Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / EBay Spurns GameStop’s Bid as ‘Neither Credible Nor Attractive’
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
- 0:10Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am
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- 0:21Speaker 1: or watch us live on YouTube.
- 0:24Speaker 2: One of the stories, Paul, that's Scott, you and me
- 0:26Speaker 2: scratching our heads is eBay. Gamestop's bid for eBay, a
- 0:31Speaker 2: company that is four times its size. Ryan Cohen, of course,
- 0:34Speaker 2: making this very dramatic takeover offer for the company. eBay
- 0:38Speaker 2: has now rejected that fifty six billion dollar takeover offer,
- 0:41Speaker 2: calling it neither credible nor attractive. I think that pretty
- 0:44Speaker 2: much tells you what it thinks.
- 0:45Speaker 3: I did investment banking for a long time, and I
- 0:47Speaker 3: can get it very creative with capital structures, but I
- 0:49Speaker 3: have a hard time seeing how they're how they would
- 0:52Speaker 3: finance this thing.
- 0:52Speaker 2: All right, let's bring in Cecilia Denastasio. She is our
- 0:56Speaker 2: video game reporter here at Bloomberg.
- 0:57Speaker 4: Nice.
- 0:57Speaker 5: Great to see you, Cecilia.
- 0:59Speaker 6: Thank you for having me.
- 1:00Speaker 2: What was the thinking behind GameStop and making a bid
- 1:04Speaker 2: for eBay?
- 1:05Speaker 5: You know, we actually didn't get a.
- 1:06Speaker 6: Lot of insight into what CEO Ryan Cohen thought that
- 1:09Speaker 6: the proposed synergies could look like. He never really went
- 1:12Speaker 6: out and said, hey, we run a video game, you know,
- 1:15Speaker 6: retail company, but also we're doing really well and collectibles.
- 1:18Speaker 6: We're doing really well selling Pokemon cards. eBay also doing
- 1:22Speaker 6: really well selling Pokemon cards and baseball cards. We could
- 1:25Speaker 6: have heard that in any of the interviews that Ryan
- 1:27Speaker 6: Cohen gave, but he didn't actually really go out and
- 1:31Speaker 6: say that. In fact, when he was given questions about
- 1:33Speaker 6: what the combined company could look like, you often sort
- 1:36Speaker 6: of dodged.
- 1:37Speaker 3: So, I mean, what's the story with GameStop these days?
- 1:39Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not a gamer, thank goodness, most of
- 1:43Speaker 3: my kids are not gamers. But it's almost a meme stock.
- 1:47Speaker 3: But what's the real call in this company these days?
- 1:49Speaker 6: You know, it's interesting because GameStop could be doing a
- 1:53Speaker 6: lot worse than it is doing. You know, they shuttered,
- 1:57Speaker 6: you know, thousands of stores over the last couple of
- 1:59Speaker 6: years to be a big ubiquitous presence at your neighborhood
- 2:02Speaker 6: strip mall. And you know, gamers are increasingly purchasing their
- 2:06Speaker 6: wares in online marketplaces and not at these at these
- 2:09Speaker 6: physical storefronts, but GameStop is still hanging on. CEO Ryan
- 2:13Speaker 6: Cohen said, you know, we could be doing worse. It's
- 2:15Speaker 6: not a great business, but it's hanging in there.
- 2:18Speaker 5: We could be doing worse.
- 2:19Speaker 2: It's not a great line that you want to hear
- 2:21Speaker 2: from the CEO of a company stock that you happen
- 2:23Speaker 2: to own. So having said all of this, there's been
- 2:26Speaker 2: some reporting that perhaps Ryan Cohen just wanted to boost
- 2:30Speaker 2: the stock price of game Stop because there's some clause
- 2:33Speaker 2: I guess in one of his compensation packages that if
- 2:35Speaker 2: the share price reaches a certain level, he gets another
- 2:38Speaker 2: big payout.
- 2:39Speaker 5: Can you talk us through what's.
