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From Here We Go Again With Kal Penn: Will Technology Replace Us? with Jacob Goldstein
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- [00:00]
Kalpen (Host)
So like, literally a week and a half ago, hadn't logged on to Zoom for maybe, maybe two weeks. Right. It was around Thanksgiving. And then I was. I was traveling and I had this Zoom meeting, and I open it, I click on the link, you know, a minute before it starts. Because I'm early, I am professional. And of course it starts updating itself because it needed a software update. And I'm frantically texting everybody who I'm supposed to be meeting with, like, blaming Zoom, as if it's Zoom's fault. Oh, of course. Now Zoom decides to do a software update, blah, blah, blah. No, I knew in my heart that this was a me issue. Right, you knew you had a Zoom meeting log on 10 minutes early. Cuz it might need a software update. But that's like how young and old I am simultaneously, right? So old that I'm trying to blame Zoom for a thing that's clearly my issue. And young enough that like, you know, we all had roommates who did dial up porn, because that's what the 90s were like. But as we think about things more and more in a society, if you want to use the word, progresses, we've all thought about AI as well as an actor, of course. Terrifying. The idea that robots and computers could take all of our work. But it's not just actors. No matter what you do for a living, the humanity of your work, the interpersonal skills, the taking pride in your job, even if that means you're in a cubicle all day, whatever it is that you're doing, the fear that maybe technology could replace us is like a real thing. It's not just creepy. It feels like it's getting out of control. And it feels like the heart of the humanity that we all have is being questioned right now. So wanted to have a very interesting guest on who could help us sort through all of that, and that is journalist Jacob Goldstein, who tells me that we've been here before and it started
- [01:42]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
in the cloth business. So these original Luddites were like the first people really to be impacted in a significant way by the Industrial Revolution. The first people to face this thing that we are talking about, that we were afraid of essentially losing their jobs to technological change.
- [01:58]
Kalpen (Host)
In my conversation with Jacob, we're going to go all the way back to the 1800s to the original Luddites, and I want to hear about their story. And we're going to talk about how technology changes, how those changes reshape our work, and then, frankly, who historically gets protected and who gets left behind here
- [02:17]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
we go again again, again, again.
- [02:22]
Kalpen (Host)
Hey, I'm Kalpen and this is Here We Go Again, a show that takes today's and headlines and asks, why does history keep repeating itself?
- [02:31]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Here we go.
- [02:46]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [02:48]
Serving Pancakes Podcast Announcer
Guaranteed Human.
- [02:51]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
You know what they say. Early bird gets the ultimate vacation home. Book early and save over $100 with VRBO because early gets you closer to the action, whether it's waves lapping at the shore or snoozing in a hammock that overlooks. Well, whatever you want it to. So you can all enjoy the payoff come summer with VRBO's early booking deals. Rise and shine. Average savings $141 select homes only.
- [03:21]
Serving Pancakes Podcast Announcer
On the Serving Pancakes podcast, conversations about volleyball go beyond the court. Today we have a little best friend compatibility test. Okay, how long have we been best friends? Since the day we met. As the League1 volleyball season heads towards its final stretch, there's no better time to tune in. You'll hear unfiltered analysis, behind the scenes stories and conversations with leaders making an impact across the sport. Whether you're following the final push of love season or just love the game, serving Pancakes brings you closer to the action and the people shaping the future of volleyball. Open your free iHeartradio app search serving Pancakes and listen. Now presented by Capital One, founding partner
- [03:53]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
of iHeart Women's Sports.
- [03:55]
Bob Pittman (iHeartMedia CEO)
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic. Stories from the frontiers of marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing. Coming up this season on Math and Magic, CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario.
- [04:15]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower where it's really like a stone sculpture. You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
- [04:25]
Bob Pittman (iHeartMedia CEO)
Take two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick and her own Chief Business officer, Lisa Coffey. Listen to Math and magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [04:36]
Eating While Broke Podcast Announcer
It's Financial Literacy Month and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth and building your future. This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
- [04:53]
Serving Pancakes Podcast Announcer
There's an economic component to communities thriving. If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
- [05:01]
Eating While Broke Podcast Announcer
Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [05:10]
Kalpen (Host)
Hey. Hello.
- [05:11]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Good morning.
- [05:12]
Kalpen (Host)
Good morning. How you doing? Hi, thanks for doing today. I'm speaking with.
- [05:15]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Hi, I'm Jacob Goldstein.
- [05:17]
Kalpen (Host)
He was a previous host on the NPR podcast Planet Money. So if you recognize his voice, it may be from that he's the current host of the podcast what's yous Problem and and Business History. And he's the author of the book Money the True Story of a Made Up Thing. Before we fully dive in, I was very excited to talk to you about all these topics because a couple of reasons. I generally know very little about technology. I'm 48. So as my college friend who does work in tech always reminds me, like, we're that generation that grew up fully analog, but we're still kids when the digital wireless world kind of came around. And so it's that rare, that rarity of knowing how to use both. But I'm now getting old enough from like, I just want a rotary phone like when I was nine. So since you are smart and thoughtful and very knowledgeable about all of this, it just. The nerd part of me was really excited to talk to you. When did you know you wanted to be a journalist and focus on the things that you do?
