I mean, one of the most important

subjects at the moment in society is

artificial intelligence.

And we you probably saw recently Eric

Schmidt did a commencement speech in

front of thousands of students and every

time he said the word

>> yeah.

>> Every time he said the word AI, um, one

of the things that Anthropic, who are

one of the leading AI companies, said

recently is that entry-level jobs are at

risk. And I've got this graph here

showing the decline of entry-level job

postings. I believe it was on LinkedIn,

um, pulled from somewhere. It shows that

they're consistently dropping and

dropping and dropping. AI is I think

about it so often. I was up late last

night trying to think through some of

this stuff because Anthropic released a

report yesterday showing that the AI

models will be able to improve

themselves theoretically in the future

and what this might mean.

How disruptive do you think AI is going

to be as it relates to job losses?

>> You know, I don't think Bernie Sanders'

latest idea is terrible.

>> The US will own 50% of all the AI

companies.

>> It is absolutely true that AI has

monetizing for free humanity's

intellectual property. And a few people

are going to directly benefit from that.

And I think that,

um, in the same way that Norway created

a sovereign wealth fund with this

enormous asset that they had, uh,

creating a sovereign wealth fund with

50% of the value created by AI and

recycling that into, uh,

I think it's unclear exactly how those

benefits should be should be recycled,

but trying to find a way to make some of

that value a cushion for the disruption

that it will inevitably cause, I don't

think that's a crazy idea.

>> It's a good idea for China and the US.

>> Yes.

Yes.

>> They're not for anywhere else

necessarily. It's not going to help

Senegal or

Southampton much.

>> No, in fact, it'll damage a lot of those

places. You know, like the Philippines

has benefited enormously by being the

outsourced back office, uh, for a lot of

small businesses that AI can now do a

lot of those those, uh, those jobs. Um,

one of the things that I always come

back to is the idea that say the UK has

5.7 million businesses, we have a

million unemployed people. We need 1/5

of the businesses to employ one person.

AI does actually make your business

better. Like AI is really good at

helping you with your marketing. AI is

great at helping you do legal contracts.

There are 100 ways that AI could

actually make 5.7 million businesses a

little bit better to the point where

they want to hire someone. And if we can

incentivize those things to happen,

businesses are trained on how to use AI

to their advantage, and tax breaks for

small businesses that are hiring. And we

will you know, that there's actually 5.7

million businesses and a million

unemployed people. That's a good there's

a good match there.

>> Uh you know, a lot of people have been

talking about AI agents.

And what an AI agent can do for anyone

that doesn't know is it can go on your

computer and it can get any task you

want done on the computer. Um whether

that's you know, editing tasks or

whether it's you know, manual data entry

tasks. Whatever it is, it can click

around on the computer and do things. A

lot of the entry-level roles we're often

given are that kind of work. I think my

entry-level entry-level job after I

dropped out of university was kind of

doing that kind of thing. There was also

a little bit of a sales component where

I'd cold call people. Um AI can now do

the cold calls, too. And increasingly,

if we just play the rate of development

forward, we'll be able to do those

things. So, if these businesses get more

and more efficient, um again, it comes

back to this entry-level point is

what what role will entry-level team

members have in these kind of companies?

>> So, what's interesting for me, I have a

group of companies, small businesses,

dynamic small businesses. We've

implemented AI in all of them, and as a

result, we've hired people.

>> Who have you hired?

>> So, entry-level people?

>> We've hired some entry-level people who

are augmented by AI, so they become more

valuable because of AI. But like things

like appointment setting, we've ended up

hiring more sales people because we get

more appointments. We we use it with our

marketing, and we end up hiring people

who can actually have those final

conversations with people. At the very

core of my organizations, we have an AI

layer and the AI layer has context and

skills and models and security layer,

right? All all in there and it spits out

amazing information and data and reports

and tells us who to talk to and why to

talk to them and what to talk to them

about. All these things are happening

because of AI.

>> But it doesn't get around the point that

like if you think about Uber, Dara has

been pretty clear that the 9 million

drivers they have, I think it is, are

going to leave their jobs in the future.

If you think about the the other sort of

white collar professions we've

described, they those roles won't won't

exist in the future. Well, I should say

those roles will be will be will be

changed.

>> Changed. Correct. If I put on my more

optimistic hat, it the thing is is that

all businesses operate in a competitive

environment and there are two ways to

compete.

One is to be cheaper, the other is to be

better.

Right? And the thing about AI

is that yeah, there are tasks that you

can automate away,

but one person

with good AI tools may be able to do the

job of five.

>> Mhm.

>> Right? [clears throat]

And yeah, you could eliminate that job

or you could keep that person, give them

the right tools and out compete your

competitors.

>> The right tools.

>> The right tools.