- 2:40Speaker 6: Going on there, It's really hard to say. If the
- 2:43Speaker 6: companies did end up combining, then it's possible that he
- 2:46Speaker 6: would have been able to receive that payout and he
- 2:48Speaker 6: would have been very happy. But also at the same time,
- 2:52Speaker 6: a lot of analysts pointed out that the way that
- 2:53Speaker 6: Ryan Cohen approached eBay wasn't exactly so friendly. You know,
- 3:00Speaker 6: so he it was an unsolicited bid, he didn't publicly
- 3:03Speaker 6: state what he thought the synergies could look like. When
- 3:06Speaker 6: eBay came back saying that the deal felt neither credible
- 3:09Speaker 6: nor attractive. I think that kind of speaks to this
- 3:13Speaker 6: idea that you know, maybe this wasn't so thoroughly thought out.
- 3:19Speaker 6: I think a lot of analysts are very very confused
- 3:21Speaker 6: about the tent.
- 3:22Speaker 4: You did a lot to improve that outlook there. Yeah,
- 3:25Speaker 4: I mean that what a disaster that was.
- 3:26Speaker 3: So do you think game Stop would pursue a proxy
- 3:30Speaker 3: fight and take it to that next step?
- 3:32Speaker 5: It's possible.
- 3:33Speaker 6: You know, Ryan is a very unpredictable executive, which is
- 3:36Speaker 6: part of what makes him really fun to cover. He
- 3:39Speaker 6: has He posted a manifesto on x formally known as
- 3:42Speaker 6: Twitter describing how he thinks American business people are often
- 3:46Speaker 6: taking a really risk averse approach to running their companies
- 3:49Speaker 6: and he's really trying to carve out a model for
- 3:51Speaker 6: something really different. So it's possible he would pursue the
- 3:53Speaker 6: proxy fight. It's possible also that this was a publicity stunt.
- 3:57Speaker 3: Do we know whose advisors are his investment banking advisors?
- 4:01Speaker 3: The only thing I saw was he's got a financing
- 4:03Speaker 3: letter from TD Securities, which again tells you that highly confident,
- 4:07Speaker 3: highly confident for twenty billion dollars forty years.
- 4:10Speaker 4: But we don't really know who other advisors are.
- 4:13Speaker 6: He's a highly autonomous individual.
- 4:15Speaker 5: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 4:22Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
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- 4:37Speaker 3: Under Armour reported some numbers today. I didn't see them,
- 4:41Speaker 3: but they can't be good. The stock's down sixteen percent here.
- 4:45Speaker 3: But I know somebody who doesn't know what's going on here.
- 4:46Speaker 3: Lillly Myers, she's a retail reporter for Bloomberg News, joining
- 4:49Speaker 3: us live here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. What
- 4:52Speaker 3: did under Armour have to say that maybe the market
- 4:54Speaker 3: didn't go for.
- 4:55Speaker 7: Yeah, so I think under Armour disappointed investors. I think
- 4:59Speaker 7: that they're the revenue for next year or this current
- 5:03Speaker 7: year is not not as high as they expected, and
- 5:06Speaker 7: their earnings per share was also lower.
- 5:08Speaker 5: They also mentioned the Middle East conflict.
- 5:11Speaker 7: As impacting their sales and the split from the Steph
- 5:14Speaker 7: Curry brand hitting their bottom line.
- 5:17Speaker 4: My question with under Armour, I'm a Nike person, by
- 5:19Speaker 4: the way.
- 5:19Speaker 3: Full disclosure always happened, and I'm not switching, but it's competitive.
- 5:25Speaker 3: I mean, there's Nike out there body dust for those
- 5:28Speaker 3: of us in the know, we pronounce it that way, and.
- 5:30Speaker 4: I'm just not sure. And it's there's so many niche players.
- 5:33Speaker 3: I mean, the kids here at Bloomberg they were in
- 5:35Speaker 3: all different kinds of sinkers that I've never seen before.
- 5:38Speaker 4: How does under Armour fit in there, do you think?
- 5:40Speaker 8: Yeah?
- 5:40Speaker 7: I mean I think it's a really competitive space, like
- 5:43Speaker 7: you described, both on.
- 5:44Speaker 5: The footwear side and the apparel side.
- 5:46Speaker 7: You know, under Armour is part of this restructuring plan
- 5:48Speaker 7: that they've been going through recently, has been trying to
- 5:51Speaker 7: really slim down the number of skews that they sell,
- 5:54Speaker 7: you know, kind of streamline the products and also cut
- 5:57Speaker 7: back on their discounts.
