#79 AI and the Meaning of Life: A Conversation with Dr. Ryan Jenkins

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]The internet is crack.

[00:00:04]You try to go, but we all know you'll be back because the internet [music] is crack.

[00:00:18]The internet is crack. The show that asked the question, can we coexist with our creation?

[00:00:28]Hello, I'm Seth Camello >> and I am Caroline Risber and we are the internet is cracked by addicts for addict >> and today we are so pleased to have Ryan Jenkins back. He is a professor that studies AI ethics, focusing on autonomous systems, moral responsibility, and human machine relationships, exploring how emerging technologies reshape decision-m, accountability, and what it means to coexist with intelligent machines. And today we are going to talk about AI and labor. So this is, you know, what's on everybody's mind and we are so lucky to have your mind.

[00:01:13]>> Yeah. [laughter] >> Yeah. Thank you. It's it's it's great to be back. It's a great topic. Like you said, it's at the front of mind for a lot of people. Uh you know, a lot of people that feel like um technology is something that happens to us whether we want it or not. And Yes.

[00:01:27]>> And so I think the question a lot of people have is you know, what does this mean for me?

[00:01:31]>> Exactly.

[00:01:32]>> Yeah. No, it's very true. Thank you again for being back and talking to us and um so I guess I'm just going to jump in and um so historically automation created new jobs like let's say the the cars you know and what is different about AI if anything will it be destructive will it rip apart humanity or just another different tool of making another tool of efficiency for, you know, making humanity better.

[00:02:07]>> Yeah. So, you're right. The the long history of economic disruption is one where um there's usually some what we call creative destruction, right?

[00:02:17]There's usually a a counterbalance or um a lot of opportunities that rush in to fill the gap for labor that's been displaced by automation. I mean the joke was uh you know when when machinery automated a lot of the labor that was required on farms a lot of people moved to from farms to factories and so while some jobs were destroyed other jobs were created and a lot of people have that that kind of I don't know polyianaish sort of sense that things will work out they've always worked out in the past um I'm not so confident about that there's a lot of reasons to be a little bit more cautious than than that story would lead us to to be.

[00:03:04]So, for example, um one thing that you might say is, well, there's not an ironclad law of economics that says the future is going to be like the past. So, just because these waves of automation have tended to to work out in the past doesn't mean that this time is going to be the same. In fact, there's reason to think that this time might be different.

[00:03:29]Um, and one reason to think that it might be different is that AI is is showing an ability to take over not just um the I mean robotics has taken over the manual labor, a lot of the manual labor involved in these tasks. AI stands to take over a lot of the cognitive labor. So when people left the factories, when the United States transitioned to a service economy, for example, >> um, and a lot of people left the factories and went into offices instead, uh, they transitioned from manual to cognitive labor. But AI is taking over a lot of the cognitive labor this time. So it's just not obvious where else there is for for human beings to go, at least if we want to paint the the economy in those really broad strokes like that.

[00:04:19]Um and even if things do work out, you know, we shouldn't gloss over the fact that these past disruptions have been really tumultuous and really um a cause of great suffering for lots and lots of people around the world and and people in developed economies like ours. I mean, we shouldn't gloss over the fact that the the industrial revolution made life a lot worse for lots and lots of people. So it's uh you know by putting them in jobs that were dirty, dangerous, and unpleasant and um being forced to work around machinery that was hazardous or you know routinely injured people really grievously um or sending people to work in coal mines, right, to to feed the boilers that fed those machines. I mean there's all there's all kinds of there's many many places where we can inject some some nuance and some caution into this story. I think, you know, people, some people, I think, will kind of glibly compare this to uh the.com boom and crash.

[00:05:23]>> They'll say, well, you know, there was the.com bubble. Uh that was bad for the economy, but we all recovered and you know, life goes on.

[00:05:30]>> Um but the the the stock market took something like 15 years to recover after the dot crash. I mean, it was enormously costly, right? and it became a a drag on the economy for you know half a generation afterwards. Yeah. So even even if we we see the kind of um the the the stories from people who are relatively unconcerned like this will just be like you know the 2000 crash it's no big deal or it'll just be like previous disruptions in the past and yeah those were unpleasant but we got through it. Um I think that even those stories which are supposed to be the kind of optimistic uh predictions even those stories have a lot of nuance that that we shouldn't neglect.

[00:06:19]>> Also I think it's interesting that we believe that we got through the industrial revolution and things are better. That may or may not be true. We are where we are, >> right?

[00:06:33]>> But maybe working on the farm actually was a better life or however or we we just sort of assume wherever we are currently is best and it quote unquote worked out whereas maybe it it it didn't quite work out and you know um one question I have for you that we were just talking about that's very interesting to us is sort of the morality of the idea that these AI companies are what are they creating They're they're sucking the ideas that that humanity has created over its entire existence and sort of organizing it. And and and why should they be the ones profiting from the ideas from Socrates, from, you know, from your favorite novelist, from you writing about how to, you know, fix your guitar amp or something like that? Why why why does Sam Alman get the money for that?