>> I think there's an assumption that will

>> I mean, this is of course what happened

with computers, right? I mean, I'm I am

older than you guys. So, I remember I

remember when calculators hit.

You had to be there to realize how

freaked out people were about

calculators.

Right? Like people were talking about

like well, what are the accountants

going to do and

and and will kids learn math anymore? I

mean, it was it was like extremely

controversial to bring a calculator to

to to school. And then along came

computers and the truth is that

computers didn't reduce the amount of

work that people did. They increased the

amount of work that people did. And I do

believe that there are ways in which AI

is probably going to do that. And so,

the job loss may not be as apocalyptic

as it now feels like it may be because

again, at the end of the day, you have

two ways to choose to compete. If you

you know, you can get rid of somebody

and do X, but you could keep that person

and have them do 5X and outcompete, you

know, your competitors in another

dimension. I think that that will be

something that people are likely to do.

Doctors are just going to be better

doctors.

>> I think I I definitely agree that

there's going to be this sort of

augmentation of certain individuals. I

think maybe the difference between like

calculators or computers versus this is

AI is coming into a technological

economy

and it is coming in with instant scale.

In a way that when Anthropic shipped

their new model last week, it went to

all of us at once, everywhere in the

world. We were all boom, step changed.

With computers, I remember the day that

like my dad ordered the first computer

for our house, and we waited for weeks

and weeks and weeks, and then we got it.

It was super expensive to get one. We

unboxed I remember us all stood around

it looking at and it was like this

Windows 95 machine that had like no

memory on it.

Um so, the distribution the sort of

disruption was much slower. The pace is

is much slower.

>> Right.

>> And I understand that like with my with

our team, there's no intent We have no

intention at all to let anybody go

because of AI. We're reskilling people,

training people. However, would we end

up hiring less people, especially in the

near term than we would have otherwise?

I think that's maybe conceivable.

>> Yeah.

>> Um and a lot of companies I think are in

that position. Well, I actually was

speaking to someone yesterday and they

said, "We're just letting the natural

attrition in our call center

take care of the shift." Which means

they they have they lose 25% of people

from their call center naturally.

They're just not hiring other people

back in. And actually Klarna's CEO said

the same thing. He said, "We're just

letting the attrition take care of it."

>> I'll give you another example though,

just to counter that. Um I work with a

husband and wife couple in the north of

England who they had a little video

production agency and like one or two

people who did a little bit of

contracting with them.

Uh they used AI to create a piece of

software. And that piece of software

uh helps automate script writing and a

few of the things that they do. Um they

launched a waiting list for this. They

got 5 and 1/2 thousand people to join

the waiting list. They then signed up

their first 1500 clients to a piece of

software that cost almost nothing for

them to build in 4 months. Um and now

they're hiring a team of 10 people. And

this is a husband and wife who had a

small constrained business who are now

uh building out a bigger business. And

this is something that could never have

happened. They haven't had to raise

billion

millions of dollars. They haven't had to

hire 30 40 people. So this this tiny

little SAS opportunity is suddenly

possible because of AI. And it would

take take that AI away and that

fast growth dynamic little businesses is

>> Yeah, I think anecdotally I could come

up with lots of examples as well where

particular people are highly

entrepreneurial. They come across an

opportunity. But there's this broad if

you just zoom out on the way that people

generate value in the economy at the

moment, so much of that's going to

change and it's going to be quite quick,

it feels like.

>> Of totally.

>> And I don't know what you do about like

what do you do about that sudden shift?

>> Well this this happened in the Jevons

paradox. The person who had a tractor

displaced a hundred people who were in

the field. And those hundred people went

into the city looking for work all at

once. And it was Charles Dickens wrote

The Tale of Two Cities. He wrote

Oliver Twist. Guess who else came out of

Jevons paradox? Our good friend Karl

Marx who came up with the most toxic

ideas ever created and written down.

Right? He came off the back of the

Jevons paradox.

>> do you do about it?

>> Uh UBI?

>> I'm not a big fan of UBI at the moment.

>> Isn't that kind of what this 50% Bernie

Sanders thing would do?

>> Well, it's it's sovereign wealth fund,

basically. But you have to find a way to

help manage through this transition, and

you have to, I think, depend on the

value create Look, the the whole the the

whole valuation that it AI is predicated

on

is job disruption.

>> Yes. You can't

>> You can't get to those numbers unless

you're displacing lots of jobs.

>> Exactly.

>> And and if that's true, then we should

grab some of that value that is created

and recycle it into the economy to try

to cushion the disruption that it

creates.

>> This is a bit of a socialist idea idea,

right?

>> I don't call that socialism.

>> What do you call that?

>> I don't know. Just common sense?