- 6:00Speaker 3: So is this you know, I understand that it's really
- 6:04Speaker 3: a product driven business. You can't just crank out the
- 6:06Speaker 3: same sneaker year after year after year. I mean every
- 6:10Speaker 3: year it's like fat it is fashion. Do they have
- 6:13Speaker 3: the resources, they have the capabilities to really compete against
- 6:16Speaker 3: the I guess the bigger players.
- 6:18Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean it'll be interesting to see. The hard
- 6:20Speaker 7: thing with some of the retail innovation cycle is that
- 6:23Speaker 7: it takes like eighteen months, you know to start seeing
- 6:26Speaker 7: some of that new product actually hit the shelves. So
- 6:28Speaker 7: I'll be interested to see what they come out with.
- 6:32Speaker 3: You mentioned they.
- 6:34Speaker 4: Lost Steph Curry. That's a big name.
- 6:38Speaker 3: How do they think about using athletes as part of
- 6:41Speaker 3: their marketing promotion?
- 6:42Speaker 4: Strategy is a core to them? And how big of
- 6:46Speaker 4: a loss was like Steph Curry?
- 6:47Speaker 7: Yeah, so for Steph Curry, I mean that was a big,
- 6:51Speaker 7: a big deal. They had worked with the Curry brand
- 6:53Speaker 7: for a long time. That was a really essential part
- 6:56Speaker 7: of their basketball business. So this quarter they said that
- 6:59Speaker 7: for this coming year, the Curry brand separation made it
- 7:04Speaker 7: so that their revenue was down slightly. If they had
- 7:06Speaker 7: stayed with Curry, it would have been flat for the year.
- 7:09Speaker 5: So it'll be interesting to see, you know, if they.
- 7:12Speaker 7: Try and side more big names or what comes next.
- 7:14Speaker 3: I mean, there's kids coming out of college every year.
- 7:18Speaker 3: Are they going to be aggressive?
- 7:19Speaker 4: What did they say? Their strategy is there because it's.
- 7:23Speaker 3: A tried and true strategy, particularly for athletic where Nike's
- 7:26Speaker 3: seen it. I mean, Michael Jordan, you know, that's the
- 7:29Speaker 3: great example. But are they committed to that part that strategy,
- 7:33Speaker 3: do you think.
- 7:34Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, they definitely work
- 7:36Speaker 5: with athletes.
- 7:36Speaker 7: I'm curious to see how that will evolve moving forward,
- 7:40Speaker 7: especially without Curry.
- 7:43Speaker 3: What's the uh, what's the tariff situation with some of
- 7:46Speaker 3: these shoot companies these days?
- 7:47Speaker 4: I mean is it? Do they even talk about it anymore?
- 7:50Speaker 3: Because I know a lot of the retail companies they
- 7:52Speaker 3: used to others as well, used to just give you
- 7:54Speaker 3: a number. It costs US five hundred million this quarter
- 7:56Speaker 3: or forty million this this quarter. Is still an issue
- 7:59Speaker 3: for these apparel companies.
- 8:00Speaker 5: Yeah, it's interesting. So it's switched a little.
- 8:02Speaker 7: Now they're talking about what their expected tariff refund will be,
- 8:05Speaker 7: so they're.
- 8:05Speaker 5: Baking that in or on the positive side.
- 8:08Speaker 7: I think, you know, there's a lot we still don't
- 8:09Speaker 7: know about what companies will get out of tariff refund,
- 8:13Speaker 7: if they'll get the full amount, what that process will
- 8:16Speaker 7: actually look like, how long it will take. But that's
- 8:18Speaker 7: the discussion now, is you know the upside from that refund?
- 8:21Speaker 3: Now companies have actually you have to go like file
- 8:24Speaker 3: and say I want a refund right now?
- 8:26Speaker 4: Has the Nike done.
- 8:27Speaker 3: It something like I'm thinking of the big big name
- 8:30Speaker 3: in your retail.
- 8:31Speaker 4: Has Nike actually done that for example?
- 8:33Speaker 7: Yeah, so a lot of major retailers have have sued
- 8:36Speaker 7: for tariff refunds, and I think it'll be interesting to
- 8:39Speaker 7: see as as they become more of a reality, how
- 8:43Speaker 7: companies will go about it.
- 8:45Speaker 3: There still really isn't a stre There isn't I guess,
- 8:49Speaker 3: a policy framework to get the money right.
- 8:51Speaker 4: They're still working on that.
- 8:52Speaker 7: From my understanding, I think it's it's it's still in process.
