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AI's Big Lie. 50,000 People Were Told AI Took Their Jobs · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  50,000 people lost their jobs last year because of AI.
• 0:05
  At least that's what their employers told them.
• 0:08
  But here's the thing. A new report suggests many of
• 0:11
  those companies don't actually have AI systems ready to do
• 0:14
  those jobs. So what's really going on?
• 0:17
  Are we witnessing the biggest workforce transformation in a
• 0:20
  generation? Or are some companies just using
• 0:23
  AI as a convenient excuse for cuts they're going to make?
• 0:26
  Anyway, today I'm going to walk through with the data actually
• 0:30
  says why Google just sent video game stocks into a tailspin and
• 0:34
  what one of the most respected minds and AI thinks you should
• 0:38
  be doing right now about all of this.
• 0:41
  And we'll get right back into that after this very short
• 0:44
  break. So let's start with the idea of
• 0:48
  AI washing. The New York Times ran a piece
• 0:51
  this week examining A troubling pattern.
• 0:54
  Company after company has been announcing layoffs and pointing
• 0:58
  to AI as the culprit. Amazon did it.
• 1:00
  Pinterest did it. The message to investors and the
• 1:03
  public is the same. We're getting more efficient.
• 1:07
  We're modernizing. AI is handling what humans used
• 1:11
  to do. Sounds reasonable enough.
• 1:13
  Except a Forrester report published in January found
• 1:17
  something curious. Many of the companies blaming AI
• 1:20
  for layoffs don't actually have mature, vetted AI applications
• 1:25
  ready to fill any of those roles.
• 1:28
  Let me say it again. They're firing people and saying
• 1:31
  AI will do the work, but they don't have the AI agents to do
• 1:36
  that work. Molly Kinder is a senior
• 1:39
  research fellow at the Brooking Institute.
• 1:42
  She put it bluntly, Saying layoffs were caused by AI is a
• 1:45
  very investor friendly message. The alternative would meet
• 1:49
  admitting, as she put it, the business is failing and nobody
• 1:53
  wants to tell Wall Street that. So here's what's interesting
• 1:57
  about this. We've seen this playbook before.
• 2:00
  Remember the pandemic hiring spree?
• 2:03
  Tech companies went on a binge. They hired like the good times
• 2:06
  would never end. Then the good times ended.
• 2:09
  Now they need to clean up that mess.
• 2:11
  But they need a story that makes them look strategic rather than
• 2:15
  short sighted. Enter AI and think about it from
• 2:19
  an executive's perspective. You can stand up in front of the
• 2:22
  shareholders and say we over hired by 30% during a period of
• 2:26
  irrational exuberance and now we're correcting that mistake.
• 2:31
  Or you can say we're investing in the future.
• 2:34
  AI is transforming our operations and we're
• 2:37
  restructuring to stay competitive.
• 2:40
  Which one gets you a raise or which one doesn't scare
• 2:45
  investors? No, this isn't to say AI isn't
• 2:48
  changing work, though it absolutely is.
• 2:50
  But the gap between the hype and the reality is wider than most
• 2:53
  people realize. Some of these layoffs are
• 2:55
  genuine AI driven efficiency gains, some are just regular old
• 3:00
  cost cutting firings with a trendy label.
• 3:04
  And the Forrester researchers called this attributing
• 3:07
  financially motivated cuts to future AI implementation.
• 3:11
  It's future, not current, not today.
• 3:14
  But someday down the road now, I've been digging into the
• 3:18
  analytics of the show and noticed that 39% of you are
• 3:22
  following this channel. I love you.
• 3:25
  Thank you. I'm forever grateful for you.
• 3:26
  And the other 61% of you have listened to a few episodes, just
• 3:31
  haven't hit the follow or subscribe button.
• 3:32
  And I appreciate you for doing that.
• 3:35
  But I've been an independent journalist covering AI, Space
• 3:38
  Flight, Elon Musk, and tech for the last six or seven years.
• 3:41
  I'm going to continue on for the next 10.
• 3:43
  And all I ask from you is one second of your time.
