Gary Vaynerchuk forecasted a major shift in personal tech
“Your mobile phones will become as obsolete as a pager or a BlackBerry, and smart glasses will replace them”, predicted Gary Vaynerchuk, the world’s leading social media pioneer and influencer, on Wednesday. When Gary, CEO of VaynerMedia, widely known as GaryVee — a New York Times bestselling author recognised globally for identifying trends early — makes a prediction, the world tends to sit up and take note.
During a session titled ‘AI Won’t Wait, Neither Should You’ at BRIDGE Summit 2025, the world’s largest debut media event, Gary said: “Six or seven of the largest technology companies in the world are pouring billions and billions of dollars to win the arms race to own these glasses. And if Meta wins and Meta glasses win, it’s going to be hard for the other social networks to get in there.”
In a wide-ranging talk on how technology is reshaping our lives, Gary said the single biggest currency in the world today is not bitcoin, gold, the US dollar, or a bullet — it is attention, and AI algorithms are going to dramatically impact it. “AI is going to be like oxygen. There’s no part of our lives that is not going to be affected by this profound technology,” he predicted.
He said attention has forever dictated how people see the world. “It has dictated what you are interested in, what you purchase, what you believe in.”
Reflecting on how gadgets are overwhelming children, he noted:“Your children are going to wear smart glasses that replace mobiles when they’re adults and be on technology 24 hours a day. Your grandchildren are going to marry AI robots.”
From dot-com to the AI era
Gary, who has been a prolific early investor in Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo, Snapchat, Coinbase, and Uber, said: “The prime of my career, which started when I was around 18 years old, has really paced along with the biggest innovations of our time. In 1996, I launched a website for my father’s wine business when most of the world was not on the Internet yet.
And then after the Internet, we got into the social media era, the cell phone era, and now we’re going into this AI era and this blockchain era, Web3.”
He drew parallels between the early dot-com boom and today’s AI surge: “Just like the early dot-com days and the social media explosion, people may end up losing money in these early days of AI — but then look at where the Internet is today. Many people are about to waste huge amounts of money and time on AI that are destined to go to zero in the next 36 months. This doesn’t mean AI is not important; in fact, it means the reverse. This is the same movie over and over again. And the fear we have of it [AI] actually reminds me of the way humans reacted when electricity was invented.”
Gary said AI algorithms are democratising content creation, distribution, and influence: “Every single person in this room is affected by the AI that runs LinkedIn’s algorithm, TikTok’s algorithm, Facebook’s algorithm, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
Through the high-powered meetings I’ve had in this incredible region over the last three days, one thing continues to be very clear to me — that 8.3 billion people on Earth are incredibly good at underestimating the AI algorithms of social media. We are now living in a world where the AI algorithms are judging the individual piece of content, not how many followers you have.”
He highlighted that the most powerful aspect of social media is its accessibility: “The most incredible power of social media is that it’s free, allowing content creators to garner more attention. This free era of social media content creation and transaction will be viewed in 100 years as a golden 25-year window for individuals and businesses to build expansive, massive opportunities for themselves — at zero cost.”
He concluded by underlining the transformative power of AI and attention: “The most significant AI that would probably impact you is happening right now — your ability to amass the single biggest currency in the world: attention. And the fact that 8.3 billion people have the ability to amass it with no upfront capital is a profound moment in human history that everybody continues to underestimate and misunderstand — the single biggest AI opportunity of our lives.”
Finally, Gary praised BRIDGE Summit 2025, calling it an “incredible event”. “I’ve had the luxury of meeting several brilliant minds from around the world here for the last three days. I think this Summit has been an unbelievable first-year effort, and I think we should all clap for the organisers.”