- 8:56Speaker 4: How much is if Nike gets money they do with it?
- 8:59Speaker 4: Do they give it back to me? Who paid a
- 9:01Speaker 4: tariff on my kicks?
- 9:03Speaker 9: Here?
- 9:03Speaker 4: We don't know that.
- 9:04Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, I think that will be really an
- 9:07Speaker 7: interesting thing to watch. I think consumer reaction will be interesting,
- 9:10Speaker 7: you know, consumers who have had to face those higher prices,
- 9:14Speaker 7: but also the company that's haed to shoulder a lot
- 9:16Speaker 7: of it.
- 9:18Speaker 10: Stay with us.
- 9:18Speaker 4: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 9:25Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 9:28Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
- 9:31Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
- 9:35Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 9:39Speaker 3: All right, So President Trump leaving today for Chinese has
- 9:41Speaker 3: got a plane full of executives.
- 9:43Speaker 4: Including executive for Boeing, Yep and Boyden.
- 9:46Speaker 3: You think about a company that's leveraged to Chin it
- 9:50Speaker 3: a I always think of Apple, But Boeing's right there.
- 9:53Speaker 3: And we want to talk to Sid Philip about that,
- 9:55Speaker 3: Bloomberg Chief correspondent for Global Aviation, because this could be
- 10:00Speaker 3: one of those trips where somebody, you know, China announces
- 10:03Speaker 3: a gazillion plane deal and you.
- 10:05Speaker 2: Know, actually something that the CEO has kind of hinted
- 10:09Speaker 2: at already saying that you know, Trump's visit would be
- 10:13Speaker 2: quote a meaningful opportunity for us.
- 10:15Speaker 3: Yeah, Sid Philip, he does all this stuff for Blomberg News.
- 10:18Speaker 3: What are you expecting here on this trip for Boweing?
- 10:20Speaker 3: What do you think Boeing wants to get out of this?
- 10:22Speaker 8: So Boeing's looking to secure its first big order from
- 10:25Speaker 8: China in almost a decade, and so we understand it's
- 10:29Speaker 8: going to be five hundred seven three seven Maxes and
- 10:33Speaker 8: a large number of white body planes, and that would
- 10:36Speaker 8: be significant because the Chinese airlines haven't really ordered any
- 10:41Speaker 8: Boeing planes in a while and.
- 10:43Speaker 4: Just because they're mad at us.
- 10:44Speaker 8: They were mad at and there was COVID in the
- 10:47Speaker 8: middle of it. And so the Chinese airlines actually need
- 10:50Speaker 8: those planes because they don't really have a supply of Boeing.
- 10:54Speaker 8: I mean, they operate both Airbus and Boeing planes, and
- 10:56Speaker 8: they don't really have a supply of planes beyond the
- 10:59Speaker 8: twenty thirties. And so if they want to keep expanding,
- 11:02Speaker 8: if they want to keep adding more service, they need
- 11:04Speaker 8: those planes, and disorder is a way to get that.
- 11:08Speaker 5: Okay, so this order is a way to get that.
- 11:10Speaker 5: I guess if you're.
- 11:13Speaker 2: An airliner, you're thinking, what's the next thing Boeing is
- 11:15Speaker 2: selling that I want to get my hands on. I mean,
- 11:17Speaker 2: you know, not tomorrow, not next month, but down the
- 11:20Speaker 2: road as I plan my fleet.
- 11:22Speaker 5: Does boe have an answer to that?
- 11:23Speaker 2: Because it feels like the company has spent so much
- 11:25Speaker 2: time writing itself that it hasn't really put as much,
- 11:29Speaker 2: at least outward energy into innovating the next jet.
- 11:33Speaker 8: So that's that's the really big question that the CEO,
- 11:35Speaker 8: Kelly Ottberg's really looking at. So while obviously you have
- 11:39Speaker 8: the short term and the immediate issues that they have
- 11:42Speaker 8: to ramp up production, they have to ramp up cash
- 11:44Speaker 8: like cash generation reduce that debt pile.
- 11:47Speaker 10: The bigger question for Boeing is where do they go
- 11:49Speaker 10: from here?