[00:07:41]>> Yeah. Yeah. It's a good it's a good question. Um I mean you know unfortunately I think a lot of this is driven by the idea that it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. You know the the companies will race and this is a I think a a standard or a typical approach from folks in the valley. That's not to say that that every startup does this or every entrepreneur has this mindset, but it's a common a common approach to say we will get big enough and powerful enough quickly enough that we'll be able to throw our weight around. So we know that regulation moves slowly. We know that public opinion can move relatively slowly. And so the strategy is we'll get very big. We will make ourselves indispensable.

[00:08:28]And while we're doing that uh or in the course of doing that, we'll make it uh unconscionable that we would be regulated out of existence. So, you know, we're not going to ask hard questions about copyright and intellectual property. We're just going to assume that everything that exists on the internet is public information. It's information that we can capture ourselves and repackage and sell to others. And by the time the copyright courts get around to figuring it out, we'll already be so big and powerful that they'll be forced to make accommodations uh that the the public would would think it's untenable to uh to restrict that kind of activity. I mean, we we see this with uh you know, Shashana Zubof called this the the Google Street View uh method of commerce, which is to say, we're just going to lay claim to things that are publicly accessible. we'll make a product out of it and we'll sell it back to people and by the time people wake up and ask uh maybe I don't want a picture of my house on the internet you know or anywhere in the world to see >> uh it's too late by then >> and so you know now we have it uh incredibly powerful systems for generating text for example and the copyright cases are are still working their way through the courts as we speak um and the you know the settlements are are relatively recent Um I mean the anthropic copyright settlement for example is relatively recent. Um and that took you know that that might take a year or two to play out. We know that the industries move very quickly. So by the time any settlement is reached it's it's almost too late.

[00:10:08]>> So it it is that this kind of idea. I remember I worked in Silicon Valley back in the the 2000s and it was, you know, everybody used to say first mover advantage, which basically meant uh anti-competitive practice where you got where you got big before somebody else could get big. And it I find it really interesting because although obviously I mean again it's a technology created by academics over you know 50 years 75 years maybe even 100 years people have been thinking about and researching artificial intelligence and so these companies grab it grab the ideas that other people have. So in a sense it isn't even I mean there's anthropic there's there's meta there I mean there's a lot of people while while it may be magical and amazing it's obviously not singular it's not a breakthrough that one person has made and they're all trying to move fast and get big and embedded so that they're the one you choose rather than maybe innovating. Does that make sense?

[00:11:22]>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean a lot of this so um I think Corey Doctoro calls this in shitification, right? And I think that you all you had him on his show at one point and >> Yeah.

[00:11:32]>> Yeah. Yeah. And and you know, say what you will about that term, but I it it traces it traces a kind of uh a common trajectory in the life cycle of a a lot of technologies. you you might um break down barriers and offer a free version to a lot of people. Sort of get them hooked, convince them of the value, I suppose, would be the the euphemistic way or the charitable way to put it.

[00:11:58]Convince them of the value and um make it so that your technology becomes indispensable uh as as you put it Seth, you know, embedded into their into their lives so that they can't easily extricate it. And then you can gradually kind of twist the screws, right? you can gradually turn the knobs on the back end so that the ads become more common, more and more invasive, they become unskippable. Uh you gradually make it harder and harder for people to leave. So you make it so that it's very hard to take your data uh to to um export your data and bring it to another platform, for example. um you start leveraging network effects where you put um you know you start setting up a moat, you start putting more and more of your content behind a payw wall. Um so X did this after after Elon took over, right? So you can view any any tweet um on the internet, any anything that's public, but you can't view the responses or the comments to it or the larger thread that it's part of without logging in. So these are all ways of sort of giving you the you know the first hit for free and then gradually uh shifting the these design choices away from what benefits the user that makes it um open uh portable accessible democratized and shifting it in favor of capital capital instead where you make it more and more user unfriendly. Um it's an interesting story that that we see this with AI because I think that some of the AI companies are struggling with this now. Um OpenAI for example I think is struggling with this. Um they're recently uh in threat of being overtaken by Anthropic in terms of their revenue which is a a pretty surprising story because just a couple months ago Anthropic was almost also ran >> uh and you know when um Opus 4.5 or 4.6 six came out late last year and Gemini 3 and these kinds of models started really threatening GPT uh OpenAI, you know, Sam Alman sent a letter out to employees that said you can rest easy. Like these are real threats, but the the line that he had in that letter was for most people we are still synonymous with AI >> in the same way that Google is synonymous with search and Kleenex is synonymous with tissue. Right.

[00:14:24]>> Yeah. For most people, chat GBT just was AI. Uh or vice versa. When they think of AI, they think of pulling up chat GPT.

[00:14:32]And Sam Alton was right about that. But the problem is there's very little moat.

[00:14:36]Uh you know, if if a chat GPT was replaced by clawed tomorrow, I think most of the people that use GPT wouldn't feel that much disruption to their their lives or their workflow. So they don't and and they don't have an obvious network effect. It's not like Facebook, right? Where the more people are on Facebook, the more potential connections there are for any particular person and the more reason there is for a person to create a new account, that is someone who's not on Facebook to get on it.

[00:15:05]That's a network effect. Same thing with telephones, right? Telephones became more valuable the more people had them because >> there's more opportunities to >> Example.

[00:15:15]>> Yeah. Chat GPT is not like that. you know, it doesn't matter to me at all whether my colleagues are using it or whether my friends in real life, you know, offline are using it.

[00:15:24]>> That's a good point.

[00:15:25]>> Whether my company's using it. Yeah.

