Post AGI Economics : UBI About To Change Everything, CNN Lays Off 100 Staff, New Predictions On Jobs

And in today's video, I want to show you guys some of the most important stories around the economy and AI. Now, this first clip is from Alex Hormozi. This was an interview he did with Sean Ferriss. And I think that this clip is one of the most refreshing ones I've seen because it's kind of emphasizing what I've been telling many people, including some of the people in my group, is that you're still always going to have some kind of advantage because you're actually paying attention.

Copywriting AI think. Do you know how many small business owners don't Even know what ChatGPT is? Zillions. And even if they did that, they don't know how to recognize good copy. And so, like right now, ChatGPT writes code. Guess what I don't know how to do? Write code. Guess what else I also don't know how to do? See, if the code it wrote was good, I don't know. And so what ends up happening, in my opinion, at least in the short term, is that you can get a 10x increase in productivity because you can write at such a faster rate of code or copy or whatever, because you have the perspective to make a judgment on how good it is. Right? You can make adjustments and you can tweak the prompts and all that other stuff. And so short term, it's going to be people who know how to leverage AI to get more out of what they do long, long term, nothing's going to matter anyways. And so I think that sounds like an eventual eventuality, but what is that going to affect about today? Not a lot. And just like any technology, use it to your own advantage.

So, yeah, this clip was truly refreshing. It shows that whilst yes, AI is something that does close the gap between individuals who know something and individuals who don't, right now there currently is a problem. A lot of people don't know how to actually use ChatGPT to generate good code. And if it does generate code, you can't always check it. In certain industries, you don't know if what it's generating is good or not because you're not someone that's in that industry. And of course, these are the nuances of AI that many people don't think about. I just thought that this was something that was rather refreshing because there are all these ideas floating about how AI can do this and how it can do that. But I always do think that humans who are competitive and who understand and who stay up front are going to be the ones benefiting the most rather than those not paying attention. Now, I also came across this article that says we must start preparing the US Workforce for the effects of AI now. And essentially it states, as AI spreads rapidly across America's economy, there's a lively debate about how it will transform the future of work. What many people fail to realize is that AI has already changed millions of workers jobs, often for the worse. At Amazon, some warehouse and delivery drivers complain that AI bots have fired them without any human intervention whatsoever. And before continuing to actually talk about this, I do want to show you a recent clip, and this one is actually from Ark Invest, where they're talking about the recent price decreases as more robots are built and how Amazon is now adding more robots than human employees.

There's an opportunity for generalizable robotics that provides an opportunity for $24 trillion in revenue annually. Lower prices are, are stimulating demand for industrial robots. And industrial robots have been dropping 50% for every cumulative doubling in production. And so I think we're at a point now where the hardware costs are low enough and continuing to flow that way. As money flows in and people are designing for different types of robotics, increased performance is critical as well to driving adoption. Right. It doesn't matter if you have a extremely cheap robot or automation, automation solution if it can't do what you want. And so I think, you know, this only goes up to 2022, and we've certainly had a handful of breakthroughs in AI since then. But just in the years from 2015 to 2022, robot performance improved 33 fold over those seven years. And this is looking at items picked in place per hour. So grabbing something out of a bin, placing it somewhere else, and you can see that human performance is roughly 400 items per hour. And now there are robots out there that can pick a thousand items per hour. The other important thing is that it's already better than humans, and it's unclear where the constraint is. So we have robots that are becoming far more performant. They're coming down in cost. What does that mean? Well, it means that many companies are likely to deploy more robots than humans. And so you can look here, this is Amazon number of robots and, and employees. And you can see that between 2022 and 2023, they certainly added more robots than employees.

