I started my newsletter three years ago as a way to share what I was seeing in Chicago’s tech scene. News, insights, and events. Over 163 consistent weeks of content.

This past January, I told myself I wanted to do even more.

So I started sharing interviews with founders and operators designing Chicago’s future. It’s called the Chicago Futurist series.

I’ve shared 21 of these interviews since the new year. Guests like Tom Sosnoff, Edward Woodford, and Cait Moran have all joined the series.

Now: Governor JB Pritzker.

JB and I spoke about AI demand, Waymo, and what it actually means to be a Chicago futurist. This was one of the most substantive conversations I’ve had in my life. And that's saying something. I've been fortunate to interview incredible people over the years, including Steve Wozniak, Beto O’Rourke, and Ev Williams.

JB visited our office for an in-person conversation. So of course, we got it all on camera. He didn’t ask for any of the questions in advance. No edits. No cuts. No Bears. Just an important conversation.

Here’s our conversation:

JB: We needed to name it. We knew we were building this thing, but I didn't know what to name it, and I'm not a marketing expert, so I actually went to a marketing firm and said, can you guys help us out. They put a list together of ideas, I gave them some thoughts, but honestly, I wasn't going to come up with it myself. They came back with a list and I hated all of them, literally, that's the truth. They said, well, there's one of these that we'd like to show you more of, because we really like it. So I heard them out, and they made a presentation with the name 1871, which was on the list. It didn't stand out to me at the time, but the presentation was pretty compelling, and it included showing us how you could turn the logo into something that would be attractive to people, and so on, but also the explanation about 1871.

So I left the meeting thinking, okay, that's really interesting, but I really don't want to just rely on my own sense of whether this is right. I'm going to get on the phone and call the Chicago History Museum and the leader of the Chicago History Museum, and I said to him, listen, we're building this tech center, and the name 1871 was suggested. What do you think of that? And he said, "oh, that is brilliant." And I thought, brilliant, it's like, there was a fire that destroyed everything in Chicago in 1871, why?

I thought it was such an intro, the way he described it. That's what we're trying to build, not death and destruction around fire, which is what I was worried about people getting, but instead the entrepreneurial spirit of Chicago. And so I thought, that's it. And I was very pleased that that became the name of 1871, and of course, its success came from the startup entrepreneurs who populated it.

JB: It isn't just about physical spaces. Let's start with, what do we in Illinois have a right to win at, what do we have the kind of natural capability to do that we can build on and be a leader. Let me give you an example of something that Illinois failed at years ago. The University of Illinois is one of the great institutions in the country, in the world really, and it's been known for its engineering school and its supercomputing, and in the very early days of the internet the University of Illinois was a critical component building out what became the future of the internet, and it was all happening in Champaign-Urbana.

It was happening, but no one was paying attention.

So what happened? People like Marc Andreessen got up and left, having developed Mosaic, the very first graphic browser for the internet, and companies like YouTube and the early parts of PayPal, we could go on, there's a list of these companies that we all know, but they aren't Illinois companies, are they? And they got up and left, and it's because no one kind of put a ring around it, at the university or at the state level, and said we're going to invest in this, we're going to make sure that these companies are building in Illinois. That was a mistake that was made in the early 1990s.

When I became governor, what I knew is that, you know the old expression, Wayne Gretzky said, you don't want to skate to where the puck is, you want to skate to where the puck is going. We have a lot of great industries in Illinois, agriculture, manufacturing, and so on, but these are not high growth industries, so we got to figure out where can we win in the high growth industries, where can we get ahead of the puck. And quantum is a great example of that, and it comes out of several of the great institutions here, Argonne, Fermilab, University of Chicago, AI at University of Illinois, married to quantum.

I knew we had a right to win, so we started making investments back then. And when you talk about Current, which is water technology, and MATTER, which is healthcare technology, and before it, 1871, which was internet technology, the idea is let's make investments where we can focus on things where we have a right to win.

So that's why we made the investment in 2019, before IQMP. We made the investment in marrying University of Illinois and University of Chicago in the Chicago Quantum Exchange, and making sure that we were attracting companies and entrepreneurs around the development of commercialized quantum technology.

Fast forward, almost immediately after that the federal government invested a lot of money in Illinois. In fact, we got more of those grants around quantum than any other state, and I knew we were on our way. As things were progressing, I went back to the legislature, and the legislature agreed with me that we should make a $500 million bet on the Illinois Quantum and Micro Electronics Park, and that is now flourishing.

JB: I think it's really important to recognize that we're in a stress-filled and unique moment when it comes to the development of AI demand, the stress on our grid, and the fact that we are broadly in the United States not producing enough electricity to cover everything that we're going to be doing over the next 10 years, and the impact of all of that on everyday folks who are paying their electricity bill and their water bill.

We're an unusual state in many ways, but one way that we're special is that we have more nuclear power plants than any other state. In fact, more than 50% of our electricity is nuclear. No other state has that.