[00:15:26]There there's no I I don't benefit from that in in any obvious way. I mean, you know, you can sort of strain your imagination to think of ways that it might benefit you, but certainly it's not the same as getting on Facebook.

[00:15:39]actually in in a certain way it might might hurt you because uh um people they they all have all these um AI systems have their own cadence in speech and stuff. So it may actually you it may be beneficial to be on the one that is least used because it's cadence is less recognized and you won't get caught.

[00:16:05]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. There there's certainly some of that. I mean, I'm starting to find some of the the mannerisms or the LLM isms really really abrasive. And I think that we I think a lot of us are starting to develop this kind of sixth sense for when SAG sounds like it's written by AI.

[00:16:22]>> Um, >> and it's it sounds uh fairly obnoxious.

[00:16:26]>> Well, it is. It's actually a poll. It's pollution because um you know it may or may not be written by AI but you're always wondering now you know it's sort of it's sort of polluted uh the thought process.

[00:16:45]>> Yeah. the the epistemic environment has has been polluted and and you know what's funny about that is that whether something is AI generated or not ma is sort of secondary um the fact that it could be AI generated is enough to inject uh kind of reasonable suspicion all over the place and you know now that we have not not just with text but with video and pictures that's that's all the worse right >> people people just need to sort of off-handedly wonder um you know, is this an actual I don't know, incriminating video of a war crime or something like that. You just need a couple people in the comments to say, "This looks a little bit like AI to me to kind of sew those those seeds of doubt." Um and just just as you said, you know, pollute the the environment in which we try to make decisions.

[00:17:35]>> Yeah. As a philosopher, this is really really really really important because I can't trust anything. I feel like if my my aunt sends me a picture of her nephew, >> I don't trust it. I don't trust anything I see. And that is not healthy.

[00:17:52]>> Yeah.

[00:17:52]>> That's the health society.

[00:17:55]>> Yeah.

[00:17:55]>> And you know, so much of it, too. I just want to say it's so much of it like like right now whatever you're on and I'm getting people sending me videos or whatever and I'm really where did you get this from? Is this true? I I do fact check. I try to figure out and then you realize that that was not true or whatever it is. And that is actually terrifying that you I had a conversation with a friend of mine like what is true today?

[00:18:21]>> Mhm.

[00:18:22]>> You know, like how do you really know?

[00:18:25]Um I want to I I'm just curious because I now I'm like when um I'm sorry, I was thinking about what we were saying. Um what what what scares me is like things go so fast and there's really no regulation and what you were saying earlier about you know Google map and all this kind of thing and then you're like oh I don't want my house in there but then it's too late >> right >> so what about where we are now like is things going to be too late because AI is too fast I mean I I'm just wondering like with jobs If I look at LinkedIn, I I think I see every day a new company are doing layoffs or they're doing I don't know if necessarily it's all about AI, but I do see a lot of that and I'm thinking they're reconstructing the companies and they're doing this and they're doing that and I'm like, what is really going on?

[00:19:24]>> Can we stop anything? I mean, I don't know. Like the the economy.

[00:19:29]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean the economy is a it's a big enough beast that I I don't no I don't think you can just stop it or turn it around. Um but but you can you [laughter] can shift the incentive structure um so that companies are are not incentivized to to behave this way or they're incentivized to uh share more of the proceeds with with labor rather than allowing them all to concentrate or flow upwards to capital. Um, when it when it comes to AI and layoffs, it's hard to know what the truth is there.

[00:20:01]Um, I think it's a very easy excuse to point to to say, well, you know, with AI made this these tough decisions inevitable and, you know, it's it's regrettable that the changing economy forces our hand and blah blah blah. And you have this this this language that really eliminates any sense of responsibility or choice on the part of the people that actually made the decision to to fire people or or laid them off. And it's easy to grab a hold of that story about inevitability and hide behind it. I think we should be skeptical of that. I mean, I'm I'm skeptical of the language of inevitability, period. And it comes up so often in technology. I mean, we were just mentioning this earlier. We have this this idea that's built into our our theory of history that historical progress is gradually upward and uh you know the line goes up over time and things get better and better and that's just what technology is for and and uh it's a it's a kind of impersonal force that sweeps us along and there's no use in fighting against it but at the end of the day it's generally positive. I think that's the view that that a lot of people have. People have this this story that the technological progress is uh generally um up upwards. It it makes life better for most people. It it makes our lives easier uh frictionless, more convenient um and it lowers the the cost or it lowers barriers to um to things that we we want to have in our lives. Um, and part of that I think part of that story, you know, it it offers folks in power a a very easy thing to hide behind, which is to say, you know, we have to adapt to changing times and this is just the way of the world and we're not we don't celebrate firing people or or laying them off, but AI is forcing us to do this. And I'm I'm really skeptical of that kind of story.

[00:22:07]I mean, for one thing, uh, we haven't, at least the the data that I've seen shows that the disruption of AI has not been profound. It has not been, um, earthshattering, you know, as a as a reorientation or or a disruption. We're not we we're just not seeing that yet.

