embrace

This week's AI fear discussion was one of the best on the @theallinpod. It's becoming quite obvious to anyone paying attention that the labor market is about to be extremely disrupted due to AI. The reality is that the US has had a welfare system for a lot of corporate jobs. Call it Universal Corporate Income. What I mean is that medium to large, often-times super-bloated companies in lower-than-average competitive industries have typically over-hired for a lot of different roles due to a bunch of different reasons: career-builders that want a bigger team, incompetent management and leadership, pure lazyness, etc. This means that over the last decade+, we've had many companies that simply have way more people than they need, but they don't really fire them because a) firing people sucks really bad and b) if the company is doing well enough, then why go through the pain of firing people? But with AI, it makes it INEVITABLE that these jobs will be entirely deleted, because a) the cost savings with AI are far too big to pass up and b) if you don't use AI and lower your costs, your competitor will, which will put you at a massive disadvantage, because then they can lower their prices without impacting their profitability relative to you. As the AI models get better, this will simply accelerate and start hitting way more industries than just coding. And honestly, this super sucks for the people impacted, because in a majority of situations, it's not their fault. They did what was expected of them. They played by the rules of the game. And they'll lose because of something outside of their control. But it is ALSO true that countless entrepreneurs & high performers at companies will harness the incredible superpower that AI gives an individual to build incredible things, both enriching their companies and themselves. HOWEVER - my gut tells me that the ratio of people that will lose their jobs vs people that will benefit because of AI will be closer to 10:1 in the short to medium term. Way more people will lose their jobs than jobs will be created in the next 5 or so years - if I were to guess. And will get even uglier once AI starts proliferating through the physical world in the form of self-driving cars, humanoids working in factories & warehouses, etc. What this means is that the Abundance Thesis - the thing that we think will happen eventually as AI becomes the foundation on which the next-gen economy gets built - needs to be proven out TODAY. It cannot wait when the ratio of job loss to job creation is likely to be violent. This is why I keep hammering on Data Center projects fully subsidizing residential electricity and water utility bills for all home owners in a Zip Code that approve the project. Or cities/municipalities that approve self-driving cars allow people living in those municipalities to ride X number of miles for free every year so getting to work every day is free. Or the US considering a UBI program partially funded by a sovereign wealth fund that invests in these AI companies. The benefit of AI needs to be felt now IMO. The current trend is that the profits are beginning to accrue - at an accelerating pace - towards those that hold the capital to deploy these AI systems. AKA the rich get richer, and the wealth gap gets worse. The longer this type of action waits (or something far better, I'm just an idiot on the internet) the higher the chance a catastrophic event brings this whole thing to a halt, and the US cedes any hopes it had to remain a Superpower to its competitors - which will result, without a shadow of a doubt, in a far worse outcome for its citizens. I hope I'm wrong, but I think we're getting too many data points.