JB: We need to both address how we change curriculum in our schools around the development of AI and quantum, so that people can get jobs around it and know how to use it in jobs that will be affected by it. I think there's going to be job loss in a number of industries as a result of AI, and on top of that, the acceleration of AI with quantum is going to cause more job loss. The question is both how do we educate people about the use of AI and how it can benefit them in a future career, and what are we going to do about careers where people are being displaced by AI. These aren't just kids in school, we're talking about 50 year olds who might lose their job because the law firm doesn't need as many associates, doesn't need as many paralegals, or even secretaries. What are we going to do for those people, and what does the transition look like?

So beyond just teaching people how to be part of an economy that's going to be affected by AI, what are we going to do to reskill people, for example in community colleges, so they can transition to another career.

JB: I'm glad you asked, and I think it's important, maybe the viewers, listeners don't know that I don't accept any special interest money, so when I make decisions about what I think is best for the future of Illinois, it's not impacted by some outside force with undue power. I just want to do what's best for our state.

When it comes to Waymo, look, I think we can't ignore the development of technology. I'll give an example that's not exactly Waymo, but I want you to know how I'm thinking. There's going to be a future where trucks are self-driving and cargo is carried in these self-driving trucks. We have 6 million truck drivers in the United States today who are employed as truck drivers. This is how they put food on the table for their families. What are we going to do for the 6 million drivers? I'm not suggesting we should avoid having self-driving vehicles, but we should ask ourselves, what does the transition look like? And also, do we really want completely self-driving? Do we want self-driving and human beings as a check on that? Possibly. These are questions we should answer.

I think that as we are considering bringing Waymo, I don't think those considerations were brought in other cities where I've ridden in one, to try to understand it and get used to it. I do think that we want to be careful to adopt it at a rate and in a way that doesn't ill affect a whole lot of people.

So that's really the Waymo legislation. It hasn't really been completely developed in my view for the good of the state of Illinois, and I think we might be able to get there in the next session, but weren't able to do it in this one. Sometimes things take longer than I like. And you know, like the cell phone ban in school during the school day, I think we should have done that last year, I introduced it last year, couldn't get done, did get it done this year. So I think we can get something done on self-driving technology.

JB: Social media has had a significantly deleterious effect on the mental health of our children, and yet the social media companies do not contribute in any way to addressing the mental health challenges that come from social media. That's disturbing to me, that they're using their consumers, they're using our children, to make money, and yet they're not helping us educate kids about it or deal with the mental health challenges that come from it.

We're not taxing people who are on social media. It's a fee on large social media companies, and that's how the law is written, we're only focused on the large ones. It's a relatively small amount of money. They are making billions of dollars from people in Illinois, and we're simply asking them to help contribute to us having the kind of mental health services and education that I think will remediate some of the damage done, particularly to our young people. We also passed the Children's Social Media Safety Act, which again is about protecting our children. Let's pay for things that are helpful for children, and ask social media companies, and parents, to be a little more responsible. Give parents the tools to be that, that the social media companies can give them.

JB: I do think about legacy. I think about the totality of your life, and what is it that when you're all done that you can look back on and say I'm proud we did these things to advance the world. That's how I think of it, anyway. And of course, raising your kids the right way to be good people. I think kindness is a characteristic I believe wholeheartedly in, and I look for it in people, along with excellence and talent and drive. I think about the things I hope my kids will look back on, I'm not promoting it with my kids, but I think about the things that I'm trying to do in the world and hope my kids value those things as I hope others do, because we all have an obligation to leave it better off than you found it, whatever it is in life, and I hope they'll do the same.

Maybe the legacy I hope to leave them is the need, the desire, the drive to do that themselves. I'm hoping that when I'm all done, we will have lifted up working families across the state, that we will have cranked up the economic growth for the state of Illinois by investing in industries that are faster growing, by making sure we're investing in education, so people can get those jobs of the future, and importantly in protecting people's rights. All those things are things I'm hoping my kids will look at what I've done, and it isn't just that I've done them as governor, I was doing it in business and trying to do my best, by being an activist for early childhood education long before I was in business, and standing up for civil rights and reproductive rights.

Last month, I shared that the Illinois legislature was considering a bill to authorize autonomous vehicles on our roads. While that legislation did not pass before the spring session concluded, the work is far from over.

 Conversations among lawmakers are continuing throughout the summer, and I’m optimistic that this bill will gain traction when they reconvene for the fall veto session.

Momentum is clearly on our side. Recently, I joined several key Illinois organizations by signing on to a letter showing the broad support of autonomous vehicles. Our letter was shared with key decision-makers at the state capitol and was even included in the Chicago Tribune.

The benefits of autonomous vehicles for our communities are tremendous. They offer safe, reliable, and efficient transit, and I remain hopeful that Chicago will be the next major US city to embrace this innovative technology.

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