2498 - Latin America’s Hidden History; The AI Job Crisis Arrives w/ Greg Grandin, Brian Merchant

Summary

Podcast Summary: Majority Report with Sam Seder

Title: The Majority Report with Sam Seder
Episode: 2498 - Latin America’s Hidden History; The AI Job Crisis Arrives
Release Date: May 15, 2025
Guests: Greg Grandin, Brian Merchant
Host: Sam Seder
Description: Entertaining Daily Politics, Award-Winning Long-Form Interviews, and Irreverent, Independent Analysis.

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1. Introduction

In Episode 2498 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, host Sam Seder delves into two significant topics: the often-overlooked history of Latin America and the burgeoning AI-driven job crisis. Joining him are Greg Grandin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian discussing his latest work, and Brian Merchant, a technology reporter addressing the immediate impacts of artificial intelligence on the workforce.

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2. Latin America’s Hidden History with Greg Grandin

Greg Grandin offers an insightful analysis of his new book, America: A New History of the New World. He explores the deep-seated historical tensions between the United States and Latin America, emphasizing the region's crucial role in shaping political and legal modernism.

Key Discussion Points:

• US Centrism vs. Latin American Perspective: Grandin highlights the US-centric view of "America," arguing that Latin Americans also identify as American, thereby challenging the United States' unilateral claim to the term. He states, “Francisco was the first American Pope because Argentina is in America...” [23:29].

• Impact of Colonialism: The conversation delves into the catastrophic consequences of the Spanish conquest, noting that within a century, up to 90% of the New World’s population was decimated through violence and disease. Grandin remarks, “The devastation is kind of incomprehensible... the greatest human mortality rate in history” [27:50].

• Human Rights and Modernism: Grandin discusses the intellectual awakening during the conquest, where figures like Father Bartolomé de las Casas began advocating for the recognition of Native Americans' humanity and rights. “De las Casas was one of the first people to come up with the idea that all human beings are one,” he explains [37:20].

• Constitutional Differences: A significant contrast is drawn between Latin American constitutions, which incorporate social rights such as health care and education, and the U.S. Constitution’s emphasis on individual freedoms. “Latin America is deeply committed to a vision of citizenship that includes social rights,” Grandin asserts [43:09].

• Modern Implications: The legacy of these historical debates continues to influence contemporary policies and the United States’ expansionist tendencies. Grandin notes, “The commitment to individual rights has become a religion in the United States” [51:33].

Notable Quote:

“The Spanish Conquest, for all of its brutality, was carried out and legitimated by the Catholic Church... laying the foundation for what we think of as political modernism.” – Greg Grandin [32:25]

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3. The AI Job Crisis Arrives with Brian Merchant

Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, presents a compelling argument that the AI-driven job crisis is not a future concern but a present reality. He shares firsthand accounts and data illustrating how AI technologies are already displacing workers across various industries.

Key Discussion Points:

• Immediate Impact of AI on Employment: Merchant cites examples like Duolingo’s shift to an “AI-first” strategy, resulting in the layoffs of writers and translators who were integral to the platform’s success. “They fired us six months ago or a year ago, and now they're replacing what we used to do with AI” [55:34].

• Legislative Challenges: The conversation covers the Republican-led efforts to block state-level AI regulations, highlighting the influence of tech industry lobbyists in shaping federal policies. Merchant states, “These AI companies are providing other corporations with this logic that they can automate or replace their workers” [62:49].

• Economic Indicators: Merchant references alarming trends in unemployment rates among recent college graduates, suggesting that AI is usurping entry-level positions traditionally filled by young, educated workers. “Historically recent college grads are among the most employable, but this number is declining” [65:39].

• Technology vs. Regulation: The debate touches on how tech giants are pushing for minimal regulation, arguing that AI is essential for future economic growth while simultaneously undermining current labor markets. “OpenAI’s charter describes AGI as providing systems that can replace most humans” [75:07].

• Social Consequences: Merchant warns of broader societal impacts, including increased unemployment, loss of essential skills among younger generations, and the erosion of meaningful human connections in professions like therapy and healthcare. “Therapists are on a hunger strike in L.A. because their work is being automated” [78:18].

Notable Quote:

“If firms aren't just hiring as much anymore and are giving those jobs to AI, we risk a condition where a group of people can't find employment and all the attendant social issues that come with that.” – Brian Merchant [68:28]

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4. Conclusion

Episode 2498 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder delivers a profound exploration of historical and contemporary issues shaping our world. Greg Grandin’s examination of Latin America’s historical struggles against US centrism provides valuable context for understanding present geopolitical tensions. Concurrently, Brian Merchant’s urgent portrayal of the AI job crisis underscores the immediate need for societal and legislative responses to technological advancements. Together, these discussions offer listeners a comprehensive view of the forces shaping both our past and our future.

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Notable Takeaways:

• The historical narrative of Latin America challenges the US-centric view of "America," emphasizing a shared yet contested identity.
• The colonization of the Americas led to profound demographic and cultural shifts, the effects of which persist in modern political and social structures.
• Artificial Intelligence is not just a future threat but a present reality, displacing workers and redefining labor markets across various industries.
• Legislative bodies and labor organizations must urgently address the ethical and economic implications of AI to prevent widespread unemployment and societal destabilization.

Quotes with Timestamps:

• Greg Grandin: “De las Casas was one of the first people to come up with the idea that all human beings are one.” [37:20]
• Brian Merchant: “They fired us six months ago or a year ago, and now they're replacing what we used to do with AI.” [55:34]
• Brian Merchant: “If firms aren't just hiring as much anymore and are giving those jobs to AI, we risk a condition where a group of people can't find employment and all the attendant social issues that come with that.” [68:28]

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For more detailed insights and ongoing discussions, listen to the full episode on Majority.FM.

Transcript

[Emma Vigeland]

You are listening to a free version of Majority Report with Sam Steder. To support the show and get another 15 minutes of daily program, go to Majority FM please.

[Sam Cedar]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Emma Vigeland]

It is Thursday, May 15, 2025. My name is Emma Diglund in for Sam Cedar and this is the the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize winning author, joining us to talk about his new book America A New History of the New World. And later in the show, Brian Merchant of the Blood in the Machine newsletter will join us to talk about the AI job crisis and how it's already here. Also on the program on the 77th anniversary of the ongoing Nafba, Israel escalates its bombing of Gaza for the second straight day and Trump once again floats US control of the Strip as a freedom Zone. Rashida Talib introduces a resolution to formally recognize the Nakba and AOC signs on that's good. Zoran endorsement when as well Trump wraps up his Middle east tour in the UAE after saying that he's lifting sanctions on Syria, which is a good thing, but apparently he didn't tell his own State Department I'm off the cuff. Trump also announced major weapons deals with Qatar, which I'm sure Israel's not too happy about, but they are probably happy to hear about how Trump's sanctions on the ICC are working. The International Criminal Court is reportedly completely blocked up because of the sanctions because they decided to hold Netanyahu accountable. American bioweapon J.D. vance wants to meet with the new Pope. Wear gloves Leo. The Supreme Court has been a Catholic.

[Greg Grandin]

Like what, four months? Wants to meet with two popes.

[Emma Vigeland]

A little suspicious the Supreme Court is hearing arguments this morning over Trump's attempt to overturn the constitutionally protected birthright citizenship that we all have. A nonpartisan congressional body finds the GOP tax cuts for the rich would add $2.5 trillion to the deficit. The DOJ is investigating United Healthcare for potential Medicare fraud. Where was Doge on that, huh? That's good though the National Weather Service is so crippled by Doge speaking of them that it may not be able to provide real time updates ahead of hurricane season. One of the South African white refugees Trump accepted into the country once posted Jews are dangerous. Mahmoud Khalil still locked up for supposed anti Semitism by this administration. It's a lie, obviously. And lastly, poor Mike Lawler. Trump has weighed in on the New York governor's race and he wants Elise Stefanik. All this and more on today's Majority Report or as I should say, the M. Majority Report. Hello to Russ, hello to Matt. We have a great show. I'm so excited to talk to Greg Grandin and also Brian Merchant, who both are wonderful authors. But let's start here. So yesterday there were hearings with the Senate Health, Education, labor and Pensions Committee and also the House Appropriations Committee and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And Health and Human Services was the subject. They these were hearings about the HHS budget and the layoffs of employees that have affected Health and Human Services ability to look after the health of the American public. They had some disastrous decisions, laying off folks that were supposed to be inspecting or tracking bird flu and then having to hire them back because of the crisis.