>> But wouldn't that broadly apply to all

all companies and rich people if there's

if they are disrupting the economy and

taking an unfair share of that

disruption? Should we not just grab and

recycle back in?

>> But that's the That is the basis upon

which every high-functioning democracy

in the in the world operates. I mean,

every high-functioning democracy in the

world has progressive taxation, labor

standards,

>> There's a difference between

>> seizing private property, uh which would

be a socialist way of doing things and a

communist way of doing things,

and

owning strategic assets, which

>> Which are private property.

>> So, for example, the the Dubai

government owns the uh physical hotel

buildings that uh that run Dubai, and it

leases those out to hotel operators, but

it keeps money in its sovereign wealth

fund because it says, basically, a big

part of Dubai is that we own these kind

of land assets.

>> So, do you think we should go and take a

a portion of these companies?

>> Well, the difference was that the Dubai

government actually developed those

assets.

>> Right, but we're we're already too far

down the the with within a capitalist

society like the United

>> might say we might say that data is the

new oil and data is a common good and it

is a common asset that has been um

sequestered uh illegitimately by these

companies. So, therefore, you're not

seizing what they created. You're You're

basically saying, "I'm sorry, but you

need to pay a license back to this

sovereign wealth fund because you're

using a common asset that you were able

to essentially seize

>> it from You stole it from Africans and

British people. You stole it from people

in Australia. You stole it from people

in Canada.

>> The biggest issue that we're having is

that we're actually the nature of the

entire economy is changing. So, this

happened 250 years ago where the nature

of the economy was land and we had an

economic system called feudalism and

colonialism. And then the nature of the

economy was industrialization

and we had a economic system called

socialism and capitalism. And now the

nature of the economy is actually

fundamentally changing. So, in

economics, there's four factors of

production: land, labor, capital,

enterprise. We're now swinging like a

pendulum from land through capital,

labor, and now we're actually in an

enterprise economy and we need some sort

of economic system that reflects the

reality of how money and wealth is made

at the

>> that? Is that go to open AI, take 50% of

that company,

and then pay out the profits of that 50%

to the people?

>> I'm always skeptical of any socialist

ideas. If it comes from Bernie Sanders,

I'm skeptical.

>> Okay, but Bernie Sanders is not a

socialist.

>> Like he he he he he he he he he he he he

he he he he he he

>> He he says he's a socialist.

>> Socialism is his word.

>> Socialist No, socialism is

the you know, the government owning all

the means of production, right? The

Look, the there are a million forms of

capitalism,

right? We have we i- i- i- i- i- i- i-

i- i- i- i- i- i- i- i- Every country

operates slightly differently. And there

I don't think that Bernie Sanders is

saying

that we should abandon markets.

What he is saying is we should manage

markets for the public benefit, not

exclusively for the benefit of the

owners of capital. And I think that's

really different.

>> with like an Amazon, they're using the

roads.

>> Yeah.

>> And the infrastructure.

>> Correct.

>> So, would you go take 50% of those

companies as well for public benefit and

then pay it out to

>> No, but

>> the citizens.

>> We effectively do take part of them in

the form of taxes, right? Now Now Now

the taxes that we impose on those

companies, I would argue and

Dan may may agree are insufficient.

>> Mhm.

>> They do not accurately reflect the value

that we give them.

They don't return equal value that we

>> increase the taxes on companies like

Amazon, you both agree?

>> Uh well, Amazon is very successfully

avoiding taxes.

>> Yes.

>> Um

>> So, would you agree to increase the tax

>> we need to have we need to close tax

loopholes. We need to make sure that

they're paying taxes like all other

companies uh that operate within the

economy.

>> Like the guy at the pub that you're

talking about pays, right?

>> Exactly. Exactly.

>> And and the retailers and all that sort

of stuff who are in competition with

Amazon.

>> Right.

>> Look, one of the biggest issues that we

have is we have widespread incompetence

in government, and I'll give you a quick

stat on this.

In the UK government, you are 10 times

more likely to die than to be fired for

poor performance, and the UK government

fires people at 1/600 the rate as normal

businesses for incompetence. So, we have

an accumulation of massive incompetence

in government. So, the idea you can come

up we can come up with all the best

ideas under the sun at this table. We

have a fundamentally incompetent set of

people who have misaligned incentives.

Uh we have basically a revolving door

between

financial industrial complex, technology

industrial complex, and then

>> Well, the you Singaporean government,

they basically said that we're going to

have a very high degree of meritocracy

in government that essentially we

promote and fire based on outcomes and

merit merit.

>> Singapore is a miracle of governance.

>> Amazing governance.

>> It's a It's a miracle of governance, but

it is a very small place.

>> Yeah, totally.

>> Perhaps the only place in the history of

planet Earth that has benefited from

uh a well-meaning dictator, right? It's

It's It's

It's an astonishing story of capability,

competence, for- foresight.

