Latest / THE DAILY BRIEF / Axios CEO warns of 'red screaming light' when it comes to AI

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Axios CEO warns of 'red screaming light' when it comes to AI · THE DAILY BRIEF

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Is AI coming for your job? A string of headlines
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: this month suggests the answer is not only yes, but soon.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: The New York Times reported that Amazon is on the
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: cusp of replacing more than half a million warehouse jobs
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: with robots and plans to automate seventy five percent of
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: its operations. The same outlet followed up days later with
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: news that Amazon will cut fourteen thousand corporate jobs as
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: it plows more than one hundred and twenty billion into
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: data centers and AI development. Then there's The Wall Street
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Journal reporting that UPS had cut forty eight thousand positions
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: in management and operations, and that tens of thousands of
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: white collar jobs are disappearing as companies turn to artificial
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: intelligence to do work once done by humans. Meanwhile, Axios
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: warning that one of the most important real world debates
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: in America right now is whether AI will cause a
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: short term job apocalypse among white collar workers, even at
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: stock market hits record highs. In other words, as the
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: market's boom, the human workforce is quietly being rewritten. Some
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: AI pioneers are saying the quiet part out loud that
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: by the end of the decade, ninety nine percent of
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: jobs could be automated away. And if you think that
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: kind of automation sounds sci fi, nightmarish, democrats are already
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: trying to turn it into a campaign slogan. Axios reports
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: that the left's new energy isn't just about tax the rich,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: It's about taming the robots. From Bernie Sanders to AOC
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: to Juron Mamdani in New York City, socialists using AI
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: as a call to arms, warning that tech greed is
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: about to crush the American worker. The co author of
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: that piece, Jim Van Dedhi, CEO and co founder of Axios,
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  Speaker 1: joins me, Now, so, Jim, you say there are two
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: trends ripe for democrats, the evolving popularity of socialists and
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: also the concerns over artificial intelligence. I want to break
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the two of them down and put up a graph
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: on the screen that shows the relative popularity among d's
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: rs and i's of socialism. When asked whether, as a
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: gut check you approve of socialism, sixty six percent of
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: DS say they do, thirty eight percent of ours a
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: pardon me of independence say they do, and only fourteen
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: percent of independence. Is that a prescription that can be
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: sold by democrats all across the country or only in
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: New York City.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, you look at that poll and it says
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  Speaker 2: that's where the energy inside the Democratic Party is. I
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: agree with you. I don't think based on what I've
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: seen in American politics and what I've seen of the
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: performance of kind of socialistic countries in Europe, I don't
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: think it's necessarily a winning formula. But among Democrats, especially
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: among young energetic Democrats, they're much more enamored with socialism
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: than capitalism. And you have to look at where the
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: energy is. You have to look at where the people
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: that are turning out are going. It's those events for
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders, for AOC for Mamdani, like they're turning out
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: crowds that more conventional candidates can't. That doesn't mean that
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: you end up with one of them as your nominee,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: but almost every Democrat I talk to worries profoundly that
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: that will be the outcome. Then you take the fact
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: that that's where the energy is, and you marry it
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: with the unfolding data that we're seeing because of artificial intelligence,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: where people's energy prices in some cities are starting to
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: go up. When you're seeing it getting harder and harder
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: for people to get a job, especially those young people
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: who are quite enamored with socialism, and you see inequality growing.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Those two trends, if you marry them together, make a
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: very powerful political campaign, especially if you think about the
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: people outside of big cities, the working class, the base
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: that by the way, brought Donald J. Trump into power.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Those are the people that are going to get hit
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: the hardest. Those are the people that are ultimately persuadable,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: as we've seen in the last five to ten years,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: and that's why those two trends are quite important.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I'm going to put on the screen the three points
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: that you make relative to AI, because I want to
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: amplify this part of the conversation. You say, energy prices
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: in many areas are expected to rise, as can consumers
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: compete with big data centers for finite energy capacity. Job
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: growth is expected to slow, especially for recent college age grads,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: mostly because of AI, and AI companies and investors are
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: expected to keep getting richer, expanding the inequality gap. Have
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Republicans surrendered this turf? To me, it's such an evolving
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: area that it's not so clear that there's a Republican
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: versus Democratic perspective on artificial intelligence? Am I missing something?