[Greg Grandin]

That's surveillance. We don't want surveillance on fl.

[Emma Vigeland]

There's they're also cutting in the House bill food safety inspections. I thought this was about making America healthy again.

[Greg Grandin]

That means a different oil at the burger for the burgers in the fast food place.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And we'll play this clip of Bernie Sanders questioning RFK Jr. Which I think really shows the contrast in a left wing versus a libertarian perspective on health, which is basically what RFK Jr embodies at this point.

[Greg Grandin]

And much like a rich person that doesn't want to pay for your cancer.

[Emma Vigeland]

Treatments perspective, and much like libertarians on war, for example, or on the military industrial complex, sometimes we can find a little bit of alignment. But overall the visions are entirely different. One is a humanist vision and one is a at least in the context of foreign policy isolationists, sometimes eugenicist. Yeah, we may agree that we don't want to be in Afghanistan or something like that or we shouldn't send bombs to Israel. But if there's going to be a fork in the road after we come to that initial agreement, and I view this Bobby Kennedy stuff in a very similar vein, Here is Ben Cohen, the co founder of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream they sold. And I think they're a little upset right now with the business practices of the company they sold it to. But that's an aside for right now.

[Greg Grandin]

Unilever, the same place that bought Joe Rogan's company.

[Emma Vigeland]

Interesting. Here he is actually participating in protests against RFK Jr. And these cuts and tying it in with Gaza. And then you'll see him being interviewed by somebody as he leaves or is kicked out of the hearing.

[Greg Grandin]

Permitted. While the committee conducts its business. Capitol police are asked to remove the.

[Emma Vigeland]

Individuals from the Hearing room.

[Ben Cohen]

Move down the hallway. Ben, why are you getting arrested? Move down the hallway. Kills poor kids and gossip by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the U.S. keep going down.

[Emma Vigeland]

Keep going down the hallway.

[Ben Cohen]

How many days have they been starving in Gaza? Yeah, 70 times. Stop.

[Emma Vigeland]

Anthony, I need my shoes.

[Ben Cohen]

Ben, what are you calling for the.

[Emma Vigeland]

Congress and senators to do for Gaza?

[Ben Cohen]

Congress and the senators need to ease the disease.

[Emma Vigeland]

They need to let food into Gaza.

[Ben Cohen]

They need to let food to starving kids.

[Emma Vigeland]

What did you say in there?

[Ben Cohen]

I said that Congress is paying to bomb poor kids in Gaza and paying.

[Emma Vigeland]

For it by kicking poor kids off.

[Ben Cohen]

Medicaid in the US don't let them any closer.

[Emma Vigeland]

Don't let them any closer. Don't let them hear the truth.

[Greg Grandin]

What a clear message. And it comes from an ice cream guy. It'd be nice if, like, someone like Hakeem Jeffries could point out such a clear line. But he's bought off, so he can't make that direct comparison.

[Emma Vigeland]

Exactly. And that's part of why, you know, sometimes I've spoken about the deficit myth and I really am an admirer of Stephanie Kelton and her work is factually correct, but from a political map. As a political matter, I don't necessarily think that we need to emphasize that because this is just an age old adage, like. Or it's. Well, I guess it's not age old, but Tupac said it. They've got money for wars, but they can't feed the poor. I'm paraphrasing a little bit.

[Greg Grandin]

Guns are butterfly.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And there. And that's. GT Here had a great piece, I think about that. Gosh, it must have been a few months ago employing that because I do think, like people don't. You can, you can tap into people's experience of where are my tax dollars going towards. And if you make people connected to where their tax dollars are going to, then you can have a more engaged citizenry where they're more involved in the idea that, like, wait, hey, why are we. Why is Trump proposing adding to the military budget with, like, this historic increase to put us at World War II levels when we're not at that level of warfare? Why are we cutting health care for nearly 80 million Americans?

[Greg Grandin]

There are choices being made.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. Because I think Americans can understand the concept of a budget and how we allocate our resources. And creating that contrast has real political salience. I think it's a huge reason why so many people stayed home in 2024. Is because they saw on their phones what their tax dollars were going towards. And it is this starving baby or this teenage boy who lost both of his limbs.

[Greg Grandin]

Bombs dropped on tents. It's obscene.

[Emma Vigeland]

And. And that is what the tangible results of what government is doing look like to people. But when you can say, why don't we reorient ourselves towards giving people health care with those funds, that's when you begin to speak to people where they are. And this clip by Bernie Sanders is such a contrast here of that vision.

[Greg Grandin]

Just one note on this protest. Jason Rosenberg points out huge shout out to the veteran AIDS activists that disrupted this hearing as well. RFK Jr. Is an AIDS denialist who just last month gutted the CDC's Division of HIV Prevention and eliminated the entire workforce at the Office of Infectious Diseases and HIV AIDS Policy. I mean, that's just another just obscenely grotesque element of RFK's just despicable legacy, frankly.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And here is Bernie Sanders laying out the different visions of health care and what we can use our resources for. In comparison to Bobby Kennedy, 68,000 people.

[Bernie Sanders]

A year die because they don't get to a doctor when they should. Is health care a human right? Will you work with us to guarantee health care to every man, woman, and child in America? Well, I think you're asking two different questions. You're asking a philosophical question about whether it is a human, like a constitutional right. As an attorney, I would say that it's not a right of a kind that we otherwise enshrine in the Constitution because health care costs your neighbor money.

[Emma Vigeland]

Can you pause? Health care.

[Greg Grandin]

Get your hand out of my pocket. The money I've inherited.

[Emma Vigeland]

Health care costs your neighbor money. Now. Now we're back. Yep. This is libertarianism, but yep. Bernie didn't ask if it was a civil right. Bernie didn't ask if it was a civil right. He asked if it was a human right, which is a very different thing. Go back a little bit. Just want to point out that slight.

[Greg Grandin]

Of let's pretend like everyone wants to get so philosophical. No, this is a policy question. Should health care be guaranteed by our government or not? We don't need to, like, think about what was in Thomas Jefferson's head about this.

[Bernie Sanders]

Yeah, man, woman, and child in America. Well, I think you're asking two different questions. You're asking a philosophical question about whether it's very practical, like a constitutional right. As an attorney, I would say that it's not a right of a kind that we otherwise enshrine in the Constitution because healthcare costs Your neighbor money. If I smoke cigarettes for 20 years, I make that choice, which is my choice. I don't mean to, you know, I don't have a lot of time, so I just.

[Greg Grandin]

Thank you.

[Bernie Sanders]

But I am here if you ask a question, if you're asking me a philosophical question, no, you know, give you a thoughtful answer within 30 seconds. Yeah, it's a problem. It's not like freedom of speech, which costs, you know, every. But every other country.

[Greg Grandin]

Mr. Secretary, I would just Google what RFK's freedom of speech costs, say people in American Samoa and how he runs away from that, but I'll just let it play.

[Bernie Sanders]

It's not like freedom of speech, which costs, you know, everybody, but every other country. Mr. Secretary, every other country guarantees health.

[Ben Cohen]

Care to all people.

[Bernie Sanders]

As a white should we as Americans? The objective is to get Americans the level of health care that they want. The choice which Americans want. What, America don't want the choice to be uninsured. Well, but they don't want the choice to die because they don't get to a doctor. Americans prefer private insurance to other insurance sources.

[Greg Grandin]

Yeah, we know what that sky is. Come on, folks.

[Emma Vigeland]

He's lying at the end there. That's actually not true. Medicare and Social Security. Well, Medicare is extremely, extremely popular. And if he wants to talk about how there's scarce resources, I don't agree with that. We now have wealth concentration at the very top that could be clawed back to fund health care for even people that, that Bobby Kennedy would deem as takers of everybody else's health care. Like if you smoke cigarettes your whole life or like, you know, if you're like Bobby Kennedy and you engage in recreational drug use, like of heroin and things like that. I guess he would think if he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth taking vacations all the time, right. That, that, that would preclude him from getting health care in the future because he didn't take care of his body when he was young. How dare he ask for health care.

[Ben Cohen]

Later on people a level of health.

[Greg Grandin]

Care that they'd like.

