Why bother with meals anymore? The reality is sobering: Our soils are exhausted—the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that 33% of the world’s arable land is degraded. Each year, erosion strips away another 24 billion tons of fertile topsoil. Our food is nutrient-poor—vitamins and minerals have plummeted over decades. An apple isn’t a beacon of health anymore; it’s a relic of a lost world. A study by U.S. agricultural researcher Donald R. Davis found that between 1950 and 1999, Vitamin C in common fruits and vegetables dropped by up to 30%, calcium by 27%, iron by 37%. Industrial agriculture churns out calories in bulk—but quality? Barely a whisper. Yet, per the FAO, over 3 billion people suffer from malnutrition—not for lack of calories, but for lack of access to nutrient-rich diets.

We measure progress in cold metrics: context windows ballooning to millions of tokens, benchmarks in math and coding shattered like glass, reasoning sharpened to a blade’s edge. Yet this is no longer about organizing chaos or hoarding knowledge—it’s about transcending both to shape a technological society of understanding. We’ve built machines that will now reason beyond us, tools so potent they mock our romantic hope to retain something worth reasoning about. Consciousness in these entities? Irrelevant. Their power eclipses every artifact of human history, and we stand, mouths agape, at the precipice of our own obsolescence as we welcome the homo obsoletus. 

We live in a time of truncated messages. Tweets replace debate, opinions drown out knowledge, and our society operates less in a mode of reflection than one of reaction. The mere fact that J.D. Vance attended the Munich Security Conference, and that Alice Weidel—yes, I have to pause in 2025 to even say this—represents the second-strongest political party in the so-called “land of poets and thinkers” underscores this reactive era.

OpenEuroLLM – this is the name of Europe’s new vision in the digital race. Under the banners of “AI Made in Europe” and “Shaping Europe’s Digital Future,” 20 leading European entities—including renowned universities, research institutions, companies, and European high-performance computing initiatives (EuroHPC) —are working together to catch up. However, the planned budget of 58 million dollars seems rather modest, especially considering the United States recently invested 56 billion US dollars in GenAI projects. The name “OpenEuroLLM” also doesn’t sound quite as impactful as Lama, Groc, Claude, or their well-known friend GPT.

We stand at the threshold of a new year, ready to pack away the holiday lights and mulled wine as we hurl ourselves headlong into 2025. And yet, a subtle, gnawing regret lingers. It’s that uneasy sense that the “me-first” society—the single-minded pursuit of our own validation—has set deeper roots in our daily lives than ever before. Moments that could be devoted to collective action, or at least mutual reflection, are overshadowed by ceaseless attempts to get ahead or outdo others.

A World of Wonders What are the implications of a world where every question has an answer, where every problem has a solution? When the pursuit of knowledge has reached its peak, and the collective human intellect stands at the pinnacle of enlightenment. The Syncretic Era, a harmonized world, a mythical enlightenment—Perfect Knowledge—a world where every conversation has been held and every puzzle solved.

In the early 16th century, the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León searched the ‘New World’ for the Fountain of Youth, a mythical source said to grant eternal life. 500 years later, many scientists and technology enthusiasts believe we are on the brink of a breakthrough in the field of longevity. The pursuit still aims at the Fountain of Youth, but now, thanks to the rapid rise of LLMs, we drink from another, eerily similar source of life: the foundation of truth. Once eternal youth is achieved, we yearn for eternal truth. It seems to me that we strive to drink from the »Fountain of Truth«, believing that with perfect knowledge we can overcome our mortal limitations.

Let's be clear: I don't own a Tesla Bot or a Porsche 911. But could a robot driver be the bridge to autonomous driving? Will we be packing our household robot—one that helps our kids with homework and cares for grandma—into our suitcase when we jet off on vacation? Or will it be sitting next to us on the plane?

“Preparing for a radical restart and some kind of Biblical end-time?”

In 2017, I wrote an outlook with predictions on ‘our future’. Admittedly, not all forecasts were precise—some missed by years or got distorted by wars and the pandemic. Yet, as I stumbled upon the article last week, I was struck by a familiar realization: the course of anticipating technological progress and its potential futures are not only observable but seem predictable, from how progress seems to happen.

Following the journalistic perception in advance, Davos 2024 initially seemed something like a crisis meeting. Restoring trust. In science, politics, and especially in the economy. That was the core theme of this year's World Economic Forum. However, it became clear during the week: The World Economic Forum has become a showcase and competition of global capitalism. Economy drives change.

In an era where the very fabric of our existence is tested – whether by the impending doom of climate change, the challenges of burgeoning technologies, the gnawing pain of hunger, or the intricate dance of geopolitics – it's in Kyiv that I find a pulse. A pulse that resonates with hope, resilience, and an undying spirit. Here, amidst ancient streets and modern aspirations, a community converges, not just to survive, but to thrive and redefine.