AI Is Stealing Gen Z Jobs | Lemonade Stand 🍋

Summary

Podcast Summary: Lemonade Stand Episode - "AI Is Stealing Gen Z Jobs"

Episode Information

• Title: AI Is Stealing Gen Z Jobs | Lemonade Stand 🍋
• Hosts: Aiden, Atrioc, DougDoug
• Release Date: June 5, 2025
• Description: Three experts break down the evolving landscape of business, focusing on the impact of AI on Gen Z employment.

---

1. Introduction to AI and Workforce Disruption

The episode begins with a lighthearted exchange among the hosts, quickly transitioning into the core topic: the profound impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Gen Z job markets. The hosts express a balance between humor and concern, setting the stage for an in-depth discussion.

2. Political Context and Budgetary Concerns

Elon Musk's Critique of Fiscal Policy

• Aiden (02:13): Discusses Elon Musk's strong criticism of a major congressional spending bill, labeling it a "disgusting abomination" laden with pork-barrel spending.
• Harry (03:04): Highlights the bipartisan backlash, noting that "every House Republican" supported the bill, reflecting deep political divisions.

Responses from Political Figures

• Governor Newsom and Chuck Schumer: Both express agreement with Musk's stance, surprising many by their unexpected alignment on budgetary concerns.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene (03:49): Reveals her opposition to AI regulation being stripped from the bill, stating, "I would have voted no if I had known that was in there."

Elon Musk and Donald Trump's Relationship

• Harry (04:28): Observes the strained yet cautious relationship between Musk and Trump, noting the lack of direct confrontation despite underlying tensions.

3. AI's Impact on Employment

Warnings from AI Leaders

• Aiden (06:11): Cites Steve Bannon's concerns about AI leading to mass unemployment, particularly affecting entry-level managerial and tech jobs.
• Dario Amodai, CEO of Anthropic (07:17): Warns that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, potentially spiking unemployment rates to 10-20% within five years.

Real-World Examples of AI Integration

• Shopify's Hiring Policy (07:17): The CEO of Shopify stated, "We will not hire anybody new unless you can prove that you can't do it with AI," highlighting the immediate impact on job availability.
• LinkedIn Executive Anish Rahman (09:07): Reports a 30% rise in unemployment among college graduates since September 2022, compared to 18% for all workers.

Challenges and Chaos in AI Adoption

• Harry (10:04): Points out the mixed outcomes of AI integration—some companies like Klarna facing disasters, while others experience increased productivity.
• Aiden (10:47): Discusses the inefficiency of entry-level positions being replaced by AI, questioning the long-term sustainability of workforce development.

AI in the Job Application Process

• Doug (15:01): Explores the negative impact of AI-driven interviews and assessments, describing them as "life changingly miserable" for job seekers.

4. Policy Discussions and Potential Solutions

Simulated Policy Making: Dungeons and Dragons Segment (24:40)

• The hosts engage in a humorous, role-playing game to simulate presidential decision-making in response to AI-related job losses.
• Doug (26:13): Proposes subsidizing AI companies with government incentives, aiming to retain ownership stakes based on success metrics.
• Harry (28:33): Suggests attracting global AI talent through research grants and outreach programs, emphasizing the need for innovation without stringent control.
• Aiden (32:25): Introduces the concept of a Value Added Tax (VAT) on AI productivity to fund support programs, echoing the idea of a "token tax."

Universal Basic Income and Wealth Redistribution

• Aiden (33:26): Advocates for a VAT tax similar to the EU model, proposing that "every time a company is making money from AI, some percentage gets pooled to a government fund."
• Doug (46:17): Emphasizes the necessity of pairing AI advancements with regulation and wealth redistribution to mitigate economic disparities.

5. Demographic Crisis: Declining Birth Rates

Global Decline in Birth Rates

• Doug (60:33): Explains the critical threshold of 2.1 children per woman needed for population stability, noting that 120 countries are now below this rate.
• Harry (62:03): Illustrates the societal impact of an aging population, where "old people who are less healthy can't work as much" leading to increased reliance on social services.

Case Studies and Cultural Shifts

• South Korea and Japan (66:15): Highlight exceptionally low birth rates (0.7 and 1.1 respectively) and the cultural reluctance to embrace immigration as a solution.
• France's Efforts (79:15): Discusses France's tax incentives for families, aiming to encourage higher birth rates, though results remain modest.

Economic and Social Implications

• Doug (89:01): Details how declining birth rates strain systems like Social Security, where fewer young workers support a growing elderly population, jeopardizing economic stability.
• Aiden (86:01): Emphasizes the urgency of addressing the demographic shift to prevent societal collapse, comparing it to environmental challenges like climate change.

6. Wacky Segments: Imagining Future Jobs

AI-Driven Job Creation

• Aiden (51:34): Introduces a segment where hosts propose innovative jobs that can only exist with AI advancements.

Example Job Pitches:

• AI Fashion Stylist (52:05): Utilizes AI to create virtual avatars for personalized styling.
• Virtual Travel Experience Curator (52:40): Plans immersive virtual trips using VR and AR AI-generated content.
• Chaperone for AI Child Actors (53:04): Monitors AI-generated child influencers to ensure emotional stability.
• Professional AI Game Master (53:50): Offers personalized gaming sessions, guiding AI NPCs for unique experiences.

Humorous and Dystopian Job Ideas:

• Sex Robot Assistant (58:43): A fictional role where Aiden operates robots for political figures, blending humor with dystopian elements.

7. Comparative Analysis and Future Outlook

Historical Technological Transformations

• Aiden (42:24): Compares the current AI revolution to past industrial revolutions, highlighting how technology has historically increased productivity and lowered costs.
• Doug (48:20): Discusses the potential for AI to drive deflationary trends, making essential goods cheaper and reducing the required work hours for the same quality of life.

Balancing Technological Advancement and Societal Needs

• Harry (45:58): Argues that while AI can create abundance, without proper management, the societal impact could lead to increased inequality and unrest.
• Doug (55:27): Emphasizes the need for comprehensive policies to support a shrinking workforce, ensuring that technological benefits are broadly distributed.

Cynicism and Optimism in Policy Implementation

• Aiden (38:39): Acknowledges the cynical views surrounding AI regulation, noting that leaders may exaggerate threats to influence policy.
• Harry (83:20): Connects AI's impact on the workforce to climate change, underscoring the difficulty in garnering political will for long-term solutions.

8. Conclusion: Navigating an AI-Driven Future

The episode concludes with a consensus among the hosts that AI presents both unprecedented opportunities and significant challenges. They stress the importance of proactive policy measures, balanced regulation, and societal adaptation to mitigate the adverse effects on employment and demographic stability.

Notable Quotes:

• Aiden (07:17): "AI could wipe out half of all entry level white collar jobs."
• Harry (10:04): "Chaos is the right word for it."
• Doug (15:01): "You're being forced to talk to these robots who are then just rejecting you."
• Aiden (33:26): "A token tax, which is basically a value added tax like EU has..."
• Doug (89:01): "There's just less young people below them generating the income necessary to fund their Social Security."
• Harry (71:02): "We're all gonna have kids that's lost your dad's ability."

Final Thoughts

The hosts wrap up with a blend of humor and seriousness, acknowledging the gravity of AI's impact while maintaining their signature playful banter. They invite listeners to reflect on the discussed issues and anticipate future episodes that will continue to explore the intersection of technology, business, and society.

End Timestamp: [97:03]

---

Disclaimer: This summary is based on the provided transcript and captures the primary discussions and sentiments expressed by the hosts during the episode.

Transcript

[Doug]

You're locked in.

[Harry]

Oh, I don't know where it's starting.

[Doug]

No, no, no.

[Aiden]

This is a podcast. We start with 20 seconds of silence.

[Harry]

As you look at this, we should open with some silence. I think that would be a good way to get people acclimated in, like.

[Aiden]

A moment of silence to honor somebody or just to keep on their toes.

[Harry]

Little baller over here. A little LeBron James got. Got smashed on the court.

[Doug]

Yeah. Let's say I got punched in the face.

[Harry]

Something cool.

[Doug]

And then I punched him even harder.

[Aiden]

Nice.

[Harry]

So you see the other dude? It's Elon Musk. I. He has a black eye. You see that?

[Doug]

It's so much less cool than that. It's just me jumping into somebody's head. Basically.

[Harry]

Every time I see you play, you get hurt. You've been. You've been like, you're active the past.

[Doug]

Month and a half. I'm getting beat.

[Harry]

You're getting beat up.

[Doug]

Getting beat out there. Okay, well, I think we. We're going to try something, you know, a little newer this week. Maybe a lighter approach to, you know what it is?

[Aiden]

Doug's crazy ideas. It's time to unleash Doug's wacky ideas as much. Everybody is here to watch my political takes. I think we need to introduce funny, wacky segments. That's what everybody's been wanting. That's the thing stopping us from asking.

[Harry]

For funny, wacky segments.

[Aiden]

They've been saying we want wacky segments. Wackiness. You guys are too serious about the budget. That's what they've been saying in the.

[Doug]

Comments, that we're too serious about the budget.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Doug]

The serious. I mean, the serious take on this is that I do want wacky segments because we did our test episode before we started the show, and Doug brought a wacky segment to that, and it was maybe the most fun part of.

[Harry]

The episode was that about. It was like, copyright.

[Aiden]

AI Copyright. Yeah.

[Doug]

You made copyright infringement incredibly fun and interesting.

[Aiden]

Well, don't hype this up too much. The segments I have today are not that good. They're very wacky. They're just not substantive at all. But before we dive into the main thing today, we're going to talk about AI taking everybody's jobs, which is a big.

[Harry]

Does sound wacky.

[Aiden]

It's pretty. It's pretty. Oh, he doesn't have income.

[Harry]

Picture, like, office manager having, like, a big celebratory cash as he fires off three fourths of the office.

[Aiden]

Well, before we dive into that, because there's. There's a whole lot to talk about here. We're, we're getting some warnings about AI causing mass unemployment. Quick update on the budget. Last week we talked all about our favorite budget bill. The big, beautiful, big beautiful bill. And there is starting to be fracturing. We talked about how Elon Musk last week was, was like expressing some sentiments that he wasn't a fan of this. If you bring this up her. But he said yesterday in a tweet that's got quite a bit of attention. I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.

[Harry]

What you really mean?

[Aiden]

Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it to be clear, the people who voted for it is all the Republicans.

[Harry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And then. Yeah. And then followed up with a tweet, in November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people. This is strong condemnation.

[Harry]

Republican. Every House Republican, by the way, is.

[Doug]

What he's talking about.

[Aiden]

He's. Yeah. And so this is the first like big split between him, which I think everybody was kind of expecting at some point a kind of divorce. Our good friend Harry Sisson chimed in, who is obviously very on the left, said, so you agree that Trump is betraying the American people with the big beautiful bill. And I thought that was well said. But then our good friend Governor Newsom chimed in and said, couldn't have said it better myself. And then our soon to be good friend Chuck Schumer said, I don't think it was imaginable, but I agree with Elon Musk, which is funny because Chuck Schumer has been the head of the Democratic Senate party for 10 years and has never given a shit about the deficit until just now, which is awfully interesting.