[Emma Vigeland]

But if we're talking about what is the most efficient way, if you're saying there's a limited number of resources and that human rights, freedom of speech, that doesn't affect your neighbor. I don't know if that's necessarily true. Perhaps later we'll talk about how Joe Rogan thinks that Kanye's extremely anti Semitic song should be allowed to go everywhere, but Medicare spends up to seven times less than private insurers. On administrative costs. It is a more efficient system by definition. One, because it's not profit motivated. Two, because there is nobody in between you and Medicare. Private insurers act like middlemen. They act like the mafia where they take a cut because they are the gatekeepers between you and your health care. It doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be that way. And what Bernie Sanders is showing there is the hollowness of the make America healthy again mantra as a political movement, whatever that means is because Kennedy says it right there. Well, it shouldn't be a human right because if you make the wrong choices, if you had an addiction to cigarettes or you ate the wrong food, according to that freak, hey, your shit out of luck.

[Greg Grandin]

It's a health movement for wealthy people that. I mean, the way he says it costs your neighbor money is. Exactly. That's everything. That's all that matters to these people. People, they don't want everyone to be healthy because they want people to live fulfilled lives. They want people to be healthy because they think it'll lower their taxes. And it's really gross.

[Emma Vigeland]

And to see him say this as a Kennedy too, like given how LBJ presided over the passage of Medicare and that was a part of his, his uncle's legacy to. And given how his father ran his campaign and became more radicalized and was more closely associated with labor unions later in his life. I mean, I don't know, it's such a bastardization of that memory, but that's for him to live with, I guess. And his siblings have said similar things to me. With that said, we're going to be speaking to Greg Grandin in just a second. But first, a word from some of our sponsors. Have you searched for something embarrassing on the Internet? I know I have. Maybe you use incognito mode on your browser, but did you know that incognito mode in and of itself is not enough to hide your browsing history? You got to check the fine print on these things. All of your online activity is still 100% visible to third parties unless you use ExpressVPN. Thank you to ExpressVPN for supporting the Majority report. And we have an offer for you. Visit expressvpn.com majority and you can get an extra four months free without ExpressVPN. These third parties can still see every website that you visit, even when you're in incognito mode. And you got to know by now, don't trust these big tech people. It's been coming out in These antitrust suits. How duplicitous they can be your Internet service provider, your mobile network provider, the admins of your WI fi network. They can see the websites that you visit. But ExpressVPN reroutes 100% of your traffic and hides your IP address through secure encrypted servers so third parties cannot see your browsing history. It works on all devices, phones, laptops, tablets and more. Just one button you gotta tap. You turn it on and then you're protected. It is that easy. ExpressVPN is a must for me when I was just traveling over the weekend. Your airport Wi fi if you got go to do some work at a coffee shop like I like to do on occasion, always flip it on ExpressVPN to make sure that I'm private and protected. Protect your online privacy today by visiting expressvpn.com majority that's E X P R E S s v p n.com Majority and you can get an extra four months free. ExpressVPN.com Majority and lastly, Manicura honey is just it. It's. It's essential. I use it just take a spoonful when I have a sweet tooth, especially because I'm trying to eat healthier right now. But I've also used it off label for things like zits. I get the occasional cold sore. I hate admitting this, but that's the truth. And Manicura honey off label, but it's a part of my routine and it's one of the only things that helps in those instances. It's something simple and delicious to add to your wellness routine. It's rich, creamy and has the most delicious honey that you've ever had. Manicora honey is ethically produced by Manicura's master beekeepers in remote forests of New Zealand. Manicura honey contains powerful nutrients to support immunity and gut health. And the bees collect the nectar from the manuka trees in New Zealand. The nectar is then packed with bioactives and the honey that is produced has three times as more antioxidants and prebiotics than your average honey. A special antibacterial compound called MGO also comes from the nectar of the tea tree. Manicora Third party tests every single harvest for MGO and makes these results available through their QR system. It is a game changer. All you need is one heaped teaspoon every morning to get the most out of the amazing bioactives in Manuka. Additional usage throughout the day is completely fine, especially helping to cut out other sweeteners those chemically sweeteners. You don't need that anymore. You got Manicura honey. Thanks to Manicura for supporting the majority report. Now it's easier than ever to try Manicura honey. Head to manicura.com majority to get $25 off the starter kit, which comes with an MGO 850 manuka honey jar, five honey travel sticks, a wooden spoon and a guidebook. That's M A N U k o r a.com Majority for $25 off your starter kit. Thanks Manicora. You can get your $25 off by going your starter kit by going to manicora.com Majority all right, quick break. When we come back, we'll be joined by Greg Grandin. It we are back and I'm thrilled to be joined now by Greg Grandin, professor of history at Yale and a Pulitzer Prize winning authority. His new book, America A New History of the New World is out now. Greg, thanks so much for coming on the show.

[Ben Cohen]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of course. And I heard you, you've been making the rounds on this awesome book. People really should check it out. You were on Chapo. I listened to that a little bit and I heard you responding to, well, I guess it hadn't happened yet, but the new pope being selected. And now we know. Do we have that tweet from Gustavo Petro? So I think this is a pretty good entryway into our conversation and to what the theme of your book is. And, and, and here is Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, responding to this tweet that said that Robert Prevost becomes the first American pope. This is the guy from Chicago. And Petro responds, the first American pope is Francisco, the first, meaning Pope Francis, who just passed away, who was from Argentina. And is this not so emblematic of what you've written about how U.S. and North American centric the branding of America is?

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[Ben Cohen]

I mean, the title of the book is America Medica. And sometimes hosts have trouble saying that second word.

[Emma Vigeland]

I have trouble speaking any other language.

[Ben Cohen]

So forgive me, you know, and yes, of course, because Latin Americans understand themselves as American and the United States was United States of America. And this, you know, the politicization of the name is a theme of the book. It's not the only theme of the book. There's larger arguments related to Latin America's role in the creation of kind of political and legal modernism. But yes, the competition over who gets to claim the name America and the kind of provincialism of the United States to think of itself as America, as only America is always constantly on display. The Gulf of America, I mean, put an accent on it. And it's the Gulf of America. And aside from nobody would have a problem with it in Latin America. So yes, Francis was the first American Pope because Argentina is in America and Pope Bob or Leo is the second American Pope. But it's even more interesting. I mean his maternal grandparents, maternal grandfather, I mean, it's so vague and ambiguous. It is profoundly anti maga. His paternal grandfather was maternal grandfather was either from the Dominican Republic, Haiti or Louisiana. It's unclear. He's, you know, there's documents indicating that he was born in one of those three places. So the greater Caribbean and of course Dominican Republic in Haiti is the island of Hispaniola. And that's where the conquest started in many ways. So the history is very deep and.

[Emma Vigeland]

Just the history of conquest. You do begin your book speaking about the conquest of the Americas and I want to get to that. But from an overarching view, the US centrism really just feels like capitalism to be overly simplistic about it. But it's like that's where the center of capitalism is. And so that must be where the center of the world is. And there you go.

[Ben Cohen]

Well, that's true. I mean, there is no country like. I mean this in many ways speaks to my previous book, the End of the Myth and the United States and the centrality of expansion. United States is like capitalism. It has to expand or dies. And as soon as limits are placed on it, it turns inward and on itself. And I think that that's what's happening with the current polarization and deepening crisis that we're in. But yeah, I think no other polity in world history has the political dynamics so overlaid the economic dynamics of capitalism so neatly. So yes, America is America, you know, but, but, but all the new world is America in the sense that the United States capitalism, you know, the United States has relied on, has expanded into Latin America. The first overseas kind of Mexico was the first nation building project after the Civil War. We turned Mexico into the, you know, a major exporter of raw material integrated into the US economy. So the, you know, the heartland of the west of the frontier isn't just within the boundaries of the United States, it spills into Mexico. And that's why the relationship with Mexico is so fraught and so fascinating.

[Emma Vigeland]

And so that's, I think, a good opportunity to move back to when this all began to when conquest and colonization of the Americas began. And there's this really rich dichotomy you explore between Latin American humanism and the dehumanization that was involved in the conquest of the Americas. Can you draw on that and we can even just more broadly talk about the history. How many were killed in the conquest of the Americas by the English and the Spanish, et cetera?

