Here are six reasons to be optimistic about 2020

Okay, there’s a lot about Artificial Intelligence that is scary. It could empower tyrants, threaten jobs and entrench bias. At the same time, history is awash with examples that technological change has brought more progress than perils. Advanced technologies could improve health care and even address climate change.

Writing for the World Economic Forum, Jeremy O’Brien says quantum computing could help beat climate change through simulations that could uncover new catalysts for carbon capture that are cheaper and more efficient than current models. “A catalyst for ‘scrubbing’ carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere could be a powerful tool in tackling climate change,” he writes.

It’s tempting to write some balancing lines here about why 2020 will be a particularly shock-prone year. Let’s save that for the New Year. After all, it is the optimists who are best equipped to find solutions to global problems – because they believe they can.

“Choose to be optimistic, it feels better,” said the Dalai Lama.

Happy holidays.

Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, prize-winning journalist and president CEO of the Atlantic Council, one of the United States’ most influential think tanks on global affairs. He worked at The Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years as a foreign correspondent, assistant managing editor and as the longest-serving editor of the paper’s European edition. His latest book – “Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth” – was a New York Times best-seller and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter @FredKempe and subscribe here to Inflection Points, his look each Saturday at the past week’s top stories and trends.

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Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/20/here-are-six-reasons-to-be-optimistic-about-2020.html