And the statement that Amazon actually added more robots than employees is pretty crazy when you think about it. I think that, yes, Amazon are leading the way in terms of robotics, but I don't think that they're going to be the last ones doing so as the robot revolution continues to evolve. So as this article continues, it continues to go on to state that and then there are the forecasts that AI will wipe out a million. So as this article continues, it says, and then there are the forecasts that AI will wipe out millions of jobs. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that by 2030, tasks that account for 30% of the hours now worked across the US could be automated and that AI will push 12 million American workers out of their jobs. Goldman Sachs predicts that AI will disrupt about 300 million jobs worldwide by 2030, and I don't think that those estimates are wrong in the slightest. As someone who's been paying attention to both sides of the coin, the now of course, you can see here C Suite executives can't wait to deploy more AI into their offices, warehouse and factories. But many workers, white collars and blue collar alike, worry that AI will mean only bad news for them. More stress, surveillance, speed ups, and more layoffs. And it doesn't have to be out that way. What's interesting is that in Germany and several other European countries, workers have a voice in how their employees roll out and use AI. German law actually requires that companies notify their works councils, which are their worker management committees that exist in most German workplaces, in advance about any plans to introduce AI. Those councils often then discuss how to use AI, typically with an eye to having it complement workers and make them more productive instead of replacing. And if you remember in the recent video where I actually spoke about how regulation in certain countries is holding holding certain countries back, it seems that regulation in certain EU nations here seems to be quite effective for the workers. And I do wonder if any new laws like this might actually start popping up and if people might start fighting for these things to be real. Because of course, the AI development is moving at a continually rapid pace. And maybe these things might start to come to fruition after people see demos of GPT5. A Cornell University expert on AI at work told me that the German model, with its work councils and strong unions, leads to less employee resistance to AI, smoother rollout of AI related technologies, and increased productivity that benefits companies and workers alike. But in the United States, a country where workplace decisions are typically top down, with employees having little or no input, workers feel like victims and guinea pigs when it comes to AI. And indeed, many workers don't even know when their employees are using AI to surveil them or to even speed up.

Their jobs, for example.

It even dives into how this has already happened to where some people have actually fought back. It talks about how at unionized workplaces, but not non union ones, employees have a right to not only negotiate about AI when it substantially affects working conditions, but also to push for protections against some of AI's worst effects. If you remember, Hollywood actually won. Hollywood's writers and actors unions won important protections on AI in the negotiations that settled their lengthy strikes last year. That was something that I was pretty surprised by. And like I said before, as many people are stating that these tools are going to destroy Hollywood or they're going to infiltrate them, do not forget that humans can always play a role in determining how these technologies are implemented. Some economists warn that if corporations can roll out AI with little input from workers, then AI will increase production and profits for corporations which with few or any gains for the workers, all while increasing the nation's overall income inequality. Workers will suffer from speedups, stress and layoffs and society at large may have to finance tens of billions of dollars in unemployment insurance, health coverage, and perhaps food and rent assistance for many who lose their jobs to AI. And of course, to minimize the AI's negative effects of America's 160 million workers, there are many things that the government, labor and businesses should do. Governments should require companies to notify their workers when they're using AI tools to monitor. And I'm wondering if there's going to be some kind of law where companies may have to notify their workers that they are going to be replaced. Of course you do have to give your employees like a two week notice. But I'm wondering if there is going to be something in the future with the proliferation of AI that allows people to recover from being suddenly laid off. There was also CNN to lay off 100 staffers as it preps major revamp of digital efforts. Layoffs will once again hit CNN and as the cable news channel reorganizes its push to expand into digital businesses. The CNN CEO Mark Thompson outlined his digital vision in a lengthy memo to staff on Wednesday morning, announcing plans to build a flurry of digital products, including a subscription before the end of the year, and plans to other paid offerings built around lifestyle journalism and a strategic push into artificial intelligence. In his note he said that about 100 rolls will be cut, which is just shy of 3% of CNN's workforce. There was also this podcast that I did actually miss. This one was released last year, but it was rather important because it contained an interview with economists. So there was an interview that was released last year, but I want to include Certain points from this because it touches upon certain points and the person speaking. Michael Webb is of Google DeepMind and is an economist from Stanford University. He actually talks about whether AI will soon cause job loss, higher incomes, inequ or the opposite. And I think it's one of the most insightful interviews. But it only has 300 views, whether.

That comes in 100 years time or whether it comes in 10 years time. So I think there's a few really important things here. So we generally are going around saying, gosh, what if it automated 90% of cognitive tasks? Big emphasis around the word cognitive. Many, many tasks in the economy are not cognitive tasks. And back to the old sort of thing we've been discussing all the way through as to when you automate some kind of thing, suddenly all the incentives go towards how do you make more value out of the stuff that is left that is not automated or that humans can now do because they've been freed up and they can do something else now. And I think there are many, many, many things that are not cognitive that there'll be huge amounts of demand for humans to do.

