That is extremely interesting. It's
interesting because there's all this
concern that young people jobs are not
going to be there for them. AIs are
replacing them. On the flip side,
there's what you're describing here. It
feels like people coming into learning
today are going to be move so fast and
learn so much more in in where where do
you sit on this divide of like young
people are in big trouble or they're
actually going to be the ones winning in
the end?
>> Yeah, so the job the job substitution
job loss thing is just it's very
reductive. It's it's I think it's an
overly simplistic model. And again, it
goes back to what I said at the very
beginning, which is we've actually been
in a regime for 50 years of very slow
technological change in the economy. And
so, you know, and again, like I said,
it's like at a at a half the rate of the
of the previous era and then a third the
rate of like 100 years ago. And so,
we're we're we're we're we're coming out
of this kind of phase where we've had
like almost no technological progress in
the economy. We've had remarkably little
job churn as a result of that relative
to to any historical period. And so,
even if AI like ticks up even if AI
triples productivity growth in the
economy, which would like be a massively
big deal, take us back to the same level
of job churn that was happening between
1870 and 1930. And if you go back and
you read accounts of 1870 to 1930,
people just thought the world was awash
with opportunity, right? At that rate of
technological transformation, kids were
able to like develop new careers into
new areas of of the economy building new
kinds of products and services. I mean,
you know, a huge part of our everything
in our modern world today was kind of
invented and and I'm proliferate a kind
of during that period. And so, even if
AI like triples the pace of economic
change in the economy, it's going to
just translate to it like a much higher
rate of economic growth. It's going to
translate translate to a much higher
higher rate of job growth. And you know,
there there'll be some level of like
task level and job level substitution
will take place, but that will be
swamped by the macro effects of economic
growth and innovation. We'll happen in
that then corresponding to that, there
will be, you know, there will there will
be hiring booms, you know, I quite
honestly I think all over the place. And
then again, go back to the
other thing, which is like this is all
happening in the face of declining
population growth and and and
increasingly population shrinkage. And
so, human workers in many many many
countries over the next, you know, 10,
20, 30 years are going to be at more and
more of a premium literally because
you're going to have shrinking
population levels. And so, if you sort
of combine in a country like the US or
any country in Europe, if you combine
declining population with less
immigration, you're
the the remaining human workers are
going to be at a premium, not at a
discount. Uh and so, I think I think
that combination of kind of faster
productivity growth, faster economic
growth, and then slower population
growth and less immigration uh actually
means there's going to be much less of
this kind of dystopian, you know, no
jobs thing. I I just think it's probably
totally off base.
>> That is extremely interesting. So, what
I'm hearing is you're not super worried
about job loss. Is the key here that the
timing kind of just works out? This
population decrease, you know, like all
these kind of have to line up for there
not to be this massive job loss with AI?
>> Yeah, well, look, if we didn't have AI,
we'd be in a panic right now about
what's going to happen to the economy.
Because what we what we'd be staring at
is a future of depopulation and like
depopulation without new technology
would just mean that the economy
shrinks, right? So, so it would mean
that the economy kind of itself kind of
shrinks over time, you know, the
opportunity diminishes, there are no new
there there are no new jobs, there are
no new fields, there's no new there's no
new source of consumer demand for
spending on things. Uh and so, you you
would you would you would be very
worried about going into a period of
like severe decline and stagnation. Uh
and you know,
you know, essentially you'd be looking
at these like very dystopian scenarios
of like an economy kind of
self-euthanizing itself uh over time. Uh
and and you it's you'd be very worried
about like the opposite of what
everybody, you know, thinks that they're
worried about. The only reason we're not
worried about that is because we now
know that we have the technology that
can substitute for the lack of
population growth and then, you know,
also for the for the lack of immigration
that's likely. And so, we you know, it
it
I would say the timing has worked out
miraculously well in the sense of we're
going to have AI and robots precisely
when we actually need them to keep the
economy from actually shrinking. Uh and
and I just think like that that's just
like a fun a fundamentally a
fundamentally good news story.