[00:22:28]Uh, in in the data that we have, there's sort of inklings of of it here and there. you know, there are um entry-level postings that that have fallen in terms of uh their numbers. So, there's fewer entry-level jobs that are open. Part of the hypothesis there is that AI can automate a lot of that kind of work. And so, it makes sense that that AI might be cannibalizing entry-level uh positions. There there's some some whispers of that or some glimmers of that. But the data that I was just looking at today um from the budget lab at at Yale suggests that the AI disruption is is no different from previous disruptions like um the internet for example or computers in the workplace. Those disruptions were significant but they took decades to play out. They ultimately had an impact of, you know, a couple fractions of a percent in terms of uh labor disruption or people that need to change jobs, people that lose jobs, you know, a couple fractions of a percent per year over a couple decades. And sure, over a couple decades that becomes profound, but it's not like we're going to wake up tomorrow and there's not going to be any need for computer programmers. I don't think that that kind of AI apocalypse is is um we just haven't seen the evidence for it yet.

[00:23:47]>> Well, what we've basically what I've sort of taken away from talking, you know, we've done so many episodes now uh and we've talked to so many technical people, roboticists, programmers, and it there's an inevitability, you know, it's going to happen. You know, you will have, you know, autonomous robots and you will have all these things, but they are uh we just talked to a roboticist and, you know, he's saying, "Look, we're, you know, we're not there. All that cool stuff you're seeing is pre-programmed or tea uh operated. It's not like you're there's no robot." He said he he was English. She said, "There's no robot that I can say, go make me a cup of tea and it'll go walk."

[00:24:36]>> Yeah. Yeah. You know, he said my, you know, my, you know, one of my three-year-old granddaughter would be better at it than than a robot. So it's like but he does say it's inevitable that we will eventually achieve that that that level of but I I I do want to focus on that idea that there's this disingenuous um use of that excuse >> by companies to uh right now to get rid of labor.

[00:25:06]>> Mhm. Yeah. So again I'm not I'm not an economist by by training. Um, but I think that the the story that's offered is just irresistible, right? You can hide be behind inevitability. It gives things this kind of veneer of impersonal uh an impersonal nature that it's something that just just happens by itself or something that just has to happen and there's no other way around it. And we forget that the these things happen because specific human beings made specific choices. Yeah.

[00:25:43]>> So, even if they feel like their hand was forced, even in the most charitable interpretation, >> they I get frustrated when it seems to me like they're trying to sherk accepting responsibility for for the choices that they're making and laying people off and pretending instead that what they're doing is just part of the story of this grand sweep of history and what they're doing is ultimately part of improving people's lives by by being part of a an economic transformation. Um, so I'm skeptical of that. You know, I've I've heard rumors about how a lot of these companies will they'll lay off, you know, 10,000 employees in America and then file for 10,000 H-1B visas the next day.

[00:26:26]>> Uh, and and so it's which which suggests it's not really AI. They're not reducing their headcount, right?

[00:26:34]>> They're trading off uh expensive American workers for cheaper workers in other parts of the world. Um, I think that probably goes some way to explaining it. Um, but I'm not, again, I haven't seen I haven't looked into that data very carefully, but that's another kind of alternate explanation that is definitely worth investigating.

[00:26:53]>> Yeah, it really that is very very interesting and like even with Seth was saying earlier that we doing this podcast, we kept actually keep hearing that like robots are programmed. They're not going to go in in your house and start cleaning tomorrow. But they want to make you think that that's going to happen. Same as you say with AI that that's constantly what I keep hearing from friends and like, "Oh my god, they're taking a job. It's AI is AI." So you're basically saying that is maybe not the whole truth. So companies are doing other things too, but they're blaming the AI.

[00:27:29]>> Yeah. Yeah. And there's lots of things that there's lots of other kinds of economic, you know, headwinds that they could be blaming. They could be blaming uncertainty over tariffs and things like that. They could be blaming, you know, energy supply shocks caused by the the war in Iran. There's all kinds of things that are playing into this story, too.

[00:27:46]But I think that it's it's it's easy. It it plays on a a common fear or a common misunderstanding, I think, to say, you know, we can do the work of these 10,000 people now with one AI program. and so we're going to let all of them go. That strikes me as as um implausible. And there's more data here that that shows that it's implausible. One is that a lot of the pilots, almost all of the pilots that companies do fail and fail to produce any um any improvements in in profit. Um AI is it's it's often hard to deploy and configure. Uh it still makes mistakes in ways that are surprising.

[00:28:27]Um, it's not just that it makes mistakes or that it's, you know, you might say, well, it human beings make mistakes, too. So, we don't lose anything by transitioning to AI or we're not introducing new sources of error, but we're introducing different kinds of error that are that are harder to protect against and harder to defend against and catch. And that requires a kind of reconfiguration of of the way that we've been doing work. So the the the idea that we can just um sprinkle AI on our operations as a company and immediately make make a couple thousand workers obsolete is really not what we're what we're seeing play out. Maybe one day that'll happen, but we're not seeing it yet. And you know, more evidence to this is that Anthropic is hiring a bunch of consultants that go out into the field and help their their clients install and integrate Anthropics systems into their own systems. Well, if AI were easy to deploy, if it if it um were obvious on its face how beneficial it would be, if it were obvious how much profit it could generate while eliminating labor, >> you wouldn't have to do that in the same way that >> uh you know, Chat GBT shouldn't have to sell ads if it's really a revolutionary economic tool that's going to bring about this technoutopia. That's kind of funny because selling advertisements is the model that we've had for several hundred years in the west and you know it doesn't sound revolutionary to me. So there's, you know, at >> especially for companies that are private >> um where we can't really scrutinize their their internal workings or their finances, I think that we have to take a lot of this with a grain of salt. Um so the idea that yeah, AI is a a revolution in worker productivity, we're just not seeing that yet. In fact, we're seeing a lot of evidence to the contrary.

