Will AI Create MASSIVE SPIKE IN UNEMPLOYMENT???

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:01]Will AI lead to 30 40 maybe even 50% unemployment? You may have heard folks like the CEO from Anthropic a couple of months ago say something just like that. We're already seeing the hardest time for college grads to get jobs. Is AI going to be a lifesaver or is it going to destroy the spirit of the American employee? Let's have this conversation with the one and only Dana Donford. How you doing, Dana?

[00:00:30]>> I'm great. Thanks for having me today.

[00:00:32]>> Absolutely. So again, folks, if you don't know Dana, she's been in Silicon Valley for a long time. Obviously, the founder and CEO of Hum Lane and just an amazing individual around AI and somebody who is a user. Probably spends a bunch of money on AI tools inside her company. So she is up close and personal with this.

[00:00:48]So I'm curious where you sit today.

[00:00:50]We've talked about AI a couple of times over the last year. What what are your thoughts? Do you think it's going to lead to this double-digit unemployment?

[00:00:58]Are are you on the Elon Musk where we're going to have UBI and and everybody's going to be rich? Where where Where are you today on AI?

[00:01:06]>> Yeah, UBI is an interesting one because I think that is just totally separate from the unemployment conversation of like maybe that is a a good idea or changing how we think about taxes. I've always said you shouldn't tax people for working. You should tax people for spending, consuming, right?

[00:01:26]You should incentivize more people to work. So I think UBI and just kind of thinking about taxes and then how the government supports its people is a separate a conversation, but somehow it gets mixed in with this unemployment.

[00:01:40]I go back to the Industrial Revolution.

[00:01:42]Back then, it was the same thing that, you know, everyone's going to lose their jobs and what happened? Everything got repurposed. I think you're going to see a couple of things happen. I think one, the types of jobs are going to change.

[00:01:57]It is going to be people managing the AI agents. It's going to be everything moving faster than ever before.

[00:02:05]But I still think you are still going to have humans. And and here's why. On the AI side, we're very much on the cutting edge of like I mean, I can ask Jarvis our agent to go and wipe out Michael Zuber's data in Hemlane or do a lease renewal and it will do it for me. But what I've always noticed is like you need an agent to watch the agent and then you need a human to watch the agent who's watching the agent. Um and there's still a level of um of uh something that humans can do that the AI agent can't do in order to perfect it.

[00:02:42]Now, the question is with AGI, could you get there and could you say, "Hey, you don't need the human involved?" I think by the time you get to there, you're going to have more humans focused on data centers and energy. You're going to have humans thinking more about nuclear fusion and how do we get energy at a cheaper price? There's going to be so much more that goes into it. And I think every product's going to get better.

[00:03:07]Like government websites I hate going through because the design is so terrible and I'm like, "Why is the call to action button there?"

[00:03:14]>> yeah.

[00:03:15]>> But what's really cool is like now the government, maybe you were doing something manually, now you can use these design tools like lovable to make the government website look like uh you know, top tech companies website design.

[00:03:29]And you could do it overnight and have a person doing that instead of administrative work. And so, I think that you know, will jobs get repurposed where people are? Absolutely. I just don't think that you're going to have this huge unemployment. And I go back to um what is that book? Is it uh Lexi Frankel? Anyway, it's um uh basically a man's um like search for meaning or whatever like for purpose driven life. A very famous book and in reading that people wake up for a purpose. People want to feel like they have a purpose.

[00:04:04]>> this innate nature to create. Yes, I agreed.

[00:04:08]>> Exactly. And and so I think when you think about what the purpose is, maybe you have more ski instructors teaching people how to ski. Maybe you have more and that would be someone who might have instead been, you know, cleaning a house or something. Who knows, but you would have it where these jobs get repurposed to something else and people still want that human connection and people still want to have a purpose in life. So I don't think that people are going to be satisfied with Hey now, Michael, you're going to sit on the couch and no one's going to work and unemployment at 50%. You're just going to find people repurposed to new jobs.

[00:04:48]>> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up cuz I didn't know I never know where these conversations are going to go and and I've often said that and I've been saying that for years even even when the idiots at Anthropic and other places are talking about double digit, you know, I'm like I you have no idea you're actually creating a message that make people want to hate you. Why why why are you being so stupid? Right?

[00:05:10]>> Yeah.

[00:05:10]>> So um, you know, also I guess they're going public now. So he's publicly changed his opinion in the last 48 hours.