[Ben Cohen]

Yeah, well, first it was the Spanish, right? The Spanish conquered the New World, you know, first, first the Caribbean, then Mexico, and then the Andes, and then spreading outward in the, in the early 1500s, after Columbus, obviously in 1492. And the, the, the, the devastation is kind of incomprehensible. Demographers imagine that that was somewhere between 90 and 100 million people living in the New World in the 1490s and the early 1500s. Within the century, 90% were gone. And they were gone. You know, at first it was conquistador violence. And the cruelty of the violence, the crew was just beyond also comprehension. The, the punishment, the maiming, the mutilation, the killing of children, the roasting of children, feeding them to Spanish dogs so that we have the taste of flesh, the enslavement of Native Americans so that they would extract gold and then silver and die for pearls and then, then eventually tend to the fields. You know, that was the first wave of demographic collapse. And then in the subsequent generations and decades, it was, it was the diseases, European diseases that would, you know, ravage Mexico or the Peruvian highlands, you know, a million people at a time, million people here. So that by the time you got to 1600, 90% of those 90 million people were gone. It was just, it was just. Demographers call it the greatest human mortality rate, mortality event in the history. And what I do. And just to. Just to build on your point about humanization and dehumanization. That's exactly right. That's the tension of the book. Because the Spanish Conquest, for all of its brutality, was carried out and legitimated by the Catholic Church, which pretended or understood itself to be universal, to be the bearer of universal history and the bearer of universal wisdom. And it had to justify itself. And of course, there were more than enough priests willing to justify what was going on. But there was a small minority that dissented. And the dissent was incredibly powerful. Within a couple of years, there was laying the foundation for what we think of as political modernism. There was critiques of the legitimacy and legality of the conquest. There was critiques, insistence that Native Americans were not subhuman, that all human beings descended from a single lineage, they were all equal, of the same community. There Was an argument that now narrowed the terms, the criteria by which war could be considered just almost to a sliver. Now, these were inconsequential in the short run, right? They didn't stop the suffering, but they were consequential in the sense that they built a kind of legacy of political legalism that gets taken up at different times. The British try to find a worker, and they want to both dismiss the Spanish conquest as illegal and find justification for their own. Own settlement, own settler colonialism, which, you know, begins in 1600s. And what happens there, of course, is they land in a place that's already devastated by the disease, right? They land in a place that they get there, and they're like, oh, look, where is everybody? Everybody's gone. Everybody. You know, because the plagues and diseases that already wiped out much of the North American coastal population. So the British could presume that, you know, they were discovering empty land or empty enough land, and that tension between a Spanish empire that agonized and grappled and debated over the nature of the humanity of Native Americans and debated over the legality of the conquest, and the British were just sure that every. They were happy, go lucky, and they were just positive that everybody. That everything they did was justified. That tension runs through the book and. Runs through the book through the wars of independence and then Latin American countries in that attempts to contain and control an expanding United States. So that's one of the tensions of the book.

[Emma Vigeland]

So it wasn't just the tension between a Catholic conquest vision and a. A Protestant Protestantism. It's also that, like the. The Spanish, they're the people in the group project that did all the work. And then the. I mean, not to compare genocide to homework assignment, but, yeah, it's a great question.

[Ben Cohen]

It's not. It wasn't just that there was an ideological difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. It was the social history in which those two empires and colonial states proceeded. Spain, having conquered an enormous mass of people presiding over a land of enormous resources, used those people to extract the wealth. They were the center of things. They were, you know, Native Americans, and then African Americans were the center of the Spanish empire, both materially in the sense that they extracted the wealth and. But also morally, because these debates went on about, you know, what they were the center of these moral debates. The British colonial project was more of a settler colonial project in the sense that they. They didn't. I mean, there was the fur trade, and, you know, I don't want to downplay how much labor Indians gave to White settlers, they gave plenty, they saved, they saved them plenty of times on those Thanksgivings, but, but for the most part, they pushed Native Americans to the frontier. And this, the settler project was one of evasion and denial. Of what?

[Emma Vigeland]

Ethnic cleansing versus active genocide. If you want to put it in modern terms, perhaps it makes a difference.

[Ben Cohen]

Whether your colonial genocide takes place at the beginning of the colonial project like it does in Spain, or if it takes place over the course of 300 years like it does with the British and doesn't end and the US which doesn't end until the late 19th century when the classification of the west like that makes a difference. And, and that led to the racial sharpness of the United States. The United States was forged in conquest. When the United States was created, its founders renovated, revitalized the doctrine of conquest and said it was legitimate. When Latin America was created, its founders looked back on that earlier critique of Spain and they delegitimized. They said the doctrine of conquest was no longer valid. And the reason they did that is because they were. There were seven independent republics on a crowded continent that had to learn how to live with each other. They came into being already a League of nations, already a United Nations. The United States came into being believing itself the only republic, the only peoples on empty or empty enough continent where they could just move west. And in moving west they revital. They Law professors in the United States taught the doctrine of conquest as a, as a legitimate principle of international law. Well into the 20th century, Latin Americans had began to repudiate the doctrine of conquest almost immediately. And respecting each other's boundaries and respecting the sovereignty and that tension. And then of course Latin America applies that critique to the United States in order to try to contain the United States States ultimately becomes what we call international law. What, what gets put into place after World War II, to put it as crudely and simply and quickly terms as possible, the liberal international order, the rules based order was pretty much all in place. All the principles of that order existed in Spanish America in the 1830s and 1840s. And that was the model and that was then globalized and, and, and which is now of course being taken apart.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And so that, that, that contrast and, and hundreds of years flatten right when we're looking at it from a history textbook. But if we're, we're looking. Your analysis lays bare how in 19th century North America Manifest Destiny were, that's, that's a driving force. But hundreds of years prior there was an intellectual and moral debate among the Spaniards and Even, I guess this is a good opportunity to talk about Father Bartolome de la Casas. Hey, all right, I'm almost there. So that central figure, right, is a way that you can, I think, analyze that contrast. Can you explain his legacy and. And his human rights writings?

[Ben Cohen]

He came over as a Spanish settler. His father sailed with Columbus. He imagined himself as. He was already a priest. And there was no necessarily a contradiction between being a priest and a settler and a merchant and a conqueror. And there's evidence that he participated in a number of pacifications of indigenous communities early on. He arrived in 1503. By 15, within 10 years, he had basically done a 180 degree turnaround in his moral worldview. And he came to see the conquest as illegitimate. He came to see that Native Americans were not natural slaves, a concept that the Spanish Christians borrowed from Aristotle to. To claim that. To claim that Indians were, you know, could be enslaved. He. He came up with this expression that all you. All humanity is one, or all humanity comes from the same lineage, meaning there was no difference from Native Americans and Europeans. And in some ways, it's the foundation of our concept of humanity, the slow creation of humanity, you know, an idea that all human beings are one. You know, it's a fragile idea. It's never applied, you know, perfectly obviously, but we. But it is a kind of foundation of political, modern thought. And De Las Casas was one of the first person to come up with it. And he wrote a book. He wrote, I mean, he wrote thousands and thousands of pages in Latin and Spanish. But one, you know, there was a brief excerpt that was published in Spain. The Spain, because of the printing press, was one of the first empires to actively publicize its atrocities. I mean, today we have TikTok, you know, we see what Israel's doing through TikTok and Twitter and Facebook, a different communications revolution. But Spain had the printing press, and there were many reasons why it printed, you know, these very graphic descriptions and not necessarily being critical of themselves, but Las Casas was. And Las Casas really presides over this moral revolution. He's not the only one. There's other Francisco Vittoria and there's Antonio Montesinos. There's a number of. A lot of them are Dominicans. There's also Franciscans. Later on, there's Jesuits. They were all associated with what's known as the Salamanca School, based on the University of Salamanca. And out of that school comes a number of arguments that we've already kind of rehearsed. One, the conquest is illegitimate. Two, all humanity is equal. Slavery is not a valid, you know, is, is illegal. All forms of slavery, Native Americans and chattel slavery. And two, the criteria for waging a just war is very narrow. You have to be attacked. And so these are all, all very kind of. The very kind of restrictive in. So the British is. The British are paying close attention to what the Spanish are debating, you know, and so I mean, there's a great document from 1609, the Virginia Company. And this is the, basically the company that funds the settlement of Jamestown and then later, and then later Plymouth and then they're sitting around and they're saying, should we maybe issue a proclamation saying what we hope to do in the Americas? And then they have this debate and they say, you know, the Spanish, the Spanish have been debating this for a century and they can't justify conquest and enslavement. Maybe it's better we don't say anything. You know, it's such a perfect example of evasion and denial, you know, understanding that what you're doing is basically illegal and then. And unjustifiable, not even in terms of Christian proselyte. So they, so, so, so that's one of the tensions in the book. You know, how that kind of evasion reproduces itself, you know, through, through Tom. People like Thomas Jefferson, you know, the things when, when, when, when the United States achieves independence from, from Great Britain. It, it, it's. It sees it's, it's for it's. And its predecessors, the settlers, the Puritans, as having done nothing wrong. Right. Independence is the fulfillment of seven Spanish Americans. Look back at the conquest and they understood their break from Spain as an atonement, as an attempt to redeem or make good on the carnage that the conquistadores dealt out against Native Americans. They were much more aware and attuned to, to the tragedies of history and the sufferings of history and to the sufferings caused by the colonial state. So that tension, I think, runs through the present. I mean, you could say the United States remembers nothing. Latin American gets, you know, United States remembers. Latin America remembers everything. The United States remembers nothing, you know, against everything.