- 11:50Speaker 8: And the seventry seven is basically a long derivative of
- 11:55Speaker 8: a nineteen sixties jet, and so for Boeing they need
- 11:59Speaker 8: to decide what the do next, and that will be
- 12:01Speaker 8: crucial in the sort of deeoperly that they have with Airbus,
- 12:04Speaker 8: and Airbus has been talking about how they are working
- 12:07Speaker 8: on their next generation of product that they're aiming to
- 12:10Speaker 8: get out in the middle of next decade, and that
- 12:13Speaker 8: would basically allow airlines to get something that's more fuel
- 12:16Speaker 8: efficient and allows them to fly greater distances with more
- 12:20Speaker 8: passengers on them. And so what we understand is that
- 12:24Speaker 8: Boeing is working on something that's more evolutionary rather than revolutionary,
- 12:29Speaker 8: because the last thing airlines need is uncertainty. And when
- 12:33Speaker 8: you have a product that's revolutionary, it always comes with
- 12:37Speaker 8: deathing issues. It comes with all sorts of complications with
- 12:40Speaker 8: new technology and how that whole measures together with existing infrastructure.
- 12:45Speaker 5: Yeah, we've seen that play UPFT exactly.
- 12:47Speaker 8: And so for the airlines, they want something that stable
- 12:49Speaker 8: allows them to sort of keep going as usual and
- 12:52Speaker 8: not sort of rocking the boat too much.
- 12:53Speaker 10: And that's really key for Boeing.
- 12:55Speaker 8: So how do you derive more fuel efficiency using evolutionary technology?
- 13:02Speaker 8: And that's where we see Boeing sort of going in
- 13:05Speaker 8: terms of their next products.
- 13:08Speaker 3: Ten seconds, if I get a big order today from China,
- 13:10Speaker 3: they can't even make the planes bowing.
- 13:12Speaker 4: I mean they have to build another factory or two.
- 13:14Speaker 8: So Boeing is in the process of opening a new
- 13:17Speaker 8: factory for the seven three seven, and they are looking
- 13:20Speaker 8: at ramping up production and they've been talking about how
- 13:22Speaker 8: they've got these short term goals. So they're currently looking
- 13:26Speaker 8: at forty two a month. They're going to ramp up
- 13:28Speaker 8: to forty seven a month, then fifty two a month
- 13:30Speaker 8: and sixty So essentially for Boeing that they have a
- 13:34Speaker 8: sort of stepped up plan to ramp up production depending
- 13:37Speaker 8: on how the FA sort of signs.
- 13:38Speaker 5: Off on it, and product will be in the US.
- 13:41Speaker 10: They will be in the US, so Boying produces all
- 13:42Speaker 10: its planes in the US. Stay with us.
- 13:45Speaker 4: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 13:52Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us Live
- 13:55Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple Corplay and Android
- 13:58Speaker 1: Auto with the bloom Work Business Up listen on demand
- 14:01Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on
- 14:05Speaker 1: YouTube AI.
- 14:06Speaker 3: It's impacting seemingly all parts of our life, all parts
- 14:10Speaker 3: of business and the economy, and that includes weather forecasting.
- 14:14Speaker 3: But maybe some shortcomings there. Our next guest has some
- 14:17Speaker 3: thoughts there at Caatham Kunda. He's a lecturer at the
- 14:19Speaker 3: Yale School of Management and he is a Bloomberg Opinion contributor.
- 14:23Speaker 3: You say AI isn't built for bad weather's Black Swan era?
- 14:27Speaker 4: What do you mean by that? Gotham?
- 14:29Speaker 10: Hey, Paul, good to be back.
- 14:30Speaker 9: So it's about weather forecasting, but it's not just about
- 14:33Speaker 9: weather forecasting. It's about the fact that we're using AI
- 14:37Speaker 9: all over the place as a tool to use the
- 14:40Speaker 9: past to predict the future, which is maybe the most
- 14:43Speaker 9: fundamental of all human activities, and it's incredibly important. And
- 14:47Speaker 9: it turns out that if as long as you have
- 14:49Speaker 9: enough and rich enough data about the past, AI can
- 14:53Speaker 9: be incredibly good at it, even better than the tools
- 14:55Speaker 9: we've used in the past, which in the case of
- 14:57Speaker 9: weather forecasting, involve planes and physics models and supercomputers and
- 15:02Speaker 9: weather satellites. So all of that is great. The problem
- 15:06Speaker 9: is that the weather is changing, so the weather of
- 15:10Speaker 9: the past may not be a good guide to the
- 15:12Speaker 9: weather of the future. And AI is incredibly good at
- 15:16Speaker 9: understanding stuff that happened within its training data set, and
- 15:19Speaker 9: incredibly bad about understanding stuff that's happening outside its training
- 15:23Speaker 9: data set. And as I said, that is about weather forecasting,
- 15:26Speaker 9: but it's not just about weather forecasting. It's about anywhere
- 15:29Speaker 9: where we're facing this problem of using the past to
- 15:31Speaker 9: predict the future. But the past is not like the future.
