Latest / Bourbon & Rum / Demis Hassabis, Universal Basic Income, and the Relationship Economy

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Demis Hassabis, Universal Basic Income, and the Relationship Economy · Bourbon & Rum

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  The analog I've heard is that it's a really bright intern.
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  You know that, but you got to give them the work and you got
• 0:05
  to check the work My. Plan is to just accelerate my
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  use of it because I think it it will make us bigger and better
• 0:13
  and faster and stronger. Don't forget that you had the
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  Reformation, the Counter Reformation, the Spanish
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  Inquisition, and 200 years of religious fueled warfare and
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  death. Putting the the the pedal to the
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  metal headed off a Cliff. I don't know and I'm OK with
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  that. Welcome to Bourbon and Rum, the
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  podcast dedicated to civil conversation.
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  I'm Kent, I like rum and I'm from the left side of the aisle.
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  And I'm Kyle. I like bourbon.
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  I tend to be a little more conservative.
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  We're brothers talking politics for bourbon and rum.
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  What are you drinking? I'm.
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  Sipping on some of this old Kirk Single Barrel I picked up a
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  couple of weeks ago. It's high proof, but it's pretty
• 1:07
  smooth stuff. What are you drinking on?
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  I got I showed this one time before.
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  It's a pars rum from Columbia, but this is called Brothers
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  blend. So I thought, you know, that's
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  appropriate. It's an Inejo, but it's it's not
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  very dark. It's a pretty light from Spanish
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  style and kind of a little hot, a little aromatic.
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  Nice. It's good.
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  Well, want to throw something at you this week We had some car
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  time and listened to, we're listening to a biography and
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  then going back and forth. The biography, I have to look up
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  the name of it or the the title. It's of Demis Hasabis, who's the
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  CEO of Google DeepMind. Really interesting tale about
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  like what his background was and how he came to it.
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  And he honestly sounds like a really interesting guy.
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  And he's been one of the more thoughtful people about AI
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  safety and and that. So I was real impressed.
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  Well, I don't know if you saw this other book that's been out
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  for a couple of months. If anyone builds it, everyone
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  dies. I've heard of that, yeah.
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  It's a little intense. And it includes like a three
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  chapter, like a like a scenario of how an AI escapes the lab and
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  concludes that it's got to get rid of people and bioengineers a
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  virus and basically kills all the people.
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  So it's, you know, it's a real cheery sort of a thing.
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  But I, I've been thinking about this a lot because, you know,
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  really important people in the field have talked a lot about
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  security. Geoffrey Hinton.
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  You know, people really are the the creators of this stuff are
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  really worried and I've tried to get afraid of it and I just am
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  struggling. But actually a conversation with
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  Claude gave a little perspective.
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  It was like, well, your risk isn't AI deciding it wants to
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  kill people. The risk is AI moving in a
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  direction, following a path and not thinking about some of the
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  downstream consequences of some of the things that it does that
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  that could ultimately be pretty destructive.
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  And, you know, it even called out like this is the irony
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  talking to AI about this? It was like, you know, there's
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  probably going to be a lot of disruption even if things work
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  out great in the end. You know, there's going to be a
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  lot of people out of jobs. There's there's going to be a
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  lot of power concentrated in a handful of hands.
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  Like there are genuine issues with it.
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  So I guess I'm wondering if you thought about that, What do you
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  think? Yeah, You know, I think, I don't
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  know, I, I kind of consider myself, I don't know, somewhat
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  of an early adopter of new technologies, you know, and I'm
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  not like spending a ton of money on stuff.
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  But I like, I've been really heavily using AI now since it
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  really came out. I mean, as soon as ChatGPT was
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  out, I was playing with it constantly and bugging all my
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  friends. Like they're like, oh, this is a
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  fad. And like, no, this is not a fad.
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  But, and now, you know, we just got clawed installed a couple of
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  weeks ago for a company where they call the proprietary dated.
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  Like you can lock down like a clawed version for your own use.
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  And it is just phenomenal. I mean, I'm using it.
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  I mean, I'm probably doing 10 PowerPoint presentations a day
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  with it. I mean, it's just unbelievable.
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  It's just spitting out one after another, and it's doing Excel
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  analysis and it's all stuff I would have done before.
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  And so in my mind, it's like, you know, we talked about this a
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  week or two ago. I mean, it's like the difference
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  between a typewriter and a computer, I mean.
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  Right. I'm still doing the job, but I'm
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  getting a lot more done a lot faster than I could before.
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  I did think about it this week, you know, like, you know, I my
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  role in kind of the business development marketing world,
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  I'm, I'm building PowerPoint charts all the time.
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  I mean, that's kind of that's how I communicate with clients
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  and opportunities and internally and everything else.
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  And so, you know, I'm creating, you know, I got a chart and I
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  need to show a few elements and I'm going to build a couple of
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  boxes and I'm going to download a couple of icons and then I'm
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  going to put some words in there.
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  And it's like, I'm never going to do that again.
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  Claude's doing all of that. Like I'm never like creating
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  insert a box and text and like it's going to do all of that.
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  I mean, you know, I'm just. Like on this slide I need to
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  portray this data have added I. Mean literally, we got this RFP
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  sent to me at like noon on Friday and I had a meeting set
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  up at like 2 with the team because it's pretty hot priority
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  and it's something we want to look through.
