BIG IDEAS BY NEW ECONOMIES
00:28:26 · Ollie Forsyth
[00:28:26] S1: If you're enjoying today's episode, hit subscribe at the bottom of your screen. The guests on this show are getting bigger and bigger and we need your help to grow this channel. So if you're enjoying today's guests or any previous episodes, hit subscribe and I promise you it'll be worth it. Now back to today's episode. There is still quite a large amount of people who still either don't just use AI, like the paid per hour workers. They're all amazing. They all want to just earn a living and do what they like. But if AI does ultimately come after what they are good at, what advice would you have for those people who get paid by the hour? I mean, obviously hourly jobs are bad.
00:29:14 · Richard Socher
[00:29:14] S0: Very broad, right? Like there are a lot of different jobs and some require you to be in school for eight years. And if you want to be like a brain surgeon, right? And others don't require any degree. And some countries Also have different standards for them. Like in Germany, becoming a construction worker does require a degree and becoming an electrician and a plumber and so on. They have, you know, different mindset. Japanese are even further on that where if you're in construction worker or in pottery or whatever, it might be a handicraft. People have a very strong sense of perfecting their craft. Even though some people might think of this as like a boring medial job, they still take pride in craftsmanship. In Japan, it seems like across many different industries, that might be a good The Japanese are more pro robots. There's a lot of complexity, I guess, with immigration and so on and an aging society. But they are generally pro robots, but they still love craftsmanship and they still love handmade things. And I think handmade will continue to be a thing. Sure, we already see this, right? You could have a sweater that's just made automatically with weaving machines and you can have pottery that is just automatically made. People love handmade pottery. And so there's all these things that will stay. I think in terms of general advice is think about your industry. Think about what are the bottlenecks that your industry faces that are... Due to intelligence being extremely expensive and knowing that intelligence will get cheaper, how could you then unlock those bottlenecks in your industry and find clever ways of building products that people ultimately want to buy? I think depending on the age, I understand that that's harder and harder. If you're just before retirement by a few years, you might not have the energy or desire or so on to learn a job. Depending on the industry and the country and their ability to have a surplus and to build social systems, I think it's up to countries to some degree to help their population in learning new skills. And in Germany, there's a thing called Volkshochschule, like the people's higher ed. Like sort of a university where you can, even after you had a job for many years, you can still learn new kinds of skills there. I think that will be a thing.
00:31:46 · Richard Socher
And then again, there are jobs that I think are going to be immune to AI in entertainment. You know, I think entertainment like people could see AI do all the sports and Probably I could come up with some crazy mechanism to just shoot a soccer ball faster than the speed of sound into some goal a mile away, but it's not going to be that interesting. People are going to want to see other people doing sports and perfecting their craft in that way. So entertainment, sports, travel, all these things will continue to exist. Luxury stuff will continue to exist. And then even in SaaS and in software, there would be pockets that were somewhat immune to AI. Any software that has a marketplace or some other kind of network effect is very hard to vibe code into existence. Sure, you can vibe code like an Instagram app, but then it's just you and a couple of your friends on it, not a billion other people. And then you have brands and data modes that will continue to exist. So I'll pause there and I could talk about hours and how different jobs will be impacted and what hourly workers can do in different industries and how to think about it.
00:33:02 · Ollie Forsyth
[00:33:02] S1: And just like so much of this is about convenience, right? You know, in this kind of ecosystem, we talk to all these people every day. You know, if you look at just like an SF with Waymos now, you know, you no longer need the driver behind the car. This is going to be replicated to the You know, farmers don't want to spend hours cutting their crops, sitting behind a tractor. You can have machines do Where do you see the biggest opportunities for superintelligence outside of research to make It's made the lives of us consumers just so much more enjoyable and convenient.
00:33:40 · Richard Socher
[00:33:40] S0: Okay, So in terms of enjoyable and convenience, I think the trick to predict the future is to look at wealthy people again and just see what the goods and services are that they have access to that are bottlenecked on intelligence and hence are going to be accessible for everyone. I think a personal assistant is I've mentioned for the last few years when asked this question and we're now seeing it. I think Muse is becoming like a personal assistant. I think there'll be many others. There are lots of startups that are working on that and I think DOTS or DOT. You'll see more and more trolls Coactive assistants, those eventually will be connected to robots and then people will come home to a clean apartment. It's going to take a while. Everything in hardware is slower and wetware is even slower. But I think life will be more enjoyable once everyone can afford a personal assistant. And then you're right. The interesting bit with self-driving is, and this is like Tough to describe or explain too, but not every objective improvement for humanity is always good for jobs. There are a lot of jobs that are dependent on people having accidents. There are the people who tow away the broken There are the people in the emergency room working from all the traffic deaths and maimings and injuries and so on. There are the injury lawyers who then can help and try to sue someone over a fender bender. There are the car mechanics shops. I mean, there's so many jobs that depend on people hurting themselves in traffic and with cars that they might hate AI again. But most people should agree that it's better if there are fewer accidents and fewer teenagers dying and so on in cars. So I think the future is complicated and it requires a lot of foresight. And then in many cases, different... I guess stakeholders collaborating as the job landscape changes.
00:35:35 · Ollie Forsyth, Richard Socher
[00:35:35] S1: You just mentioned MUSE and DOTS. Meta hasn't really changed in five, ten years from a grand scheme of things. Do you think if Meta didn't release MUSE or some form of agent, do you think it would still be relevant? What do you think about that kind of opportunity? [00:35:56] S0: I mean, you have to give it to a meta, I guess, like, sure, people use Facebook less than less now, but they use Instagram a ton, right? Like, so there are, like, they, and WhatsApp, people use WhatsApp a lot. So there are, you know, they, they stay extremely relevant through some of those acquisitions. And, but then Muse was developed in-house, so that's, that's been really impressive too. And, yeah. [00:36:20] S1: When we're looking at so many opportunities with founders, if it's building new agents or you look at what all these AI models are doing, I kind of feel sorry for a lot of these early-stage founders. They want to build a note-taking tool app or an agent that MuseNow does and one of these large companies with massive distribution can copy them overnight. What is the role these large companies have in creating technologies, but also allowing these amazing founders, which we both speak to on a daily basis, very early stage founders, to actually go and create the thing that they want to do and have a chance of also becoming the next metas and open AIs?