Tyler Cowen on Why AI Hasn't Changed the World Yet
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Oddlots Podcast. I'm Jill Weisenthal.
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
You know, th not a novel observation here, but I do think That if like an early twenty twenty two or late twenty twenty one. you had someone had revealed to you all of the amazing things that we could do with AI these days. I think you would have expected that either the broader economy or society would be more different. than it has been.
Like by and large, you know,
I think most people's jobs are done roughly the same way. Sort of society still seems to operate, although a little maybe a little bit worse every day. I don't know. But like I just don't think like it's sort of mind-blowing technology. And yet by and large, like it hasn't had the economic disruption that I think many people would have guessed.
Maybe I'm cynical on the subject, but I always say never underestimate the human capacity for uh stasis, I guess. And making things much more difficult than they actually need to be. And putting up, you know, bureaucratic barriers, regulatory barriers and things like that. So it's not it's not that surprising to me, but it is true. You have a lot of economists out there who think there was going to be this massive productivity boost, right?
Well it's certainly tech people. Like I don't know, like economists, you know, they're like, Oh there were some we're gonna have a productivity boom. We're raising our estimates from two percent to two and a quarter percent. And then you have uh everything's relative,
J And
then uh you know, we talked to Kathy Wood one time and I think she what did she predict, twenty percent real GDP growth for twenty years, or you certainly have these people in Silicon Valley pre Deflationary boom, post post scarcity, any uh any minute right now. Some real gaps, I would say, between how a lot of economists think about some of these things and the numbers that an economist would be comfortable using versus Maybe literally everyone else.
Kathy Wood, certainly. You know what I think about is how different would your career and my career have been had AI existed in like two thousand eight, two thousand six, when we were starting to to blog basically.
It's a really good question and I don't know the answer because part of me thinks, well, you know, that whole path that was like defined my career like would not have been there, would not have existed. Or no, no, maybe. But on the other hand, maybe in two thousand six I would have been like, just like I was super early into blogging, super early into experimenting with AI news, and it would look different, but maybe I would have rode some different Different. Different
but the same. Yeah,
different but the same, you know. Like I think it's uh it's pretty hard to tell.
One thing I know is like Back then we were writing to optimize Google results, right? That was basic or, you know, like I know social media was disseminating stuff as well, but like Google was still the main the main platform for a lot of stuff. I'm sure if we were doing it now, we would be optimizing for chat GPT or perplexity or someone like that to actually pick up the content.
I mean I that that's the
audience.
Why hasn't AI caused a major productivity boom yet?
Yeah, it is. And I think like any especially any like commercial publisher, right, that's trying to do a scale. I think like a sort of niche voice expert could still have like their audience that comes to them directly. Of course. But like it's scale. Scale. For sure. Every publisher is trying to figure this out. Anyway. We really do have the perfect guest, someone we should have had on the podcast years and years ago.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:47
2
Why hasn't AI caused a major productivity boom yet?
3:47–8:16
3
What do economists predict about AI‑driven productivity growth?
8:16–18:05
4
How might AI change the way we write and blog?
18:05–24:40
5
Will new AI‑focused startups drive the next economic wave?
24:40–32:34
6
Which industries are likely to see the first AI‑powered disruption?
32:34–38:42
7
How will AI reshape law, privacy, and data ownership?
38:42–44:24
8
What impact will AI have on healthcare, insurance, and public finance?
44:24–54:11
Speakers
9 identifiedMore from Odd Lots
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