- [06:15]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
So I became a journalist in my late 20s. I was a newspaper reporter and it was around the time of the 2008 financial crisis. I was a reporter covering healthcare at the Wall Street Journal. And like everybody else, I wanted to understand what was going on. It was confusing to me. You know, I knew about health care, but even though I was at the Journal, I wasn't covering finance. And I have an aunt who was an MBA who is like my go to kind of business and money person when I don't understand things. And you know, there had been this collapse obviously of the stock market, of real estate prices. And I asked her, like, it seemed like people were talking about like a trillion dollars disappeared from the stock market, Right. And so I had this maybe dumb, maybe not question. Where did the money go?
- [07:04]
Kalpen (Host)
Yeah, that's not dumb. That would be my question.
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Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
And she said it wasn't there in the first place. Money is fiction.
- [07:12]
Kalpen (Host)
Oh, yeah.
- [07:12]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
And I was like, ooh, fiction. I had been an English major. I knew about fiction. I was like, this is interesting to me. And that was sort of the gateway. And so not long after that, I went to work for this podcast called Planet Money that's like covering the economy, but in a very sort of narrative storytelling Way. And through that I got into kind of the history of money and the history of economics and the stuff we're going to talk about today.
- [07:34]
Kalpen (Host)
Amazing. I had an aha moment like that when I was hosting a show just before COVID terrible title, called this Giant Beast that Is the Global Economy for Amazon Prime. And I had a great time working on it. But that was, you know, I was the host through which the audience gets to experience things. So I knew very little going in and my mind was blown. It sounds like, not dissimilar to your 2008 phone call.
- [07:56]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Yeah.
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Kalpen (Host)
As a journalist, I'm going to jump ahead a little bit to just sort of what people are thinking about today. And I'll, I'll preface it by saying as an actor and a writer, we just came off of two very protracted labor disputes where we were forced to go on strike by these big media companies in large part because of AI proposals and provisions. As a journalist, are you at the place where you're thinking through, or are you afraid that technology is going to replace people in your profession? Or has it already?
- [08:29]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Yes, and yes. I mean, if you look at employment in newsrooms over the past 20 years, which is to say my career, it has gone down and down and down because of technological change. Right. It's not exactly AI doing reporters jobs, it's people substituting away from newspapers. But yes, looking forward, I am worried that AI will be able to do what I do. And fortunately I'm not that young and I don't have to make it that much longer. But like I would caution someone starting their career of trying to be a journalist in the traditional sense. Right. I mean, the perhaps interesting question is like, what is the combination? Right. Like, will AI take our jobs? Is a valid question. But in the meantime, how can we use AI to do our jobs better? Is perhaps a more practical question.
- [09:27]
Kalpen (Host)
And how do you feel like you're able to use AI to make your job better?
- [09:31]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
I mean, it helps me with research, is the short answer. And I will say there's an interesting cultural thing certainly among journalists and writers. I'm. I suspect it's not as much in other fields, but because large language models are writing, they feel like a direct threat to journalists in a way that they perhaps do not to people in other fields. So I don't know. There's a feeling among journalists that using AI is cheating. People will sort of abashedly admit to using AI, and I think that's unhealthy. Right. I think using AI is like using The Internet, which by the way, is like, you know, Google searches are driven by AI, of course. So, for example, I host this show called Business History. And just this morning I took a script that one of my colleagues had written that was like a great narrative, but I felt like it could use some big ideas. And I put it into a large language model and said, like, what are some big economic ideas that you think sort of emerge from this? What are some themes? And it's not like I copied and pasted the answer. It suggested some ideas and I went and researched those ideas. Right, so that's an example.
- [10:33]
Kalpen (Host)
So when you, when you research the ideas after the prompt, are you researching that outside of the AI models? And here's basically what I'm getting at is like how as a journalist, how do you make sure that the sources themselves are accurate, knowing that however AI has learned that may not be, whatever the inputs were, may not be a real thing. So how do you, how do you fact check that when you take the next step in research?
- [10:56]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
I mean, that part is the same as always, right? Like, I don't, I never take the answer from the AI as a reliable answer. I go and I look it up elsewhere and I look at the source and I evaluate the credibility of the source material. And, you know, certainly AIs hallucinate some, but like, overall it's useful. And like, once in a while it's like, oh, that doesn't make sense. But quite often it's like, oh, that's a good idea. And like just this morning, there was like some particular monetary policy shift in Germany in the 1940s that it pointed me to that was in fact real and interesting in the history of the Volkswagen Beetle, which is the story we're working on.