• 3:45
  Hit the follow or subscribe button on whatever platform
• 3:48
  you're listing on right now. I'm extremely grateful and
• 3:51
  blessed to have you right here, right now and in this community.
• 3:55
  So thank you for doing that. Now, this is where it gets
• 3:58
  complicated because while some companies appear to be AI
• 4:01
  washing their layoffs, other companies are creating AI that's
• 4:05
  genuinely rattling markets. This week, Google launched a new
• 4:10
  AI model and the reaction was immediate.
• 4:13
  Video game stocks dropped immediately.
• 4:16
  The market looked at what Google built and said this could
• 4:19
  destroy us. I find the timing fascinating
• 4:23
  too. In one corner, you have
• 4:25
  companies claiming AI is so powerful that it's replacing
• 4:28
  workers, but they don't actually have the AI.
• 4:31
  The other corner, Google releases something and investors
• 4:35
  start panic selling gaming stocks because they believe AI
• 4:39
  is about to eat that industry alive.
• 4:42
  Both of those things are happening at once.
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  The hype and the reality, the excuse making and the genuine
• 4:47
  disruption all tangled together. And this is what's making
• 4:51
  covering AI so tricky right now. You can't say it's all fake
• 4:54
  because some of it is very real. Can't say it's all
• 4:57
  transformative because some, but it's just marketing.
• 5:00
  The honest answer is messier. AI is changing some jobs faster
• 5:04
  than others. Some companies are genuinely
• 5:06
  adapting, some are just using the moment to make cuts and fire
• 5:10
  people. They wanted to make those
• 5:12
  firings anyway. They just use AI as an excuse.
• 5:15
  And the market is trying to price in a future nobody can
• 5:18
  actually predict. So what do you do about it?
• 5:21
  If you're someone trying to figure out whether your job is
• 5:23
  safe or whether you should be worried or what skills matter,
• 5:26
  how do you separate signal from noise demise?
• 5:30
  Hazabis has a view on this CEO of Google DeepMind, which means
• 5:35
  he's one of the most credible voices in AI on Earth.
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  His team built alpha fold, working on systems that win
• 5:43
  Nobel Prizes. This week, he offered some
• 5:48
  advice to college students. He told undergrads to get, in
• 5:51
  his words, unbelievably proficient with AI tools.
• 5:56
  He said this is a better bet than traditional internships.
• 6:01
  It's a huge statement. Strong internships have been the
• 6:04
  gold standard for building a career.
• 6:06
  Go to work somewhere, you learn the ropes, you make connections,
• 6:09
  you make a little bit of money. The value you can create by
• 6:12
  deeply understanding these tools could outweigh the credential of
• 6:15
  having done a summer at some company.
• 6:19
  Think there's real wisdom there. Regardless of where you land on
• 6:22
  the AI washing debate, whether companies are being honest about
• 6:25
  a is impact or using it as a cover, the underlying technology
• 6:29
  is advancing. And the people who understand
• 6:31
  it, who can actually use it, who know its strengths and
• 6:35
  limitations, they're going to have options.
• 6:37
  It's a bit like the early days of the Internet.
• 6:40
  A lot of companies talked a big game about being digital.
• 6:42
  Many of them had no idea what they were actually doing.
• 6:45
  But the people who actually learned to build websites, who
• 6:48
  understood how the technology worked, they just did fine.
• 6:51
  Whether the hype was real or not, just keep coding, keep
• 6:55
  building. So here's where we end up.
• 6:57
  AI is both overhyped and under hyped at same time.
• 7:01
  Some layoffs are real AI driven change, some are convenient
• 7:04
  excuses for managers not to get in trouble.
• 7:07
  Google is building things that genuinely destroy markets.
• 7:11
  And the smartest advice for anyone watching all this unfold
• 7:13
  is probably the simplest. Just learn the tools, get good
• 7:16
  at them. Don't wait for someone to tell
• 7:18
  you whether your job is saved. The disruption is uneven,
• 7:22
  sometimes exaggerated, but it's not fake.
• 7:25
  And the people who treat it as both real and overstated, who
• 7:28
  stay curious without getting swept U they're going to
• 7:31
  navigate this one the best. O Good luck out there.
• 7:36
  Learn all the tools that you can.