Oswald Oschin

Of all the new technologies coming out of AI, the most transformative one might be driverless cars.

They're already on the road in 10 American cities, and they're quickly coming to more.

We tell the story of how we got here.

The secret team at Google that spent 15 years building what might be the safest vehicle on the road, and we cover the fights brewing in blue cities, where unions and politicians are working to keep those cars off the streets.

Listen to Search Engine wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back.

Taylor, you recently spoke to the rising star, sub-stacker, freelance journalist Jasmine Sun, who wrote a piece for the New York Times that did the rounds all about the, quote, permanent underclass.

And I want you to explain that concept to us.

But first, I want to play a clip from your interview with Jasmine.

I think she just explained it really well.

She tweeted it out.

Hasn't that always been true?

Like, that's always been true throughout history, right?

Well, so, yeah, Jasmine actually talks about the origins of this idea of the permanent underclass, and it's not new.

I mean, it actually goes back to, you know, mid last century when we just saw rising automation in factories and daily life, etc.,

I think this idea of the permanent underclass is sort of especially salient now because you have a lot of tech executives echoing this rhetoric.

So it's not just coming from average working people that are nervous.

It's also the CEOs themselves that are saying, you know, hey, we could eliminate all white collar work, that famous Dario quote, you know, by whatever, whatever.

So I think it's just, it's,

It's getting like these fears are getting legitimized, you know, in these people's eyes.