- [11:33]
Kalpen (Host)
But okay, I want, I want to go back a little bit to history because the same friend who I mentioned, the tech savvy college friend, often likes to tell me that I'm a Luddite. And I don't think he's necessarily wrong. The way that we throw around the word today. Technology doesn't necessarily get me as geeked as some of my friends. Although. Although I'll obviously have my moments. And so just in looking back, right, I get that people have always had this fear that newer technology is going to replace their jobs. So what you've talked about is that we've been here before and all this palpable fear started back in the 1800s. And so can you take us to the 1800s and tell us what happened? Like, take us back to that moment in history for somebody who doesn't know anything about the Luddites.
- [12:16]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Yeah, so. So the original Luddites were quite different, just to start, than the word we have today, Right? The word Luddite today means just like somebody who doesn't like technology because they don't like it. Right? So the original Luddites were cloth workers in England in the first part of the 1800s, like 1811, 1812. Around that time and for essentially all of human history, there was very little technological change, Right. This world we live in, where you just assume that technology changes generation after generation, that things get more efficient, that was not the nature of the world until the Industrial Revolution, which started in the second part of the 1700s in England. And it started in the cloth business, right? So these original Luddites were like the first people really to be impacted in a significant way by the Industrial Revolution. The first people to face this thing that we are talking about that we are afraid of essentially losing their jobs to technological change. The cloth business was actually a huge business for England at the time. And the Luddites were skilled artisans. Right. Like, we think of, you know, factory work as terrible in the 1800s, and it was. But before the Industrial Revolution, it was like something you did kind of in your home. It was farmed out. And so, you know, there were all these steps to making fabric, and different people specialized in different parts of it. So the croppers would take a rough piece of fabric and they would have these giant shears, like kind of giant metal scissors, and they would crop the. I guess, the nap. I don't know about fabric. They. They'd crop something off the wall to like, make it smooth and nice. Okay? So that was their job. And for the time, it was a pretty good job. Like, they worked for themselves. They set their own hours. Very poor by the standards of today, which is an important point. But in relative terms, at the time, they were doing well. And then along came the Industrial Revolution, which started out as machines to make cloth, right? So somebody invented a thing to spin raw fiber into thread, and somebody invented a loom. And then somebody invented a shearing frame, Right? A machine to crop. A machine to do what the croppers had done, right? And so this is the thing we are talking about. This is AI taking our job, but for the croppers, but for the skilled cloth makers.
- [14:39]
Kalpen (Host)
I'm curious, all those inventions, what's the. Do you know the range of time? Like, did this all happen in a year or was it over a period of like 50 years?
- [14:47]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Decades. The order of magnitude is decades.
- [14:49]
Kalpen (Host)
So slower than. Slower than right now?
- [14:52]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Well, maybe, maybe not. I think it didn't feel that way if you were a cropper, right? Like there wasn't the spread of information like there is today. They didn't necessarily, you know, if you were a cropper in 1800, you didn't know that somebody was going to invent a shearing frame and that it was going to show up. You know, I think it came as a surprise.
- [15:12]
Kalpen (Host)
And once it was there, there's a guy named Ned Ludd.
- [15:15]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Yes. So what starts happening? Does one curse on this show?
- [15:20]
Kalpen (Host)
Oh, yes, please, feel free.
- [15:21]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
So these people who have these good jobs, who have these skills, see the machines coming and taking their jobs and they essentially think like, fuck this, like, no, we're not going to do it this way. And so what they start doing is going in the middle of the night and attacking these new machines, like literally physically, like breaking them with sledgehammers. It's like, oh, you're going to do this with the machine? No, I'm going to break your machine with a sledgehammer. And then you can come back to me and I'll keep cropping. And in, I believe it's 1811, it starts to get more organized. So these have been just kind of random ad hoc, kind of what we would call today, like maybe mob might be a word people would use today. But in 1811, it starts to feel more organized and there start to be these letters from this self titled general, General Ned Ludd. And he's actually holed up in Sherwood Forest like Robin Hood, who has kind of similar vibes, right? And these letters are taking on the tones of civil war, frankly, right? He has this title, General Ned Ludd. And at one point they call his army of Redressers, right? Like a redress of grievances. The main thing you need to know about Ned Ludd is there was no Ned Ludd. He was. He was a myth. He was a myth. He was like Robin Hood. He was like Robin Hood. I mean, there may actually have been a guy named Ned Ludd decades earlier who was like a frame breaker. But like this General Ned Ludd, this guy leading the revolt, he was an invention which is kind of genius, right? Like, it's a genius way for a people with no political power, for a group of people with no political power, to like create a movement, right? You invent a figurehead, a mythical general holed up in the forest who does not exist. And so it's this idea that the Workers are not just randomly breaking machines. They're organizing to fight back. And one thing that's interesting, there's this historian who has called what they were doing collective bargaining by riot because there were no unions. Like they couldn't even vote. Right. There wasn't a mass suffrage in, in England at the time. There were certainly no unions. They basically didn't have power in any organized way. So they were seizing power. And it's this collective kind of ad hoc way. And these attacks get more systematic. There's this one particularly dramatic one where these guys, they all mass at this bar and they're going to attack this mill. But the mill owner knows, like the Luddites attack, you know, have been attacking around this region. He's been preparing to defend himself. So the owner is actually like sleeping there. He's hired some people with rifles to defend the factory. He actually has like a vat of, I think sulfuric acid. He's going to like pour down on them. Yeah, it's very medieval, right? It feels very like medieval castle. He's made this factory like a fortress. And so the Luddites march on it. It is, it is very, is like proto civil war, right? This is an armed, organized attack on a heavily defended factory. And they get in and there's like actually an exchange of gunfire and ultimately they retreat. So there's two Luddites dead. They have failed in their attack. And around this time, Parliament, you know, the British government realizes that this is getting out of hand. And they have passed a law making attacking machines punishable by death.