[00:30:25]>> But uh can I Okay, this may or may not this has occurred to me may or may may or may not be a uh an insight worthy of um um talking about but let's talk about Newtonian physics, right? So let's >> let's talk about it. It's it's you know he creates it. It's there but it's not going to be tomorrow that people it's going to take a long long time for people right it took a long time for that to become part of you know the fabric of how things were created and in those innovations same things with uh you know theory relativity I mean it there's I feel like there's an inevitability with AI but it's not here right now and it takes time it takes time for um for these, you know, techn technological innovations to really make their way through society is I guess my point.

[00:31:30]>> Sure. I think that's totally fair. Uh and and if I had to wager, I that's probably the the kind of future that I would bet on too is one of uh displacement or disruption at a pace that's much much slower than what a lot of the hype would suggest. So the idea that you know 50% of jobs are at threat uh under threat of automation or hundreds of millions of jobs around the world could be eliminated by AI in the future. Um the idea that most code I mean most code probably is written by AI nowadays but most of the software development work um is still real work that real human beings have to have to tussle over and and reflect on. So I would say, you know, I don't doubt just like if you tried to resist the introduction of computers into the workplace, that was going to be a a fool's errand probably.

[00:32:25]>> Yeah.

[00:32:25]>> So I don't doubt that we'll see a future where we have where we're relying on AI or AI co-workers or collaborators um at our job or um and where a lot of the work a lot of the routine work gets handed off to AI too. So I don't doubt that we'll see that future. But a lot of the narrative around massive you know world historic levels of of disruption and um economic progress uh those I think are overly optimistic by an order of magnitude. And the government where ethically where is the government where should the government be because they are totally maybe not buying in but using the narrative to do the things they want to do.

[00:33:09]>> But what should the government be doing to help us ethically transition into this new phase of uh um you know our time on earth with this technology?

[00:33:21]>> Yeah.

[00:33:23]>> Yeah. It's a great question. Right. Uh we we certainly live in in interesting times. Um I think you know there have been proposals to uh tax companies or penalize companies that that replace their workers with robots or AI. I'm not sure exactly how how those would work.

[00:33:40]Uh I mean it sounds like setting a a kind of price floor on on wages or trying to raise that that price floor on on wages. Um, I think that there's, you know, you can you can use the stick. You can penalize companies for uh implementing AI or robots. You can reward companies for hiring humans, but we don't want to term turn private firms into like a make work program. That would be kind of odd. Um, or you can provide a cushion for people who are um displaced or or unemployed by AI. And um that's a I mean that's a worthwhile proposal I would say, but I don't know what form that takes. So it's probably not enough just to say, well, we'll just retrain these people into a different job. That's not super promising. It's not obvious that that would be really promising. Um or we, you know, extend unemployment benefits for certain reasons or something like that. I mean the the problem is uh I I don't I don't know how the government slows down the progress and the integration of of AI and the kinds of economic disruptions that it'll it'll wreak. Um and the attempts where they've tried are kind of odd. I so I think California floated a bill. I think the bill failed ultimately, but the mechanism that it it chose to lean on was the size of the model or it was either like the number of parameters in the in the resulting model or the number of you know GP GPU hours of compute that it took to train the model. I mean, when you think about putting boundaries on how much AI development is allowed to take place, it's kind of a strange target that you're looking for.

[00:35:33]>> Yeah. very very odd uh proposals end up being floated here. So I think in a perfect world you'd probably we'd probably have a pretty different um economic system to begin with. I mean we'd we'd have an economic system where people aren't afraid of starvation or homelessness because someone 3,000 miles away invented a new computer program.

[00:35:56]Um, you know, ideally people would have the kind of job security or at least they'd be able to continue surviving um even under those conditions. Maybe that means something like souped up um unemployment benefits. I'm I'm not entirely sure. Um >> yeah, >> I think Yeah. Yeah. I'm not, you know, to be honest, I if I could wave a wand, I I would change a lot about the way that the the economy works. Um, but I don't see any of those things in the offing in America nowadays.

[00:36:30]>> Oh. So, what which groups of of workers would you think would be more vulnerable in this? I actually have two questions in this. like the groups cuz also the hype like we just talked about like the hype of how we're going to lose the jobs but which one do you think is the the most vulnerable group the the low skill the middle skill the high skill but also question in it is for students for young people today what what should they look for because that's something we talked about earlier too said like what would you if you I don't have children but what would advise my kids to go to be um electrician or something else like what's your what's your thought about all of this? What's your advice? What's your thoughts?

[00:37:19]>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean the labor that is routine. So I think we talked about this maybe in our in our last discussion. you can create this um kind of two by two cross-cutting grid of of occupations where you have routine and non-rine or routine and creative and then uh manual or cognitive on the other dimension on the other axis. And so uh the labor that's going to be easiest to to automate with robots would be manual routine labor. So, the labor of, you know, screwing in a hubcap um 500 times a day in a factory that gets automated by a robot that can just follow a script um and never gets tired. It can work 24 hours and so on. Nowadays, I think that we're looking at labor that's uh cognitive that's being disrupted by AI.