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  And it's spit out of 15 chart review package that's spit out
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  all the details represented super well, showed all the
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  risks. It showed all the issues.
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  I put in a a few tweaks. I made a few tweaks here and
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  there, you know, 15 minutes of work and I've got a deck that I
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  that would have taken me half a day to finish.
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  I mean, I hate to say that, but it's true.
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  I mean, it's a lot of work and so I love it, but to me it is
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  more of AI think, you know, I'm sure and we're going to explore
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  this today and and there's probably stuff now that you're
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  going to talk to me about that I probably need to worry about
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  that. I'm not worried about maybe, but
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  like to me, it's the difference between I had a job about 25
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  years ago. I did this internship at FedEx
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  in Memphis and they were doing strategic sourcing and I was in
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  the Air Force and we did this thing where you could go work at
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  a company for a few months. And so it's pretty interesting
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  and learning about it. But there is, I'm working with
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  these people that are doing these strategic sourcing
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  projects, right? So they're pulling all this data
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  like somebody's like, I mean, literally actually pretty
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  interest. I mean, probably not that
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  interesting, but interesting to a guy like me.
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  Like, like one of the strategic sourcing projects at FedEx is
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  they were like, let's see if we could get a, a cheaper, we could
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  save some money on the boxes. You know, like, well, yeah,
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  that's, that's some significant spin.
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  But you know, you're you're piping in all this data of all
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  the company usage from all the systems.
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  And then you're playing with the data to figure out, you know,
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  how much are you spending here and how much can you save?
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  And I just remember at the time there was this one lady on the
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  team, like there's this one guy that I worked with that was, you
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  know, a good relationship with. And he was, he would use Visual
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  Basic all the time and to create Excel macros and stuff because
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  you know, you're dealing with huge volumes of data.
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  And he, he just whip out a Visual basic little program and
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  boom, it'd do with his query and he'd do it in 5 minutes.
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  Well, there's this one lady on the team, like I think the
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  extent of her Excel experience was like, I can right click the
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  mouse, copy paste. Like she couldn't do AV look up
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  in Excel. She couldn't do anything in
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  Excel. And you know, like we're leaving
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  one night and she's talking. I mean, she's talking how she
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  stays in the office every night till midnight working on these
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  Excel files. And this guy I'm talking to,
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  he's like, the problem is she doesn't know how to use Excel.
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  And if you don't know how to use those data tools and you're
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  trying to work with thousands of lines of data, like you're going
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  to be working all the time. And it's a long story just to
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  tell that. I think that's what it's going
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  to be with, with AI. What I'm seeing with Claude, the
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  expectation for the amount of output I'm going to spit out in
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  a day is now at about 20X what it was 2 weeks ago.
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  And as long as I can manipulate AI and meet that 20X threshold,
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  I'm fine. But if I'm one of these people
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  that's like, I, I have my figured it out.
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  Those are the people I think are at risk.
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  Yeah. Well, and your CFO is going to
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  tell somebody, you know, we, we're spending X 100,000 on
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  Claude, we need the quota for everybody to be about 10 X what
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  it is, right? You know, no, I, I, I'm not
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  worried about that. I do think that there's a
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  difference between people that are getting in front of it and
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  if you get in front of it, the power of what it can let you do
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  is incredible. I, I have been able to do, but
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  it's still me doing it like I'm calling the shots.
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  The the analog I've heard is that it's a really bright
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  intern. You know that, but you got to
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  give them the work and you got to check the work, right?
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  You, you can't just well. And, and you got to like, you
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  know, I'm building all these these decks.
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  Well, I've got a message I'm trying to communicate.
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  It doesn't, it's not in my head. It's giving me examples of, OK,
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  this is good. But we got to do this and we got
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  to now we got to change this one to do this.
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  And you got to say that, you know, so, and it's, you know,
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  it's possible, certainly possible AI will do all that.
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  But I think to me, even when it does that, like everybody's got
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  a boss. I mean, you know, maybe it's
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  possible that that AI will become the CEO, the CFO and the,
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  and, and all the VPS and all the directors and all.
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  But I kind of think it's going to be it.
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  It may replace some individual contributors and some managers,
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  but you still going to have people that are driving the bus
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  I would think. 100% agree. I think it's a little
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  interesting that about 10 years ago, my sons and I had this kind
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  of an ongoing debate because it was right as Tesla self driving
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  stuff was coming out and we were all like, Oh my gosh, like truck
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  driving, you know, there's all these people that drive trucks.
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  These trucks are going to be automated driving on the road.
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  You're not going to need truck drivers anymore.
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  And like you can't like, you can't go into trucking.
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  Like you got to have another plan because that's it's coming
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  for that. One of the interesting things is
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  that this isn't coming for truck drivers.
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  This, this is coming for the people that are clinging to the
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  bottom of not understanding Excel.
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  And there's enough work to do. And they're, they're low enough
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  on the food chain that nobody's bothered to really, like, trim
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  those rolls. But there's a lot of marginal
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  positions that are going to go away.