[00:05:17]>> [laughter] >> I thought that was hilarious. I'm like you're changing that for a different reason, you jerk.

[00:05:22]>> Yeah.

[00:05:23]>> But [clears throat] but this is just in my opinion you're you're you're right. I think there was a time where there was a lot of people in tech who thought AI was going to be the answer and we were not going to need engineers and all of that.

[00:05:35]And I never thought that.

[00:05:37]And and David Sacks from the All-In podcast, you know, they do this yearly yearly episode where they kind of make a crazy prediction and his crazy prediction in January was that AI will create more jobs than it destroys.

[00:05:51]And at the time he looked like an idiot because the prevailing message January 1st was AI is coming fast and heavy and oh by the way engineering's gone and customer service is gone and all this all these things are gone.

[00:06:03]And there was just a report I think it was Kellogg that talked about in engineering there are more open engineering jobs today than there were at the beginning of the year.

[00:06:13]Yes, we're hearing about Meta's 8% and we're hearing about Amazon and all these others but we're actually empowering smaller companies who used to not be able to afford engineers because who can compete with Google?

[00:06:27]For software like who's going to pay 400 grand for an engineer? But now you get a junior engineer plus some AI you know LLMs or whatever and you know, it's cheaper so I I do think that AI and I've said it forever AI will create more jobs than it destroys.

[00:06:45]I am afraid that we'll have a timing issue right cuz it's easier to cut before you grow so we still may have a timing issue but I've never been on this AI doom 50% employment. I You know what I thought that was? I thought that was messaging for the next billion dollar round.

[00:07:05]Yeah, these idiots need to raise money and that's the only story they have.

[00:07:08]>> No new life. Yeah, these data these data centers cost more than what they're charging the consumer at this moment. Um but you know, with the meta layoff um I think it goes back to smaller more agile teams can move faster.

[00:07:26]>> No question.

[00:07:27]>> I think they used AI as an excuse to say we need smaller teams. Let's get rid of you know, X percentage smaller agile teams. Here's our rockstars. Let's go ahead and move back to being more agile and the reason I bring that up is I was at dinner last night um with um some tech executives here but at these large large companies. And what they were saying is they it has gotten way too political at these companies where most of the conversations that are happening are about people, not about the product.

[00:08:00]And if you see any you know, like this person and this and I need approval from this person on budget and they said they spend, you know, 50% of their time right now and talking about allocation of resources versus just building cool And so I actually think most of these companies are doing that because they're saying, "Hey, these startups are much more agile. They can turn on a dime and be able to implement this tool. They don't need legal's approval for 3 months. They don't [laughter] need, you know, it's it is true." And so that's the frustrations that they had. It was interesting. I was like, "Weird, we just don't have that when I go into one-on-one with someone, I'm talking about work product. I'm in founder mode.

[00:08:43]I am totally in founder mode. I'm not in hey, I need to kiss this person's ass to like get this approval or whatever. It's all just talking about product and building. And I think that's what these large companies want to get back to because it is the most exciting time in tech. So the layoffs, I don't think are because of the AI. I think what they're saying is I need to get rid of a lot of just large teams, lot of management layers.

[00:09:09]AI is going to be my reason and now I need these teams to be able to have fewer decision-makers and be able to execute faster.

[00:09:17]>> That is exactly what's happening and I've been calling that for a while. What What What Meta and others can't say is we over-hired.

[00:09:26]That would hurt That would hurt That would hurt the bottom line. The prevailing message now is we're getting more efficient. AI is doing this, that, and the other. And oh by the way, we're removing 8%. Uh the CoreWeave CEO sent out a stupid message, but I understand what he was trying to say. He basically said, "We're getting rid of the measurers."

[00:09:46]Right? You have a bunch of people playing with Excel spreadsheets and doing measures. Like it's slowing the system down. AI AI can measure. We don't need measurers anymore. We need doers.

[00:09:57]>> Yep.

[00:09:57]>> And Yeah, I I that's that's what's happening is I think a lot of firms over hired during the pandemic. And oh, by the way, let's not forget. There was a time where people were competing for talent. So, you were sucking up B and C talent cuz you just wanted the body.

[00:10:13]>> Yeah.

[00:10:13]>> And now they're getting rid of some of that B and C talent.