- [18:54]
Kalpen (Host)
Amazing. I was almost 99% confident that this would not go in the favor of the people. Tell me something about British history that I didn't already know. Okay, go ahead.
- [19:07]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
So after this attack where two Luddites are killed, there's like this roundup. Essentially, the government fights back. A bunch of Luddites are arrested, thrown in jail, they're tried to. And several of them are in fact given death sentences and they are publicly hung. They actually make the gallows twice as high as usual so that you can see it from even farther away. You know, there's like, you know, a crowd of people witnessing the hanging. And this basically defeats the Luddites, right? Like, this is basically the Luddites lose, right? The government rounds them up and kills them and they stop attacking the machines. And there are no more rich croppers, or they were never rich, but there are no more like relatively well off croppers after this. Right. It's just the machines are in fact a better Cheaper way to make cloth. The Luddites don't have any political power and they are out of luck.
- [20:07]
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- [20:21]
Serving Pancakes Podcast Announcer
Select homes only on the Serving Pancakes podcast, Conversations about volleyball go beyond the court. Today we have a little best friend compatibility test. Okay, how long have we been best friends for? Since the day we met. As the League1 volleyball season heads towards its final stretch, there's no better time to tune in. We really are like yin and yang, vodka and tequila. You'll hear unfiltered analysis, behind the scenes stories and conversations with leaders making an impact across the sport. Today we have Logan Lednecki. I feel like our fan base in general is very connected. Just like a comforting feeling getting to play at home. Whether you're following the final push of love season or just love the game, serving Pancakes brings you closer to the action and the people shaping the future of volleyball. Jordan Thompson had that microphone out. God forbid we make mistakes or cuss at our coach.
- [21:07]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Like when talking.
- [21:09]
Serving Pancakes Podcast Announcer
Open your free iHeartradio app. Search serving Pancakes and listen. Now this has been Serving Pancakes and we'll catch you on the flip side.
- [21:17]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
Okay.
- [21:18]
Serving Pancakes Podcast Announcer
Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
- [21:22]
The Secret World of Roald Dahl Podcast Announcer
You know the famous author Roald Dahl? He thought up Willy Wonka and the bfg. But did you know he was a spy? Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast the Secret World of Roald Dahl. All episodes are out now.
- [21:37]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Was this before he wrote his stories?
- [21:39]
Serving Pancakes Podcast Announcer
It must have been what?
- [21:41]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
Okay, I don't think that's true.
- [21:42]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
I'm telling you, the guy was a spy.
- [21:44]
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- [21:53]
Kalpen (Host)
That all makes me wonder. Like if you put the Luddite story next to conversations that we're having about AI today, in what ways do you think that they're similar and how are they different? And the one, the one stat that I remember when we were researching for this that came up is like Gold said that by 2030, AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million full time jobs. Forbes said it would replace 2 million manufacturing jobs by the end of next year alone. And so when that Luddite story especially it's Got everything. It's got public policy. It has clear, very simple explanation of who really wins in the short term in capitalism, the power dynamics, all of that. So then that just makes me wonder if you put that story next to today's AI conversations, Like, how do you see them being similar or different?
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Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Yeah, I mean, certainly workers being potentially replaced by machines is in fact similar like that in some places. You know, call centers is already happening, clearly. I mean, one thing that I think is an important difference is political economy. Right. Like, it's common for people to say, oh, ordinary people have no power in today's economy. It's all the rich people. And like, certainly rich people have a lot of power, but relative to the Luddites, ordinary people do have more power today. Right. Like unions were illegal. The Luddites literally could not vote. Right. And so it will be interesting to see who is losing jobs to AI and when and how politics and the government respond. Right. And it's an interesting moment now because for a long time, technological change threatened lower skilled workers. Right. Like 20th century automation hollowed out the middle to a significant degree. Right. There was this phrase, the hollowing out of the middle, where like, physical labor actually for a while did okay. And if you were sort of highly educated, you did okay. But if you were kind of in the middle of the distribution, it was bad for you. Now it's kind of across the board. And strikingly, people like lawyers and journalists are threatened. And so those are people who traditionally have had more political influence, perhaps. Right. And so I think how will the government respond is super interesting and super unclear.