- 15:35Speaker 2: And in your column you write it will work right
- 15:38Speaker 2: up until it doesn't. AI models have a tendency to
- 15:40Speaker 2: fail in the biggest moments. And one example you give
- 15:44Speaker 2: that I think anyone who's over the age of eighteen
- 15:47Speaker 2: can relate to is the value risk models that banks
- 15:50Speaker 2: use during the Great Financial Crisis, where they relied on
- 15:54Speaker 2: past data to predict how much risk they can each
- 15:57Speaker 2: take on.
- 15:58Speaker 9: That's right, And that's another case of a tool that
- 16:00Speaker 9: works really, really well under normal circumstances, so well that
- 16:04Speaker 9: it gives you confidence, right, it makes you start to
- 16:06Speaker 9: rely on the tool. You might even enshrine it in
- 16:09Speaker 9: regulations so that when it fails, it's not just a
- 16:12Speaker 9: normal failure, it's a catastrophic failure.
- 16:14Speaker 10: So that's one layer of problem.
- 16:16Speaker 9: The second layer is that often these tools, it can
- 16:18Speaker 9: start to get used by people who aren't they people
- 16:20Speaker 9: who built them, and so who don't necessarily understand them
- 16:22Speaker 9: very well. I was at MIT during the to the
- 16:25Speaker 9: financial crisis, and I remember a very senior risk management
- 16:28Speaker 9: person at one of the banks at MIT saying to
- 16:31Speaker 9: a group of us, you know, I saw six sigma
- 16:34Speaker 9: events on three consecutive days, so the markets are weird.
- 16:38Speaker 9: And I just stared at him and I said, that
- 16:40Speaker 9: doesn't mean that the markets are weird. It means that
- 16:43Speaker 9: your tool has failed, because six sigma events three days
- 16:47Speaker 9: in a row will not happen in the entire lifespan
- 16:51Speaker 9: of the universe. Right, That's how rare we're.
- 16:54Speaker 10: Talking about is.
- 16:55Speaker 9: And this was a person who, you know, they were
- 16:57Speaker 9: very smart, but they didn't understand what this meant.
- 17:01Speaker 3: So, you know, I think one of the AI question
- 17:04Speaker 3: marks Gotham right now, is is AI going to create
- 17:08Speaker 3: jobs in this economy or destroy jobs in this economy?
- 17:11Speaker 3: I'm not sure we know that, do you have any
- 17:13Speaker 3: thoughts on that.
- 17:14Speaker 9: Well, I think we know that the answer is both,
- 17:17Speaker 9: it's going to create it's going to destroy some jobs,
- 17:20Speaker 9: it's going to create others. But the data on AI
- 17:23Speaker 9: job described destruction, the actual empirical data is pretty weak.
- 17:27Speaker 10: It looks more.
- 17:28Speaker 9: Like companies that over hired or that are looking to
- 17:30Speaker 9: cut costs and are kind of blaming AI for what
- 17:33Speaker 9: they did. But at the same time, there are going
- 17:37Speaker 9: to be some big transitions, and you know, all of
- 17:39Speaker 9: the standard models that we have, they're all about like
- 17:42Speaker 9: you know, bank tellers or things like that that tell
- 17:44Speaker 9: us new technologies don't create jobs, don't don't destroy jobs,
- 17:48Speaker 9: they don't destroy jobs and aggregate, but they destroy some jobs,
- 17:50Speaker 9: and the transition can be really hard for the people
- 17:53Speaker 9: who are undergoing through it.
- 17:55Speaker 2: So you are lecturer at the Yale School of Management,
- 17:58Speaker 2: How does education prepare young people? Graduates, those who have
- 18:04Speaker 2: some working experience, are going back to school and want
- 18:07Speaker 2: to come out, you know, with a better skill set
- 18:09Speaker 2: to prepare for this world.