[Doug]

And then Chuck's famously been on top of it.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Harry]

Chuck spinning under control.

[Aiden]

Only the last hundred days has it really gone awry. Yeah. So that's funny as a, as a person who has been way off on this. And then our good soon to be friend Marjorie Taylor Greene. Oh yeah. Said full transparency. I didn't know about this part of the bill that strips AI regulation and I'm adamantly opposed to it. And I would have voted no if I have known that was in there. So that's funny as well, is like the Congress people don't even like read the bills. Yeah. Which is awesome to go. There's multiple people who have responded to Elon, been like, I agree, the Freedom Caucus, whatever. And then there's community notes that are like, this person voted yes on the bill. It's literally like.

[Harry]

Yeah, it's wild. You know what's weird? So Elon so far has not mentioned Trump by name. There's been this weird dance where he's like, obviously, Trump doesn't know the bad parts of this bill. Obviously, like, it's not Trump. And then Trump has not mentioned Elon. So, like, when Rand Paul came out against this bill, Trump had three tweets, some of them yesterday, being like, rand Paul is the world's biggest idiot. Doesn't even know what's in the bill. What a loser. The BBB is beautiful. This guy doesn't. He always votes for losing ideas.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Harry]

Like, that was. But then Elon comes out against it. Trump has said nothing. There's this weird thing where neither of them are crossing that DMZ of, like, we still have our friendship.

[Aiden]

Yeah. We have a North MAGA versus South MAGA thing going.

[Harry]

So I don't know if that'll break. I mean, Trump generally, anytime he's shown any restraint, holding back on someone, some reporter asked the right question, and he fucking. He loses it.

[Aiden]

Like, both him and Elon tend to just, like, suddenly and extremely aggressively flip on a person. So it's like, dude, it seems like a tenuous relationship that they got right now. It'll be funny.

[Harry]

It is wild that, like, Elon Musk's last day in the White House, he shows up with a big black eye and facial bruising, and they give him, like, he said it was his kid, punched him. I. I don't know.

[Doug]

What was that all about? There was something about him hiding, getting hit by another member of the administration, but I didn't.

[Harry]

Steve Bannon, your favorite person?

[Doug]

Oh, yeah.

[Harry]

Said. Said. His. His. His point was that Scott Besant, Treasury Secretary, and Elon Musk got in a physical altercation. That's what he said. But obviously, you know, Elon says it's his kid. I have no idea. It's all drama. But he did show up with, like, not just a black eye, but, like, bruising all down his face. And it's like, what the hell happened? It's weird, dude.

[Doug]

Well, whatever. Steve Bannon, my hero, said, that's what.

[Harry]

You lock in on.

[Aiden]

Weirdly enough, Steve Bannon is relevant to the AI conversation. Steve Bannon said, AI job killing, which gets virtually no attention now, will be a major issue in the 2028 presidential election. And then Said, quote, I don't think anybody is taking into consideration how administrative, managerial, and tech jobs for people under 30, entry level jobs are going to be eviscerated. So Steve Bannon actually is kicking off this conversation about AI taking everybody's job.

[Harry]

I mean, this is the conversation today. This is the big thing, right? So you have an overview you want to give or like, because everybody's starting to chime in, at least in spaces that are watching close.

[Aiden]

Yeah, so. So AI, obviously taking jobs has been a big concern broadly to give. I'm going to give a real quick overview of what's been happening this week and then we can dive into wherever. So essentially what's been catching headlines is Dario Amodai, who is the CEO of Anthropic, one of the biggest AI companies, has been going publicly around saying some pretty terrifying things like AI could wipe out half of all entry level white collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10 to 20% in the next one to five years. So he is like this in very soon is going to potentially destroy that.

[Harry]

In context, that is like Great Depression level on a employment 10, 20% all.

[Aiden]

Of a sudden happening. So his argument and the core point he's trying to convince convey is that the technological rate of progress is greater on this than anything else. So unlike previous industrial revolutions, which happened over time, this is extremely fast. And if you kind of think about this logically, AI models are getting faster extremely quickly. He mentioned how a few years ago it's like a smart high school student, now it's a smart college student. And rapidly in a year it'll be a smart PhD student, et cetera. But it takes time for that new AI system to be integrated into, let's say a warehouse or something physical, right? Like that takes, you're then trading robots. You need to physically get the materials. That's exacerbated even more by the crazy trade wars going on. But if you are a software company, if you are a law firm or an administrative group or your secretary or whatever, like those tools can be integrated immediately, right? So the white collar jobs, meaning people essentially in offices doing informational type stuff, those are the people who in the short term, everybody will be affected long term. But the next one to five years, this might just come in like this massive wave and just cause mass havoc. So he's warning a whole lot about this. And you're seeing some examples of this, like Shopify, the CEO said we will not hire anybody new unless you can prove that you can't do it with AI. That was like a thing he posted like a month or two ago. You also, a LinkedIn executive, posted something in a New York Times Article said the unemployment rate for college graduates has risen 30% since September 2022, compared with about 18% for all workers. This is Anish Rahman, a LinkedIn executive who's basically saying new college grads are seeing the worst unemployment, which again are the ones who typically go into these entry level jobs for white collar.

[Harry]

I know that's true, but rising 30% is crazy. I entered that stat. That's crazy. Yeah, if true, that's crazy.

[Aiden]

And I think we all anecdotally hear about this of, oh, it's harder to get a job as a software engineer, it's harder to do whatever. I think the core fear around what's happening with this particular part of AI right now is that the AI is getting good enough to be like, and we've talked about this to be like an entry level worker. And so if you're already integrated in an industry and now you essentially via I have an unlimited number of entry level staff to work for you. It's incredible, right? But the challenge is why would a company then hire anybody entry level? How do you ever get the people to learn the stuff, to become an expert, which is this broad higher level question about things. And I can quickly outline counter arguments. Anything else from you guys on this? And we got a lot of really good notes for people in the discord as well, which we can dive into. So thank you to everybody who gave thoughts on their own experiences with seeing companies integrating AI or failing to integrate AI or replacing them with AI. It's chaos right now.

[Harry]

Yeah, I think chaos is the right word for it. The things I'm reading and seeing is that, you know, some people are trying it and it's, they're going too far and it's not working. Like, you know, Klarna tried to replace all their customer service with AI, had to walk it back. It was a disaster. But we're also seeing experts put it into their workflow and get way more productive. We are seeing entry level jobs. Like you said, a lot of them are getting wiped out or being like more, more radical about testing to make sure before they hire. Like they're making sure again they can't do without AI. I like the idea of walking into Shopify's office and drawing five perfect fingers to get your job.

[Aiden]

But you know, you eat spaghetti like Will Smith.

[Harry]

You'Re hired. You know, I think chaos, I don't think anyone can truly tell how it's going to shake out. And because the technology is not static the whole time it's advancing.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Harry]

That you Know the, the reality of the ground is also chasing like the ground is shifting under your feet and people are adapting and you know, there's a growing groundswell of like, I don't know, moral pushback. So people are like getting mad about it. So it's like there's one thing I want to talk about we can get to later. But the way companies are now starting to launder their AI work because they, because the reality of it is that it's cheaper and more effective in some cases and they want to use it. But if it's public, my example through Hollywood is where they're trying to find a way to like launder it where they can do it without seeming like it's AI because they want the cost savings without the push.

[Doug]

They want to escape the bad press.

[Harry]

Yeah. So there's a lot and there's a lot going on. I don't know if you want, you want to take it in any direction.

[Aiden]

But I think one thing I just want to voice in case we don't get to quote some of the specific people because we post about it, posted about this in our lovely Patreon Discord that you can join for $5 a month. Check it out. We have really amazing conversation. We've asking people for their thoughts on topics before we record and got a lot of great stuff. And I just want to acknowledge amongst the many things that people said that this is scary and hard for people who are entry level positions or there's people who feel like their job is clearly being threatened or will be replaced in the next couple years or were fired and then couldn't find jobs. And I just want you to know that it was depressing reading that and I feel for you and this is scary and bad and again there's I think good things that are going to come as a result of this. But, but certainly this is an example right now of causing pain to people during the advancement of this new technology.

[Harry]

Yeah, I say this all the time but you know, as someone who uses it as part of my workflow in sometimes I use it and I'm like this is a magical tool. This is the coolest fucking thing that I, you know, I'm like, like I'm just trying to think of a recent example where I had it, you know, generate me a quiz and then every question I got wrong, like Socratically walked me through it with more questions and then I was like dam I really learned something that was like, that was like I had a private tutor who walked me through it. Went through every step. It was awesome.

[Aiden]

It has made my life demonstrably better in many ways. Yes.

[Harry]

And then I read like our teachers or something and I'm like, they're just screaming about how every student has refused to pay attention. Turning in constant cheated work. Students complaining about how their teachers just grade their things with chat GPT. Like they're, we're seeing both examples in real time and I think in the short term I'm seeing more of the negative, but I at least am keenly aware that like the, the possible good uses are incredible. They're, they're something that wasn't possible before. You know, sometimes I use it and I feel like when I first saw the Internet or when I first got an ipod or when I like, this is awesome. This is a cool bit of tech. And then I see the downside. So I guess I'm with you. But I also, I was reading these comments too and I deeply understand. Do one of them. I don't know if you could find it. There's a guy who talked about, he's a software engineering graduate and first of all, you know, this is devastating entry level software engineering because it's making more productive coders way more productive senior. And you know, it can do all the entry level code. It's like it does a lot of entry level coding pretty well.

[Aiden]

Just to say that as somebody who was an entry level coder and worked with a number of entry level coders, you're. I would, I would almost describe hiring a new engineer as your. It's a detriment to your team for at least several months. I think this is true in many industries and many careers. But the assumption is you have somebody, particularly if they're like fresh out of college, who will probably take more supervision time away from your best people than if they were to do it themselves. I mean, certainly your best people could just do what they do in an hour of what it would take them a month to do. It's like that stark of a difference and it takes months for them to get to a point where they're contributing at all versus taking time away. And then years, you know, year, two year, whatever, until you're really a useful part of the, the team.

[Doug]

You have to, you have to push to invest in that person that you've hired to grow them into something that is like a good fit and valuable at your company. And people don't like management or people making decisions don't want to deal with the essentially the downtime or the short.

[Harry]

Term cost right of if they have this cheap alternative.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Harry]

And then so there's this guy, right? And he graduates and then he's going into these job interviews and he's interviewing with AI. Like AI is like doing the interview.

[Doug]

The interview, yeah. They're trying to find this, maybe the.

[Harry]

Third page if I think of this.

[Doug]

Trying to find this longer one Doug.

[Harry]

You don't talk about.

[Doug]

Right.

[Harry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

From Gamster. I have a lot of personal experience with this. I've been on Zoom call, interviewed by AI, had an AI proctor. A test I took was told the leetcode test I took would go to an AI review board for evaluation and then the results would get sent to ar. I've gone through the whole thing and seen AI replace everyone around me in the job application process and it's life changingly miserable. Which just sounds like if you're trying to get a job and you're feeling the strain of unemployment and a lack of opportunity and you can't even talk to a human, like you're, you're, you're just being forced to talk to these robots who are then just rejecting you. Like it sounds truly awful. And that's going to be a increasingly common experience.

