Following the July 2021 discussion, COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. will increase from then-current levels, with the increase driven primarily by unvaccinated people.
“so, you know, we'll see. Uh, it's going to come down to policy. But I think from a depth perspective, there will absolutely be a rise in deaths now, as unvaccinated people are going to be the bulk of those deaths.”
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Explanation
COVID-19 deaths did rise as the Delta wave hit later in 2021, driven predominantly by unvaccinated people.
If COVID-19 is allowed to continue spreading widely among the unvaccinated for a sufficient period, a new variant will eventually emerge that substantially evades existing vaccines, causes very high mortality including among vaccinated people, and is severe enough to force a renewed shutdown of the economy.
“we are fighting basically a time function where at a certain amount of time you're going to have a variant that that is, you know, basically will overcome all the vaccines we have will, uh, kill enormous numbers of people, including the vaccinated, will literally shut the economy down.”
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Explanation
No vaccine-evading variant caused mass mortality among the vaccinated or forced a renewed economy-wide shutdown; Omicron proved more transmissible but markedly less lethal.
COVID-19 will become and remain an endemic virus, continuing to circulate in the human population with intermittent modest-to-severe outbreaks for many years, regardless of how many people are infected or vaccinated.
“it seems this is, you know, as we talked about earlier and as I think everyone is coming to terms with, this is going to be an endemic virus, and that means that it's going to be circulating in the population in a modest way, causing sometimes severe, sometimes modest outbreaks for likely a very long time. No matter how many people get it, no matter how many people get vaccinated”
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Explanation
COVID-19 became and remains endemic, circulating with periodic outbreaks for years, confirming the prediction.
DeepMind will expand its AlphaFold-based public proteome database to include over 100 million unique protein structures from many species, making them freely available and searchable within the months following July 2021.
“they said that they're going to publish this proteome database and scale it for all other species of life, that we have the sort of data set around us for which they expect will achieve over 100 million unique proteins in this database over the coming months, freely available and searchable.”
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Explanation
DeepMind's AlphaFold Protein Structure Database expanded to over 200 million protein structures across nearly all cataloged species, exceeding the predicted 100 million, freely searchable.
Over the years following the public release of DeepMind's protein-structure database (starting July 2021), hundreds of new drug discovery or therapeutics-focused companies will be founded that rely materially on that database.
“there will be hundreds of drug companies that will now start because of what's in that database.”
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Explanation
Many AI-driven drug discovery companies emerged in subsequent years, but a direct causal attribution of "hundreds" specifically to this database is difficult to verify.
Over the long run, the current highly centralized, monopolistic structure of major technology platforms (e.g., Google, Facebook, Amazon) will shift toward a more decentralized market structure, driven by either legislation or new innovation, resulting in a materially healthier competitive and societal outcome than exists in 2021.
“so it stands to reason that technology will be not dissimilar to those things... either through legislation or through innovation. Then the pendulum swings to decentralization... So it's likely that we're going to move to a place that's a healthier outcome for everybody.”
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Explanation
Big tech platforms remain dominant as of 2026 with only modest decentralization pressure, though AI has introduced some new competitive dynamics; not a clean confirmation either way.
The privately led space race efforts by companies such as Blue Origin, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic will lead to significant engineering and scientific breakthroughs in the coming years, beyond the state of the art as of mid‑2021.
“And I do believe there will be great engineering and scientific breakthroughs that come as a result of what they're doing with this new space race.”
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Explanation
Private space efforts (SpaceX's Starship, reusability advances, Blue Origin's crewed flights) produced significant engineering breakthroughs in the years following.