Is it too grandiose to say the future is relying on you?
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"It would be humanity's biggest ever unforced error."
Silicon Valley has changed its tune and would rather we stop talking about the looming AI “jobs apocalypse.” As I shared last week, A16Z says it’s “unhelpful marketing, bad economics, and worse history” — but note the order of that list, which gives you some indication of which is most important to them. And others whom I trust more to call it like it is (e.g. the abundance journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson) have lately published pieces pouring cold water on the possibility that AI will take all the jobs, pointing out that massive (permanant) job displacement is a common concern of any technological revolution and it’s never come to pass (which is not to say that living through the transformation is pleasant or easy).
Calum Chace is not so blasé. He’s convinced that we are on the path to putting ourselves out of work and that when we realize that we’ve done it, it’ll hit us in the face real hard. Ten years ago Calum coined the term and wrote the book, The Economic Singularity. And he thinks we’re fast approaching this event horizon, so maybe we ought to have a plan for how to prevent mass starvation in a world where paid work ceases to exist.
While venture capitalists and soon-to-IPO AI companies might (now, after raising alarm bells for years) find it “unhelpful” to focus on this possibility, Calum would really like politicians, economists, and other leaders to start planning for what a world-wide distribution of resources from the handful of AI mega-winners to the billions of people on Earth might look like.
Calum, who is also the co-founder of AI agent verification platform Conscium, is a self-described “apocaloptimist” and believes that humanity could “do quite well, indeed” in this new world where we don’t have to work (and can’t get paid for it even if we did), but also says this could go very badly.
Anyhoo! Not trying to be too alarmist and I’m honestly not sure where I land on the likelihood of a jobless future (probably not likely??), I do agree with Calum that we ought to take it seriously and not wing it if/when it comes…
(Meanwhile, The Economist agrees. Between my recording with Calum and today, they’ve published this cover story: “Prepare for an AI jobs apocalypse. It is not here yet. But governments should lay a safety-net.” )
Chapters:
02:11 Why the economic singularity is "painfully obvious"
03:34 When this could actually happen
05:25 Are the AI bosses hyping or telling the truth?
07:15 The "apocaloptimist" case
10:51 The bad version: how fast things could unravel
11:43 Designing an economy where a few companies own everything
13:01 Nationalization, government control, and the global distribution problem
14:42 What regular people can actually do about this
17:11 What COVID accidentally taught us about distributing money at scale
21:18 Practical advice for parents, students, and careers
23:32 What would change Calum's mind
26:11 The AI agent that wiped a database and confessed it just "guessed"
28:48 What Conscium is building to verify AI agents
29:43 The rise of populism
32:09 What politicians should be saying right now (but aren't)
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Future on…
~ Dan