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  Yeah. Yeah, but I guess, and maybe I'm
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  over an overly optimistic person, but if if you're a
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  person and you can say, hey, I'm going to get in front of this AI
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  thing and I'm going to use it, I think there's going to be a roll
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  for you, especially if you can use it better than other people
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  can use it. Yeah, yeah, I, I believe that
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  the, that the, it's really creative work.
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  And I would put what you're talking about is creative,
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  right? Like you're, you're seeing
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  clients, you're putting together potential deals or options or
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  things that you can do. Like, yeah, could AI do that?
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  Yeah. But but that's really the
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  special sauce that you bring honestly at what you make.
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  Like it wouldn't have been crazy for your company to hire you a
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  PowerPoint maker. Yeah, you're like, like nobody
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  was going to do that. But like, that wouldn't have
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  been a terrible idea and it would have freed you up to do
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  more. This is cheaper than hiring a
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  PowerPoint person, but it has the net effect.
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  Yeah, no, totally. I mean, I think the bigger
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  concern, well one, OK, well, let me explore that.
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  One concern people will say is, well, now you know, you're
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  you're no longer going to have the skill to do the task
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  manually because this is going to replace it.
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  But then I'm like, yeah, OK, but like, you ever see my
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  handwriting? It sucks, but does it matter?
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  No. You know, like.
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  Right. So what if you can't do it
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  manually? Like, I don't know what's the
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  risk there? But but you and I have lived
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  through this transition. Did you have typing in high
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  school? Yeah, not a keyboarding class.
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  I had a typing class and and I bought a typewriter before I
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  went to college. And by the time I left,
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  seriously, I bought a typewriter when I went to college.
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  It was one of these memory things with a like a ribbon.
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  And the ribbons were 20 bucks. And after the first year, I
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  started using a Mac at the computer lab, and I never looked
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  back. Like, I've lived through that
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  transition. But.
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  But I guess this is the question is this.
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  I think of it as a linear progression going back to the
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  printing press. I know I say this all the time.
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  And the monks were like, oh, my gosh, we're going to be out of
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  work. And.
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  And it worked out. Yeah.
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  And, you know, likewise, in my lifetime, people were like, you
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  know, those kids, they watch Sesame Street all the time.
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  Their brains are going to go to jello it.
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  Like, society's over because of television.
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  And then we were the computer, the personal computer.
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  It's like, nobody's going to do anything anymore.
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  And then the Internet laid on top.
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  Like, I've lived through these evolutions.
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  So I'm kind of like, yeah, this is big.
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  This is happening fast. The upside of this is really
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  high. The disruption of this is
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  possible. So in my chat with Claude, I was
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  giving it this kind of argument from history.
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  And it was like, yeah, well, OK, so you're right on the printing
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  press, you know, the monks were like, oh, they're out of job.
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  And but don't forget that you had the Reformation, the Counter
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  Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition and 200 years of
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  religious fueled warfare and death throughout Europe.
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  Now, Yeah, we're at the point looking back, like you wouldn't
• 17:19
  say like, oh man, we shouldn't have invented the printing
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  press. But, you know, it was a little
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  rocky there for a couple of centuries.
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  Yeah. So, you know, I don't know, I
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  think I do think that where we really need to be thinking
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  about, right, because I people who are like, oh, we need to
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  stop development. No, no, that's not going to
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  work. I do think we need to be more
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  attentive about, I might have mentioned this on here.
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  There's an article in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks
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  ago about taxing compute power. Like right now, if you, if you
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  have a task that you can hire a person for or you can deploy an
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  AI agent to do it. I mean, first of all, people
• 18:16
  think about the salary. But even if the salary, you
• 18:19
  know, you got to pay for the, for the compute power of the
• 18:21
  assistant, but how much is our payroll taxes?
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  And you don't pay payroll taxes for the AI assistant.
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  And so we've built a system where the humans are
• 18:32
  disadvantaged by the tax system. Maybe we need to tax data
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  centers a little bit and use that money to mitigate some of
• 18:41
  the public impact of this. Why should computers be cheaper
• 18:47
  from a taxation standpoint than? People well, but then OK, so
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  play that out we're going to tax the data centers.
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  So now all the AI tools just got more expensive and you're going
• 19:02
  to have to pay them. So now you're not, you know, you
• 19:08
  tax the ICE centers, you're just taxing the people.
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  Kind of and kind of not I, I, there's a valid point that
• 19:18
  you're saying, but you're, you're accelerating the like,
• 19:25
  I'm going to try to say this you, I mean, do we or do we not
• 19:29
  believe that taxation is a disincentive to things?
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  Why do we tax cigarettes? Why do we tax alcohol, We tax
• 19:38
  hiring people more than we tax having an AI agent do it?
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  That seems perverse to me. Like nobody said payroll taxes.
• 19:50
  I'm sure somebody said payroll taxes are all that.
• 19:54
  I, I don't know. It's just like we're going to
• 19:58
  have to come up with some sort of, I think universal basic
• 20:01
  income becomes very much a conversation again.
• 20:04
  If we're going to put out of work big swaths of people, which
• 20:08
  I think is possible. I just don't think, I don't
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  know, You hear Elon must talk about that like EA is going to
• 20:18
  be able to just pay for everybody.