Does that mean most people are going to be doing a bunch of physical tasks? I guess like moving boxes? Because I guess that sounds pretty strange to me. Even though your conclusion might mean it's not that we'll have loads of unemployment, but it might be that most people are just doing a bunch of physical labour. Is that what it points at?

So by physical labour it would be weird, right, if we ended up sort of lifting boxes in warehouses. I don't think that's where we're going to go. And there's things which we'll get onto beyond physical labor, but within physical labor. Caregiving is a physical task, right? Like if you are looking after an old person who needs care, like you have to be physically present and you have to help them do all kinds of stuff. That's what you're there for, that's a physical job. And there is going to be like so much demand for that kind of work going forward. And don't forget like most of us spend, you know, 18, 25, whatever years in education before we even start working. And then people seem to be living longer and longer and retiring earlier and earlier. So you're actually only working for 30, 40 years out of a 80 year time lifespan. Right? And then there's like half of those people maybe are they're not engaged in the formal labor force because they're looking after young children or they're staying at home or Whatever it is, right. Or they're rich and retired, they retired really early or this kind of, they're working not many hours a week. Right. So it seems like everyone these days is switching to four day weeks and it seems great.

Right.

And in the long sort of history of this, it's amazing what's happened in terms of hours. Minor digression quickly, but like in 1870, the average hours of work someone. Yeah. For a working person in America was 70 hours per week. Right. It was like a grueling life. You were like working like in factories, whatever, like you were made to work really, really, really hard.

Right.

Today it's 35 hours a week. So we've literally seen a halving of those who are full time employees, a halving of the hours per week.

Right.

Just more recently in the UK, just in the last kind of 30 year period, the UK has seen the decline of 20% in hours worked per worker, excluding those who retire, whatever among those who are working. Right. So there's ever further declines in sort of hours worked because people sort of choose to spend some of their extra wealth on working fewer hours.

And this is where Michael Webb actually talks about his prediction for the next couple of years, basically stating that the next couple of years aren't going to be as impactful as many people might think.

And I'm not going to say I completely disagree with this, but I do.

Think that, you know, economical models exist for a reason.

For example, adoption cycles and, you know, LLMs are going to be a technology that might be slowly to adopt, it.

Might be even quicker to adopt.

I mean, when you think about it, ChatGPT was the fastest app to grow to 100 million users.

So I mean, I'm wondering if this time is different, but it's still a valid perspective that he had.

Is the story that they have in mind, like, yes, there will be some adoption, but it's not going to double or triple anyone's productivity. It's not going to automate away so many jobs that I don't know, there's 150% increase in the labor available to do more work. Does it assume that the predictions about what AI could plausibly do in terms of boosting these kinds of labor inputs, they just think they're overblown.

I, I think a sort of charitable version is think back to 1960 and computers, the first computers are being invented and the inventors of the computers say, look, this can do anything, right? We've got all these humans doing loads of jobs involving tabulating data and storing, retrieving, manipulating numbers and addresses and databases and all those kind of stuff. And look, this computer can do all of that, like just today, right? And initially you had the US Secretary of Labor, Willard Wirtz in 1963 giving a big speech saying, we're going to have. We are quickly about to be throwing all these people onto the human slag heap because of automation from computers, right? And everyone then. I think they were correct in that, yes, a huge fraction of the economy was in fact, this clerical work could be done by computers and computers were coming along right then and there. The fact is though, that it took 50 years for that to happen, for all the reasons that we talked about. So I think, I just think that's the same sort of thing's gonna happen this time. Big impacts, but it'll be spent over a long time. 10 years is not very long time.

There was also this article, what was.

