Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Chapter 2: How does Cal Newport critique AI job loss narratives?
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Chapter 3: What problems arise from directionally true reporting on AI?
Buy a t-shirt, download a blog, whatever it is you want to do, okay? It's not up to me what you do. But today, I'm joined by the incredible ComSci professor and commentator Cal Newport. Cal, thank you for joining me.
Always a pleasure, Ed.
So I kind of wanted to start with, I asked you for a quote a few, like a week ago, maybe two weeks ago. I can't remember how time works anymore, but it was around the way the reporters cover AI and how it seems that a lot of the reporting is kind of directionally true rather than actually true.
Yes, and I want to add something to it since. So I've been thinking about that quote. Yeah, I've been thinking about it.
So what I said, if I remember that quote properly, what I was saying is I was picking up a lot in the reporting on AI that you would lean into a story without having necessarily verified that the details are true and that this is what's actually going on, say, with the new AI model. You would lean into it anyways because it was what I call directionally correct.
It makes the general point that you see it as your job as a reporter to make, which is, hey, you need to be worried about this or this is a big deal. And so I think that is a problem. There's another issue I'm seeing.
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Chapter 4: How does anthropomorphization of AI impact public perception?
I've sort of been refining my thinking on this. I'm also wondering if some of what I'm seeing in some of the reporting on this ā
is it's just a embrace of the form of i'm going to give you a stress wave with no relief just like we're all going to take turns just i will choose an area you haven't thought about how about math math mathematics are going to go away mathematicians are going to be okay i'll take that one yeah let's go like negative clickbait
Yeah, but there's this weird sort of passivity to it where it's like I'm just going to sort of ā I call it like head-shaking doomerism. You're just like ā it's this, this field's just going away. What can we do? Like this, this sort of like passive head shaking. It's a very specific style. You don't see a lot of other reporting historically.
I think that takes on this resignation of, I'm just going to make the case that like you're screwed and then kind of give you a shoulder shrug. And then we're, and then we're going to drop the mic and walk off. And I'm kind of getting tired of this. Like, I think there is a cost to, to stressing the hell out of people.
Chapter 5: What does Cal Newport say about the Mythos marketing strategy?
I mean, I'm getting letters all the time now from people. They'll say things like, I feel like I'm trapped in a cage, just being hit with wave after wave of stress, and there's no outlet. There's no door or possibility of making things better. And I think the CEOs are doing it. And I think increasingly we're seeing commentators doing it as well. This is not good in many different ways.
So I don't know. I'm adding that to my list. Some of it's directional true reporting. Like they really are worried that people aren't worried enough. And I think it's just sport now. Can you find an area that come in and just write a head-shaking article that's only trying to undermine the existence of this like important human activity or this job or our lives or whatever?
It's a very unusual style that quickly became a standard.
And I see it a lot with anything to do with AI and job studies. Like I've been sent this Tufts report where it's like, oh yeah, AI affected, or they find these weird weasel words where it's like,
Chapter 6: What are the implications of AI in cybersecurity?
jobs that could be at risk from ai at some point and we put them in one bucket and then jobs that might one day be we'll put that in another bucket and there you go don't know what we're like you said don't know what we're meant to do with this don't know what anyone's meant to do with this information but it's just like well there you have it there you have it we're all fucked it's it's the it's the end the job even though the data does not say that like i've read i think every ai jobs report now
Every single one. And they're all the same. They are all, right now, AI can do this. And then you look at what it says. It's like, it can do law. Well, it can't really do law. It can do one sigma within law, kind of. And even then, it isn't really obvious. And the people saying it can do that are partners at law firms that don't write motions or don't do the grunt work. So it's...
It's almost ā it feels like the reporters have either given up or are just looking for clicks, and it's hard to tell sometimes.
This is what I'm trying to figure out, because I'm realizing if it's entirely just, I think this is directionally true and that's good enough ā then they should be way more upset and in the streets and sparking a revolution, right?
Like, if you actually really believed 50% of the economy was going to be automated, that we're going to have to have government checks just so we can afford to buy the cat food to eat after all the jobs are gone.
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Chapter 7: How does the conversation around AI agents evolve?
If you really thought that our entire infrastructure is about to collapse, that superintelligence was going to emerge suddenly and be a threat to human existence ā you want to just write a sort of too cool for school head shaking resignation article. You would be like, we got to, where are the John Connors, right?
Like we need to get on the cool trench coats and get out there and go against the Skynet revolution. Like you would be on your feet. You'd be, you know, nothing would be more important to you. So this is the, this is my case about the tech CEOs. I think there, there's a moral hazard that I don't think that we're putting our finger on properly here, right?
So you have the tech CEOs in the AI space that are just, they'll just come out and just,
drop these bombs like yeah white collar blood you know he never actually said that that's axios putting words in people's that was axio i thought that that was a he definitely our dario amadei wario he did say 50 but i said 50 but not i thought he said the blood bath that's my bad
Well, I trust ā the New York fact checkers figured that out for me. But Axios does a lot of this where they put like these really quotable quotes in the headlines about articles on interviews or speeches given by AI people. And it turns out the thing in the headline wasn't what they said. It was directly what they said. But anyways ā
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Chapter 8: What future does Cal Newport envision for AI technology?
So they're out there making these big statements. The jobs are going away. The internet, as we know it, is about to all fall apart because of mythos is going to have this new capability. The super intelligence is coming. I don't even know what's going to happen. There's two possible things going on here, and both of them are morally bad.
One is, which is the one I think is true, which is this is largely marketing. This works. It gets reported. It keeps us seeming inevitable and important, in which case that's a huge moral hazard because you are making many, many people, normal people, stressed the hell out. Actively scaring them. Actively scaring them. The other option is you actually believe it's true.
Well, this is an even larger... moral trap that you've just fallen into because you are now perpetuating something that's going to cause exponentially more harm. You should be the very first person shutting down your company and trying to get the other ones to do it as well.
So it's this weird moral trap they've set up where whatever is actually going on here, if they're coming out here saying these things, it is bad. This can't possibly, normatively speaking, be the right ethical behavior to be out there saying these scary things all the time because either you need to be building the barricade or you're just scaring people for the marketing.
Neither of these, I think, is something that's defensible.
I have a third and worse option, which is I choose Axios. I think Axios, there are some good reporters there. I think the leadership over there is disgusting. I think that they are aligning themselves with the companies. I think that what, like, if you watch, there was a Jim, what's his name, interviewing Sam Altman.
These, I think that there is a level of, and I would put this across people like Kevin Bruce and Casey Newton. These are my words, not Cal's. Um, that they're aligning them, that they're saying, we think this is going to happen, and we're here to tell you great news. This is good news for me, the writer, because I will be safe somehow. I will be fine. You will not. You should be scared.
But it's also a good thing because economy, marketing, market, good. And it's a very incoherent message because it's like, to your point, yeah, if this was a virus ā Like a pandemic. You wouldn't be writing, hey, millions of people are going to die. What? Pretty good, right? Hey, it'll be good. We'll have less people. That'll be good, right? It would be seen as peculiar.
Someone did write that. Someone did write that, by the way.
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