[Emma Vigeland]

But how does that. And that's well said. How does that inform, say, different concepts of rights in Latin America versus the United States? We have a lot of freedoms from things as opposed to freedom to. Or guarantees for things. Right. I think that's an important distinction.

[Ben Cohen]

Yeah, thanks. That's a really wonderful question, Emma. And that is one of. That is another structuring tension with. Throughout the book we think of rights as either political or individual. The idea that, that a legitimate state is a state that restrains itself. And the US Constitution is a kind of the purest expression of this, that you know that the state shall not, shall not, shall not, you know, every individual, you create the greatest area of liberty possible for individual action, whether to speak, to assemble, to believe, some say to own guns. Things are debatable. There's nothing in the US Constitution that, except for one sentence that calls for a general, what calls for the defense of the general welfare, that imagines the state is acting to create virtue or to create a common good. Latin Americans. The other concept of rights is social rights. The idea that the state needs to take action in order to create a general welfare, the general welfare, and take action to basically capture surplus wealth and redistribute it in the form of a social wage, in the form of education, in the form of, say, health care, in this form of pensions and whatnot. And most countries in the world have a balance between individual rights and social rights written into their constitutions. Latin America was. Social rights were basically created in Latin America out of this complex that I've been talking about, this colonial Catholic complex. It's too complicated to explain right now, but I'll just say that the Mexican Constitution in 1917 was the first constitution that tried to balance social and individual rights, that said that it was a state's responsibility not just to restrain itself, but to actually take action. And defining citizenship not just as freedom to pursue one's interest, but as being guaranteed a living wage, guaranteed education, guaranteed health care, guaranteed the right to join a union. So those social rights. And Latin America is deeply committed to that vision of citizenship. So much so that even conservatives, normal conservatives operatives are okay with this, right? Like, you know, during the Cold War, even when the worst of the anti communist dictatorships were in place, they never wrote out of the constitutions. Even Chile, in finishing, didn't write out of the constitution the right to health care, the right to. The right to education. And so that tension runs through the book. And just, you know, to put, just to come back, you know, the U.S. constitution, the first Latin American constitution, let me put it this way, was in Venezuela in 1812. It was a failed republican state that was taken back by the Spanish very quickly. But they did write a constitution. The word social appears in that document nine times in the word society, something like 13 times. Neither one of those words appear in the U.S. constitution. There is no sense of social. And again, this goes back, as you said, to the conquest itself. Because there was a sense that the Conquistadores had broken free of society and they were the ones that were acting like animals. They were the ones that were sub once they were kind of free from all social restraint, they were subhuman. And the constitutions of Latin America were very clear to say that there is no such thing as individualism without society. You know, there is no such thing as humanity without society. They're mutually dependent. And that was there at the beginning of Spanish American independence.

[Emma Vigeland]

And we now see how durable that is because of the threats that those more humanist institutions have posed to the United states in the 19th and 20th century. Just to, since we have you for a limited time, to fast forward to more modern times where people will understand, like of course the death squads and US over the United States overturning democratically elected left wing leaders and our policy towards Cuba and even how that tradition is just dozens of miles off the shore of Florida, but not right here in the United States. Like what problems did that present for American capitalist expansion in the Western hemisphere given, you know, how resource rich Latin America is and, or I should say US capitalist expansion, how, how, how research rich these areas are and how the US went to great lengths to try to undo these traditions.

[Ben Cohen]

Yeah, you could think of the great arc of the Mexican Revolution, you know, the Mexican Revolution. The Constitution also allowed for agrarian distribution, land distribution and nationalization of property. And Mexico nationalized U.S. oil companies and to distribute an enormous amount of land that was owned by U.S. landowners. And that was all based on the notion that this was the fulfillment of the social rights obligation of the state, of the revolutionary state. Mexican Revolution was the first third world revolution against capitalism and its enabling myths. And it legitimated nationalization. You talk because the reason why I'm saying this is because you asked about the challenges to US capitalism. A lot of it comes out of Latin America. The migration of the notion of sovereignty from political sovereignty to economic sovereignty, that nations have a right to nationalize their resources, they have a right to nationalize their electric companies, even if it's owned by John Rockefeller. This all comes out of Latin America. And the pushback against that was a large part of the history of the 20th century. I also wanted to tell just very one quick story about the contradictions between social and economic rights and how it plays out in the Western hemisphere. Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. I don't know what, maybe, maybe it's called the Commonwealth. I can't keep up with what it's called.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's a colony, it's a colony of the United States.

[Ben Cohen]

Right? And so it had, but, but it has this Latin American political culture. So in 1954 they, they draw up a constitution, a commonwealth constitution that they was going to be part of. The, you know, the US is you know, all, you know, similar to state constitutions and they had a couple of clauses in there about the right to health care and the right to education as if they were Mexico or as if they were Cuba or something. So he hands on the Constitution for approval to the US Congress because the Congress has to approve it and they see these clauses and the conservatives freak out. So here's social rights literally sneaking in through the back door of US's informal empire. You know, Puerto Rico just was like three clauses that the state, that the Puerto Rican state provides, you know, education and money for the, you know, for the poor and, and, and, and, and, and, and medical care. And the US Congress forced, forced Mexico to strike those clauses from its constitution before they, before they let it, before they approved it. So that's a perfect example of the tension that I'm talking about. I mean I think the commitment to individual rights has become a religion in the United States and it's the core that binds the different constituencies of the right together. I think there's, you know, there's a fetish of individualism, you know, that individual rights that, you know, the right obviously is a wide spectrum and brings many groups together but a certain commitment that we've got to keep out this notion of social rights and from the United States is deep and I think it's what drives a lot of the anti immigration stuff.

[Emma Vigeland]

Lastly. Can you expand on that, Greg? We'll let you go after this.

[Ben Cohen]

Bringing with them conceptions of citizenship that entail the right education.

[Emma Vigeland]

But we let in all those Cuban immigrants. Sarcasm, sarcasm. Even, even the more right wing ones.

[Ben Cohen]

Yeah, there's a lot of Cuban immigrants that are in Nevada organizing unions. You know, they may hate Fidel Castro and think, or you know, you know, and the Cuban Revolution, but they still think that they have a right to a union. And they've been in, they, they, they, I have friends that, that organize in, in Nevada, in Las Vegas and la. And there's, there's, there's a bunch of Cuban migrants there that hate, you know, they're totally anti communist, but they, but they, but they're active in the union and they, you know, and yeah, give them a candidate that promises national health care and they'll vote for or her.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, we are praying for that as well. 2028 couldn't come fast enough. Although, I don't know, maybe if we're talking Josh Shapiro, then I'm going to be wishing for a different time. But we're hopeful here. Greg Grandin, Everybody should check out America, America, New History of the New World.

[Ben Cohen]

Can I hold it up? Can I hold it up?

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, my gosh, of course. Here you go. There it is. Visual.