>> Um so, what is the solution with this AI

revolution? It's I think we all agree

that there's going to be job disruption.

And there's going to be a new type of

job. There's going to be probably a

delta of people transitioning to those

new types of jobs.

Um I I've said this before, but I even

noticed that within our recruitment

processes now, we are really looking for

people that have a certain set of

skills.

>> We always ask.

>> And it's harder and harder and harder to

find those people.

Um

>> Well, that's training. That's education

and training.

>> It is.

>> The

The school system needs to produce

people that you would want to hire.

>> Yeah, and that takes a lot of time.

>> When I ask the question, "How deep are

you in the AI rabbit hole?" And anyone

who says, "Oh, a lot." I'm like, "Okay,

join the team."

>> And And also, if you think about

humanoid robots, Elon Musk's pay packet

mandates him to deliver millions of

humanoid robots, or else he doesn't get

his big pay packet. We think about

robotics and humanoid robots coming

through. We watched the other day Figure

AI release this video showing a humanoid

robot sorting packages on a production

line for 8 days straight, beating a

human sorting those packages on the

production line by car in Los Angeles

now drives itself, and as do the taxis,

and there's a huge race to make

autonomous vehicles. Um I'm sure there's

new jobs created, and I understand in

foresight it's hard to understand what

those will be. Um I assume there'll be

more human jobs, more sales jobs.

>> My only thing that I can say is that it

the future is small businesses. It's

It's small teams of 10 people making

YouTube channels. It's small teams of 10

people making software. It's like the

When you You millions and millions of

little small businesses. Everyone's

happier.

>> But if you read what Anthropic released

yesterday, they're making the claim that

actually we're getting to a point where

it will be an individual with a

team of agents who can now make a

trillion-dollar company without hiring a

single person.

And actually when you said about making

software, making that they would they

might argue that that will be agents

making that software. Anthropic said

that the amount of code each individual

is producing on their own is eight

times. And this one particular quote

which I actually screenshotted on my

phone last night that comes from an

engineer at Anthropic

who was saying they feel useless because

now they they say they haven't written a

line of code in months and months and

months. This Anthropic engineer was

basically saying like, "I come to work.

This agent writes the code for me, and I

kind of sit and watch, and I feel

useless."

Um so all those examples you gave

>> Okay, but what would happen in that

situation is you would have a massive

deflationary effect. The cost of if if

there was one person doing all sorts of

things in the economy, then the cost of

that would go to the cost of the

electricity to run it, right? So,

massive deflationary. And then the

question becomes, "Well, what does

everyone do, right? What do we all do?"

>> Yeah.

>> We do human things, right? Humans always

come up with things to do with each

other. Uh like if I was to tell my

grandfather that there is a job called a

personal trainer who takes you to the

gym and counts your reps, right? My

grandfather would go, "That's insane."

And I say, "Oh, there's 50,000 personal

trainers in gyms all over the country."

So, there are always these crazy new

jobs that get created. I look at what

trust fund kids do, right? Cuz a lot of

trust fund kids, they go they they don't

have to worry about money, and they

don't have to worry about resources, and

they go find something to do, and it's

always weird.

>> We're going to traverse through, you

know, potentially the jobs we have now

involuntarily

go through this transition moment where

I think history's quite clear on what

happens in these transition moments. It

gets ugly. It gets ugly.

>> Yeah.

>> And then we'll come to, you know, what

what I'm hearing is that you're saying

that we will come to some kind of utopia

on the other end of this.

>> No.

>> No.

>> No.

No, I don't think I don't think there's

going to be utopia.

>> What do you think?

>> look, I I don't think utopias exist. I

do think that markets are the greatest

social technology ever invented for

creating prosperity and for ennobling

the human spirit. But that is not

because markets are efficient allocators

of scarce resources, which is the

conventional view. Markets are an

evolutionary system that enables groups

of people to come together and solve

complex problems. And solutions to human

problems is what prosperity actually is.

It isn't GDP or money. And the best

world that you can build, I think on

Earth,

is a market economy

governed by a robust democracy that

robustly includes all citizens in that

economy. And your your answer is small

business, and I'm I'm 100% behind you,

and I I wish you all the success. My

answer is that a lot of people are going

to end up working for large companies

and or medium companies, and that we

have to ensure or my part of the answer

is that we have to have standards in

place to ensure that those companies

treat people well enough so that they

can

be dignified participants in both the

society and the economy. And that will

require

innovation in laws and rules and all

sorts of mechanisms to enable that, but

that there is no alternative if you want

to live in a decent society. And and but

the high-order bit for me, and the

reason I work on economics, is that the

existing economic paradigm basically

says markets are perfectly efficient, we

should just let them run, and you know,

what comes will come.

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