[00:10:16]>> Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And your point of the measurers is so true because what I heard last night at dinner was like, you know, people are scared to make changes or big leaps in implementing new stuff because they're like, "Ooh, what number would it change and how much?" And and they've got all these measures. It's like, "What happened to just let's launch something and figure out what happens? And if it goes the wrong way, let's just kill it."

[00:10:39]Like that agileness, I think is very much needed. And the it's the innovator's dilemma.

[00:10:45]>> Yeah.

[00:10:45]>> It's the larger you get, the more challenging it is to innovate. And that's why I think a lot of these large companies try to create total offshoots where they have a innovation hub that is completely separate than everything else that doesn't need approval or requirements from anyone.

[00:11:04]And I think these big companies are probably going to have to go back to that in order to be agile and keep up.

[00:11:11]>> Yeah, a couple more topics here. The other thing that I saw happening is I'm sure it hit your radar, but you have so much going on, you may not remember.

[00:11:18]Uber Uber's COO or CFO put out a note that they're already spent their entire yearly budget by April on on AI jobs. All right? So, again, they're they're in they've already spent all of it. And then we got Microsoft canceling their use of Anthropic because it's too expensive. So, one of the things that has to come to AI, in my opinion, is is a new licensing model.

[00:11:42]And then the last thing, and I think I've said this before, maybe never to you, is I think one of the things going on kind of in the 3D chess world is China is dumping cheap and good enough LLMs on our market, kind of like steel dumping in the '70s.

[00:11:58]>> Yeah.

[00:11:58]>> And it's going to destroy the valuations uh of some of our players. So, uh what do you think about new pricing models?

[00:12:05]You've seen companies like Uber say, "Hey, we we're we can't spend that.

[00:12:09]We've already spent our whole yearly budget. What's what's going on?"

[00:12:12]>> Yeah, a couple of things with that. Um so, first just like at the start of like these LLMs and how much they charge, uh China is the one that has more energy, cheaper energy. Now, it's coal, so, you know, a lot of it's not the most um the best for the environment. The cleanest It's not the cleanest, but, you know, they're winning there. The question is, is someone going to put their data into um you know, >> to say is look at TikTok.

[00:12:37]>> censored. Yeah, it's true.

[00:12:38]>> Hey. Hey, TikTok is good enough. That's what people don't understand cuz >> Yeah. Yeah. So, that is true. And maybe it's not companies, but like consumers will absolutely um >> You're going to get You're going to get some tier of company like, you know, mom and pops.

[00:12:54]What they're going to be like, "What are the Chinese going to do to me?" right?

[00:12:56]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:57]>> Like, they'll be obviously the US government will never go there, you know, but again, most of the market is not the US government.

[00:13:05]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:06]>> this is going to be a problem for the for the US players, I think.

[00:13:09]>> Yeah. No, I I couldn't agree more on that. And then just to your point of the AI costs, there's two things there. One, I can personally say our costs on AI, how much we spend for our AI agents, it's going up 3x month over month. And so, I always have finance come to me and be like, what we forecasted, Dana, is not this There's this one line item >> [laughter] >> that is already over. And so, that is That is true. That is from a company perspective. I'm like, wow, now I'm looking at the AI and I'm like, how many people is that that we're You know, there's There's 20 people right there just in AI alone of how much we're we're paying in profit. And so, that's the first thing.

[00:13:51]The second thing which worries me more about it is none of these companies are profitable. And if they actually charged us the actual cost of the energy and how much it took to do that, it would be like 10x the cost of what we're paying now. And so, now I'm like, well, once these VCs stop funding it, if we can't get the data cost the energy cost down, the And they were to charge us as a company or you as a consumer the amount that it actually cost to service, this cost would be so much more. Like right now, this is on the backs of of venture dollars and trying to be the first to go to market. And so, that is the interesting thing is the whole conversation just needs to be how do you make energy cheaper and more efficient because if not, >> This is a runaway train. This is This is This is >> Yeah. And if they And then we're stuck with it because we have all everyone reliant on the AI and using it. And so, if they 3x our cost, it's like, okay, now what do we do? We restrict how much people are using AI and go back and hire more people for it. You know, there's There's that question as well with it.

[00:14:58]So.

[00:14:59]>> I You know, again, I have no idea how I'm going to ask the question. If you don't want to answer it, totally fine by me.

[00:15:03]>> No, please.

[00:15:04]>> But let's let's just say for a minute your CFO comes to you in 3 months, so 90 days from now.

[00:15:09]>> Yeah.

