Because we can go through the list that the creators, the people who actually are making AI right now, developing it. We can go through a list of jobs they say it's going to eliminate, which would be like lawyers and financial planners and like the basis of upper middle class America. That's going away. They've said this. What will it be replaced by? >> It'll be replaced by new science opportunities, new exploration into space, new manufacturing for robotics, for defense as well. >> Where are these millions of new jobs? What specifically are you talking about? >> Well, you know, every time technology advances, it creates new opportunities that were not foreseen prior because you don't know the direction of new tech. >> Now, it's interesting because Steve, you've been predicting a huge crash in the AI. You you think it's a massive bubble. You think large-scale bankruptcies are coming not just in AI companies, but across industries as automation replaces the income distribution system that's held capitalism together for 200 years. I mean, I've debated a lot of this on my show. I mean, it seems to me pretty obvious now that AI stroke robots, that the combination of all this is going to cost a lot of human jobs. And I'm not entirely sure that any of us know how they're going to get replaced with new human jobs in this new AI stroke robotic world we're going to live in. >> But this actually, if I can dive in here, that comes back to an issue of what it why do we have jobs in the first place? And the reason we have jobs at the
Billions of dollars in advancing AI because AI is a weapon. It is going to change things. It will be disruptive to the economy. But we want to beat China to the punch. So they come out and they say actually AI might increase productivity. This is not correct. AI right now is largely for abstract work. It will eliminate white collar jobs overnight. It will not create economic output >> productivity. It currently does increase productivity. >> No, it doesn't. >> It absolutely does. There are people that are doing considerably more work using AI agents than they were capable of doing 6 weeks ago. >> You are you are you are going to see everybody fired in short term. They are withholding AI technology intentionally because of this. We are not talking about the industrial revolution where we can reduce the cost of a vehicle from the equivalent of a million dollars to >> only use the industrial revolution as an allegory. The it's it's not exactly. >> So let's use the current state of things. Around 20% of our economy is healthcare. A large portion of that is administration. With the implementation of the latest LLMs at full capacity, this is 15% of the economy gone literally in 3 weeks. >> You can get rid of the admin. You can get a lot of rid of a lot of the administration work which is the majority of the cost of healthare and you can actually bring healthare costs down. >> Now what do those administrators do for work to increase their productivity after their jobs been eliminated to code? >> I mean look I don't know but that you're asking me to prove prove a negative or or >> No, I'm asking you what is the productivity increase? What is the the claim >> you're going to get rid of? >> What do these people produce? >> Oh well they're do they're doing paperwork. They're doing healthcare claims. >> When we eliminate their job with AI and we wipe out something like 17 million jobs overnight. What do those
Actually grew the fastest and they tended to grow their headcount roughly 10% in the two years following the adoption of AI. And entry level headcount rose even faster, it grew at 12%. So all this stuff about how entry- level headcount's going to get wiped out, not true. The more firms adopted AI, the more hiring they did. At least that was a correlation. Obviously, they can't prove causation, but that was the correlation. And then companies that were not highintensity adopters of AI, they were either didn't adopt or they were low intensity adopters, they just saw flatness in their headcount. So, no one is really showing a trend here of job loss. What they're showing is that the more you adopt AI, those companies also tend to grow headcount. So I you know there's just no data to support this idea that in the present AI is causing job loss. >> Job displacement will happen. Jobs will increase because of AI. Sovereignty will increase and people will make more money. Corporations will be more will have more earnings. But there will be jobs being retired. And I think if you look at translators, if you look at telephone operators, if you look at bill collectors, if you look at Whimo drivers, these very simple tasks are being automated. How do I know that? Because I invest in startups that are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to replace these jobs with AI. We had the pilot uh we we had people building the perfect pilot, the perfect driver, the perfect customer support rep. That is the point of AI. Every single sales
AI puts 15 to 30% of jobs in developed economies at risk. That's tens of millions of people. And it was Ford's CEO, one of the largest employers in the world, who said AI could wipe out half of all white-collar jobs in America. Half. That's analysts, coders, paralegals, marketers, entire departments, just gone. And the public already knows it. A Reuters-Ipsos poll found that 71% of Americans fear AI will permanently replace workers. Here's why that's especially dangerous for men. Our identity is tied to our ability to produce, to provide, and to bring home resources. When that gets ripped away, it's not just an economic crisis, it's a crisis of meaning. But the truth is, no one really knows where AI is going to go from here. While the CEO of Ford may believe half of all jobs are about to vanish, every new technology throughout history has wiped out old jobs, only to make way for new jobs. No one laments the loss of lamplighters or the guy that used to shovel all the horse We simply look forward to a whole set of new possibilities from electricity and cars. So far, humans have always adapted. We are, in fact, the most dominant apex predator the world has ever seen for one reason. We're the most adaptable. AI might be a threat down the road, but as of today, it is a tool. Arguably, the most incredible tool we've ever had