[Ben Cohen]

It's a New York Times bestseller. Yes, it is, compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I mean, perhaps another Pulitzer is is in your future. Greg Grandin, thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

[Ben Cohen]

Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of course. You, too. All right, quick break, and when we come back, we'll be joined by our second guest, Brian Merchant, about AI and it is already taking our jobs. We are back. And we are joined now by Brian Merchant, technology reporter in residence at the AI NOW Institute, publisher of the newsletter Blood in the Machine. It's also the title of his 2023 book, previously the technology columnist for the LA Times and senior editor at Motherboard back then. Brian, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of course. So you wrote a piece for your substack, as I mentioned. It's called Blood in the Machine. It's called the AI Jobs Crisis is Here Now. So why were you compelled to write and indicate that the AI jobs crisis is already here, that people have been warning about for a while, and what is its impact looking like in the present?

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, well, I kind of wanted to dive into that question. Right. Like, I mean, it's, it's always put in the future tense, like what will I mean, for jobs, what is going to happen? We how it's it's sort of positioned as this unknowable thing. But over the last two years, I have been sort of reporting on and talking to people who are dealing with sort of this frontline impact. And even though it's not necessarily sort of being tracked on like a macroeconomic level, we need more good data on this. I just I've had enough sort of anecdote data. I've done enough investigative work. I've talked to so many workers who are impacted by this stuff that I decided I just needed to start putting this all together and to formulate a theory of what is happening now. And sort of the most recent catalyst was the fact that I'm sure folks maybe saw in the news that Duolingo had announced that it was going to be again, like in the Future, it was going to be an AI first company and that they're going to start phasing out contractors and writers and translators. And I soon heard from actual writers and say, there's nothing future tense about this. They've already let us all go, all of the writers and translators, people who sort of have made duolingo in this quirky language learning app into a success. And that's what people love about it. We're gone. Like they fired us six months ago or a year ago, and now, and now they're replacing what we used to do with AI. And I've heard stories like this in the video game industry, in illustration, in the animation industry. And so it's enough to say, look, the AI companies are providing other corporations with this logic, this idea that they can automate or replace their workers, whether or not the technology is ready or it actually can replace the workers. Sometimes it doesn't matter. They can just take that logic and then say, well, this is what we wanted to do anyways. We wanted to get rid of you. Or maybe this is a useful way for us to say, all you pesky workers who may be asking for raises or better conditions, well, we can replace you if we want to yet. So don't get too, you know, aggressive or, you know, or demanding for better conditions. And I think the best example of the way that this is manifesting is just looking at what's happened with doge, right? How are they justifying, you know, a lot of this work when they go into a new agency like the General Services Administration or now even, you know, just about everywhere. But that started with the gsa and they said, we're going to do an AI first strategy right now. And that is not necessarily true. So for this piece that I also spoke to an 18F worker who was one of the technological services department workers who was let go when the Elon, Musk and Doge completely wiped out that entire agency and said, you know, this is part of our AI for a strategy. And he saw the AI tools that they're actually planning on using in the agency and he's like. And it was laughable. He said, there's no way that this.

[Emma Vigeland]

Thing is ready for the technology is not there. The technology. But. But like, so the Republicans right now are debating their budget bill, and currently they're proposing this part of the budget bill, which is just thrown in there clearly by these special interests that says so much for states rights. The Republicans want to use the federal government to block states in the United States, even if they have state law from regulating AI for 10 years. And what's so crazy about what you're describing is Duolingo is firing these people with this, like, AI, that's not the technology isn't there. But what is there is built on from culling from the work of human beings prior to this 100%.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, and that's what. And we're good. So the, you know, people often say, well, which is. It is, you know, AI, you know, so scary that it's. That it's going to replace us all and we need to prepare for that, or does it suck and is something that we shouldn't worry about? But the answer is it can be both, and it is both because it is being used as the tool to do these things, as an excuse to do these things, and it can do immense damage in the short term. You look at a company like Klarna, which is this fintech company, this Swedish company that was like one of the first major companies to like go all in on AI and like, really be a cheerleader. So much so that OpenAI is using like quotes and testimonials on its own web page.

[Emma Vigeland]

And I think Klarna just did a deal with DoorDash so that you can do installment payments for your lunch, which is going to just completely. We just hit a record credit card debt a few months ago, just to give people a sense of how people are getting by just putting it on their cards right now, putting it on.

[Sam Cedar]

Their cards, you know, breaking down sort of, you know, all of these, all of these structures and these, and these jobs, right? Like, DoorDash is the model that kind of predates AI. So it's useful to bring that into the conversation, I think, because if you want to look at what OpenAI and the AI companies are doing, it's like what Uber did on steroids, right? Arguing that, you know, that they need special treatment, that you should. It should get rid of regulations that govern, say, taxi work in cities. But now these AI companies are going right to the source. They're going to. They're saying, you know what? We've mustered enough power, we've got enough buddies in Congress and I, you know, the thing about this moment is it's not just special interest, it's actually the oligarchic capture of, of Congress and the federal sort of level. The Trump administration itself is now run by people who have a vested interest in seeing AI companies take root. So we have this concentration of power and they're saying, why don't we just Go to Congress and see if we can ban all lawmaking at the state level. This is the right, the party that just last summer was like championing states rights, and now they're saying, we want, we're going to ban your ability to legislate on this hugely impactful technology at all. And they're sliding it into a budget reconciliation bill. And I, I've never seen anything like this. Right. Again, it's like Uber on steroids. Like, this is, this technology is too important. It's so game changing. We can't have anything getting in the way. And just the fact that this might even pass is, I think is just yet another one of these reflections of this moment and how much, how much power sort of, you know, the tech industry wields in this administration and this Republican Congress.

[Emma Vigeland]

And I wonder if that crypto money, the record amount of crypto money that came into the 2024 election is also just AI money. I mean, these are the same players. There's the same people. They, they're all, they're all getting rich off of AI and crypto.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. Marc Andreessen, who is one of the biggest sort of, you know, crypto investors through Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm, is also huge into AI. Every single VC is big into AI now. And his fingerprints are all over this, this, this, this new law. There's a strong argument to be made that Andreessen now is just as influential as Musk is in the Trump administration and in the gop. And he has this little tech manifesto that came out last year that sort of is the framework for arguing the, that, you know, regulation should be done away with except for some very basic things. And you can see that in when like JD Vance goes to Paris and he makes this blustery speech about how AI is American, AI is going to dominate. And then now we see it in this bill that's used, that's, that's justifying, you know, trying to wipe away even the capacity for states to write laws that pertain to AI.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, and Marc Andreessen, it's funny you mentioned that. I guess it was last, last week he was saying how there's one job that's too important for AI to take. Brian, you must have seen this quote. Why don't you tell the audience what that was?

[Sam Cedar]

Three guesses. Yeah. And the first, you know, I mean, what, what is the one job? It's the venture capitalist.

[Emma Vigeland]

Venture capitalists. I mean, look, you know, we have nuclear scientists, we have people trying to cure disease and they can all be replaced by artificial intelligence.

[Greg Grandin]

Say if venture capitalists can't be replaced by it, then neither can roulette player.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, well, I think that they've actually done studies on this that like, that just sort of did actually pit sort of. I don't know if it was a vc, but an investment banker, you know, against sort of just like an automated system. And like the automated systems, like, do they win? They make more money. But of course, that's immaterial. Right. Who gets automated and who doesn't is all a question of power and very little else.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. Let's pull up this graph you cite in your piece, and it's pulling from Derek Thompson's writing in the Atlantic. Here is a, here's this graph. I guess it's from this one must be from the Atlantic here, where you can see the unemployment for recent college graduates. Just, I mean, take a look at that. Obviously the COVID pandemic is a huge driver of that going below zero at this point, but we're in a worse situation in 2025.