• 20:21
  We've talked about this before. No, nobody's going to make any
• 20:25
  money off. The people are going to make the
• 20:27
  money Are the people at the top that are are making the money
• 20:29
  now They're just going to make a hell of a lot more.
• 20:31
  Nobody's going to get basic universal basic income out of
• 20:35
  this. Well, not if we don't do
• 20:36
  something different, but that's exactly what I'm talking about.
• 20:39
  The tax. I I don't mean necessarily tax
• 20:43
  the and I guess you can say that that it it rolls up to the
• 20:48
  consumer, but tax the AI companies.
• 20:53
  I mean, you got to you got to tax where the you got to tax
• 20:58
  where the need is. It it's, you know, it's like,
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  oh, I, I sent you a snarky e-mail this week about Trump
• 21:07
  taking off the gas tax. And like, that should really
• 21:13
  annoy people. That, that should annoy people
• 21:16
  as much as all of the talk about, you know, welfare Queens
• 21:21
  getting handouts from the government.
• 21:24
  If we take off the gas tax, it looks good because it's cutting
• 21:31
  a tax, but it's given people a free ride.
• 21:35
  We're still going to spend the government money.
• 21:37
  We're still going to pave the roads.
• 21:39
  That's as much of AI don't. Think, I mean I know gas tax are
• 21:45
  a contributor but I don't think it's the majority anymore.
• 21:49
  Like 1. There's a lot of state and local
• 21:51
  and then the government just pays that money to do crap
• 21:54
  anyways because they probably don't cover it all.
• 21:57
  I mean, you're not wrong, but I mean, I guess I wonder though,
• 22:04
  bigger question I've got, does AI, does the advancements in AI,
• 22:11
  could they, could it actually take on the role of the
• 22:16
  government? So you don't need to tax as much
• 22:18
  because you don't need as much government because it could do a
• 22:21
  lot of the stuff government's doing today.
• 22:26
  I think that that's valid. I guess I'm looking at this as
• 22:30
  two parts, right? Do you tax because you need
• 22:35
  revenue or do you tax to create incentives and disincentives
• 22:43
  around behaviors and actions that have been judged socially
• 22:47
  desirable? And we do both like, like we do
• 22:51
  both. You, you, you need money.
• 22:54
  We we went to the income tax what after World War One.
• 22:58
  Before that it was tariffs. Can't believe I said that.
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  It's true. So there's that.
• 23:06
  You can't believe you speak the truth.
• 23:08
  As a Democrat, I get that. OK.
• 23:13
  But so you know, partly you tax because you need revenue,
• 23:17
  obviously, but you also tax, you know how you tax and what you
• 23:23
  tax is a statement about what you value.
• 23:27
  Yeah, but why would you want to? Why would you want to tax?
• 23:36
  It seems a little bit of a it seems like a bit of a conflict
• 23:42
  for you because on the one hand you're saying you're embracing
• 23:44
  AI, but now you're saying you want to tax it because you think
• 23:47
  it's bad. No, I think it, I, I do embrace
• 23:51
  it. I, I want to tax it in this case
• 23:54
  because we need to, we need to offset the negative, the
• 24:02
  negative externalities. I, I would, I would see that
• 24:06
  compute tax the the best analog. Well, you guys have got this in
• 24:11
  Texas. I'd hate to know what your
• 24:14
  severance taxes are. You pay.
• 24:16
  If you got an oil well in West TX, you pay a ludicrous amount
• 24:21
  of money in taxes. Not your property taxes, not
• 24:25
  your income taxes on with the businesses profitable.
• 24:29
  You pay a direct tax for every barrel you pull out of the oil
• 24:33
  or pull oil you pull out of the ground because Texas says, well,
• 24:37
  you know, you own that land, but you're piping away part of
• 24:41
  Texas's natural resources. You're going to pay for that.
• 24:45
  Yeah. So that's severance taxes.
• 24:48
  With AI, I'm thinking about the disruption of the labor market.
• 24:52
  I'm thinking about how many people it could put out of work.
• 24:55
  We're it's a 2 fold strategy. You're going to need money
• 24:59
  because you're going to need to support those people somehow.
• 25:02
  Whether that's enhanced unemployment payments, whether
• 25:06
  it's Ubi, there's going to be social cost to that that we're
• 25:12
  going to have to shoulder. If we don't tax computers, we're
• 25:15
  given a subsidy, an incredible subsidy to these companies.
• 25:20
  Because but who? OK, OK.
• 25:23
  So that's a good question though.
• 25:25
  Who's getting? Who?
• 25:27
  Reaps the benefit that AI brings.
• 25:30
  The AI company or the corporations like mine that not
• 25:34
  just are, are way more productive than they were
• 25:37
  before, and now that because they're more productive, they're
• 25:40
  going to make more money. Right.
• 25:41
  But right now, like, I don't think the dust is settled.
• 25:45
  But long term, you're going to pay for that Claude subscription
• 25:50
  proportionate to what it saves you and what it gives you.
• 25:54
  Like, like the marketplace is going to take care of that.
• 25:57
  It's not right now, yeah, but you're.
• 25:59
  Getting a deal. To me, this is a classic
• 26:03
  difference with how Democrats and Republicans look at taxes,
• 26:08
  because you look at taxing the immediate.