- [24:23]
Kalpen (Host)
Yeah. Do you have a sense of which other types of jobs are projected to be affected? I mean, the manufacturing jobs, obviously, that's well documented and also follows a pattern of technological change throughout history. I think you're right. The doctor lawyer thing is relatively new, jarring for a whole different economic class of people. What are the ones we're not thinking about?
- [24:46]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
I don't know. I mean, I'm wary of making specific predictions like, AI is insane right now. There is one thread of the discourse and maybe this has died down. I don't know. That is like, oh, it's just hype from AI companies. When AI companies are like, AI is going to be crazy. I don't think that is true. I mean, it is interesting to think about where are the bottlenecks? Right. I do think there might be bottlenecks in adoption. Right. Like, in a superficial way, AI looks really good, but when you actually try and get it to do stuff it's kind of a pain in the ass. And there's this interesting guy, Dwarkesh Patel, I believe, who he writes about AI and he interviews a lot of the really smart AI people and he made the point that he's been trying to use it for his own work, but that it's not good at learning incrementally. It can do an okay job, it can do a 5 out of 10 job, but a human being that starts out at 5 out of 10 at your company, you can kind of get them up to 8 out of 10. And getting the AI to 8 out of 10, getting it to learn on a particular task is actually still doesn't work. And like getting an AI to actually do a job for you is still hard. And so I don't know, I really don't know how it's going to roll out and I don't know what the political response will be.
- [26:09]
Kalpen (Host)
Do you feel like it's too early to speculate what the differences are compared to previous technological changes or advances?
- [26:20]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
I mean, I think one thing that is important to remember is at least so far, every time people have lost jobs to technology, new jobs that people couldn't imagine before emerge, right? So like some number of people are displaced, some number of people are worse off in the short to medium and sometimes long term. But always so far there have been more new jobs. People's wants and willingness to pay for things is insatiable. And I suppose this may be the end of that, but I wouldn't bet against that. You know, I mean, I feel a little silly that making podcasts is my job. Right.
- [27:04]
Kalpen (Host)
Trust me. But it is security I have about my jobs. Yes, I understand.
- [27:09]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
And that's because, you know, we have all these machines that make really cheap clothes and cheap food and all of the basic things, you know, like if you just look at farming, right, like in 1800 something, there's rough numbers. 1890% of Americans were farmers. In 1900, 50% of Americans were farmers. Ish. Maybe 42,000, 2% of Americans were farmers. Right. Maybe the greatest displacement of labor you can think of because of the reaper and the tractor. Right. But like everybody went to work in factories and then they went to work as, you know, personal trainers and bank tellers and other things.
- [27:43]
Kalpen (Host)
It also makes me wonder like the, the implications of, to your point about like, maybe there is no next widespread job thing that people have. Like what do you retrain for when it's just a computer taking everything. And I, I wonder like in terms of the TBD for what government does, if it's even government that does this, is like just taking the US we live in a country that can barely agree on the federal level that we should have just the basic social safety net in place. Right. Compare us to other industrialized, civilized countries and so then jump to, you know, well, what about universal basic income and people who are really touting universal basic income? And if you look at today's political climate, in what fucking reality are you going to get these two generally right of center? If you're looking at global standards, two political parties to agree that UBI is going to be a thing that we can do. And I don't mean to be a cynic about it, but it concerns me greatly that our politics in the democracy are designed to move slowly. That's a given. But if the technological displacement of jobs is moving faster than our public policy, what happens?
- [28:57]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
I mean, that's definitely a possible bad outcome. I mean, the short answer to what happens. So what you're imagining is like, lots of people lose their jobs because of technological change and the government doesn't do very much to help.
- [29:08]
Kalpen (Host)
Yeah, because we have more trillionaires who are benefiting from all this and they just don't want to give up their money.
- [29:13]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
It's possible. I mean, I mean, obviously it's the case that, you know, northern European countries have much more robust safety nets than we do. It's also the case that, like, Medicare and Social Security are politically totally untouchable and have broad support. Right. And so, like, maybe there's like incrementalism, Right. Maybe you can get Social Security and Medicare 10 years earlier.
- [29:35]
Kalpen (Host)
Right.
