Tristan Harris

Now we have automated teller machines.

So humans will always just find something else to do.

But why is AI different than that?

Because it's intelligence.

Because it's general intelligence that means that rather than a technology that automates just bank tellers, this is automating all forms of human cognitive labor, meaning everything that a human mind can do.

So who's going to retrain faster?

You moving to that other kind of cognitive labor?

Or the AI that is trained on everything and can multiply itself by 100 million times and it retraining how to do that other kind of labor?

I think everywhere where people value human connection and a human relationship, those jobs will stay because what we value in that work is the human relationship, not the performance of the work.

But that's not to justify that we should just race as fast as possible to disrupt a billion jobs without a transition plan where no one – how are you going to put food on the table for your family?

What AI represents is the zenithification of that competitive logic.

The logic of, if I don't do it, I'll lose to the other guy that will.

Is that true?

That's what they believe.

Is that true for sort of companies in America?

Well, just as you said, if Walmart doesn't automate their workforce and their supply chains with robots, and all their competitors did, then Walmart would get obsoleted.

If the military that doesn't create autonomous weapons doesn't want to because they think that's more ethical, but all the other militaries do get autonomous weapons, they're just going to lose.

If the student who's using ChatGPT to do their homework for them is going to fall behind by not doing that when all their other classmates are using ChatGPT to cheat...

They're going to lose.

But as we're racing to automate all of this, we're landing in a world where in the case of the students, they didn't learn anything.