• 26:16
  I'm trying to think of how to say this, well, you're you like
• 26:21
  Democrats who want to tax the stuff right in front of them
• 26:25
  versus having a system such that productivity improves,
• 26:31
  profitability improves, and as that improves, the taxes are
• 26:34
  already there. Like you can get more taxes, you
• 26:39
  can get more tax revenue with a highly productive economy then
• 26:44
  you can by adding more taxes on where you're at today.
• 26:49
  You know what I mean? So like, yeah, we could we go
• 26:51
  tax the hell out of these AI companies now and you get
• 26:54
  revenue. But if you let these AI
• 26:57
  companies go crazy and turn this technology into something
• 27:01
  awesome and deploy it to all these companies, now all these
• 27:03
  companies are already paying taxes, are going to pay a lot
• 27:06
  more taxes because they're they're going to make a.
• 27:08
  Lot more. I, I think that's almost a
• 27:12
  parallel and secondary conversation.
• 27:15
  I, I, I hear what you're saying. And at what point in the food
• 27:18
  chain do you tax things? But I'll throw this back at you.
• 27:22
  I think Republicans have got some real craziness when it
• 27:25
  comes to tax policy themselves. And there's things that you call
• 27:31
  that This is why I threw the, the gas tax at you.
• 27:34
  There's things that masquerade as tax cuts that are really just
• 27:40
  freaking handover subsidies, like just because you don't
• 27:46
  charge a tax for something, I, I, I don't know that that's
• 27:51
  inherently good. And here's an example that'll
• 27:54
  that'll and you may think I'm nuts, but but I know you think
• 27:58
  I'm nuts. You hear this all the time.
• 28:01
  Amtrak, Amtrak loses money. Oh my gosh, we Amtrak loses
• 28:05
  money. We're putting taxpayer money
• 28:07
  into Amtrak. Why don't they just charge the
• 28:11
  fare at the at the ticket box of what it costs to run Amtrak?
• 28:18
  The truth is that no passenger rail in the world pays for
• 28:24
  itself off the fare box. That's true statement.
• 28:27
  All of these excellent trains all over Europe, they're
• 28:31
  subsidized. That's how it works.
• 28:34
  But the crazy thing is that people think that like, oh, it's
• 28:38
  so horrible that we would subsidized Amtrak.
• 28:41
  Amtrak ought to stand on its own like the airlines stand on their
• 28:45
  own. Do you know what it costs to
• 28:48
  build another LAX? So this is the, the, the high
• 28:53
  speed rail in California where there's all this people like,
• 28:56
  well, you know, why are we subsidizing the, the rail?
• 29:00
  Well, because if you don't, you're going to need to build
• 29:02
  another LAX and another SFO. And you think that's going to
• 29:07
  come easy and cheap? You think you're going to get
• 29:09
  the right away, You know, where in Southern California are you
• 29:13
  going to get what, 10,000 acres? You know what I mean?
• 29:19
  Like and, and so do we subsidized the airlines in this
• 29:24
  country massively. You know, do we subsidized cars
• 29:30
  with how much do we mean we subsidized we?
• 29:33
  Subsidized the airlines because of building airports.
• 29:37
  Yeah, OK. Yeah.
• 29:41
  You don't have airlines if you don't have airports like that.
• 29:44
  OK, well, would we have an auto industry without a highway
• 29:47
  system? No, no, that's, that's another,
• 29:51
  that's even a better example than the airlines.
• 29:53
  That's what I'm saying you what did we spend in the 1960s to
• 30:02
  build the Interstate highway system?
• 30:05
  It was more than some of these rail projects are.
• 30:08
  Trust me, it was a lot of money and and you know, the gas tax
• 30:13
  supposedly offset some of that, but there's a lot of government
• 30:17
  money in that. And it's just, you hear that,
• 30:21
  you hear this from auto executives.
• 30:24
  Honestly, they were, I mean, it was General Motors that really
• 30:27
  went after the like street cars and bus services places.
• 30:32
  And they were like, no, no, these people need to have cars.
• 30:38
  I don't know. I mean, you raised a valid
• 30:40
  point. Like, yeah, we could get that
• 30:42
  those taxes at corporate income tax level at the top end.
• 30:47
  I don't disagree that the government, I'm not one that
• 30:52
  thinks that we can do everything without the government and we
• 30:54
  can do without all these public infrastructure projects and
• 30:57
  everything else. It's just a question of how do
• 30:58
  you pay for it and do you pay for it?
• 31:03
  Do you pay for it through encouraging productivity or do
• 31:07
  you pay for it as a way to discourage productivity?
• 31:12
  That's what I worry about. I mean, if you start, you know,
• 31:17
  stepping on the throttle or on the on the brakes and all these
• 31:22
  AI companies by throwing a bunch of additional taxes on them, are
• 31:26
  we, do we then do we have a productivity challenge that
• 31:30
  results? I think that's a fair question,
• 31:33
  but there's also a proportionality argument on
• 31:35
  that. I think I pay $16.00 a month for
• 31:39
  my subscription to Claude. Trust me, I'm getting a good
• 31:45
  deal. And if they taxed that and said
• 31:49
  no, your $16.00 is now going to be $20.00.