- [29:35]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Like, that seems like a plausible outcome. It is, in fact, interesting that the people talking the most about universal basic income are AI people and tech people who actually think this might happen. Right. You know, there is this essay that John Maynard Keynes, you know, of Keynesian economics fame, wrote in 1980, 30, I think, called Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. And I think that was actually where the term technological unemployment was first used. Right. So, you know, 1930, right. The world's going into the Depression, but he's thinking generations ahead. And he's thinking about technological change and robots taking our jobs, as we would sort of colloquially say it today. And he's imagining like, well, what if our grandchildren are just working 15 hours a week? He's like, first of all, it's hard not to work at all. Right. We're sort of wired to want to do something, but maybe you don't have to work that much. And People sort of look at 15 hours a week now and laugh like, oh, ha ha, how charmingly wrong he is. But I was looking as I was thinking about this interview and if you look at hours a week, it was like 60 hours a week in 1900 and 50 hours a week in 1930 when he wrote that. And we sort of plateaued at 40 in this country. But in the Netherlands they're like down to 32 hours a week now with
- [30:56]
Kalpen (Host)
like all these days off with all these.
- [30:59]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Right. With a lot of sane Mondays thrown
- [31:00]
Kalpen (Host)
in, in the mix.
- [31:02]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
And so I don't know, like, yes, there are many, if we think of possibility space, there are definitely bad outcomes. I'm not entirely pessimistic. Like, look, it is the case that like that there is a progress aspect to this, right? Like, yes, a lot of things could be bad and a lot of things could go wrong. And maybe we're not in the best possible timeline. Certainly we're not in the best possible timeline. But like having machines do stuff instead of people, it does mean there is more abundance. Right. And so there is this problem that you're pointing to of like sharing the abundance, making sure that it doesn't all go to six people.
- [31:34]
Kalpen (Host)
Right?
- [31:35]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Which is a, a real thing to worry about. But there will be more to go
- [31:39]
Kalpen (Host)
around, I guess, if it's structured, right? Yes. And I, you know, I, I am not, I'm not such a Luddite that I don't acknowledge that we, you know, the advances in medical research and science and exploration and astronomy and all of those things are going to be incredible. I was just talking with a doctor who I ran into last night who was touting how exciting it is in her field for AI research and medicine. And I had the exact opposite viewpoint as an artist. Right.
- [32:08]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Let me ask you a question. I've been curious. Do you ever use AI for work?
- [32:13]
Kalpen (Host)
I have tried because I was curious and thank God, AI does a piss poor job at writing jokes. I'm sure one day it will learn. Part of that obviously is that comedy is so subjective. But no, in fact, what I've used it for and what I find to be helpful is that as a writer and actor, my brain is usually very scattered. Like, you know, people like me think of the 10 things that you're not supposed to say out loud. But like, that's constantly in our brain. And so you, you're, you always have a filter on your brain depending on the setting you're in. Like if I'm on stage doing a stand up routine, that filter is off and generally it works and sometimes it'll get you in trouble. But in normal day to day interactions, there's like this weird filter you have to put on. And so when I'm writing a what by normal people standards would be like a professional document or a professional email or a professional text, my mind has nine paragraphs of things to describe what I want to say. And I just need two sentences. So I have found that something like that is a helpful tool, but I have not found that in my actual professional life that there's, there's anything that I have that I've benefited from. That said, I know it's all coming.
- [33:28]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
So you're saying it's good for taking all the creativity out of your work so far? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [33:34]
Kalpen (Host)
That's been my experience. But again, the, the, you know, I read about all of the things that AI companies are working on to replace actors, to clone our voice, our performances, coming up with just completely new actors slash characters or personalities. So those are the things that I don't, you know, that I hope won't take my job. Like you, you said this earlier, I am of a certain age where like, I'd love a good 20 to 25 more years in my career, but man, I'm glad I'm not 18 going to drama school. It's a, it's a whole different ball game.
- [34:05]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
I mean, I feel like if you're 18 going to drama school, you've got to think of using the tools you have. Like, yes, you have that. A classic technology thing is you don't want to be competing against the tool, the technology, you want to be using the technology. And you've seen that. I mean, to get back to the sort of historical arc, like that was a thing that happened in factories, right? Like us factories in many instances are high tech, right? There's like CNC machining. What is that? Computer numerical control machining. Like they're sort of like tech jobs for kind of skilled workers, right? And even when I worked at npr, there were the engineers in the studio who were running the board. But then there was the guy who was the manager of those guys, who was very much an engineer at heart. And he loved doing the stuff, but he was also building the systems and running the servers. And he was the guy who figured out how the reporters could self up, could record ourselves. And so that's the guy you want to be, right? You want to be the guy using the tools. And I haven't given up on that. Like in the Long run, I assume AI will be better at doing everything that I do than I am, but hopefully that'll take a while. And there's some number of people who are used to hearing me and I can sort of use AI to maybe work faster or be smarter. Right. To do. To figure out in five minutes what it would have taken me an hour of Google searching to figure out and obviously still vet it. But for the medium term, that's what I'm banking on. And I do think that's like a healthier relationship to technology in general.