Released very recently, and it talks about how UBI is probably about to transform society. It talks about how the concept of guaranteed income is gaining traction as a solution to the impact of AI and could encourage more rewarding and socially valuable work. Now it details how one woman found out she had been randomly selected to participate in the income pilot scheme and she couldn't believe her luck. And in return for a guaranteed salary of over $1,200 a month from the Irish government, all she had to do was fill out a questionnaire about her well being, how she spends her time. And this is crazy because it's going on right now and she'll receive it until September 2025. Apparently she is giving up temping and focusing instead on her artwork. The article continues to talk about how today, as AI learns from collective and intellectual creative output of humans and uses this to dispossess workers of their livelihood, the idea of UBI is gaining additional traction. It also talks about how Elon Musk said last year before speculating, there will come a point to where no job is needed and you can have one if you want personal satisfaction, but AI will largely do everything. A bold claim, but I think maybe in 70 years that might be true. In fact, considering the rate of exponential development, it's probably a lot earlier than that. Just take the 70 years and just throw that in the bin. I don't know where that came from. There is also this counter argument, and this is something that I've actually also been exploring, which is the new roles that AI has been creating. The counter argument is that although AI could replace a range of jobs it could also create new roles, including oversight of AI decision making, known as human in the loop. Yet for many workers, the advance of AI continues to be alarming. In March, after analyzing 22,000 tasks in the economy covering every type of job, a model created by the Institute for.

Public Policy research predicted that 59% of.

Tasks currently done by humans, particularly women and young people, could be affected by AI in the next three to five years. In the worst case scenario, this would trigger a jobs apocalypse where 8 million people lose their jobs in the UK alone. And of course, UBI would provide a vital safety net, because under capitalism you need that money to survive.

And one of the findings from this.

UBI study of a 2020 study conducted by university researchers in the Netherlands found that unemployed individuals who were previously receiving benefits increased their participation in the labor market after they were given a basic income for three years. Rather than opting for insecure work, taking any job they could get, they were more likely to find and accept long term, well paid work. And they also took on more work. Of course, someone believes that if UBI was available, people would do more creative and more charitable work. The kind of work that is now very difficult to make an income from, I think is the kind of work that people would move into in droves and that would be a net positive for society. And I think right here this is one of the most important points, the particularly true for care work and parenting. People shouldn't be punished for making these choices. Socially and economically. That work is actually valuable, but at the moment it's not economically valuable.

There are also two more points here that I do want to cover.

Darrell west, the author of the Future of Work, AI, Robots and Automation, says that policy innovations were needed before to help people transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy. And they are going to be needed today as we transition into the AI economy. And there's a risk that AI is going to take a lot of jobs. A basic income could very well help navigate that situation. And AI's impact will be actually far reaching, affecting blue collar and white collar jobs. It's not just going to be entry level people who are effective. And so we need to think about what this means for the economy, what it means for society as a whole. What are people going to do if AI take the majority share of the available jobs? And Nell Watson, a futurist who focuses on AI ethics, has a more pessimistic view. She believes that we are witnessing the dawn of AI companies, corporate environments where very few if any humans are employed at all instead, at these companies, lots of different AI sub personalities will work independently on different tasks, occasionally hiring humans for different bits and pieces of work. Now, whilst that might have been a pessimistic view, I want you guys to take a look at this. One of the levels that OpenAI is focusing on is level 5. This is how they're tracking their progress in terms of AI development. And you can see that currently we're at level one, we're about to get.

To level two, and you can see.

That level five is organizations and, and that's AI that can do the work of an organization. What happens to the economy when we get to level 5?

A very interesting precedent will be made.

One that many people can't even fathom predict.

The article continues to talk about how AI companies have the potential to be.

Enormously more efficient than human businesses, driving almost everyone else out of business, apart from a small selection of traditional old businesses that somehow stick in there because the traditional methods are appreciated. I think most people don't truly understand how a level 5 AI system could actually operate. If an AI system can truly do the work of an organization, that is going to be absolutely insane, because humans can work at best for about four hours. And when I say four hours, I mean if you're doing focused work on a computer, I say four hours, not.

That you're at the computer for four hours.

I mean, if you aggregate every actual moment that you are actively working, it's about four hours before your brain, just like, you know, you become less focused.

And stuff like that.

And that doesn't mean that humans are extremely inefficient. The point I'm trying to make is that an AI is going to be 100% for 24 hours and it's going to be able to continuously work on whatever you want it to, which is a remarkable level of productivity that I don't even know what the economy is going to look like after that, or how you would be able to compete with a business that is able to work that effect.

There are arguments that only jobs that require humans.