• 31:54
  I would say fine, you know, and like, we're in theory, you're
• 32:01
  right, in theory, taxing things suppresses productivity and
• 32:05
  stuff like that. But I, I don't know what I see
• 32:10
  the power of AII. See, you could say, all right,
• 32:14
  we're going to double the price. Whatever the companies are
• 32:17
  charging you, we're going to double it and people would pay
• 32:21
  it. Look, I don't think that's going
• 32:23
  to slow productivity at all. It's it's, it's a bargain.
• 32:28
  Yeah. And, and I, I mean, if that's
• 32:31
  the only place that the government puts their hooks in
• 32:34
  the businesses, then great. But then there's there's a
• 32:36
  million other ways they're going to put their hooks in there as
• 32:38
  well. Yeah, I, I'm not suggesting that
• 32:41
  this be like just another, I'm talking about a fundamental
• 32:48
  shift that we do it as an intentional thing.
• 32:51
  And we said, all right, we're going to look nationwide and for
• 32:54
  knowledge workers, we're going to cut payroll taxes and we're
• 33:00
  going to increase compute taxes on on AI.
• 33:04
  OK, so then you collect all these taxes and and then your
• 33:08
  solution is to deliver all these unemployed knowledge workers
• 33:12
  that can't use AI tools, a universal basic income and turn
• 33:16
  them into crackheads? I like a UBII think it, I think
• 33:22
  it makes sense, but I also understand the problems with it.
• 33:24
  I'm not married to anything. I mean, if you don't want to pay
• 33:28
  universal basic income, I mean, we could just, I don't know, we
• 33:32
  could, we could, we could pay for methadone for people that
• 33:40
  wind up on drugs. If you, I mean like we can pay,
• 33:42
  we can pay for these social costs at any place you want, but
• 33:46
  I think you incur the social costs I mean.
• 33:48
  But let's dig into that though. I mean, how would universal
• 33:53
  basic income, do you think that's going to be a, a good
• 34:00
  society where everybody's making money?
• 34:03
  It's some basic income. Not if it does, not if it
• 34:06
  happens incrementally. I I mean, I'm just throwing that
• 34:08
  out there. I'm not just saying like, hey,
• 34:10
  what do? You mean incrementally?
• 34:12
  Like like if there starts with $2000 a month and grows to 20
• 34:15
  or. No, I mean, if it's like
• 34:18
  everything else is status quo, we're just shoveling a little
• 34:22
  money out the back door. Like the like the giveaways that
• 34:26
  I don't know, what did Trump do in the big bill, like the
• 34:29
  increase the child tax credit. We'll just, you know, here you
• 34:33
  go and you know, and and equally, I think one of the most
• 34:38
  outrageous things that Biden did was the student loan stuff.
• 34:42
  I'm not in favor of that. So I'm not saying that you just
• 34:44
  like everything else is is status quo, but then we're going
• 34:49
  to just throw some money out the back door.
• 34:50
  It's not what I'm talking about. I think though that looking at
• 34:55
  some of the basic parts of life, you know, there's other ways to
• 35:00
  look at it and I just I mean, there's universal basic income,
• 35:03
  like you get a check the native. American style.
• 35:07
  Right. And I, I don't think that that's
• 35:08
  worked out great, but well, you're not going to love this,
• 35:13
  But what about healthcare? What if, what if we, what if
• 35:18
  you're, you're a businessman? What if your, what if your CFO
• 35:21
  said, hey, that 27% of our payroll that we're paying in
• 35:29
  healthcare, we don't have to pay that anymore?
• 35:32
  Yeah, that would be huge. It would be huge.
• 35:35
  And, and you know, I've said this before, the, the thing
• 35:39
  about healthcare, I mean, I look at this myself, one of the, one
• 35:45
  of the reason, not the only reason, but one of the reasons
• 35:47
  that I don't quit my job and start a business of consulting,
• 35:51
  of doing what I do that I could make a lot of money doing.
• 35:55
  I'd be terrified to have to pay my own health insurance.
• 35:58
  And, and if that happens in my head, amplify that over 300
• 36:03
  million people in this country and think of how many businesses
• 36:06
  aren't getting started, what kind of entrepreneurship isn't
• 36:09
  happening for fear of healthcare costs.
• 36:11
  So I don't know. It's interesting, the healthcare
• 36:17
  dilemma, because I've been looking about, I've been just
• 36:22
  running numbers based on retirement.
• 36:24
  You know, I'm not getting any younger.
• 36:28
  But you know, you, you, everybody wants to wait till
• 36:30
  after 65 to retire because Medicare kicks in.
• 36:34
  But when you start running the math like the difference between
• 36:39
  Medicare and not Medicare, it's not that big a number.
• 36:43
  I mean, it's like you're without Medicare.
• 36:47
  You're probably shelling out 30 grand a year with Medicare.
• 36:51
  You're probably shelling out 15 grand a year.
• 36:53
  I mean, it's not like zero and 100.
• 36:58
  It's a little bit better on Medicare.
• 37:03
  Well, maybe, but your math might not be the same as everybody
• 37:09
  else's math because Medicare means tested.
• 37:13
  Like, I don't think that the average person in this country
• 37:15
  is paying 15 grand a year to be on Medicare.