[Harry]

Like do you think, not to get glib because I think that is terrible, but do you think it's possible to use the jailbreak methods they use on ChatGPT for these interviews? Can you be like, my grandma wrote a recipe for cookies and it's giving me the job.

[Doug]

That cheated you right through the interview.

[Aiden]

Not to shut down your fun whimsical comment, but that will rapidly be shut down. That type of thing is exactly what people. They're actively working on. It's, it's called like red teaming where you try to find things like that.

[Harry]

To make it happen then.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

So reading through this, it seems like from, from this specific comment and also the others that I had sort of grazed through, a common theme here of the is that at least right now, the death of these entry level positions, especially in white collar work, is you're getting rid of all the people's time that they would be using to train and develop skill sets that apply to some higher level position. And those are the people that for the time being, that these companies still need, but by foregoing these entry level positions in the short term, you're erasing the development of these higher level skill sets in the long term. Yeah, you don't have anyone to fill the gap and eventually these people are going to have nobody to, to turn to. And a lot of people bring that up. It's like, well, nobody is developing the key skills that it takes to get to these like higher level, higher level positions anymore. And the amount of like education and time spent learning now that you would need to adequately take on one of these higher level positions is just astronomically more than what is available to you through standard schooling at the moment. That's, that's kind of what I've a lot of these responses have that have that same theme.

[Aiden]

Yeah, there's a, there's a huge concern because again, entry level is what's going to be most targeted and right now it's going to be white collar entry level. And the question is how do you get the senior engineer right if they never get the job? And there's actually here, let's move ahead to what people are saying against us because then we'll get into potential solutions. So I, after acknowledging that this is a challenging, scary thing, I now want to voice what people are saying that to basically counteract some of this. So there's two voices that I think are relevant. One is David Sacks and David Freeberg. These are both, they talked about this on the all in podcast. David Sacks in particular is relevant because he is currently the aizar of the Trump administration. So this is somebody who is actively managing the AIs are.

[Harry]

And cryptos are.

[Aiden]

Yes, yes.

[Harry]

Which doubling up.

[Aiden]

Not a lot on the crypto front, but yeah. So he went, asked repeatedly about the impact on jobs, basically ignored it. He said the 50% of white collar jobs we lost is like hyperbole. He went on a long rant, which I think you maybe heard about how there's this industrial complex that is all set up to basically scaremonger about AI with the intention of then convincing governments to sort of clamp down, overregulate and pick a couple winners. And so that's the criticism for him of which I am personally not. I don't see that tangent.

[Doug]

Did feel a little off the rails when I listened to it, but yeah.

[Aiden]

Felt a little, a little Trump esque. But then he said, but there are legitimate concerns. And his, his point is basically the bigger risk is actually China that if you say, oh, we're concerned about, you know, the short term job loss and we stop AI progress, we start, you know, doing increased regulation, then China will win the race. And that's bad. A quote was, I think our policy should be the AI race because the alternative is that China wins it and that would be very bad for our economy and our military. You can't Optimize for only solving one risk while ignoring all the others. So, and then basically saying China won't abide by regulations. So his thought and the explicit intention of the Trump administration right now, as based on the bill they just tried to pass to stop states from having regulation, is minimize regulation, allow everybody to go as fast as possible, even if that causes risks or damage in the short term. Because the other alternative is let China win, who will not have those kind of restraints. And then you have an author, authoritarian government, which is basically in control of the world in many different ways. So that was his take, which is not super comforting right now, but he's sort of like, you can't get too distracted by that.

[Doug]

Yeah, I, I think listening to them talk about it in general. And this also applies to maybe the, the point that Fried Friedberg brought up is I think you could make a case that the argument is true. I think you could also replace China with maybe any other country in a way, any other country that is spending the time and the investment in order to develop AI to benefit their country's position in the world. Right. And you choosing to ignore and not pursue like that technical technological advancement, if it is as valuable as people expect it to be down the line, and you become reliant on that to compete as a nation in many, many different ways, and you haven't developed your own, you will become beholden to whatever countries have managed to be at the front end of the development of that thing. So I think it's necessary to combat and compete against things. I think the problem that we have here as we talk about, not just like so much of this in the short term, the really short term is about entry level white collar positions disappearing for people like basically desk jobs and customer service jobs. But the other thing we've talked a lot about on the show is automated driving and people in warehouses getting replaced.

[Harry]

Right.

[Doug]

And I think transportation is like most prominent in terms of raw number of people that industry basically employs. But you're looking at, you know, within the next 10 years, a gigantic portion of the economy just not having a job anymore, not having anywhere to like quickly pivot to. And society is not structured in a way to support that level of unemployment. These people need something to do and somewhere to go. If you automate everything and people lose their jobs, if the structures around those things in your society are not built to accommodate and support people in the wake of that, then we've just failed. There's nothing to pursue at all anymore. It's like there's no, sure. At a micro level. Right. My company could maybe fire my customer service staff, replace them with. Let's just say it's a really good AI and it does their job fully better than they ever did. Let's just say that's the case. I, I have effectively increased my business's profit margins and I make more money at my company's level. And maybe me and the other people that remain at that company and whoever happens to have ownership in that company, we're all happy because of that. But if every company does that everywhere or if the majority of the economy, of the economy is making those decisions, there's no one participating in the economy to buy the services and participate in society in a way that keeps all of these businesses existing in the first place. Does that make sense? There's a tipping point where if everyone, if 40% of people are unemployed, nobody has any money to pay and use services and engage with the economy that these businesses are developing by cutting people. Do you get what I'm saying?

[Harry]

That makes total sense. I think what you're saying is maybe a more extreme version of what like Andrew Yang was saying in the last election, which is the idea that we need some sort of universal basic income taxed from the AI companies profits because of. You don't really have a great alternative of just stopping technology growth because you'll get outcompeted. Yeah, as any other country that didn't industrialize when the UK did and then the UK ran the fucking world. People know if you fall behind technologically there's a, there's damaging long term effects.

[Doug]

And in the context of the US specifically where our social services are not as strong as maybe other, other countries in let's say Europe as an example, or maybe Australia or Canada or something. The shortfalls for the people that are losing their jobs in the next five to 10 years, they do not have the level of support from the state that they might need to live and make ends meet in the meantime, in whatever time it takes for society to transition to something that better supports the automation of these jobs. I think it's just this idea that if you do this at scale, if everybody chooses to do this everywhere, we no longer have a society to participate in.

[Aiden]

I completely agree and it's one of many things to consider in this which leads to really well into the first wacky segment called Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons and Diplomacy. Okay, I got a big 20 sided die, right? You guys are going to decide what would you do day one if you were president Right now. Okay, this is turn one. Go. So what I've done is I've looked into all the different kind of theories about what would happen and what government should be doing. So we're going to see how. What would you guys do? First thing, what's your first order? We'll see how it lands Dungeons and.

[Harry]

Okay, wait, let me. Give me the rules here. I can say whatever you say, whatever.

[Doug]

Decision before I roll the die.

[Aiden]

I'm going to roll the. Have you not.

[Doug]

Oh, I get it.

[Harry]

So are we operating as a team?

[Aiden]

You guys are a co president. All right?

[Harry]

We're co president.

[Aiden]

You're, you're both, you're the lovely two husbands of the president. Right now you're president. And somebody comes in, some guy barges in and says, I'm Doug. This is what's going on. All these concerns are in front of you. How do you deal with it right now? Because there are many different factors.

[Harry]

Listen, I don't like you.

[Aiden]

Hold on, hold on. Get the fucking Mike.

[Harry]

I don't like you, you don't like me. But the world has thrust us together this important and we need to figure this out. Aiden, they're looking to us for answers. Okay. And while my constituents think you are a terrible, terrible person and they have.

[Aiden]

Been saying that there are constituents.

[Harry]

Well, we ran together for some reason. Okay, this is step one. So what we're in now? We're in 2024.

[Aiden]

What do you do right now? Let's say literally right now, you are installed as president and this is presented to you. What do you do? You were, you were describing about what maybe government should do.

[Doug]

I, government, along with my co governmenter, would like to propose a policy that provides significant subsidy or financial incentive to a select group of AI companies. And they, with the return that if they reach a certain level of success by metrics of which I do not have the knowledge to set, that the government retains a large portion of ownership in those companies.

[Aiden]

Okay, let's see how it goes. 13. So it goes well, but OpenAI comes up to you and you say, and they say, look, Deepseek is going to ignore that. They're going to be profitable. It already costs so much money to generate these models that we are not going to be able to afford that. We're burning money right now. We're not profitable. To be clear, the AI companies are not profitable yet. We will not be able to continue operation if you're taking a tax from us. And particularly if we can't convince investors there might be a big payoff in the future, our development, Development will slow down. China's going to win. They're going to win in potentially a year because of this. They're right behind us. What do you do now? It's turn to.

[Harry]

I didn't even like turn one.

[Doug]

You didn't like my decision?

[Harry]

Yeah, because I think it's still picking winners too early. We'd be picking a few companies subsidies for.

[Aiden]

Okay, so you've pissed off some of the companies a little bit. They're a little spooked. But you roll, you roll pretty well. They're. They're so, they're so they're ready to work with you. They're just saying, look, that's really going to slow us down right now. Is there something else you can do?

[Harry]

I mean we're in 2025, so we.

[Doug]

Could, we could say we can, can we even adjust our first turn anymore? We locked in.

[Aiden]

So imagine that. That was day one.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Now it's day two of your presidency. You'll have three days to try to solve this.

[Doug]

Well, we 1. We could open it up a bit, I think. It doesn't have to be a select group of companies. It could be a large financial incentive or tax break. If you meet certain metrics of success, does that mean. Yeah. Any company the way I was. Metrics of success.

[Harry]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Receives a gigantic.

[Harry]

I guess the subsidy I'm thinking is like a huge broad based, you might call it like intelligence program where we are trying our best to recruit.

[Doug]

Yeah. Like a central intelligence.

[Harry]

The, the best AI researchers from across the world. Like I think right now we're driving away a lot of people who are really good at this, going to other countries, Europe or China.

[Doug]

So you want to attract more talent.

[Harry]

I want to attract the talent. And then.

[Aiden]

And you're doing this by taking the government control of the AI company?

[Harry]

No, no, no. I'm just talking about government.

[Aiden]

Oh.

[Harry]

Just generally subsidy program towards research.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Harry]

Okay. And then I think we both agree some sort of ubi, Right. Some sort of like, I don't know where you stand on that, but some sort of way of protecting people who have lost their job from AI, from the worst economic consequences.

[Aiden]

Okay, the day's almost over. You got to have a press release. What specifically are you doing? What specifically are you doing? That sounds great. That sounds great.

[Doug]

What's our policy for attracting talent? You should attract talent.

[Aiden]

You say how you guys are doing very political stuff right now. You need specific policy. What's going on? The day is almost over.

[Doug]

This is hard for me. I'm 88 and I can't make decisions.