[00:38:09]And again, that's what's so surprising and unsettling about this particular economic disruption is that it's not obvious where humans go from here. It's not obvious that as many new jobs are being created as are being destroyed.

[00:38:24]>> Okay. In the long term, we've we've discussed that short term, you know, maybe but but we do agree the long term that this stuff is going to happen and automation is going to happen and and and and we're outsourcing our brains and we're losing work. What does that do to the human condition? You know what I mean? What happens that I mean philosophically? What what what am I 150 years from now if I have no dos and I'm outsourcing my thoughts to somebody who can do it better, >> right? All the all the creative work has been taken over too. Yeah.

[00:39:06]>> Yeah. Yes. Yes.

[00:39:08]>> Yeah. I think I think this is a great question and I you know for a long time for 500 years or so we have connected someone's ability to live and flourish to their ability to sell their labor you know to to earn a wage somehow. And I think that that those things are are at risk of being decoupled. So, um, there's going to be lots of people who are unable to sell their wage, sell their labor at a wage that would be competitive with AI or robots. And so, you know, in the old days, that would mean that they're at risk of starving to death, uh, if they if they can find no one who will employ them.

[00:39:46]>> Yeah.

[00:39:46]>> I think that it would be it's a good exercise. It's a worthwhile exercise around now to imagine different futures for what it would look like in a world where um not everyone, in fact maybe even most people are unable to find a way to sell their labor. And what does a good human life look like otherwise?

[00:40:09]There's a lot of people that point out that having work is a a real component of self-esteem and a sense of your your own value. the idea that what you produce is something that's in demand from other people and they're willing to to honor that and recognize that by parting with some of their own money.

[00:40:30]Um, and not to mention the idea that your work makes the world a better place for for other people, too. I mean, all of those are important components of of self-esteem and and well-being. If we start eroding those, we're going to have to find them elsewhere. And maybe that means, you know, different kinds of local communities. Maybe it means clubs that are oriented around common interests. Maybe it means forcing ourselves to do things like read books or paint or bake bread like we all did in the early days of the of the pandemic. You know, when we we filled our time by looking for other ways to improve ourselves and refine and hone our our various dimensions of excellence. If we want to get really aristoilian about this, you know, a good human life is made up of a whole paniply of of skills and crafts that we that we fashion over our lives. It's not just sitting in front of a computer.

[00:41:28]>> But I but I'm a musician. Well, at least I think I'm a musician. That's up for debate. But but I make music and um and >> that can't be doubted. make music.

[00:41:42]>> But but but I have heard amazing there's like the the this band band god look at me the Velvet Sundown I think they're called that they were they're an amazing AI music and I'm like I listen to this and it's extraordinarily disheartening >> because it's like they're better than I am and they're not they they're a computer.

[00:42:07]>> Yeah. the music is better than mine and I'm trying really hard for a long time to be >> good and and somebody writes a prompt and 10 prompts later they've got something better than you know I've been playing guitar for 37 years. So it's like >> right >> and they're better than me and they really are and and my friends I have a friend who's a musician who's like oh I use suno which is like the big uh oh I he's a pianist he's like oh but then I get the strings and I get it's what I see in my head and I'm like no don't do that. He's like, "Well, you use drum loops." And I mean, it's all it's just all very very confusing to me >> in terms of the satisfaction that I derive as a human and that I search for it my very very deepest core.

[00:42:57]>> Right. Yeah. So, this is there's a great material here for a thought experiment.

[00:43:03]I mean, I was going to ask you, you know, you encounter work by by a computer that's more impressive or more sophisticated than than something that you could produce.

[00:43:14]And the question is, how does that make you feel about your own work? And how does it make you feel about how does it change your drive to keep producing and keep practicing? I mean, does it make you think, I never want to play music again because computers can do it now?

[00:43:29]Um, or you might think that's not why I don't play music to be the best person in the world. I don't play music to get a certain number of streams on Spotify.

[00:43:38]I don't, you know, if I were on a desert island and all I had was an acoustic guitar, I would still practice my music.

[00:43:43]>> Yeah.

[00:43:44]>> Or if you are the kind of person that says, I want to make a name for myself and I want to rise to the top of the charts, then the advent of that kind of AI music really is a threat. But, you know, I I heard someone point out a while ago uh computers solved chess. You know, that computers could beat the best humans at chess for 25 years or so, maybe probably close to 30 years. I think the game with Gary Kasparov >> in Deep Blue, I think, was about 30 30 years ago.

[00:44:12]>> People still play chess, right? They still care about getting better at chess. They still enjoy playing computers or humans. Uh they do it for fun. They do it as a a way to build community and and talk to other people.

[00:44:23]They built they do it as a way to challenge themselves creatively and strategically. And it's not like chess became pointless the day after that match where Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov. And >> so I think that for a lot of people who make art in particular, you know, you mentioned music, painting, graphic design, we could say all the same kinds of things now in this in the age of mid Journey and and the rest of them.

[00:44:46]>> Yeah. Um people people get a different kind of benefit from from doing that and a different kind of fulfillment I think from creating art or having a hobby. And so, um, you know, computers can write great great undergrad essays in in philosophy. And I find that I found that kind of troubling and, um, dispiriting, I think, was the word that that you used. Uh, because part of my job was always teaching students how to write.