[Greg Grandin]

Describe for the audio folks what we're seeing here too.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, Actually, Brian, maybe you can, as somebody who's maybe more number literate than me. Math literate. Graph literate.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. So this graph points out a really disconcerting trend for, for, for one major reason, and that's historically recent college grads, like people who just graduate from college with a new degree, eager to enter the workforce, are typically among the most employable demographic, period. Right. They're, they're young, they're ambitious, they're educated, they're willing to work for relatively cheap. So they are sort of an ideal worker in a lot of, in a lot of cases, firms want to invest in them. But this number shows that that number is declining, and it's declining relative to the employment of. In the economy at large, which is really interesting and disconcerting. Right. You'd expect, okay, maybe the job market itself is tanking, and then, and, and then you would find fewer college grads able to get work. But while the economy has been relatively healthy, by these metrics anyways, you know, by, by these metrics, there's a strong case to be made that it's not. But anyways, it's not. In, in other words, this number is going down not in tandem with the regular numbers. And so this could mean a number of things. But one plausible theory is that firms aren't just hiring as much anymore. They're giving those jobs to AI, to automated systems. Because a lot of times the work that a college student or a college grad would do is sort of the entry level work. They may be ambitious, they may be smart, but when they come into a firm, they, you know, they do sort of, you know, the easier, less complicated tasks. And that's the kind of stuff that you would expect to be done by AI or that management thinks can be done by AI. And this is just worrying on so many levels. If new grads aren't entering the workforce and learning these skills and sort of growing with, you know, in their skill sets and in their knowledge bases, and instead it's just being handed over to AI, or the firms think they can hand it over to AI, then we risk sort of a pandemic like condition where you have a group of people who just, you know, can't find employment and, and all of the attendant social issues that go along with that. So, yeah, this is, and, and I also note that some people have pointed out that this extends before the sort of the, the chat GPT AI boom. But firms have been talking about AI and automation for at least the last 10 years. And the other trend that's been really big in the same time period has been uberization and gig work. And a lot of college students have had to get contract work and stuff that's also less likely to show up in, in economic data.

[Emma Vigeland]

I got an internship out of college and, you know, a lot of just regular jobs didn't bite. If I couldn't live at home and not pay rent while I was working, I don't know what I would have done. And that was back when I graduated in 2016. Yeah, but that is like, I. You hear about this all the time and you wonder why there's like this. Honestly, the they, that demographic went more for Trump than typical. I mean, Kamala Harris won young people, really young people, by, I think, four points or something like that. But it wasn't six points. I don't remember the exact polling, but it was not the typical shift you would see, I mean, with young people voting Democrats or numbers, margins, whatever.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's, it is, it's a worrying moment. And I think if this trend continues for another couple of years, we'll be able to see again, like, there's a lot of questions with AI in. One of the biggest questions is like, long term, like, can the firms keep this up? Like, can they keep shoveling sort of the kind of work that a college grad would do into an AI system and, or are they going to regret doing that in two years. So I think we're at this incredibly precarious moment and like I said earlier, it could do a ton of damage if companies just decide to sort of downsize, decide to lay people off. And it's going to do damage in particular to those areas and those parts of the economy that are sort of, you know, more vulnerable to AI that have jobs, that even if it, you know, if their work isn't as well replicated or isn't as good when it's done by the AI, that maybe companies can just justify it in the long term. And these are some of the most important parts of our culture. Right. Artists, illustrators, writers, designers, journalists there, you know, I can in a lot of cases produce a facsimile of the work that's done by these people enough to maybe, you know, just get a manager to sign off on it or to get used to some lower standards or maybe they decide that consumers, you know, don't need the human made stuff as much. And that's what, and that's what I think is really dangerous about this moment. It's a great sort of dulling down and sort of, you know, just sloppification of not just like the Internet, but also industry after industry.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, you mentioned Doge earlier and I think it's not irrelevant that the, that effort, those efforts by Elon Musk and the groipers that he hired and Trump, like they were firing people and they were using AI to do it.

[Ben Cohen]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

And this is between the tariffs and the recession it may cause laws and Doge trying to explicitly funnel people back into the private sector or at least unemploy people and then using AI to do it as companies lay off people with AI. I mean, it feels like this is some labor discipline that is connecting all of these interests from the Republican administration to the tech overlords that have backed it full throatedly.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, 100%. That is the through line. And it extends directly to what we're seeing happen this week because take a closer look. And that's, that's what, what I've done this week. I've been talking to people who, who've been involved in writing some of these AI bills in California that are now threatened by this ban. I talked to Assemblyman Isaac Bryan who has a couple of the bills and, and look at what these, what these bills are doing. They are, they're not even crazy bills. Right. They prevent abuses of AI systems in the workplace primarily. Right. They say if you're going to use an AI system To, like, do hiring and firing, then you have to let people know. You have to put certain measures in place so it doesn't discriminate you. Another bill focuses on workplace surveillance and says you have to notify workers if you're going to use an AI system that ingests their data. So these aren't even really like, crazy, like, no AI bills. These are bills that just seek, like, I would call them common sense sort of interventions in how an AI can be used. But the AI companies are looking at this and saying, oh, this is gonna, you know, this is A, going to like, cost us a little bit of money if we have to make tools that can help people comply with this. And B, it cuts into the, you know, primary value proposition of these tools, which, as you just said, is, is, is if it, if not automating labor or automating jobs outright, then providing new tools for management, for labor discipline and control. And anything that cuts into that is not tolerable to OpenAI and to Google and to the, the companies that are selling what essentially amounts to automation software. And so they're looking at these bills going, okay, these, these costs could, could add up fast. Maybe we can just go right to Congress. We've got our buddies in there, and maybe we can just make the case that we can just block them wholesale. Which is, again, crazy. It's crazy.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and it's just, it's. It's. As you're. When you talk about Uber, it's the same thing. It's just on, on steroids here. Because, yeah, the Obama. Well, look, the Obama administration was pretty, pretty pro gigged. I mean, that is, that's the bipartisan thing here, which is like that we, that the Obama administration empowered these people with a lot of subsidies, Tesla, but also like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and all of it. And now they're here and this is the monster they've created. And this happens, it feels like with every industry, then they just shift to the party that's exciting, explicitly pro capital and they get what they want, it looks like.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you mean even beyond that, Obama sort of empowered them ideologically as well. Right? He helped them create this aura that they're building the future that Airbnb and, you know, Facebook at the time are somehow inherently progressive because they're tech companies, because Google had a tagline that said don't be evil. And they did help. And by cozying up, you know, that was a symbiotic relationship, you know, Obama.

[Emma Vigeland]

And they did it with Starbucks as well, who just tried to fire a bunch of people with AI.

[Sam Cedar]

But yeah, anyway, it is a through line, right? Like the Obama White House had a compelling antitrust case against Google 10 years ago and it declined to take it up. The same thing, it sort of let Uber and Amazon and the other tech companies grow in power and kind of turned a blind eye because it was again, yeah, it was good for both parties at the time. And now we have a new heavily monopolized or duopolized industry that is dominated by some extremely powerful players. And it's extremely difficult now to unwind this. And now they quite literally, you know, want to have this power to again, as you said, one up Uber, they want to take it to the next level. OpenAI's charter. And this is really important to understand that what they describe AGI as the way that they're chasing. And there's all this, oh, is this AGI? Is this not. Is AGI? What even is AGI? Well, OpenAI has a very specific way of defining that and that is basically as providing a system that can do the work that humans do for most economically valuable work. So that's their pitch to investors, to backers, to partners that we are going building a tool that can replace most humans and do most economically valuable work. When we get there, that's, that's how you'll know that we've hit it big. And this is our pitch to you. You know, hitch your wagon to this ride and we will give you a tool that can replace human like this is the end goal. Again, open question if they'll ever get there, but that is explicitly what they're trying to do.

[Emma Vigeland]

Brian Merchant, technology reporter at the AI Now Introduced Institute, publisher of the newsletter Blood in the Machine. It's also the name of his book, but you can check out his substack at Blood in the Machine. I'm not sure about the link, but we'll put that below wherever people are listening to or watching this. Brian, thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. And if you have a story about how AI has hit your job, I'm currently collecting these. I've already heard from over 50 people with great testimonials. Please, yeah, just send them through my newsletter. It's an ongoing project and thanks so much, Emma.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of course, I mean, before we let you go, here we have some people writing in SoCal. Ryan, my friend, is a social worker and therapist and her employer wants to record sessions so they can use Them to train AI to replace her as a counselor, as if there's a simple formula to the human soul and our needs. Pardon my French, but f. That, well, we'll save it for the fun half with the. The cursing, but Here it is. Mr. Melancholy data entry employee here. My leadership openly brags to us about how AI Will make us obsolete. Always expecting to be fired. We're going to get many more stories, so send it to Brian.

[Sam Cedar]

Send it to me. Just two weeks ago, I went to a strike where therapists were on a hunger strike in L. A in 2025 because their work is being automated like an assembly line, they said. So this is happening and we need to understand it. We need to fight back against it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Where they're starting, the therapy is supposed to be about human connection. And this is one of the frontiers. I mean, that is like, yeah, we're talking dystopian novels here, of course, but not, not in the take over the world way. The, like, you have no human connection way.