[Harry]

I'm 92 and I'm in my diaper.

[Aiden]

It's 3pm it's still time.

[Doug]

I still think it's a 1. I still think it's a one. You haven't come up with an answer.

[Harry]

You could, okay, what research France to universities. You could do a outreach program to leading AI researchers from other countries and try to attract them to come to America. That would be like one.

[Doug]

And then, okay, research grants to foreign. Foreign students and. Or researchers for AI programs.

[Aiden]

Okay. Incentivizing them to come. You roll 60. Okay. So the AI companies are on board and they think if the government subsidizes, that goes well. The problem now is the Republicans start to say we don't want to spend more money. We have to cut it down. At most, we should be cutting taxes for these companies so they can accelerate growth. However, because you roll to 16, enough people are becoming unemployed and pissed off that it does seem that it's shifting towards the Democrats. And you might be able to make that argument in two years, but it's currently 2025. What do you do on your final day of office?

[Doug]

We only have three days of office.

[Harry]

Three days in office.

[Aiden]

The point of this is what would you do right now? Because everybody's freaking out about it and it's a huge problem. But what can you realistically do? If you were the president right now, what would you do?

[Harry]

I'm a. I'm a Democratic president about to leave the office.

[Aiden]

You're whatever president.

[Harry]

I'm going to become just a guy. A Republican podcast. I'm trying to make some money.

[Doug]

You try to pivot. No, I got you. Change my residency to Malta, become a Republican podcaster.

[Aiden]

Okay, so you begrudgingly pretend I live in Florida. You begrudgingly got the AI companies on board with some side of tax. You're going to be hopefully dropping these, let's say, tax incentives for people to come here to the us there's still a lot of unemployment happening. So your plan is basically ubi. But the Republicans are furious about this. They're saying the people should pick themselves up by their bootstraps. And besides, AI is going to create new jobs. Anything else you try to do, you just be a demagogue. Just kind of rile people up, make sure you keep the policies going.

[Doug]

I think this is what I think this. I think we need to raise. I think we need to put into place a gigantic. Or at least where to. To where we were. Raise in corporate taxes. In personal income taxes. These need to be offset relative to the air industry by supplying carve outs that apply to AI workers at an individual level, like people that work at these companies individually. Some sort of tax breaks that go to like the workers and owners of people who work in the industry that we desire.

[Harry]

Doug, can I call him a nerd and woke and run against him? Because I feel like I could easily.

[Doug]

We're already in power together.

[Aiden]

Okay, well, here's what we'll do on the final term. You both get your own role and we'll see who's more successful. Okay, so here's your Paul, what's yours?

[Harry]

And then, yeah, it's that it's to. It's realized that the unemployment's rising. And so I'm just going to call him a nerd and I'm going to call him woke.

[Aiden]

Okay, so you demagogue and get people angry.

[Doug]

That's a good Strategy.

[Aiden]

It's a 14. So it's, it's okay. You guys do maintain the, the election, even though you are now theoretically poofed out of office. The party that wants to increase taxes does maintain, but it's just not going to be that much. 14 is not high enough to overcome lobbying. So you get a very symbolic tax increase, but it's not nearly enough to cover the debt and all the things. And then China probably wins and it becomes even more chaotic.

[Doug]

We just had three decent roles and we lost.

[Aiden]

The boy is this complex. Fuck no. What I'm saying though, look, there was way worse options that could happen. All right? I gave you relatively good ones of the AI companies. Go along. You manage to attract talent. I think in this situation, if you guys had done that and managed to convince the electorate to increase taxes, that's probably the best outcome. And this is, I guess, tying it back to actual stuff here. This is what Dario, the CEO talking about, this is kind of advocating for. He's saying, first we just need to warn people. We got to start training people to be aware of the AI tools so at least they're not caught off as off guard. Governments need to start forming committees and policies, potentially retraining policy type stuff. And then what he suggested, which I like, is a token tax, which is basically a value added tax like EU has, where every time a company is making money from AI, some percentage of that, let's say 3%, gets pooled to a government fund that is then supporting these programs. So essentially attacks, you know, similar to what you guys said, some kind of tax on AI, you know, productivity that can then be used to help people as this kind of, like, devastation spreads.

[Doug]

It's so funny because in this insane DND esque example where we had three fake short days in office, I was thinking through everything, like everything that I could come up with in that moment. And then being like, but then this, but then this. And then, and then I just imagined what it's actually like to be in charge and you have to, you know, it's harder than I became a grifter in three days.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Yeah. I can just go make a podcast where I talk about how, how, how women, women suck. Women suck. And why won't they date me.

[Aiden]

It's good to have a backup plan as the president.

[Doug]

I'll move to Miami and I'll, I'll invite a bunch of girls on every week, but I won't let them speak that important.

[Harry]

Get swole and steroids and.

[Aiden]

Yeah, and I want to reiterate here, like I meant it when there's worse cases. So, for example, if, if the government right now was like, massive tax on every AI company, those companies will leave. Like, at some point you do need to have enough incentive for these companies to be here to attract the top talent. And you guys address that, which is good. But yeah, you know, if you look at the top AI companies, they're almost all started by immigrants or the most influential people. And for anybody who's a software engineer, let's be real, non Americans are usually the smartest in any given group of programmers and software engineers. And so, you know, the more you prevent a company from being able to profit, right. It is going to be harder to pull those people into this specific company versus another one that is offering, let's say, massive monetary incentive because every company, every country, excuse me, right now, is viewing this as life or death. That's the problem is as much as we want to say, whoa, pump the brakes here. This is scary. A lot of jobs. Every comp, every country on the planet is viewing this as an existential threat. That one, is going to be key to the economy growing at the rate that it quite possibly will. And two, militarily, and it's so hard for a politician to pitch that as well as a politician to go, if you're in a democracy, to get a bunch of companies to buy into the idea of a massive tax on.

[Harry]

I want to push back on that slightly in that my understanding is that there is the United States, there is China, and then there is a massive, massive gap. There is no third. Even the EU as a Whole.

[Doug]

Have we thought about all the countries?

[Harry]

What country are you talking about?

[Doug]

Macau.

[Aiden]

Macau is part of China.

[Harry]

It's a gambling center of China.

[Aiden]

No, no, I mean that's a, that's a fair point. And I personally believe you could institute a lot of regulation and tax and I, I am in support of that, to be clear. Like I think in the face of this there has to be government. It's exactly what you said. We have no support right now for this happening at this scale, at this speed. And so I think there needs to be some kind of government support. And ideally that comes through that or taxes or something that on top of retraining, on top of all these other things, like there needs to be something because I think this is going to cause potentially enough chaos that we hit a threshold where people are just like rioting rather than expressing frustration via a YouTube comment, you know, so you're right to an extent. There's probably a lot more Runway than companies like to pretend because that's, that's.

[Harry]

What they always incentive to make it seem like. I mean it's the same thing with like military companies. You know, I remember before that's just a little too in the weeds but like, you know, Russia invaded Ukraine and didn't do that. Well, everyone thought they'd take over Kiev in you know, a month. And that was because all the military companies leading up to that were like, yeah, Russia's unstopped. We need to, we need to be spending a lot of money to stop that. And it like turns out they were not. Everyone has an incentive to talk up the opposition because it makes, because it makes you, the government spend more on them. That's a small example but like, like that happens in a lot of fields and the age old tech in America strategy is when you are about to get regulated, say the word China. Like Zuckerberg has done it for social media. Everyone has done it where it's like, oh, you're gonna regulate this.

[Doug]

What was Zuckerberg saying? Cause it's not like we're a foot away from getting ah, maybe I'm wrong even.

[Harry]

You know, it reminds me of the Silicon Valley bank bailout where some of these all in guys were on the podcast being like, if we don't bail this company out, we're gonna fall behind China in vent capital, you know, it's like they always have And I do think that AI is like significant enough like an industrial revolution and if your country is not competitive in that based on the last industrial revolution, you fall way behind and you get exploited by the countries like, like the uk, that we're ahead. So I agree. I just think, you know, we have to understand their incentives, which is to exaggerate and to massively scaremonger. To scaremonger and to fearmonger you into getting as much funding as possible.

[Aiden]

Yeah. There's even a cynical argument. Dario, who is the CEO most vocal about the dangers of AI and regulating. And I really like him a lot. I've brought up, like, blogs that he's done these, as was pointed out by the all in guys. Very cynical interpretation. But these warnings that he distributes happen to be when they're fundraising. You know, it's like, if these things always, like, there's always the incentives. And he talks a lot about how important it is to not let China win and how much we need these export controls on chips and all that. So. So all of the tech leaders are basically like, we cannot let China win. That's like life or death for many of them.

[Doug]

I mean. And also in the best interests of that.

[Harry]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Individual.

[Aiden]

Right, right, right.

[Doug]

I think my frustration listening to the all in episode was mostly that the conversation is so heavily weighted in, like, this progress is absolutely necessary and this is the direction that we're going in and we need to move quick and fast. And it's like, like, let me dispute the reasons why people's concerns about losing their job actually aren't that important and for different, I think, like, logically following reasons within the context of their show. I see why they're saying it, but to listen to, like, wealthy guys who work in, like, the business and VC space, be like, let's worry about the speed right now and, like, not worry about the people suffering and losing their jobs. They're out of time and let's push that till later. And it's. You need to do. I. I think you just need to do both. You cannot leave this giant wasteland of unemployed people behind you and be like, we'll figure it out later. Because those are just people's lives. And it's the, you know, people's lives that make up the society. That's the reason we want to wake up and participate in it every day.

[Harry]

Yeah. And not even just from a pure, like, it's the right thing to do. It is. If you don't take care of these people in society, we know what happens. They're going to start getting really, really angry. Really, really radicalized.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Harry]

And we have a democracy. They have a vote. I mean, things will change dramatically in ways people don't understand if you cannot provide people a reasonable standard of living that is ideally better than their parents, like it should be growing and getting better. If you promise prosperity with AI and you're not delivering it, people will notice and they will get quite angry.

[Doug]

So this was the other thing I was going to ask is because all of the benefits in the short term, I would say, let's say most of the benefits in the short term that come with this idea of AI being developed basically boil down to making work more efficient or potentially replacing workers at certain levels. Right. Those are the upfront realities of this technology. And I think we've spent time talking about, well, what are the. Some of the good applications of that, what are the advancements in medicine that could happen down the line, for instance, instance, that'll help people live longer, happier lives. What can I even point to realistically in the next five to 10 years that the average person really has to look forward to? Do you know what I mean?

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

There's not a single use of this. It's like automated cars, automated art. It can code at an entry level, it can write journalism at an entry level. All of these advancements bar me getting to engage with something that conveniently answers questions for me, which is a level of convenience that I really like. None of those things help the average person. They just help people that own companies or they help in really tangential ways. If all of the cars are automated, maybe there's less accidents and less people die. But if all of the people who are driving are unemployed, it's like the amount of people that die in high periods of unemployment because of externalities from that is probably more or similar. I'm just guessing, I'm just saying that. So I think it's important when we have these conversations to contextualize for the average person. What do I have to look forward to here?