[00:15:10]>> And basically says, um you know, we were on a 3x run rate. For whatever reason, it jumped to 10 this month. And this we can't afford this anymore.

[00:15:19]How long Like how fast could you turn it off?

[00:15:22]Like, how fast could you turn Jarvis off?

[00:15:25]>> Um, so we could turn it off. It would be very detrimental to the business to turn off. Like, so we could turn it off overnight, but we use it for everything.

[00:15:36]If a customer asks any question, support the first response is AI going through what a human used to take 10 hours to try to troubleshoot and it's like, oh, this is exactly it and here's why this happened. Review this click to send. And so, the team wouldn't like it as much cuz right now the team loves that any of that admin kind of stuff they don't have to do.

[00:16:02]And and so, going back the other way because we live in the convenience culture. People want answers now. They don't want to search for them. And that is what AI helps them do is get to the answer right away. And they still have to validate it. They still have to review it. But there's that and then also just customer insights. We use AI so frequently to if a customer has a random report they want to pull, type it in, analyze, get insights that you may not otherwise get.

[00:16:34]I use it for everything. When someone's like, I need a case study on you know, customer who's grown a lot with Hemlane. Type into it what customer's grown the fastest and it will give me a whole case study and a deck and verify data. It's fantastic. And so, you know, I think all of that kind of stuff it's like, great, now we can get to the answers faster. And we as a company can't move faster because of it.

[00:16:58]And so, it would be detrimental, but then to your point, you might put restrictions of when can you use the AI in order to say like, how much is this actually costing? And then you might have models that says, this just cost you $150.

[00:17:15]And you then be have to have to pull back from there. So, yeah.

[00:17:19]>> Yeah, cuz again, this this is my world, right? Go-to-market strategy. And I'm just trying to play this out. And again, this is all assuming price is 10x. So, again, this probably doesn't happen, but I'm just trying to play the worst-case scenario.

[00:17:31]You would You'd You'd very quickly probably do a couple of things. One is you would definitely restrict what it is and isn't doing. But the other thing I just thought of hearing you talk about that is you could actually create a pricing tier.

[00:17:45]Like one based on convenience. Like if you want speed, or if you're willing to wait 12 hours for a human, right? There's a different pricing tier, right? So, it's um Yeah, I I actually do think that that given the the confluence of of China dumping, cuz I think it's going to be proven out just like steel dumping. I just I just I think it's a strategic play with deep fake or whatever their next thing is. They are trying to destroy billions, if not trillions, of dollars in investment capital and hurt us. I I think that's what they're >> Yeah.

[00:18:15]>> doing.

[00:18:16]And the other thing is the energy thing, right? This thing is running away at a rate that even if we broke ground on a hundred, you know, atomic or whatever energy, they're not coming to save us.

[00:18:26]It won't be ready in time.

[00:18:28]>> Yeah.

[00:18:28]>> So, this this is running very, very quickly to a an accident.

[00:18:34]>> Yeah.

[00:18:34]>> Yeah.

[00:18:35]If you have kids, go put them into energy. That's where they need to go.

[00:18:39]Data centers and energy.

[00:18:41]>> Yeah. No kidding. No kidding.

[00:18:43]Uh it's going to be fun. Well, again, I think at the end of the day, uh AI is not I I'm not an AI doomer. I think AI will I've always said AI will create more than it destroys. Just like every other technology that I've ever studied.

[00:18:57]It may We may have a timing problem, which does happen on occasion. Uh but I do think AI will be a net positive to mankind. And um yeah, that's that's just where I come down. And I think the idiot anthrop changing his message is >> [laughter] >> So, it's like laughable that he's changed his message, but whatever. Yeah.

[00:19:16]>> Totally.

[00:19:17]>> Dana, where can where can they find you?

[00:19:19]>> Yeah, um if you want to learn more about property management, um AI stuff that we have on the tech-enabled services side, hemline.com. We've got a ton of free resources as well, so go ahead and check them out. Everything from rent estimate calculators, um all the way to free advertising marketing tools, background and credit checks on tenants, all that fun stuff.

[00:19:39]>> Yeah, the other thing I'm hearing pretty consistently in my community is more and more people are doing out of state or out of area investing and trusting Hemlane uh to help them manage that.

[00:19:48]We've got more and more people doing that. So, Dana, you guys are amazing.

[00:19:51]Thanks for being a part of the channel.

[00:19:53]>> Great. Thanks for having me.

[00:19:54]>> Yep.