[00:45:16]It's not obvious that they they need me if what I'm looking for is the finished product. But there's another kind of value in the process of writing. Uh it trains you for a certain way of thinking in the same way that the point of making music is not necessarily to have a finished song, but it's the the process of playing it. It's the process of engaging in the art and feeling that kind of reward, seeing yourself improve and so on. So now many many jobs are not like that. I think that there's lots and lots of people that would say, "Yeah, I don't get any kind of that fulfillment out of out of my job." Um, I would I'd love it if a computer or robot took over my job tomorrow because my job is dull or, you know, repetitive or uh stupifying or or what have you. Um, and so I think one question is, can we please try to replace more of those jobs with AI and robotics and stop eroding, stop eating into things like art and music and poetry and and, you know, novels and and creativity with AI.

[00:46:25]Instead, we're we we're sort of siphoning off that >> that that source of fulfillment and um and making that we're reducing the demand for that kind of work. I I fear, you know, it's it's a a tangent, but I always wonder why the kind of work that I would like to see automated is never the kind of work that ends up getting automated with the introduction of AI. I mean, one of my jobs at at at Calpali is that I'm the major adviser for the philosophy majors. And among other things, that means I fill out a lot of forms. And it's so repetitive. You could easily write a script to just get the data from the right place and fill, you know, put it in the right forms and whatever, and I can look at it for 10 seconds and approve it. Um, that's not the kind of thing that ends up getting automated.

[00:47:16]Instead, we give chat GBT to all of our students. And now, you know, it's sort of like the wild west in terms of academic honesty out there. Um, whereas if I had my brothers or if the if the people who were most affected by the technology had more of a say in how it was developed and deployed, I think the world would look very different.

[00:47:37]>> Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I'm thinking like just what you said like if you have a passion for something like you say about art that is not just I'm going to go to job go into my job and do whatever it's something you dream about you you maybe have went to school to become something whatever it is like that is something that you want to do or you said like been musician I want to just put a little my my niece she runs uh 400 meters and she competing And I always tell her and I'm like to be the best because she's really she's up there. is like to be to be the best everybody don't think like you cuz she don't stop you know she's running the training that's a life form that's is something that she lives for this this is her passion and if you are a musician that say you do the same you don't stop you play all day long you do want to be the best of the best but I I'm thinking of about my niece now if there will be a robot that will be faster than her just machine I mean Yeah.

[00:48:47]>> What that takes away something that I think it's so important for us as humans. We want to have dreams.

[00:48:56]>> We want to be better.

[00:48:58]>> I agree with Caroline that there I I I I agree I agree with you, Dr. Jenkins that the I that the process is something but there is I don't know if it's human arrogance or whatever it is but I agree with Caroline that uh you know my dad's a mathematician if there were robots or I guess he doesn't need to be a robot a computer that would be better mathematician than he is >> I don't think he would just think to himself well >> that's great but I still enjoy doing math I think the ability Yeah, the Rolling Stones are better than I'll ever, you know, be, but they're human and so it's okay.

[00:49:41]>> Somehow it does does it is a joy kill.

[00:49:45]It is it is it is it's more than a joy.

[00:49:47]>> You look up to it. You look up to it.

[00:49:49]Like you want to be like Mc Jagger or whoever, you know, like look up to it.

[00:49:54]You want to be as good or better, but I would never want it to be as good as a AI, let's say, right? Because >> it's going to outdo me. It's not It's not a um >> what do you call it? It's It's not >> It's not It's not It's not >> And I hear lawyers say the same thing. I mean, I think it's getting very good at doing law. And I have a feeling lawyers aren't just like, "Oh, that's great, you know, but I still want to practice law."

[00:50:28]No, I think it's probably affecting their internal value of themselves.

[00:50:35]>> That good one.

[00:50:36]>> That's absolutely.

[00:50:37]>> Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you know, it's kind of interesting. We run into this in a history of thinking of human nature.

[00:50:46]uh for a long time I think we tried we've tried to draw a bright line between ourselves and say the animal world. What is it that makes human beings special? And what is it that distinguishes us from the rest of animal life? Is it language? Is it tool use? Is it, you know, reasoning and planning? Um it turns out to be none of those things.

[00:51:07]It's it's it's hard to say what is it that separates people from animals.

[00:51:11]>> Yeah.

[00:51:12]>> Um and the the boundary is a lot blurriier than than we think.

[00:51:16]And that eats into a kind of mythology that we've told about ourselves that we are special that we are um exceptional and that we stand above the rest of animal creation.

[00:51:30]We see the same kind of story in our relationship to machines. You know, there's the the tall tale, the American tall tale about John Henry who erases a um a steam engine that's uh building a railroad that's driving railroad spikes, I think, to build a railroad. And he challenges the the new steam engine. And my memory of how the story ends is that he wins, but he dies of exhaustion at the end. Yeah. And I I think there's a kind of cautionary tale in there about uh human hubris um and maybe the inevitability of of the triumph of machines.

[00:52:07]>> Wow.

[00:52:08]>> You know, I I I was going to I was going to joke at one point car Caroline about your your niece and say, you know, you might it might break her heart, but you probably want to tell her that things like motorcycles exist and cars exist and you know, but but the point is >> [laughter] >> I mean, I I >> faster than a car.