[Aiden]

So let me, let me give a pitch. I want to be clear. This is not what I think. It's more complex, but here's the idea. 300 years ago, 95 or something percent of Americans were farmers.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

That's what everybody did. Everybody just farmed. That's all you. That's the majority of society was farming even 100 years ago. In the early 1900s, 40% of the money that people earned went towards food. Even though the amount of people dropping weren't farmers anymore. All these new jobs had opened up in society, they still spent the majority of their income on food because food was proportionally way more expensive, much more expensive. Just to be Able to afford to live, just to be able to afford basic sustenance. Now, about 1% of the country in America are farmers, almost none, which means 99% of the country is doing things that weren't jobs before. And we spent about 10% of our income on food. Objectively, you can have a much, much, much better lifestyle in terms of, you know, health, birth rate, medicine, access to food, access to resources. As a poorer person now than you could 300 years ago, the standard of living has raised dramatically. So I think the one to five years is probably not realistic. But the idea of technology is that it allows you to create more resources with less. If we can send electricity through a silicon chip, and that chip can do an enormous amount of business work, that would have taken a while otherwise, or drive a car that is more efficient with less input. And that means, for example, let's look at food. You have imagine the food system right now, but instead of humans planting and managing farms, it's mostly automated. And then once the stuff is harvested by automatic machines, it's packaged and sent to processing plants by self driving cars, which is then run and processed in the factory by self managed robots that are automated. And then it sent to grocery stores that are automatically putting it in stocking shelves. Eventually that drives prices down, particularly if you have competitors who are all competing. This is what has driven food prices down over time. As technology makes it cheaper to produce things, that same thing will happen here as all of the different components think electronics like buying a switch too. If every part of that process of delivery and logistics and creation of the, you know, the mining of resources becomes automated, all of these pieces of these supply chains and product, you know, product creation becomes automated, prices will drop, it will be deflationary. And so even though the average person might not have access to the same number of economic opportunities because prices will be driven down by this, because it will become cheaper to make things, you will require less money and capital to have the same lifestyle. So maybe it will only take 10 to 15 hours of work each week to afford the same level of quality that you have now, right in the future. Perry, if you could pull up this graph, this is a pretty commonly one that's referenced. It's about how services in the United States, the cost of things like hospital services and college have gone way, way, way, way up over the past two decades. And then if you look at kind of electronics of consumer goods, clothing, cell phone services, toys, computer software, TVs, I mean, think about the fact that for $500, you get a TV that's absolutely massive where 10, 20 years ago, $500 TV would. You know, I'm old enough to remember growing up when you had a TV in the family home and it was like the size of a laptop. Right. You know, so there is a real, there's a real concrete way that things get better over time when technology allows people to create more with less. And that's what this is going to do. Now, I don't think that means, oh, your problems are all solved. But that's the idea is 10, 20, 30 years from now, restaurants will be able to offer things for less or at a higher quality because of how much less was required to put into that process.

[Doug]

I do. Okay. I agree with you in a broad sense. I think technology, technology on the whole benefits in that we get to continue to be more specialized and productive as human beings. Right. I do fear, just real quick because.

[Aiden]

I'm sure there'll be some bad faith comments.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

I think that needs to be paired with some kind of regulation and redistribution of wealth like we're talking about, like a VAT tax.

[Doug]

But please keep that in mind, please. You'll put two asterisks on the end of your comment. I'm coming back to it.

[Aiden]

If you just heard they gave an.

[Doug]

Opinion, please, please put two asterisks. Because I think when I talk to Doug about, I heard the first half.

[Aiden]

Of his sentence and I'm frustrated.

[Doug]

It's like, I understand that you also want that. Is there a fear. So food, bar food, which has been, I would say, a great achievement in human society in terms of how cheap and widely available it is. Right. That is a good thing. But on a graph like this, right. Look at all the things that have drastically decreased in price. They're all consumable things that you debatably do or do not need. They're, they're material goods that are just pretty, pretty cool to have except for, I don't know, maybe clothing, like, but.

[Aiden]

Broadly stuff that doesn't feel like fundamental to the human experience.

[Doug]

Yeah. And then above it, I mean, I do worry that things like housing, like education, those are the things that continue to get more expensive.

[Aiden]

So those, to be clear, those have. Matt basically matched inflation is what is true showing in this graph. And the ones above that are where it really gets like this has dramatically increased past a point that makes sense.

[Doug]

Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I think what I wonder right now is because at the rate of AI's improvement in the way that it fits into society at the moment, can we provide a level of training and education, especially in the United States where education is so expensive, to give a average people a leg up into increasingly specialized jobs at a pace that outpaces AI's ability to replace those jobs, it doesn't seem super likely.

[Aiden]

We would need a really competent forward facing government and leadership which we do not have at all.

[Doug]

I think the structural changes that this demands. I also want to be clear that when I say these things, I don't want to sit in this camp of AI denial of its importance or value. I want to stress that I think it is something important to pursue for hopefully reasons that we've outlined on the show that we've talked through, security reasons being one of them. Whether it's China or some other country keeping on pace at the forefront of a technology as important as this. This is important. I do think that's important. I just, I worry and as I sit here rolling dice with my co president wondering how to solve this problem together, there's so. I've grown fond of you have him on your podcast now that we're out of office.

[Harry]

I have a respect for you and your constituents. I think you're. You were onto something.

[Doug]

D the level of change that needs to be complimentary to this is just so comprehensive and difficult. Sitting down where you're asking me what would I do right now, that's a challenging thing. And I don't know the externalities of my bet one way or the other because from my perspective, I think securing the value of AI from a government perspective is an important part of this and a part of the equation of making sure that it benefits society at large and not just, you know, and not just a select group of like companies or people.

[Harry]

Yeah, I mean I think, I think we've all circled this and it sounds pretty clear that we need some way of listen, this is going to generate wealth like all technology does. This is a great way to generate wealth and we need to find a way to make sure that wealth doesn't end up pooled in a few hands. And that is the problem. Whether AI exists or not, that is, that is like the defining issue across most societies right now, which is like trying to figure this out. And I don't want to sound too fourth turning pilled, but looking at history, whether someone smart comes along and figures out or not, they'll be forced to. This is going to get. Yes, the issue is forced.

[Doug]

So speaking of issues that will be forced into that may require this, I, if, if we can transition. I wanted to talk about declining birth rates. Oh, interesting.

[Aiden]

Real quick. You want to do the wacky segment.

[Doug]

I want to do one more wacky. Okay, absolutely.

[Aiden]

So great transition. Is that exactly what you're saying? We need something to replace all these jobs that are being lost. That's a common sentiment. In fact, let me even say this from the beginning. If AI is going to destroy all these entry level jobs, many people are asking, what is going to be the replacement to them, right? And so I've been doing a little bit of research, trying to figure out what kind of jobs in AI we might see. And so each one of you guys don't look at them. I gave you a little pile of jobs that I think might only only be available if AI is created. So why don't you start atrack, pull it from the top and, and read out what job you think and pitch it to us. Like, why would this be a cool job that can only exist with AI?

[Harry]

Right wing podcaster, we have brought Gavin Newsom on. You are fired from the podcast. But don't worry, there is a job for you. Okay? AI fashion stylist. A brand new personal stylist who uses AI to create a virtual avatar of someone's body that perfectly showcases how you'd look in different clothings in various situations. The stylist will mix and match outfit ideas, working with you to refine and improve the looks, even generate fully original new clothes like the Sims.

[Aiden]

You could like, view yourself as a sim. Is that a cool idea?

[Doug]

Wait, why is this my job? Why can the AI just do this?

[Harry]

That's my first question. Why do I need a human for this? I guess maybe people like talking to a human, but yeah, I mean, they're.

[Aiden]

Like overseeing, you know, the AI is generating the imagery and the virtual environment and whatnot. But they're being like, you know what, I see this trend, I know what's going on.

[Harry]

I can do it in the same way I could do it from home.

[Aiden]

All right, all right, hold on. Let me get the next job. Okay. Virtual travel experience curator. Plans and lead immersive trips using VR and AR AI generated content. Like hosting a virtual tour of a world landmark or a fantasy realm. Little virtual tours. Eh.

[Doug]

I hate to ask the same question.

[Aiden]

All right, all right, read yours, read yours.

[Doug]

Why can't the. The AI can just do that?

[Aiden]

No, cuz like a person could design it. I think AIs are general, generally not going to design super interesting experiences. Humans are going to design the coolest ones.

[Doug]

Chaperone for AI child actors?

[Aiden]

Yeah, no, that's.

[Doug]

Monitors. AI generated child influencers to make sure they're emotionally stable.

[Aiden]

That's important. Once we replace all the actors.

[Doug]

Imagine being, imagine having this job and then your AI child influencer kill tells them so.

[Aiden]

That's dark.

[Doug]

Because they just, they got hooked on, they got hooked on.

[Aiden]

You're just not gonna have that job.

[Doug]

Until AI And I just, and I feel AI guilt because I failed.

[Harry]

Yeah, I failed my, I mean you.

[Aiden]

Can just create a new instance with a single UNIX line here.

[Doug]

Yeah, I just run it back.

[Aiden]

Professional AI game Master offers personalized gaming sessions where you can guide the whole world as a human. And you're directing AI NPCs. Kind of like Helldivers 2 does this or a D and D game. But like, you know, one person is doing a whole sort of experience for somebody. That's pretty cool.

[Harry]

I mean again, every, the answer to every one of these questions is like, do I need a middleman human? When I could go.

[Aiden]

I think I, I think a human is always going to be better at designing an interesting experience and getting a particular artistic creative mind to design experience. But use AI as tools in that experience is what I think you're probably right.

[Harry]

Especially for something like D and D. I think that that sounds like a real thing that could exist. But I, I think people will always.

[Doug]

It's similar to how like there's, there's services for like oh, and they hand stitch it in this way. They did it in the 1840s still. And people buy that. You know, sometimes there, there will always be a desire like a bucking of the trend demand for bespoke human approaches to things. But those are the minority of industry.

[Aiden]

Right. But I think this one I really believe in like imagine World of Warcraft. That world is static after you've played through the original content. And imagine you have a team within Blizzard who is using AI tools and saying we're going to create a storyline that's happening over the course of 12 hours. That's only possible because of the scale and rapidity, rapidness that you can deploy AI tools, tech NPCs in the game generate dialogue. You have these game masters in all these different games that you can imagine add so much nuance that isn't possible right now.

[Doug]

I, I, I agree with you. Kind of like I, I, I, I think that this absolutely, there will absolutely be jobs that exist as a result of these tools being available. But can we will the combined nature of all of these things, you know, besides, besides Chaperone for AI.

[Aiden]

I mean that's, I mean most people.

[Doug]

Will be doing that.

[Aiden]

There'll be bespoke ones as well.

[Doug]

But, but, but I think that the main, the main issue I have in my head is that there's, there's just not that many like places for these jobs as truck drivers. Yeah.

[Harry]

I mean truck driver is the number one job in like 38 states. It's a lot of people. It's difficult to imagine. Listen, I. One thing I will agree with, even if I can't see it in this conversation is that this type of conversation has happened in human history a lot.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Harry]

And people are very bad at predicting.