[Sam Cedar]

No, I mean, some of the groups that are fighting hardest against this is where you can see the real. I mean, a lot of teachers are standing up against the use of AI in classrooms. Nurses who are being forced by hospitals to use AI to diagnose their patients. And it becomes a real life or death struggle sometimes to have to override this system in a heated moment to get patients the care and medicine they need. And that hospitals are saying you have to use AI first so you can see sort of some of the battles, lines being drawn and, and people really pushing back. And it's only going to get more heated before anything gets better.

[Emma Vigeland]

Brian Merchant, thanks so much, much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, thank you.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, with that, folks, we're going to wrap up the free part of this show and head into the fun half of this show where we will read your IMs, take your calls. We will be joined by Brandon Sutton and by Matt Binder as we have Brandon as we're setting that up. I'll read some IMs.

[Sam Cedar]

Whoa.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hello. Oh, he's not in the shot yet. Okay, one sec. Punch Drunk Pulpit. I'm an illustrator and graphic designer. My wife is a color artist in animation. AI has destroyed so much of our industries and options for the future. I mean, like, I, I'm not sure if you're in a union, Punch drunk pulpit, but like, I mean, what the. What was secured with the actor strike and the writer strike?

[Greg Grandin]

Not enough.

[Emma Vigeland]

Not enough, probably. Yeah.

[Greg Grandin]

And did it's worth pointing out, like, how they're doing this, which is with the sort of simulated or like sort of digested and then regurgitated work of the history of these industries, whether it's illustrators or musicians. There's a Marx quote where it says capitalist dead labor. That sort of works vampire like on the existing society. And I mean, that's really what this is. It's like, it's like capitalists have discovered a way to reanimate, you know, workers gone by and pit them against people who are alive now.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep. Yeah. All right. Well, Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning? Oh, okay, one sec. I'll ask Brandon first. Hello, Brandon.

[Ben Cohen]

Hello.

[Emma Vigeland]

You're. Did you get a new camera? It looks like very crisp today.

[Ben Cohen]

No, I, I have no control over how my camera looks on any given day. It seems random, but I should get a new camera. I think I'm gonna do that. I'll get a new camera.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right.

[Greg Grandin]

I mean, today it looks fine.

[Emma Vigeland]

It looks great.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[Ben Cohen]

Yeah, right.

[Emma Vigeland]

Fair enough. What's happening on your shows?

[Ben Cohen]

Well, I mean every day. Well, not every day.

[Sam Cedar]

That's a lie.

[Ben Cohen]

But some days. We're streaming. We'll be streaming tomorrow after the Majority Report, a little show you may never have heard of. And I don't know, I don't have anything special planned, but I think we'll have a good time no matter what. This Friday we'll have, we'll, we'll chop it up, we'll keep it casual. We'll find out about fallen angels, we'll find out about Bigfoot, we'll find out how they're related.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's, that's the pitch. All right. Check out the discourse. Hello, Matt Binder. We can't hear you.

[Greg Grandin]

Muted.

[Ben Cohen]

Bender.

[Sam Cedar]

Hello, how are you?

[Emma Vigeland]

Hello. I'm doing well. What is going on on your shows?

[Ben Cohen]

Sure.

[Emma Vigeland]

So on doomed Last night at YouTube.com mapinder I talked about how.

[Ben Cohen]

Grok Elon.

[Emma Vigeland]

Musk's AI chat bot went insane obsessing over South African far right wing talking.

[Ben Cohen]

Points about non existent white genocide. It was very interesting to see Grok last night.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, yesterday.

[Ben Cohen]

And the show was very fun yesterday because this was so ridiculous.

[Emma Vigeland]

YouTube.com Mapinder Check that out. Matt Lech, what's happening on Left Record?

[Greg Grandin]

Yeah, Andrew Hartman on talking about his excellent book that any, I mean, should be relevant to a lot of people listening to this Karl Marx in America. A really good overview of the history of that guy's ideas stateside here. Also, Michael Burns, philosopher, talking about whether we are less philosophical than, than we were when maybe I graduated college. And talking about the crisis in masculinity and the religious turn we're seeing from people like Russell Brand and Charlie Kirk. I mean, not that it's new with Charlie, but it's just kind of like, you know, he tried to present himself as a logic lord, and now he's saying, you know, I felt God in Israel, so now I support it. Like, okay, I guess I'll try to logic that. Patreon.com LifeRecking to get a access to that.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, guys, we will head into the fun half. See you there.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay.

[Ben Cohen]

Emma, please.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report.

[Sam Cedar]

Wait, look, SA is unpopular.

[Ben Cohen]

I do deserve a vacation at Disney World, so. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure.

[Emma Vigeland]

To welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday.

[Greg Grandin]

I think you need to take over for Sam.

[Ben Cohen]

Yes, boys. No, no, no.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm.

[Ben Cohen]

I'm.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm going to pause you right there.

[Sam Cedar]

Wait, what?

[Ben Cohen]

You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. Someone's offered a tour, sushi and poker with the boys. Tour, sushi and poker with boys. Who was offered a tour?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Ben Cohen]

Sushi and poker with the boys.

[Emma Vigeland]

What?

[Ben Cohen]

Sushi and poker.

[Emma Vigeland]

Tim's upset.

[Ben Cohen]

Tour, sushi, and poker with boys. He was offered twerk, sushi, and that's.

[Emma Vigeland]

What we call biz.

[Ben Cohen]

Twerk, sushi, and bulker with two boys. Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

Twerk, sushi, and we're going to get demonetized.

[Ben Cohen]

I just think that what you did to Tim pool was mean.

[Emma Vigeland]

Free speech.

[Ben Cohen]

That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about him.

[Emma Vigeland]

I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here.

[Ben Cohen]

Sushi and poker, boys. Oh, my God. Wow. Sushi.

[Bernie Sanders]

I'm sorry.

[Ben Cohen]

I'm losing my mind.

[Sam Cedar]

Someone's offered.

[Ben Cohen]

Yeah, sushi and poker with the boys.

[Sam Cedar]

Logic.

[Ben Cohen]

Sushi and poker with the boys. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like. Okay. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Add this debate 7,000 times. A little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a duke or I'm losing my queen. So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the us should be combining me with a wife and kids.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's not what we're talking about here.

[Ben Cohen]

It's not a fun job tour. That's a real thing. That's a real thing.

[Sam Cedar]

Real thing. Willy Wonka.

[Ben Cohen]

That's a real thing. That's real thing. That's a real thing. That's got real thing.

[Sam Cedar]

Real thing.

[Ben Cohen]

That's a real thing. That's offered at work. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. That offered work. That's a real thing. I think he might be blowing it out of proportion.

[Sam Cedar]

Real thing.

[Ben Cohen]

That's got poker boys offered to work. That's a real thing. That's poker.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's go, Joey.

[Ben Cohen]

Sushi and poker. Take it easy. Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hands. Sushi and poker with the boys. Sushi. You don't have a clue as to what's going on live.

[Sam Cedar]

YouTube.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sam has the weight of the world on the shoulders. Don't want to do this show anymore.

[Ben Cohen]

Anymore.

[Emma Vigeland]

It was so much easier when the Majority Report was just you happy?

[Ben Cohen]

Let's change the subject.

[Emma Vigeland]

Rangers and Nicks are doing great now. Shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.

[Sam Cedar]

That's one of the most, most difficult parts about this show.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is the Pro Killing podcast.

[Ben Cohen]

I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet.

[Emma Vigeland]

Left his best Violet twerk.

[Sam Cedar]

Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me. And don't. The way Emma has cucked all of these people. Love it.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it.

[Ben Cohen]

She wrote an honest thesis.

[Emma Vigeland]

I guess I should hand the main.

[Ben Cohen]

Mic to you now. You are to the right of me on foreign policy.

[Emma Vigeland]

We already fund Israel. Dude. Are you against us?

[Ben Cohen]

That's a tougher question I haven't answered.

[Sam Cedar]

Incredible theme song.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hi, bumbler.

[Sam Cedar]

Emma Viglen. Absolutely one of my favorite people.

[Emma Vigeland]

Actually.

[Sam Cedar]

Not just in the game, like period.