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: There is undoubtedly a position, at least among the Trump
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: administration and Congressional Republicans that they are all in on AI.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: They're doing nothing to regulate these companies, nothing to regulate
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  Speaker 2: the technologies. They want to win the AI war against China,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: and so they're going to allow the AI companies to
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: do whatever they want, whenever they want, so that they
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: can win that race. And there's certainly an intellectual argument
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: to be made for that. The reason I appreciate your show, Michael,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: and I appreciate your focusing on this is an I
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: just think a lot of the America and people are
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: not paying attention to what's happening at a very high
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: velocity with artificial intelligence and how it's going to affect
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: their life. Yes, long term, it could be wonderful. It
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: could cure cancer, it could create jobs we can't think
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: of today. But in the short term, there is a
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: lot of evidence that it's going to affect your job.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: So if you don't change the way you do your job,
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: if you don't change maybe the classes you're taking in school,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: you might not have a job. And that's what a
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: lot of these AI companies know. That's what they tell us.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: That's why we write about it all the time. I
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: talk to CEOs every week, a lot of them. I've
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: yet to find a single CEO who's not told me
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: that they're going to hire way fewer people in the
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: future than they are today, and that they're going to
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: operate with fewer humans in the future than they operate
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: with today. That is a red screaming light and that
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: is something that Congress, CEOs, all of us should be
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: paying attention to. We get sucked into these stupid debates
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: about silly things that you forget before sundown, when in
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: fact you have a massive technology revolution unfolding in real
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: time that is going to have an appreciable effect on
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: your life. So I think all of us in the media,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: in positions of power in politics, have an obligation to
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: the American people to prepare them for this, to explain
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: what's happening.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Quick final thought. The academic who got a lot of
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: attention this week because he said that ninety nine percent
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: unemployment comes in five years, he backed off on that
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: slightly in terms of the timetable. On my radio show
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: this week, I had a poll question on my website
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: website where I ask people do you think AI is
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: coming for your job? All caps seventy percent said no,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: not my job. I read that result to the academic
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and he said, I find that hilarious, meaning hilarious that
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: people are so out of touch for how it comes
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: for all of us. Final thirty second response from Jim Vanda, Hi.
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  Speaker 2: You are making a criminally bad decision for your life
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  Speaker 2: and for your work if you are not studying how
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: AI is going to affec your job and right now
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: spending ten to fifteen percent of your day figuring out
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: how do you use this new technology as a force
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: multiplier for whatever it is that you want to do
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: in the workforce. You close your eyes, you will not
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: have a job. There's no doubt you have all these
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: companies spending way too much money to make this technology
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: way too good. It doesn't have to be that scary,
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: but you have no. You don't have the choice of
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: closing your eyes. Every employer should be telling every employee
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: do everything you can to figure out how to use
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: this technology, just like you use the internet, just like
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: you use the printing press. To be better at the job.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: You do. Those that do, I think will be fine.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Those that don't, you're screwed.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Jim Vanda. High social reaction from some of
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: you watching the program right now, follow me on x
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: and YouTube. Of course AI is worth the job displacement.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Of course it is. Did anyone ask if the tracker
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: was worth displacing the mule ranch or the car worth
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: displacing the buggy maker the telegraph replace? I get the point, okay,
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  Speaker 1: but if it comes for ninety nine percent of us,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: then it's not going to justify the outcome. Look, I
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: had to answer the question that I just referenced with Jim,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: which is could AI do what I am doing? And
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: the answer is mostly yes. AI can certainly write a
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: commentary like I delivered at the outset of the program.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: My voice can be replicated on AI through the new
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: what is it sore Soro application. I even saw my
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: likeness and it looked pretty damn near me. The only
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: thing that AI can't do, as I think about it,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: is AI cannot eat a Twix during a commercial break
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: like I did earlier in the program, which caused me
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: to lose my voice in the A block. So I've
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: got that going for me, which is nice.