[Doug]

They'Re bad at coming.

[Aiden]

Nobody, nobody would have imagined that this is our job.

[Harry]

Yeah, 100%.

[Aiden]

50 years ago. 100 years ago.

[Doug]

Absolutely. The part of not being able to think of what the jobs might be able to do. But I think this is. We, we brought this up on like the second episode is the idea here of what there's never been a technology prior to this where any version of the new technology can't just replace the next generation's technology as well.

[Aiden]

I have the answer for you. Open your next card. Okay. Read this out.

[Doug]

I'm so.

[Aiden]

It's not funny. This is our future.

[Harry]

This is where you're going to be working in. So get used to it.

[Doug]

Sorry.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Doug]

I'm sorry. This is. I think this is really funny. Eye contact Compliance officer Eye contact monitors footage to enforce minimum required eye contact in meetings now tracked by workplace AI morale systems.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Doug]

You only looked at the VP's face for 3.4 seconds. Consider this a warning.

[Aiden]

That's great. Much more efficient workers who can't slack off.

[Doug]

This one's money. This one's money.

[Aiden]

All right. Why don't you read one more? Let's do two more.

[Doug]

Finally my girlfriend will look me in the eye.

[Harry]

Okay.

[Aiden]

Are the green ones the good ones the random?

[Harry]

Oh, because I. I think his sound dystopian. This is kind of nice.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Harry]

AI Wellness Nutrition and exercise coach Provides a highly customized diet and exercise plan. Oh, I'm gay now. Pride month. And I'm already uses AI analysis AI systems can update and exactly tailor plans throughout the day to maximize health or personal times. Bring my same. I. I actually tried this in chat GPT. I was like hey, I want to start running. Can you give me like a plan? Cuz I'm kind of out of shape and it like told me like, like do this, do this, do this, do this.

[Aiden]

Yeah but imagine a person who can More tailor to what you want. More experience.

[Harry]

If I have to pay the person and then I have to meet the person, like.

[Aiden]

But that person could be covering many more clients because of the AI tools.

[Doug]

Okay, I. Look, I. Because obviously maybe not obvious. I think like, some of these are clearly jokes. Other ones are.

[Aiden]

Why don't you read your last.

[Harry]

Okay.

[Aiden]

What I.

[Doug]

There's no difference between the colors. Doug, you look me in the eye.

[Aiden]

The colors. The colors are random. It's randomly decided. It's randomly decided.

[Doug]

Equally good ideas is atri.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah. These are all. This is like equally. A third of the industries will be this.

[Doug]

Okay, this one has my name in it.

[Aiden]

No, it's random. It's randomly. Don't read ahead. Okay. Just tell us what the job is.

[Doug]

Sex robot assistant.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Doug]

Aiden wears a motion capture suit which allows him to control robots remotely. He physically acts out depraved sex scenes for corrupt politicians who are having AI based affairs. He can monitor and pleasure hundreds of politicians simultaneously. Secretly. He loves it. That part. That last part.

[Aiden]

And so. And that's the future I think a lot of people can look forward to thanks to AI does feel bright. Bright is the future.

[Harry]

I could see how that argument could be.

[Doug]

They've been weak in the last couple seasons. This is a banger.

[Aiden]

Black Mirror episode.

[Harry]

Black Beard episode where Aiden is having sex with every politician simultaneously.

[Aiden]

You know what? If we could have Aiden personally pleasuring hundreds of politicians at once, that might solve the birth rate crisis.

[Harry]

In what way?

[Aiden]

In what way?

[Harry]

That makes it way worse.

[Aiden]

You guys are asking a lot of questions about my segment. You're getting really upset about my cool segment. That kind of solved a lot of problems. I think we can agree based on that sex robot that we have once again solved all problems. Lemonade stand. Come here, come here, come here. Get.

[Harry]

No, I don't give.

[Doug]

It does sound kind of fun for me.

[Harry]

What is crazy is before this segment, I was like, you know, there's some good, there's some bad. And after I'm now dystopian build. Now I'm concerned.

[Aiden]

What's cool is the other guy can check the amount of eye contact from the politician and the robot.

[Doug]

That's it. Thank God.

[Harry]

I am now building a.

[Doug]

Where's my phone? I'm going to call Chuck.

[Harry]

Okay.

[Doug]

I'm going to call Chuck Schumer.

[Harry]

Birth rates.

[Doug]

Okay, well, I thought this. You know, we didn't even plan this, but I think this topic actually kind of goes hand in hand. And the. I think we've touched on this on the show. But I wanted to talk about this idea of birth rates dipping globally.

[Harry]

Yeah.

[Doug]

And the important thing here, or like why birth rates matter at all, is the idea is if your birth rate of 2.1, I think that 2.1 children per woman on average means that your population maintains itself over time. That's basically what that means. And as you dip below that, it means that eventually your population is going to start decreasing. And if you maintain a birth rate below 2.1 for long enough, you decrease more and more rapidly. And the gap that you have between 2.1 in whatever the number is. So say, say my birth rate's 1.8, but versus another country that has a birth rate of 1.3. The difference between 1.8 and 1.3, it's exponentially increasing the problem of your population.

[Harry]

Can I say one thing? Because people, some of their first response when they hear this is like, we have too many people already. Who cares? Like, why don't we, why don't we let the population go down, down a little bit? And I just want to say the, the particular reason why this becomes so damaging is you end up with a very large amount of old people and very few young people who can support them. So you have old people who are. Again, once you hit a certain age, you are no longer working or producing, and you will become in. I don't know, I don't have a nice word for it, but you're like, you're kind of a drain. You require more resources from society than you produce. And that's fine because you, you know, that's, that's what we should do. We should take care of all people.

[Doug]

If we lived in a world where everybody happened to reach the age of 30 and stopped aging until they just died one day, then this problem, they're kind of right. Like you could, you could have population fall off because everyone is equally productive in ways on society.

[Aiden]

So you're saying we purge the old people.

[Doug]

We keep coming back to this with you. I've noticed. I've noticed.

[Aiden]

I'm not the one bringing it up. Okay.

[Doug]

So, yeah, it's that the population pyramid, as you get more and more old people, they become more reliant on social services, especially like healthcare, with fewer people at younger ages who are more productive, work longer hours, but can't pay enough tax or literally are not in number enough to support the older people above them. And as this happens and as is happening in some places already, there's. There's other consequences that play out, like small Towns, especially in rural areas, as their populations have declined, they just become ghost towns. And over a long enough period of time you sort of, you lose the culture of certain areas because there's literally less people to carry on the local culture of whatever people that were there.

[Harry]

Right.

[Doug]

And this is happening super broadly. I think the really interesting thing about this problem to me is the scale at which it is starting to happen versus I think people have this idea that, oh, there's a subset of developed countries in the world that are probably in the minority that are facing this issue and it's not that pressing yet. Or a really quick thing that people jump to is like, okay, well what could fill the gap of a falling birth rate? You could increase immigration. And that's kind of true, but it doesn't tell the whole story of how the whole world is moving in this direction right now and the economic consequences, especially 50 to 100 years from now. And I say economic in a broad way. I would maybe say the societal consciousness.

[Aiden]

Sure, yeah.

[Doug]

The first thing I wanted to touch on was the rate at which this is happening. In 1980 there was about 25 countries already below that 2.1 replacement rate. And then in 1990, just 10 years later, that number had doubled to 50. And then in 2070, 2010, 100 and now as of now about 120 countries globally. Globally.

[Aiden]

Isn't that like half the world?

[Harry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Isn't there 250 countries or something like that? That's, that's. So the majority of the world, the.

[Doug]

Majority of countries in the world right now are dipping below this.

[Harry]

Pretty much every developed country, every country that's developed is, is below replacement rate.

[Doug]

And they're, you know, there's, we're reaching a stage with this problem for some countries where it's becoming really, really pressing. The most notable example is South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world. They have about 0.7 births. And then Japan, also a notably low country I think at 1.1. And the main thing I wanted to talk about here is why this is happening so broadly. If you guys have any initial thoughts about that and, and I have some thoughts about solutions or countries approach to turning this around. I think the consequences of this are really hard to contextualize because they're not short term. The reality is for most people for the next 10 to 20 years, maybe even the next like 50, 50 years. Right. The consequences will not be felt in a lot of places, but it's a problem that is going to.

[Aiden]

Japan is starting to hit it Right now. South Korea is starting to hit it right now. China will be soon, in about like a decade or two. So it's like, it's coming soon for certain countries. And I think the word. I mean, you guys, I think know a little more than me, but the worst demographics are, like, China, Japan, South Korea. It's a lot of, like, there's some European ones.

[Harry]

Italy's really bad.

[Aiden]

Italy is super bad. Yeah. Yeah.

[Harry]

But, yeah, I mean, Japan is. In many ways, I say this so many times, it's becoming a meme, but a canary in the coal mine, where you look to Japan to see how it's going to shake out. And every day in Japan, there are fewer Japanese people than there were yesterday, which is like a shocking when you think about that. It's like, that is existential crisis.

[Aiden]

We need more white guys from LA to go there.

[Harry]

To go there. More anime fans.

[Doug]

Well, we could start with that. Right. Because immigration is something that comes up a lot with this stuff. And I wanted to say people are kind of right about that. I think. I think a kind of damning thing for countries like Japan, countries like South Korea, is that they aren't very open to immigration, like, culturally compared to a lot of other countries. Right. But the other problem here is they are at a point where the rate of immigration that their society would demand to supplement the gap is just not feasible. Like, the quantity of people that would need to come in every year, even if you had a fully open immigration policy, full cultural acceptance programs, they are too far gone to turn the problem around that way. They're probably too far gone.

[Harry]

Period.

[Doug]

Period. That's like, the issue will play out in those places no matter what at this stage.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Can you.

[Aiden]

Can you pull up a list of countries by. By birth rate? I think that the top one, if you go. Yeah. Because there's some crazy rates. And, like, even the U.S. people are aware, like, the U.S. we would be losing population if it wasn't for immigration. Like, that's the only thing saving us right now, you know?

[Doug]

Yeah. We're at 1.6.

[Harry]

I'll have a kid and.

[Doug]

Come on.

[Harry]

I'll have a kid. My wife and I are talking about.

[Aiden]

We're getting. I'm not sure if I want to. So could you have four makeup?

[Harry]

We're already having.

[Aiden]

You got me.

[Harry]

There's a hot debate in my household between one and three.

[Doug]

Game.

[Harry]

I'm on the one.

[Aiden]

Why not?

[Doug]

Why not? That's far away from four.

[Harry]

There's no shot for four.

[Aiden]

Why? Why two? Why do you dodge two.

[Harry]

Oh, I think I'm saying one because we'll end up at two. Holding ground so that I.

[Aiden]

Well, you need to have 2.1 children if we're gonna make little Timmy.

[Harry]

He's not. He's not very big.

[Aiden]

You have two kids and a cat.

[Doug]

Do you.

[Harry]

The.