• 37:18
  OK, I haven't. Put it full 17 high, but you
• 37:23
  know, because you well and I guess it depends on if you get
• 37:26
  there's added things you get I mean, it's it's a complicated
• 37:30
  deal, but. Right, if you want.
• 37:31
  And that's what I, I mean, if I had the magic wand, that's what
• 37:35
  I would create for healthcare. I would give universal basic
• 37:40
  healthcare. You can buy all the, you know,
• 37:43
  here's what you get on the government plan.
• 37:47
  And you know, if you have a heart attack, we'll save you.
• 37:50
  But which we already have. Well, kind of, but the worst
• 37:56
  possible effectiveness, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 38:00
  I mean, you're right, we do like you're you're not.
• 38:03
  You'll get treated for stuff. What you won't get though, you
• 38:08
  will not get any preventive care.
• 38:10
  You will not get any diagnostic or testing.
• 38:13
  You won't get anything that'll keep you from getting heart
• 38:16
  disease. We will wait till you have the
• 38:18
  heart attack and then we'll pay. We'll let the taxpayer pay for
• 38:22
  the bypass. Yeah.
• 38:26
  I, I know we've talked about this before and I think that
• 38:28
  you're really rational about this.
• 38:30
  I don't think, I don't think we maybe agree on everything, but
• 38:33
  but there's a lot of people lying to themselves about
• 38:36
  healthcare in this country and how we pay for it and.
• 38:38
  Well, and I love, I mean, I don't, I, you know, I'd love to
• 38:43
  retire before 65 and I'd love to have a pathway that doesn't
• 38:48
  costing her and leg. I just worry more about what
• 38:55
  that looks like. And, and to your point, if you
• 38:59
  know, if the universal basic income instead of being like he,
• 39:03
  you know, it's going to pay for everything.
• 39:05
  It's well, you know, if, if you're paying yourself instead
• 39:09
  of 30 grand a year, it's 10 grand a year.
• 39:12
  OK, you know, I, I, I got some skin in the game, but it's not
• 39:15
  too bad. You know, like who's going to
• 39:18
  complain about that? I the thing I'm concerned about
• 39:21
  is more, you know, oh, it's free, but you want a knee, knee
• 39:27
  replacement. OK, well, a year and a half from
• 39:31
  now, you might get on the list. You know, that's the part I'm
• 39:34
  concerned about. Yeah, although, and credit to
• 39:37
  the old man who used to say everybody has to ration
• 39:40
  healthcare, you do. And, and if you have to wait for
• 39:43
  time, and if it's a knee replacement, you got to wait for
• 39:46
  a year, unpleasant, but if you have the money, you can buy it,
• 39:49
  you can get it done earlier. You're not going to die because
• 39:52
  you need to need any replacement.
• 39:55
  No, I mean. Yes.
• 39:58
  I mean, I think in general it makes sense.
• 40:00
  I guess I'm just saying like people I've known, I know in
• 40:06
  Canada, for instance, you know, it's not all it's cracked up to
• 40:09
  be and it's not it's. There's a lot more scarcity if
• 40:15
  if AI does indeed result in some kind of windfall and there's a
• 40:19
  way to capture that windfall. Yeah, that seems like a
• 40:22
  reasonable way to use it. I just think I don't think
• 40:27
  there's going to be a windfall. I think the money's all going
• 40:29
  to. It's just going to be these
• 40:32
  companies are going to grow and do better than they did before.
• 40:37
  Yeah, honestly, one of the scariest things about AI to me
• 40:44
  is this is going to sound bad, but you know, here we are
• 40:50
  talking about healthcare, we're talking about Medicare.
• 40:54
  One of the first real big breakthroughs that Google
• 40:58
  DeepMind did before Google bought them was what do they
• 41:03
  call Alpha Fold? They came up with an AI tool
• 41:08
  that helps you uncrack the way that protein molecule molecules
• 41:13
  fold up. And what this does is this
• 41:16
  unlocks drug discovery and development.
• 41:21
  Like we haven't started to get it just yet, but there's stuff
• 41:24
  in the pipeline already that's relying on this, that this is
• 41:28
  going to be a game changer and they're going to be able to give
• 41:31
  you medicines that's designed for exactly your condition,
• 41:34
  that's targeted to you. Well, that is all great, but if
• 41:42
  everybody lives ten years longer, you've been doing some
• 41:45
  retirement math. Think about, think about that
• 41:50
  plan through society, right we? Because you're not extending
• 41:54
  people's 20s by 10 years. Right.
• 41:58
  You, you know, oh great, we made everybody live 10 years longer,
• 42:03
  but they lived from 85 to 95. OK, but if you're, you know, I I
• 42:13
  was playing around with Chechi BT here about, you know, what is
• 42:18
  work like it look like in 2050. You know, if you think about how
• 42:23
  fast AI has come together the last couple of years, I mean, if
• 42:27
  you were to project this over the next, you know, 25 years,
• 42:32
  what the hell does that look like?
• 42:34
  And and it could be that, yeah, you're, you're going to live
• 42:38
  another 10 years from 85 to 95. You know, it's going to be like
• 42:43
  minority report. Your body is going to be well
• 42:47
  maintained with an IV connected to it sitting in a hospital
• 42:50
  room. Your mind and emotions are going
• 42:53
  to be on the beach, some place in virtual reality or what have
• 42:56
  you. You know?
