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Chapter 1: Is the AI doom fever breaking?
The way that CEOs of major AI companies have been talking about their products in recent years really has been bonkers. They seem to be going out of their way to terrify their potential customers. I mean, last week I played a clip of Microsoft CEO Mustafa Suleiman claiming that their AI systems would be capable of fully automating basically every knowledge work task within a year.
That's not a very nice thing to tell your customers.
Chapter 2: Have the AI CEOs changed their rhetoric recently?
All your jobs are going to go away, by the way. We're working on it. Hold for applause, I guess.
Chapter 3: What prompted AI CEOs to change their messaging?
Now, he's far from alone in making these type of disturbing claims. Here is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talking last summer about what the world is going to be like after AI takes over everything. People really need agency.
They really need to feel like they have a voice in governing the future and deciding where things go.
Chapter 4: Why did AI leaders initially adopt a fearful narrative?
And I think if you just say, okay, AI is going to do everything and then everybody gets a dividend from that, it's not going to feel good. And I don't think it actually would be good for people. So I think we need to find a way where we're not just like, if we're in this world, where we're not just distributing money or wealth. Actually, I don't just want a check every month.
What I would want is an ownership share in whatever the AI creates so that I feel like I'm participating in this thing that's going to compound and get more valuable over time.
All right, so to summarize what Altman just said there, sure, AI will, quote unquote, do everything. But don't worry, we're going to find a way for you humans to still participate in the world. And now, not to be outdone, here's Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei also wringing his hands about the damage that his own company's products will soon do.
but exactly those same kind of skills things like summarizing a document brainstorming putting together a financial report makes me worry a lot that entry-level jobs in areas like finance consulting um tech uh many many other areas like that entry-level white-collar work I worry that those things are going to be first augmented, but before long replaced by AI systems.
And that we may indeed, it's hard to predict the future, but we may indeed have a serious employment crisis.
Think about how crazy this is, right?
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Chapter 5: What evidence suggests a shift in public perception of AI?
We have CEOs stating in effect, that they're afraid of all the different ways that their products are going to destroy the economy and make everyone's lives much worse. We've kind of become used to this in the context of AI, but if we heard it in any other industry, it would really catch our attention. I mean, can you imagine the CEO of Pfizer
going on the air and talking about a new drug and saying, hey, we're excited for the potential of this new pill to reduce plaque psoriasis by 50%. At the same time, however, I'm worried because once widely used, it will likely transform a large fraction of the population into zombies. That's basically what we're getting from the AI CEOs, and I think it's just lunacy. But here's the thing.
Recently, I'm talking about like the last few weeks or I have noticed a bit of a shift in this rhetoric. There have now been multiple statements from major AI leaders that hint that they might be retreating from the strategy of trying to make everyone as anxious as possible about their own products.
Chapter 6: How are recent AI developments affecting job markets?
Now, if true, this immediately inspires some questions. What specifically are these AI leaders saying in more recent weeks? Why are they changing their minds about how they talk? And why did they ever think it was a good idea in the first place to try to terrify people about the products that they were also trying to sell them?
Well, it's Thursday, which means it's time for another AI Reality episode, AI Reality Check episode, rather, of this show, which means this is a perfect opportunity for us to explore some of these answers, which is exactly what we're going to do. So stay tuned. As always, I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show for people seeking depth in a distracted world.
All right, so let's proceed by looking at those three questions that I just raised. Question number one, is it true that the AI CEOs are starting to change the way they talk about their products' potential impacts? Well, I want to give you some recent examples that give me hope. I want to start with a tweet from Sam Altman from late last week. So this is sort of breaking news, right?
He said, and I quote, we want to build tools to augment and elevate people, not entities to replace them. I think a lot of people are going to be busier and hopefully more fulfilled than ever, and Jobs' doomerism is likely long-term wrong. And just as a quick aside, it's all lowercase letters. Jesse, we've talked about this before. Why do these tech people write in lowercase letters?
Chapter 7: What role does public opinion play in AI discussions?
Have a little bit of respect, but okay, we'll let that slide. This is a far cry from the Altman that we heard just last summer talking about how we'd have to find ways for people to participate in the world after AI took over literally every job. So this is definitely a change of tune from Altman.
We're getting even stronger pushback on job doomerism from the CEO of the largest of the AI relevant companies, which is NVIDIA. And Jensen Wong has been on a welcomed rampage recently, really pushing back on this rhetoric about AI replacing jobs. I want to read you some quotes here from a remarkable article that was published in Fortune just on Saturday. So just less than a week ago.
All right, here's from the Fortune article. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong has been pushing back against the popular narrative that AI will wipe out huge swaths of the workforce, but he also placed some blame on overly confident CEOs who assume they know everything.
Although it's important to advocate for guardrails on AI, he added that scaring people into believing that the technology will pose an existential threat to humanity, destroy democracy, or eliminate 50% of entry-level jobs is, quote, ridiculous, end quote. In reality, he estimated that AI has created more than half a million jobs in the last few years.
That's because when companies incorporate AI, they grow faster and hire more people. And data from hiring site Indeed shows that demand for software engineers is actually increasing. So good for you, Huang, for really taking a stance. I love that sort of barely concealed dig at Anthropic CEO Daria Amadei, who's exactly the figure who's been saying that thing about 50% of entry-level jobs.
And Huang is like, nope, not going to happen. It's still early. But I have been picking up more and more of these signals that I think a memo has been successfully delivered to the AI CEOs. Hey, guys, stop trying to terrify everyone about the product you hope they will pay for. All right, this brings us to our second question. Why did they change their minds? Why did the rhetoric shift?
Well, now we're going to get a little bit more speculative. I have a couple different things I want to suggest here. One, I think the fact that multiple of these companies are preparing for an IPO and or considering an IPO, and I'm looking really particularly here at Anthropic and OpenAI, made a difference. Now, here's why.
If you're Anthropic or you're OpenAI and you're thinking about an IPO, you have to start hanging out with people from the East Coast who wear suits. And they're not in the Silicon Valley bubble. And they're not in this world where everyone tries to one-up each other with who can be more apocalyptic about AI.
They come from a different, more sober-minded, more careful world in terms of the ways they think and talk about things. And I really think this happened. I think a lot of these companies are basically hearing from Wall Street types who are saying, what the hell are you doing? You're trying to convince people to get excited about your company and
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