[Doug]

The other issue with immigration that I hadn't really realized until I saw the scale of the problem globally and how countries are reaching this lower than 2.1 rate prior to being that developed economically, too. There's, like, an increasing speed at which countries are reaching, like, a level of economic development and hitting this threshold of dipping, dipping below 2.1. That's the other reason immigration doesn't solve this in the long run, is if it's a global issue, it's like, if I'm a country like the United States, I could let, like, have as many immigrants as possible to help fill the gap and reduce this problem as much as possible. Right. But in the long run, in the. In the really long run, I'm only shuffling the problem around between different places because all the countries that still have birth rates above 2.1 are expected at this rate to fall below it eventually. And I'm only shuffling people around into new places without actually solving the issue. Like, someone suffers from the way that the groups of people are moved around in the broad sense of this problem.

[Aiden]

Gary, can you flip it, like, if you click the thing at the top?

[Harry]

Highest birth rates.

[Aiden]

Yeah, it's like the highest birth rates. Yeah. Somalia with six children per woman. Chad with 6.1. Niger was 6.1.

[Harry]

A lot of Chads in Chad.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Damn. As you can see, it's. It's basically Africa. So the Africa. The countries in Africa still have a very high birth rate. And everywhere else, to my knowledge, essentially is falling. That's like. I think South America is falling a lot as well. And this is, you know, like, again, it's. It's urbanization. Right. As soon as a country becomes developed and particularly urbanized, it just plummets. And that's one of the things I wonder. I think clearly there is an economic factor to it, of people move into urban environments that it feels like it is so expensive and difficult to be able to have a high quality of life while raising a family that they just don't. Right. They don't have three kids or four kids. They have one kid because they're in the middle of a city, and it's just, like, hard to do that. I also wonder, like, in the past, historically, humanity worked on Farms. Right. We. There was manual labor. And so the more kids you had, the more you were able to maintain manual labor.

[Harry]

Like, again, 300 years ago, incentive.

[Aiden]

Economically, 300 years ago, the opposite. Almost the entirety of America was just farming. Every single person, like, literally almost every single one. And now it's a percentage. And I do wonder what percentage or what portion of us as humanity wanting to have a lot of children came from needing labor and how much of that, if you remove the economic pressure of just needing cheap labor, it's a lot. What would we default to? You know, like, if everybody had all their needs met, would it still be above 2? I don't know. Yeah.

[Doug]

I think that is a huge cultural shift, because when people talk about what the roots of this problem are, it's interesting because it affects so many places that are so radically different. So you have to look at what trends apply everywhere. Like, what. What are the things. And urbanization is the main. The main part of it. It's like, there used to be in rural areas a very base economic need to have a lot of kids. You needed to have kids to operate usually the farm or the. The sustenance of, like, what kept you. You alive and a group of people that supported you as you got older. And that's removing the, like, biological desire to. To reproduce, produce. Right. Like, moving a little beyond that. These circumstances of your. Of your situation basically demanded that you have a lot of children in order to maintain your way of life.

[Aiden]

My. My dad was squirted out by my grandma to help with the cotton farm in Texas. I'm not. You laugh. That's not a joke. He. He literally squirted out. He worked up. Squirted out.

[Doug]

Wasn't a joke.

[Aiden]

Working on the cotton and sorghum farm in Texas.

[Harry]

Texas.

[Aiden]

They had a bunch of kids. Five, four. Shit. Four or five. I think four. Four kids to help work on the farm. That's what. That's what you did as farmers. And then. And then my dad left, and he was like, I'm only going to squirt out three, and I don't even know if I'm going to squirt out one or two.

[Doug]

I think this is an issue that's difficult.

[Harry]

The Doug clan all score.

[Aiden]

Well, no, that's what I'm saying is economically, I don't know if we can score it anymore.

[Harry]

I see.

[Doug]

Yeah. We don't have what it takes.

[Harry]

We've lost that ability.

[Aiden]

Well, we have what it takes. All right, let's just be clear.

[Harry]

I don't know. Oh, I'm seeing a trend. You said, we're gonna have kids that's lost your dad's ability.

[Aiden]

Can we get back on track?

[Doug]

So there was an interesting thing I listened to about this on the Daily, I think I want to say like six months ago, and they were interviewing people about their take on the story in general, but also their desire to have kids in the U.S. right. And what was interesting is at least when you poll them, a lot of, of people say they want to have like three kids on average still. And I was surprised by that because in my head I was like, oh, there feels like there's a large cultural shift among people becoming maybe a little more individualistic, you know, more career focused and not, you know, not wanting to prioritize this idea of having kids anymore beyond the economic aspect. Right, right. And, and I think the fact that so many people say they want to have three kids on average, that's what, like, what I think it's like 2.9. It averages out in the US of how many kids they say they want to have. And the economic attempts to fix this, while really mixed in their results, are most people's approach to trying to tackle this problem at the moment. So if you look at, for example, if we looked at Singapore quickly, Singapore has a pretty low birth rate. I think it's like 1.2 or 1.3 or something like that. But they have a policy that allows you to apply for their public housing at a way earlier age if you have a partner or spouse. The motivation being is they want families to have like stability in Singapore and pushes people to fast track their relationships and get to get into public housing and have a nice home way earlier than they otherwise would. It's also seen as an investment there. Yeah, but that, that for Singapore, that isn't really, you know, that aspect of the solution isn't really working. So there's examples of these economic attempts to get people to change their mind without that actually being effective.

[Harry]

That's what I was going to say. I'm saying a lot of, a lot of countries have tried this. Japan has tried a bunch of different random things to incentivize you to have kids. All of them seem to be very small effect or no effect. Now I do want to say, you know, my general theory is if people are telling you why something's not happening, generally trust them. They're usually right. And most people, if you ask on this, will say it's, it's a larger economic reason. They will say it's like it's too hard to afford a house. I don't feel like I could afford cost of college and child care and. And all that to have that many kids. And I think there probably is some truth to that. And none of these in any country so far have been, I think, broad or big enough to really tackle the uncertainty about the future and future costs. So I think that's fair. Like, America's proposing something that Trump proposed, like a $5,000 baby credit or something. If you have a baby, you get $5,000.

[Doug]

Like, so my pushback to this a little bit is it doesn't feel as simple as having strong economic policies that allow people, that give people the economic room to have children. And I do think that's a massive part of it. I don't. I'm not denying that at all.

[Harry]

Yeah.

[Doug]

But what I do want to stress is I think it would not be controversial to say that in the United States we have less social services than the Nordic countries. Right. But the Nordic countries have even lower birth rates than we do. And so what is it about? Let me fact check that real quick. Yeah. And so there's something to be said about, like, okay, what about these conditions for people makes that the case? Like, why in a place like the United States would the birth rate still be a bit higher than these Nordic countries, which have way stronger social services, way better time off for parents if they have a child? What. What is that? What does that mean?

[Harry]

I think that's super fair. I mean, the Nordic countries having the same problem, you know, what they have in terms of social stability is like, what most countries would dream of. Right. So if they can get all the way there and it still doesn't solve the problem, then it's a bigger problem.

[Aiden]

Problem.

[Harry]

One thing I did notice, like, I, I remember, I forget this was Japan or Korea. So I'm sorry, but I. There was a study, and it's a small one, but where they subsidized fewer working hours specifically. So it was like in Japan, they were working insane hours working, and they. They made it so they. They had significantly fewer hours per week to work to get the same amount of money. And that had a measurable positive increase on birth rates. That group, that control group or whatever went above 2. And so there's a chance that maybe it's not just wealth distribution or daily old house, but the ability to, like, have free time completely without worrying, to feel like you have the. The ability to form a deep relationship, start a family, get kids. I think that that could be part of It, I, I think it's a complicated issue.

[Doug]

But do you feel like. So to, to push back against my own pushback. The. I don't. This, this feels so unquantifiable to me. And if somebody listening to this right now has a, has a good case or a good understanding of this issue. But one country that's managing this pretty successfully is France. They have a really high birth rate, especially among all these developed nations.

[Aiden]

Really?

[Doug]

France's is like 1.8, I think, and still below. Still below, but way closer than most of these other countries. Theirs is way higher. And they also didn't dip below 2 for a really long time. It took them a while to get to this point. So there's a, there's a point to be rectified here. Right?

[Aiden]

What are the French doing?

[Doug]

So for France, Doug.

[Aiden]

Hey, you pull that up.

[Doug]

And the. There are economic policies that France has in place that encourage you to have children. They have huge tax incentives if you have 3 versus 2 versus 1 versus 0.

[Aiden]

Oh really?

[Doug]

The idea being that like if you have three children as a family, it should in no way impact your quality of life in comparison to somebody who has zero children. I think also from a healthcare perspective, France spends an extraordinary amount of money on its healthcare system. And there's a lot of availability for nurses to come to new mothers homes directly. They spend even at like a middle class, a lower class level. They pay way more in taxes for that system that they have available to them on the whole with tax breaks to those who choose to have families. So there seems to be a cultural decision to like emphasize these tax breaks as related to families. But these policies come into place in other places as well. Right. So why do they not turn things around after the fact? I think that's the question that I feel unable to answer.

[Harry]

I posted a link, if you could pull it up. Perry, in the. In the show links. Man. Looking at this chart of France's birth rate, it is hard not to see some kind of economic correlation. This is not it. This is the old one. Okay.

[Aiden]

You don't want to visually describe it.

[Harry]

Yeah. Okay. So it's basically flat and in a good spot until the 2008 crisis, until the global recession.

[Doug]

Interesting.

[Harry]

At which point it becomes a free fall. And it's funny because that previous chart that, that Doug had with the thing, a lot of those things start spiking in a lot of scarce things like college healthcare, college child care, all these things post 2008 start spiking, which also correlates with when Governments globally started massively debt spending to pump up those things. So it's just interesting that it's all. It all feels connected in some way where the. I think the few scarce things required to feel comfortable to have a bigger family, which is the ability to afford college and child care and housing and, you know, all those things are the things that have gotten more and more scarce and difficult since 08 specifically, but over the past 20 years in general. And those seem to be, at least in this France case. And again, I'm sure it's different all over, but those need to be strongly correlated outside of, you know, look at that first drop at the beginning. That's probably more tied up with industrialization. I'm sure there's like a level that is like, once you're industrial society, educated society, they're not having five, six kids on the farm. That probably makes a lot of sense. But then I think going from that to near zero for a lot of families is probably more economic. That feels more like people feeling like can't even get started on the.

[Doug]

Yeah, I agree. It just has to be layered in some way. I want to talk to somebody who can just party all of the details or factors better than I can. Because when we looked at the countries with the highest birth rates, right, they're some of the least developed places in the world and they have really high birth rates. It's not like people in Chad are incredibly rich and that's why they're having a bunch of kids. Like, there are societal circumstances of just base, like country development or like urbanization.

[Harry]

That's what I'm saying.

[Doug]

Like, and then it turns out it like folds into another issue when you get far enough along.

[Harry]

Yeah, that's. That's what I'm theorizing. I don't know if anyone has the.

[Aiden]

Hard truth here, but I want to ask. You basically said this, but I just want to confirm it. Have you guys seen anything that has been done successfully for this? Like, has any country actually succeeded at reversing this in any way?