• 42:56
  I mean I know that sounds crazy, but like as people age some type
• 43:03
  of virtual reality would probably be preferable to their
• 43:06
  decrepit failing. Body, I would refer any of our
• 43:10
  younger listeners to get on YouTube and pay for a screening
• 43:15
  of Total Recall. Yeah, exactly where you just buy
• 43:22
  implantable memories and there you go.
• 43:25
  Hey, it was great. Well, we've wandered a little
• 43:30
  bit, but it, I, I think it's, it's interesting, if nothing
• 43:35
  else, that the rate at which AI is changing things is going to
• 43:40
  bring up these questions, right? We're going to have to deal with
• 43:43
  that. There's going to be societal.
• 43:46
  That was the the part that out of this conversation that really
• 43:50
  kind of I left with it. It was like, because I was like,
• 43:53
  yeah, you know, it's like the industrial revolution.
• 43:56
  They invented the, you know, the sewing machine.
• 43:59
  And, you know, nobody's sitting here today and saying, Oh my
• 44:03
  gosh, if only we had stopped the sewing machine right when it was
• 44:06
  going. You know what?
• 44:09
  It was properly pointed out to me that it was things like the
• 44:13
  invention of the sewing machine that led to the, you know, the
• 44:17
  labor struggles of the early part of the 20th century, the
• 44:21
  Russian Revolution, You know, like, like there's some problems
• 44:25
  with that. Well I think of chachi PT here
• 44:29
  and I talked about 2051 thing that wasn't insightful.
• 44:32
  I thought it said is the highest value.
• 44:34
  Humans become relationship builders.
• 44:38
  Well, there you go. And that's a good point.
• 44:40
  I mean, it just, you know, shamelessly promoting our own
• 44:45
  podcast here. But this is, I mean seriously
• 44:49
  though, like a is and robots, it's not going to be a real a
• 44:55
  genuine relationship like human. Human, yeah.
• 44:59
  Or to the degree that it is. You know, that's the other
• 45:02
  thing. It's the collective reflection
• 45:06
  of human beings. It's trained on what human
• 45:08
  beings do. It's the the part that it's good
• 45:12
  about is it's it's capturing and encapsulating the best of
• 45:16
  humanity. I think my final statement on
• 45:20
  this I, I can't get afraid. And this is this may age badly
• 45:25
  when Skynet launches 18 months from now, but I have a hard time
• 45:30
  getting too afraid of it because my fundamental belief is that
• 45:36
  people are good. I, I hear the Christian
• 45:41
  doctrine, I think people are flawed, but I don't think that
• 45:45
  they're by nature evil. If you think people are by
• 45:51
  nature evil, then all this is going to do is facilitate that.
• 45:55
  But I don't think so. I think people are good by
• 45:57
  nature. I think they make bad choices.
• 45:59
  I think that there's problems, but most of those show up when
• 46:03
  resources are scarce, right? I I think people are good.
• 46:08
  Yeah, I think people are selfish.
• 46:10
  Yeah, well then. You know, I could, I could give
• 46:15
  you the the Gordon Gekko speech on greed.
• 46:19
  But you know, yeah, I mean, I, I'm all for it.
• 46:27
  I don't care. I'm you know what, I'm all in.
• 46:29
  And like I said, maybe it, it doesn't age well either when
• 46:32
  we're at Skynet. But I, I'm 100% all in on on AI.
• 46:37
  My kids are sick of it. I talked to ChatGPT all day
• 46:40
  every day and I'm on ChatGPT and Claude and Grok.
• 46:44
  I use Grok for all my video audio stuff.
• 46:49
  I love it. And I think my plan is to just
• 46:54
  accelerate my use of it because I think it it will make us
• 46:58
  bigger and better and faster and stronger.
• 47:01
  What the future looks like, I don't know.
• 47:03
  And it this may be going putting the, the the pedal to the metal
• 47:10
  headed off a Cliff, I don't know.
• 47:12
  And I'm OK with that. I think the thing that gives me
• 47:17
  comfort, I think that there's potential bad effects, but I'm
• 47:22
  like you, I'm doing some retirement planning.
• 47:25
  I got a spreadsheet. I think I've got line 46.
• 47:29
  That's when, that's when I hit my actuarial age on my big
• 47:34
  planning spreadsheet. You know, I, I don't know.
• 47:39
  As long as this happens sometime after line 46.
• 47:45
  Yeah, as long as all. The bad stuff happens about 50
• 47:48
  years from now. We're good.
• 47:50
  I don't even need, I don't even need 50 year.
• 47:53
  I, I think I'm going to be out of it in the nursing home before
• 47:56
  that. So that's right.
• 47:57
  Yeah, I, I need, I need more than 5 or 10 years, but not 50.
• 48:03
  Yeah. Hey, thanks for joining us on
• 48:10
  this episode of Bourbon and Rum Podcast.
• 48:12
  We hope you enjoyed it. Remember to subscribe on your
• 48:15
  favorite platform and leave us a review.
• 48:18
  Your feedback helps us keep the good spirits flowing.
• 48:21
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• 48:23
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• 48:26
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• 48:28
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