Argument. We've been through this before. Um, in 1800, 90% of work the work the American workforce were farm workers. >> Either you owned your farm or you worked for somebody else. >> By 1900, it was down to like 40% 30%. It only went further from there. So the only question bring us back to AI is we're doing the same type of thing here technological revolution. U will human beings be able to be creative enough and stay as you say Patrick stay on top of the heap enough so that um we just reinvent new roles because people don't want to work people want to survive. There'll be a place for creativity that kind of thing. The only question for AI is whether or not this is actually different. You know they keep calling it the singularity. I I'm kind of doubtful about that. I mean, it's going to definitely revolutionize the future, but as far as economic processes are concerned, um, you know, we've eliminated industries before. You used to go in an elevator in New York City in the 1920s, somebody had to press the button for you, right? We don't miss the elevator operators, right? We don't miss telephone operators. In fact, we would not have had the internet if it hadn't been for the elimination of telephone operators. We automated that process. Where did the telephone operators go? Where did the um where did the uh elevator operators go? They found new employment doing something else. So as AI takes over more of the mundane stuff first, does it invent do people invent new industries and opportunities to absorb the rest of the labor force? There'll be a shift, not an elimination. >> That's the optimistic take. I don't know that for sure. We don't none of us know that for sure, but that's the optimistic take. And this part of this is part of it. >> Moving moving unproductive farms out of the system because they're unproductive
There was the beginning of a direction that, you know, Dona Simoglu and I and others have been talking about for a while, which is this idea of complimenting humans rather than substituting for them. Now, fleshing out exactly how to do that is a is a bigger question, but at least if we could get, you know, a couple hundred economists and a lot of Nobel Prize winners and other AI researchers around the world to agree on on that direction, uh that's a good start. Let me uh hit you with some of the objections that I've heard when I've talked to other tech leaders or um uh economists about the idea that AI might take a lot of jobs. Um I myself am totally prepared to believe that there could be a real disruption here, but I do hear some skepticism. So, one thing I hear is that job losses almost never have any one cause and it's basically impossible to pinpoint when you're looking at the data. >> Well, it's certainly true. There's lots of things going on in the economy. AI is not the only thing. It's one of the most important and increasingly the most important thing. You know, we wrote this paper, Canaries in the Coal Mine, that that you may be familiar with. We're going to have a new version of it out in in a few days, probably in time for your your airing this podcast. Uh where we look at some of the alternatives as well. We look at what's going on with interest rates. We look at remote work. We look at the tech over hiring. Uh we look at changes in education. Um all of those are important. Um and we find that all of them make a difference. But even when you put them in individually or all at the same time into these regressions to try to to parse out what's happening, AI continues to be an important factor. Um, and it's not just destroying jobs. AI is also creating jobs as a lot of people will tell you. Uh, and it's the job of us, people like me, like
That might become a more attractive seat so you know you certainly do see that to some extent and then you have the big banks who are you know requiring everybody to come in and it's just been a bit of a sort of difference. We'll probably find some equilibrium eventually. So, I mean, I think what we'll see is an environment where especially because the younger generations seem to want to be more productive with their time. The days of coming in before your boss and leaving, you know, leaving after your boss, like that seems that seems to be over to some extent. Um, which is which is fine. It's just, you know, an evolving uh sort of younger generation. And I think what we'll see is, you know, productivity will probably continue to rise with AI. You haven't really seen the benefits in the data broadly speaking yet. It's been very limited and I think it's because adoption rates across various industries are still pretty low, but that will very much likely change. It's just a much slower adoption pace than people thought. Earlier this year, there was real concern that AI was going to take over the the labor labor force and we were going to get a big rising unemployment rate. And it didn't pan out that way. And I don't think it necessarily will. I think the way it will pan out is people will gradually become more productive. Perhaps some job openings won't get filled because you know they realize AI can maybe do some of that work and then new jobs will be created as a result and it will just result in overall a better economy better labor force one where it's more productive unit labor costs come down or sort of the the costs associated with production and that's where you get you know further disinflationary trends. >> I have 100% changed my mind. I used to think it was going to take all the jobs
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