Christopher Mims

And we wouldn't have done this without AI because one of the things that AI is good at is coming up with weird ideas that are, you know, slightly inhuman.

I think the average person doesn't realize that AI is already, you know, the water that we swim in and we're all fish, right?

Every time you open up Google Maps, there's a very particular kind of route planning AI that is solving this incredibly difficult so-called traveling salesman problem to get you the shortest route to your destination given the traffic that's happening.

Every time you make a claim through your insurance company's app, which they love for you to do now,

I mean, one insurance adjuster told me... Actually, he was a PhD who works for the company.

He said, there's 20 different AI models in production when you use that app to make a claim.

And it means that, like, you know, an adjuster has way less work to do when you bump into a pole or something with your car.

So...

AI is powering our Google search results.

It is determining what we see in our TikTok and our Instagram and all of our other social media feeds.

We're constantly exposed to it.

And most of that is this pre-generative AI.

And that's going to remain the case for the foreseeable future.

Most of our interactions with AI are going to be invisible.

And they're this kind of older, so-called classical AI.

In the short term, I'm very concerned about what's going to happen in the labor market.

Big moves in the labor market, they never happen because of one thing.

But AI is arriving at the same time that we have tons and tons of economic uncertainty, which business leaders hate.

So whether it's an excuse or it's the reality, business leaders are either laying people off or keeping headcount flat

And one of the ways they justify it is they're like, well, I'm going to use AI to make existing workers more productive.