- [35:45]
Kalpen (Host)
I was invited to an AI exhibit recently, an AI art exhibit. I'm putting art in air quotes by a friend who is a tech bro, and he's like, hey, I've been working for the last 18 months on these art pieces, these AI art pieces. Will you come to the gallery opening? And I'm like, I love you. There is nothing that I would rather do less on a Tuesday night than come and see the product of you getting high in front of your laptop and pressing buttons. No, sorry, man.
- [36:15]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
I wanted that. I'd stay home.
- [36:16]
Kalpen (Host)
I would stay home and do it myself.
- [36:20]
Bob Pittman (iHeartMedia CEO)
But.
- [36:20]
Kalpen (Host)
But yeah, I'm not a fan of that. I don't want to get too off track and I want to. I would. I want to ask a comparison question about the Luddites. And today in the Luddite era, you write that productivity went way up, wages for regular workers barely moved for decades. That's something that we're obviously used to. You see that time and time again. You also talk about how the generations after the Luddites benefited from the machines themselves that replaced them. So I'm curious, like, what are the big lessons from that period about who benefits from new technology? What do the people who are in the generation that are directly impacted by machines supposed to do? I know we talked about that a little bit, but all of that's leading to right now. With AI knowing how much diversity of opinion there is, how much panic and excitement there is, what should our outlook be?
- [37:09]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
That's super hard. I mean, you know the. I think the closest thing in recent times that comes to my mind is workers who've lost their job to foreign competition. Right. Like in the kind of early part of the arts, there was what's come to be called the China shock, which was China entered the World Trade organization in like 2000. It's funny, not that long ago, right? China used to be a super poor country, was not a major competitor. And then bam, they entered the wto and there were places in the United States that were making things that competed with Chinese imports, like clothes, and they got obliterated. The United States as a whole did well. And I mean, ordinary people, right? Like it is the case that like, for working people, when clothes get cheaper, that is good, right? It means they have more money in their pocket, more money to spend on basic things. And I think it's easy to overlook that part. But the, the people and the towns that were competing against China were worse off, right? So overall everybody was better off. And it's important to say that, like, it wasn't just rich people who got better off. It wasn't just the owners of capital. Right? And I think that is likely to be true here as well. Right. It is a competitive world and I do think that there is a universe where overall people are better off from AI. The really hard question is, how do you help people who are clearly losing their jobs because of AI, Right? Like, well, give them money seems like a good part of an answer to me. Will it happen politically? I don't know for the reasons you said. But if I were waving a wand, give them money. In a way though, it seems like I don't want to say the easy part because it would be great if it happened politically, it would be hard. But there is this more complicated thing for everyone, right? And Keynes talked about it 100 years ago. It's like work is meaning for a lot of people, right? Work is purpose. Work is just an organizing principle in life. And so if we project forward, I don't know what's going to happen. I don't think all jobs are going to be gone in five years. Maybe I'll be wrong, but I doubt that. But if in fact lots of people are losing their jobs because of AI, yes, please give them money. Of course there will be more money to go around. There should be money for those people. But like, what do we do about everything else? How do we, like, help them find meaning in their life? It feels hand wavy to me, but like, might be my own problem in three years, right? Like, my identity is my work to some significant degree. And like, technology might put me out of a job in a way it's easier for me to talk about now that it's me. I don't just sound like some asshole talking about other people in a condescending way. Like, this is me. Like, truly, I could put me out of a job before I want to be out of a job. And like, it will be hard in many ways if that happens, not just the money.
- [39:57]
Kalpen (Host)
I worry that not just in the interim, but when, when we're dead, the next, you know, the next 80 years or 80 years down the line.
- [40:05]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Yeah.
- [40:06]
Kalpen (Host)
If you have new classes of people that are so completely diametrically, like, they don't mix, you've got this AI job class of folks who are working and then if there's even success at something like ubi, people who have been pushed out, who are then economically locked, whose children are economically locked in a particular scenario, does that breed a type of class resentment that's even more extreme than what we see today? You know, you see scapegoating of immigrants. The fear that I have about how that could be exacerbated without the right public policy, once the people who have lived it have died off, is also very scary. I don't have to worry about that because I'll be dead. But it is something that I think that worries me. My question for you is literally the exact opposite. Because I hate wrapping up on a doomsday scenario. I think it's very easy to do. I'm not a rage baiter. When you imagine the next 10 or 20 years, what are kind of the most realistic ways that technology might change our jobs that don't fit into either a doomsday scenario or a utopian story?
- [41:19]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Yeah, that's nice. So, like, it's kind of the middle of the probability distribution, right?
- [41:24]
Kalpen (Host)
Like, if I took AI to tell me to take the emotion out of that question, that's what it would have given me.
