Within a few years robots are likely available that look like a human shape and that can do a lot of things for elderly care where there is a huge amount of unmet demand while at night they can prepare meals to be delivered the next day or restack shelves at Coles or Woolworths.

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Also, Tesla’s self-driving works. Within a short time I expect we will call a driverless Uber or taxi and it will get us where we want to go, probably at a lower cost than now. Those who want to have a car, can buy one that drives itself which is very useful for those who are losing confidence in their driving and, statistically, this self-driving is much safer than humans.

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On the other hand the number of fake videos and well-written but lifeless communications will explode. Writing will also become better and better at appealing to our emotions, marketing will get more targeted which may not be a good idea at all as they may target our weaknesses, and the ability to control communications will likely increase. One redeeming feature is that when people see an AI-generated person in a picture or video and realise it is AI, they immediately lose interest completely. I am very glad about that.

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There will have to be a lot more vigilance with one bank giving out $1 billion in loans to fraudulent applications who used – guess what – AI to forge documents convincingly. Also cyber security may get much more sophisticated as it is now possible to clone a voice from just a few recorded words such as from a cold call.

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Therefore vigilance and double checking when money is involved is hugely important. Any time a large amount of money is moved one should verify account details in multiple ways such as over the phone. Some time in the future, even a familiar voice may not be enough, one needs to ask the other person a question only they know the answer to but we may be some time away from that yet.

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Tradies and people who work person to person could be the big winners from these changes. For investors, there will be lots of winners and losers among companies and the simplest way to pick all the winners is to buy the entire stockmarket (index funds) which is my favourite strategy.

Coming back to the current war. The best case scenario is that a regime that has committed many vile acts may be on its last legs. Another scenario is that those legs can still twitch but, unless the outcome suddenly becomes uncertain, I don’t see a substantial long term effect.

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Coming back to the current war. The best case scenario is that a regime that has committed many vile acts may be on its last legs. Another scenario is that those legs can still twitch but, unless the outcome suddenly becomes uncertain, I don’t see a substantial long term effect on markets.