[00:52:31]>> I I like where the the conversation has gone because um it it might be that in order to retain that sense of selfworth, we just have to think of ourselves as playing a different kind of game, right?

[00:52:43]Why is it that I I care about running the 400 meters? Why is it that I care about playing guitar? Um I'm doing something that's distinctively human.

[00:52:53]And even if a machine can replicate the output or the end goal of that, I'm not doing it just for that reason. I'm doing it so I can push the human body to its limits or the human mind and and human creativity to its limits and I can perfect what my what my nature is as this peculiar kind of animal that we call a human being. This is all very Arisatilian. Um, but I think that I think that Aristotle says a lot of very plausible things here. I mean, >> see, see, this is the thing. I'm not a philosopher.

[00:53:27]>> So, in my mind, uh, human desire has is sort of like genetically coded. And that's probably not true. Probably 3,000 years ago, people had different feelings. They didn't have guitars. They didn't have uh Banksy, you they I mean like the desires were and the motivations were so much different and maybe we're going to have to go through that transition again. And I am as a fully formed adult having trouble dealing with that.

[00:54:06]>> Yeah.

[00:54:07]>> Making that change.

[00:54:09]>> Well, just to say like I'm sorry. I just want to say like what what what about like you know the the the ones who jump on a ship you have no idea if the earth was flat or not like the the the adventure like what made him do it >> right >> what made them go on a boat you have no idea where you're going you know you follow the stars hopefully it's not flat you know and [laughter] I wish you know like I'm falling off >> that is something about being human like what is it that that urge.

[00:54:43]>> Mhm.

[00:54:44]>> And I hope that AI is not going to kill that urge. And I I don't really think they will because we still are.

[00:54:52]I think we still have it in there.

[00:54:55]>> Yeah, >> we do.

[00:54:56]>> I think so too. The question is whether we can design our society to not not necessarily reward that urge, but accommodate it and make room for it. I mean, you know, it would be great. What we've been promised for a hundred years or more is that technology would gradually minister to our our needs and our wants and would gradually reduce the need for labor or unpleasant chores and so on. And we haven't seen that. You know, we we don't have a a robot that can fold my laundry yet. Um, we have a robot that can wash and dry it, which is great and that does save time. But what we found at least in the west is that people tend to fill that free time, that newfound free time with more work. And so, you know, the the goal of productivity is not to free up time so that I can do more work. It's to free up time to to spend more time on the things that really enrich me as a human being and and are a source of fulfillment.

[00:55:58]Yeah, that's a that's a really that's a really good point and I hope we can get there, you know, so we can, you know, >> that's the real question.

[00:56:07]>> Yeah, that's the real question. So, in I want to ask you like what what is the what do you think just for saying all of this, what do you think the world's going to look like in like 20 30 years?

[00:56:21]>> I think >> Yeah, I don't know. Well, I mean, God, that sounds like a that sounds like a like a trap to try to predict >> what the world will I mean, you know, people quip that it's hard enough to know what it's going to look like in six months. Um, I wouldn't be surprised if the world looks a lot like it does today in in many of the ways that we've been talking about.

[00:56:50]um obviously not withstanding whatever kinds of new inventions and and so on.

[00:56:56]Um the general trend seems to be one where more and more power and wealth are accumulating to capital rather than labor. Um people are feeling stressed, you know, hyperco competitive, burnt out at work. Um children are still kind of disoriented about which careers are promising and which ones are not. and that's going to be genuinely unclear.

[00:57:19]Um, more and more people will be driven into procarity as long as we're not really buttressing or shoring up the the economic defenses against um against the the vicissitudes of the of the of the market.

[00:57:36]>> Um, so you know and and again that's just touching on a very small part of what the world would look like. Who knows what what the political scene will look like or what the climate will look like or or any of those things.

[00:57:49]>> I mean, yeah, you know, we'll probably have driverless cars and stuff like that. We might have humanoid robots walking down the street. Um or I don't know, picking up our groceries for us or something. I I mean, who knows?

[00:57:59]>> I mean, I I kind of hoping that it's not going to be that big of a of change >> in one way. I just hope that it's not gonna take away our hope and dreams and you know we are not going to have we're going to live under what do you call it the universal >> basic income >> call it basic income and all of this where I'm like okay I I don't think it's going to happen I I don't want to I well who knows and I don't know how that will work anyway >> right Right.

[00:58:35]>> All right.

[00:58:36]>> Well, it was Thank you so much for coming back.

[00:58:39]>> Yeah.

[00:58:40]>> Really appreciate it and and you know you know we're going to be knocking on your door again.

[00:58:44]>> That sounds great. I will listen for the knock. Yeah.

[00:58:49]>> You are so good at at at at putting things our our scattered thoughts into tributaries of uh you know a clear thinking. So we appreciate that.

[00:59:02]Thank you so much for coming.

[00:59:04]>> It's a great conversation.

[00:59:05]>> Thank Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[00:59:09]>> Thank you for watching or listening to The Internet is Crack. Tune in next week when we have another great conversation about robotics, AI, and the internet.

[00:59:28]You can watch us or listen to us on YouTube or Spotify or many other outlets. And don't forget to follow us on social media. See you next Monday.