- [41:29]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
Yeah. No, it's interesting to think about. Right. Because it's more subtle. So people. It doesn't make so much of a story. Okay, so let's think about that. So one thing, one thing in that story is the capability for AI really to actually do people's jobs emerges rather slowly. Right. It is constrained for reasons, partly technological, but partly also institutional. Like companies have all this sort of tacit information. People at companies know how to do all these things, but they never wrote it down. And so AI can't just know that, oh, you got to call John in Accounts Receivable when this happens. Right. Like that kind of thing. So it's slow. Right. That's one important thing is like if you can see the transition coming, if you know that it's not tomorrow. Kids don't become a journalist if you're 20, maybe, or if you do learn how to do it with AI because it's going to change. So it's slow. Right.
- [42:27]
Serving Pancakes Podcast Announcer
Two,
- [42:30]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
to the extent it happens, it will increase output. Right. Like it will make us more productive and more efficient. And like at a basic level, that is good. And I think it is underappreciated. Right. It will increase material abundance. It will help us whatever you want, more clean energy. Certainly we can get better at doing clean energy. Get better at doing battery storage of clean energy. Better medicine, like there are happy things that will happen. The economic policy in the government is a complicated one. I mean, if you want more redistribution, like when there is more wealth, you can generally have more redistribution, right? You could. If people are having crazy capital gains windfalls, perhaps you could raise the capital gains tax and use that to help the people who are being put out of work or help people go on Medicare at 55 instead of 65. Right. That would be a very popular political program. Still, you will have people who are losing their jobs because of AI, who because of the political realities, may well be worse off financially, who, even if they are better off financially, lose a sense of meaning in their life. Often jobs and job types are clustered. So it won't be just an individual losing their job. You will have communities, impacted communities having this economic disaster, perhaps if it's bad, like with the China shock. And so, you know, you might see this kind of heterogeneous outcome. And I don't want to make it as simple as rich and poor. I don't want to make it as simple as, like the trillionaires get more trillions and everybody else is screwed. I think, in fact, a likely outcome is more subtle than that and more varied. And there are some people who are working class, middle class, who learn how to use AI, who get more money because they're being more productive, but others who are totally screwed.
- [44:10]
Kalpen (Host)
Then final question for you. When. Because we opened with this. When you look at this long history of people who have been afraid that machines would take their jobs and many cases where they did, what still worries you when you look ahead and what gives you the most hope?
- [44:26]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
So I guess what still worries me when I look ahead is the rate of change of AI. Because when you look at these instances and the alternatives, right, so like the Luddites are this very dramatic story where these people who had a decent life lost their jobs to machines and their lives got worse on a much vaster scale was the automation of farm work, right? That was like almost everybody worked on a farm and then almost nobody works on a farm now. But there wasn't really. I mean, you know, farmers organized politically in various ways and they wanted different policies, but you never had a kind of Luddite moment for farmers, in part because it was gradual, in part because you had industrialization alongside it, so people could leave the farms and go work in a factory. So if it's really sudden, if a huge amount of people lose their jobs really fast, that just feels super politically dangerous and unstable. Right. Like, it could be violent, it could be bad. I mean, the hopeful thing fundamentally to me is that people have been worried about technological unemployment for 200 years and indeed pockets of people have really suffered from it for long periods of time. But today, the employment to population ratio, the share of working age people with jobs, is like as high as it has ever been. Right. Much higher than it was 50 years ago when far fewer women were working despite incredible amounts of innovation, technological change, technological job loss. So I think we really do underrate the extent to which we are good at coming up with new jobs. Jobs we cannot imagine today. And like, I actually think that'll happen in the long run. It'll be maybe embodied things, you know, like maybe I'll go, I don't know, be a meditation instructor or something. And yes, you could have AI be a meditation instructor. But there are some things I think people who will be richer overall will pay for a human being to do. I just don't know what those things will be.
- [46:19]
Kalpen (Host)
So forget podcasting. We will have other jobs that we just can't even think of right now.
- [46:24]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
I believe that we, you and I, I don't know. But people will have jobs. Yeah. I mean, it could happen to me. Call me in 10 years. Yeah, yeah, it will be super interesting.
- [46:36]
Kalpen (Host)
Yeah, for sure. What a time to be alive to witness it, you know?
- [46:39]
Jacob Goldstein (Guest, Journalist)
What a fucking time to be alive that was.
- [46:43]
Kalpen (Host)
Journalist Jacob Goldstein. To hear more of what's in Jacob's brain, listen to his podcast what's your problem? And business history and read his book Money the true story of a made up thing. Here we go again as a production of iHeart podcasts and snafu Media in association with New Metric Media. Our executive producers are me, Cal Penn, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alyssa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly and Dylan Fagan. Megan Tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is our producer and editor. Our consulting producer is Raman Borsalino. Tori Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly. Logo by Matt Gossen. Legal review from Daniel Welch, Caroline Johnson and Megan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn Basner, Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at I Heart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etor. Thanks for listening everybody. Tell your friends, write a review. All of this helps. I appreciate you listening. And until we go again, I'm Kelpin.
- [47:52]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
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- [47:55]
Serving Pancakes Podcast Announcer
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