[Doug]

I looked at this, yeah. So far, no. Which is part of the scary part. There have only been countries which have managed to either slow the decline pretty well. Like France is one of the better examples of that. Or countries who have gotten so low and then they made some sort of policy change to push it in the other direction. So just recently South Korea bumped their number up. But when you're talking about moving from 0.7 to 0.8, you're not solving the issue. You're just you're just pushing it a little in the other direction. So there, there, there just are. There's been no country, from what I looked through that have, has fallen below 2.1 and then managed to get back above it afterwards. And I thought that was something that. I think something really interesting with this problem is it feels a little similar to climate change with, to me, where a lot of the most dire consequences of climate change, we're seeing some of them now. Do you ever, do you guys ever think about that? I'm going to go on a tangent for a second.

[Harry]

Okay.

[Doug]

You know, when you grew up and you watch maybe, do you ever watch like An Inconvenient Truth or little documentaries about climate change and the consequences of the environmental damage we were doing and they'd talk about what it's going to be like Recently, I would say most, maybe in the past five years especially, it's like, oh, some of it's starting to happen, but you can see some of the consequences actually starting to play out. But when people were talking about these things in 2000 or 1990 or 1980, a lot of these things felt really far away. And I think it's hard to garner long lasting political change in the direction of something that feels so far out. I think that is, that's a problem for most people, right, because the more dire economic circumstances in front of you are often the things or things threatening your rights are the most pressing. So. But even now, the most dire consequences of climate change with the trajectory that we are on, are not going to be felt for decades, but they are going to happen basically no matter what at this stage. And it's like the degree of how.

[Harry]

Bad it, I mean, our whole thing we can affect was. You know, it's hard to get people to care about the consequences of AI stuff that could happen in three years, yeah, three or four years, let alone things that could happen in 10, 15, 20. It's just, it's difficult to get someone to, to get enough people to, to be the ant versus the grasshopper, to plan and to save and to build for something that could happen.

[Doug]

And this is the, to me, this is the exact same thing because it's like on the whole, you wake up every day, even if you're in Japan, right, for the most part, you wake up every new day and it's just kind of fine and you're the frog in the, in the hot water and you're slowly boiling. And the real boiling point for most countries is, you know, for Japan and South Korea, it It's going to happen within our lifetimes. Which is, you know, in a. In a kind of interesting. Not in terms of the actual consequences, but it's like we'll see how it plays out. We want to or not, but for, for like the United States or for France. Right. The reality of that problem might not hit for another hundred years, but it's still going to happen. And the way I wanted to tie this back in is I think realistically with the fact that no one has any success with turning this around in a meaningful way yet you can do nothing but replace the labor of young people with. With things that are automated. You need that to like prop up society in order to get through this oncoming like demographic crisis, which, which is a need.

[Harry]

One of the major needs. If that actually worked. That's not even that. That's not even dystopian really. Isn't that you could, you could stabilize the earth with fewer people, using fewer resources.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Harry]

Without anyone dying. Just naturally aging now.

[Doug]

No, I think you can make.

[Harry]

AI is creating an abundant.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Let's tie to a specific example. Japan right now has too many old people because the demographics, there's not enough young people. Traditionally, the way old people were supported by young working people generating income and taxes that can then support older people through social programs or retribution or whatever, that isn't happening. So that structure that has worked through most of time to varying degrees is not going to be there for Japan. They can't rely on. On the young people generating economic value. But if every young person was not even say every young person. If the young people can put together a hospital which is fully automated and those people can go in and fully be taken care of for a 100th or thousandth of the cost, you might be able to maintain and hopefully will the same degree of quality even with a third of the amount of young people. So there's a very real world in which AI is in. Automation in particular is like a huge portion that. And we talked about with healthcare in previous episodes is what allows countries to overcome this.

[Doug]

I think it's necessary.

[Aiden]

Overcome meaning while their population is continuing to go down. Right. They're like, they aren't suffering immensely as they like dry up as a puddle, you know, into like nothing. It's. It's wild. Dude. Who would have thought this is like going to be one of the biggest problems of our lifetime is people. Not.

[Doug]

A little bit.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Harry]

Like the commentary.

[Doug]

A lot of it.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Doug]

But like, dude, we grew up like.

[Aiden]

That was like over popular. There's too many people. Everybody was, you were considered, you know, like backwards. If you had like seven or eight kids, what. And now it's crazy.

[Doug]

I think one, two things I want to say to help ground this. Maybe if you're listening to this and you still don't quite understand why this is a problem, and I wanted to use two, like real life examples that I could think of is in the US we have Social Security. And Social Security is a huge part of what supports older people in their, in their life. Right. You pay into Social Security and then that system pays you back out later when you're around retirement age. And that money helps supplement your, your life because you're unable to work as much as you once did in. If this problem continues, eventually we'll reach a point where the reason Social Security functions right now is because I, a young productive person who can work a lot, is healthy, doesn't have any big interruptions in my, in my day to day life. I generate income and I pay Social Security. And then that gets used to pay.

[Harry]

Out to the people who are old now to generate wealth for the old.

[Aiden]

Yeah, okay, yeah, they don't need us.

[Harry]

And one of the jobs.

[Doug]

But if this problem continues with no changes to how, you know, society is structured, eventually we'll reach a point where all of the old people who are less healthy can't work as much, can't do as much, are more reliant on. They are people that are more reliant on that Social Security income. There's just less young people below them generating the income necessary to fund their Social Security. Okay, that's an example of.

[Aiden]

Well, and that is the case right now. People are aware right now in America there are now not enough young people to support the needs of Social Security. That's why it costs money every year. A few decades ago, Social Security or a decade or two, I think Social Security made money every year like it saved money because there were more young people than old people. As that is reversing it now costs more and costs hundreds of billions of dollars every year in order to fund and take care of old people because there aren't enough young people supporting them. This is happening right now and is a huge catastrophe.

[Doug]

And the example I wanted to add on top of this is say you're listening to this and you're like, like the American system and its capitalist tendencies need to be burned down and we need to restructure all of the way society works to begin with. Okay, let's just say you're right. About all of that. Imagine. Imagine because no matter how society is structured, we all need to.

[Aiden]

That's mine.

[Harry]

Oh, I drink all your water.

[Aiden]

What the. I was wondering.

[Doug]

That's a giant bottle.

[Harry]

Still got my.

[Aiden]

Sitting next to you. There's.

[Harry]

What the fuck? I will not go thirsty at all. While you will definitely be.

[Aiden]

Can I trickle down economics?

[Doug]

No, he just keeps the second bottle. Imagine that scenario. Just imagine you're. You're right about everything. I made up that you said you. We still need to eat food. And we've reached a point now, maybe we're 100 years in the future where there's so many old people and they're sick, they're weaker, they can't work the farm as long and they can't work the farm very well. And a lot of them are just out for gaps of time and unavailable to work on it at all. There's only a disproportionate amount of young people left to work the farm and make the food. And there isn't enough food to go around because of that. And back to what we were talking about with AI productivity earlier, or just machine productivity in general, right. The idea is that we need enough ways to supplement the remaining young people that exist to allow them to produce more for the old people that are outnumbering them drastically at that stage. So regardless of how you engage with this issue politically or how you imagine an ideal society functions, the base problem of a lot of old people and not a lot of young people still affects you in some way. And that's why everybody, as far as I understand, there's so many governments around the world trying to address this in some way because they know what the long term consequences is of leaving this.

[Harry]

Can I end on a funny story? Because we're out of time and it's. You mentioned the, the quirk of the world is that 30, 40 years ago, the, the main topic was the opposite. Everyone was like, we, we are, we're going to be overpopulated. We're going to run out of resources. This is a problem. We have to get birth rates down. We need to. Especially in a country like China. China. China was the one talking about how we're getting overpopulated. We have too many. It's a big scare. And they instituted the one child policy. And because at the time it was more preferential to have a boy more likely to be economically beneficial to your family, they ended up with a lot more boys. And now they have this, this declining population with a massive glut of like 30 to 50, 50 year old boys. Boys or 20 to 50, you know, people in this range. And so what they're dealing with is this, this link you can bring up where there's just not enough women in China. And so now they, the alliance between Russia and, and China that's existed has been fortuitous because there is a glut of women in Russia. Russia has a. Over. I don't know what the ratio is but it's, it's slightly more women than men and China has more women than women. So there's like this, this marriage happenstance.

[Aiden]

Between Russia feudal lords forging alliances through blood.

[Harry]

One princess and prince. It's like, you know, hundreds of thousands of Chinese men of alliances are, are forging this alliance in actual matrimony. That I thought was a really funny, interesting article.

[Doug]

I wonder what the numbers are. Does it have any stats on like I don't know if there's any people are doing this.

[Harry]

The numbers they have are all around if you ask Chinese men because there's, it's a competitive market for Chinese women. They have to pay massive dowries often for, for when getting married and they don't want to pay that. They know it's not affordable so they're like going to Russia to try and find cheaper. You can see the rural areas.

[Aiden]

Do you think China is going to put a tariff on Russian women?

[Harry]

Well, I think they want the marriage, marriages to be honest but well, it.

[Aiden]

Depends where they move because Russia is the same thing. Russia's massively struggling with the demographic collapse. That's one of the theories about Putin's interest in Ukraine because you have a bunch of ethnically Russian people there and you can stave off this problem by absorbing them. I mean that's a legitimate, that's a legitimate incentive of okay, we're losing ethnic Russians at a crazy rate. Let's, let's gobble up this big area.

[Doug]

With a bunch of them invading for the historical ethnostate.

[Harry]

This is funny. I'm just reading this part now. I didn't see it. Russia has 10 million more men than women, which is why Chinese men think oh there's a lot of opportunity there. But in fact the truth of it is that Russian men just die a lot younger like old men because they have high Death rates over 40 more women than men. Yeah, 10 million more women than men. But most of that is old women because they just live longer because Russian men often die for whatever reason. Oh yeah, consume.

[Aiden]

It's yeah, but alcohol and war.

[Harry]

Yeah. I would say alcohol and war.

[Aiden]

Both not good for longevity. Longevity.

[Harry]

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting story. Clearly. We have solved the birth rate crisis again. We've done it. Talked about it twice, but I think.

[Aiden]

Well, we solved it with that new AI job Aiden's gonna be doing.

[Harry]

It doesn't solve it. I don't know how to tell you. That does not solve it. What's.

[Aiden]

Aiden is pleasuring hundreds of politicians at once. Finally done.

[Doug]

No, they'll be relieved.

[Harry]

It doesn't.

[Aiden]

I don't see if you. I don't get what you're. I feel like you're Then be able to. They'll then be able to make better decisions about how to solve the birth.

[Harry]

Next week we'll do a segment where babies come from. I'll be the presenter because I have some questions.

[Aiden]

Dude. And the follow up question. How will AI make a baby?

[Doug]

How?

[Harry]

But. Good episode, folks.

[Aiden]

Thanks for watching everybody. We'll solve all your problems next week too.

[Doug]

I'm not shaking you.

[Harry]

Okay, well, I'm gonna punch you in the mouth again. You're on my style.

[Doug]

I show up. It was basketball.