- 18:10Speaker 9: So I think there are two things we need to
- 18:12Speaker 9: think about really hard here. One is that one of
- 18:14Speaker 9: the really interesting things about AI, at least as it's
- 18:17Speaker 9: currently structured, is it seems to be a magnifier, not
- 18:20Speaker 9: a compressor. Right, So if you think about like power tools,
- 18:24Speaker 9: power tools and construction equipment made brute physical strength less
- 18:28Speaker 9: important if you were working in manual labor. So they
- 18:31Speaker 9: compressed the differential and productivity between people who were physically
- 18:35Speaker 9: very strong and people who were less strong. But there
- 18:38Speaker 9: are other sorts of technologies that they increase the differences
- 18:41Speaker 9: in capability, so someone who normally would be twice as
- 18:43Speaker 9: capable becomes ten times as capable. AI looks more like
- 18:47Speaker 9: something in the second pool, right. It looks like it
- 18:50Speaker 9: takes people who are good and it makes them great,
- 18:52Speaker 9: but it's not that useful if you're not already an
- 18:54Speaker 9: expert in the field, and so someone has to create
- 18:58Speaker 9: those experts. That's the second That's what the one thing
- 19:00Speaker 9: that schools can do. The second thing is that schools
- 19:03Speaker 9: are you know, like at their best, and not all
- 19:05Speaker 9: schools do this all the time. I'm not defending that
- 19:08Speaker 9: saying that at all, but at their best, schools can
- 19:10Speaker 9: learn teach people to think independently of these skill sets.
- 19:14Speaker 9: And you're even seeing AI companies coming out and saying
- 19:16Speaker 9: that like humanity skills are really really important, that's what.
- 19:21Speaker 10: Yeah.
- 19:21Speaker 9: So, so something I've been I've been quoting at all
- 19:23Speaker 9: my programmer friends with great joy is when there was
- 19:26Speaker 9: all this turmoil before, people were saying they would you
- 19:29Speaker 9: know the responsibilities, but you guys need to learn to code, right,
- 19:31Speaker 9: And so now the AI is doing the coding, and
- 19:33Speaker 9: I said, you guys need to learn to ode.
- 19:38Speaker 3: I mean that kind of goes to one of the
- 19:40Speaker 3: things I'm learning from the young folks is it's the
- 19:44Speaker 3: ability to ask AI the right question, the prompts, yes,
- 19:48Speaker 3: the prompts, and in your world and your day to
- 19:51Speaker 3: day at a university environment, gotam, How's AI impacting your world?
- 19:56Speaker 9: So a lot in multiple different ways. So it's but
- 19:59Speaker 9: I'll it's not just learn the prompts, it's you have
- 20:02Speaker 9: to know enough to know when the AI is wrong.
- 20:06Speaker 9: That is actually I found the single most important skill.
- 20:08Speaker 9: So I used AI to help me create the syllabus
- 20:11Speaker 9: for a course.
- 20:12Speaker 10: It was amazing.
- 20:13Speaker 9: It took what would have been a week of work
- 20:15Speaker 9: and let me do it in a day. I was
- 20:17Speaker 9: blown away. But several of the things that it gave
- 20:20Speaker 9: me were wrong in ways that you had to be
- 20:22Speaker 9: an expert to understand. We're wrong, but another expert we've
- 20:26Speaker 9: seen this and thought I was need it right. So
- 20:30Speaker 9: that was a really important distinction. And what you're seeing
- 20:34Speaker 9: first is, you know, look, cheating is a huge problem.
- 20:36Speaker 9: Like we've had to crack down on that, like written exams,
- 20:41Speaker 9: take home exams. I think, like, I'm really sorry to
- 20:44Speaker 9: hear that, see that happening, But it's really happening. And
- 20:47Speaker 9: I tell my students on the first day, I'm like,
- 20:50Speaker 9: you probably can cheat. And you know, look, honestly, I
- 20:53Speaker 9: can't tell you if I'm going to catch you or not, right,
- 20:55Speaker 9: Like the tools to catch you are not that great,
- 20:57Speaker 9: but you're gonna cheat yourself. Like what you want here
- 21:01Speaker 9: isn't the grade. Nobody cares about your grades. What you
- 21:04Speaker 9: want is the learning, and you get the learning from
- 21:06Speaker 9: doing the work, not by asking trat ept to do
- 21:09Speaker 9: it for you.
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