AI Revolution: Trillionaires vs. Universal Basic Income | The Future of Work 2.0

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What happens when more and more jobs get AI ified? What do humans do?

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Hey, Adele Wang here and welcome to the podcast where we explore all things around creating an amazing life and dealing with a world that has never been under so much change.

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And AI is definitely a big change that's impacting everybody. On so many levels, every business is going to be impacted.

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The way we communicate. Our policy, even our politics. For those of you who don't know, I have been a leadership mentor and I am an AI consultant as well.

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So I get to sit with both of these on the personal level of people's happiness and what's happening on a change level for businesses and what it means to be human and what companies are dealing with.

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So unless you've been hiding under a rock. AI, Artificial Intelligence, is probably the biggest change that we've had almost ever, even bigger by some estimates than the Industrial Revolution.

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And the reason why is that up to now, most of our technology breakthroughs haven't been able to make decisions for us. That's what makes AI different.

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Up to now, the computer, the car, the cell phone, all these things were great. But it's not like the car could just automatically turn itself on and take you where you wanted to go.

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Your computer wouldn't know what to do on a spreadsheet unless you told it. Up to now, inventions haven't been able to make decisions for you.

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AI is different because now the technology has advanced to a point where it has agency. It can just make decisions for you that can alleviate a lot of stress make a lot of jobs much more efficient.

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And I'm going to get into that in a second. But AI has already been around for a while. You just didn't notice it as much.

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And the easiest place to notice where a very primitive AI has been happening is probably in social media. Algorithms are a form of AI, meaning they know what you like to look at.

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If you liked this dress on Amazon, they're going to show you, you might like this. If you watch this movie, you might like these three suggestions. Algorithms are a form of AI.

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And There's some pros with that, and we're all familiar that it also has some cons. And I'm going to get into that in a bit, because now the technology has really advanced to an exponential level that's going to be impacting, everything's going to be an algorithm.

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Right now, there's a lot in the business world around using these latest AI tools to help with business. That means that consultants, advisors are coming in and looking at companies and what we are looking for is how to get the most out of humans to do human things and start implementing AI to do the stuff that nobody likes to do.

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That's usually tasks that nobody enjoys. It's very repetitive. You really don't need a human to be managing contracts or reconciling this against that or emails, customer service inquiries, things that happen over and over that just wear people out.

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No one wakes up in the morning excited to respond to your basic repetitive emails that you might get from customer service. But those types of jobs are perfect for an AI agent to be involved with, to know that when we get this type of request, it has the intelligence to look at it and make decisions and suggest what a good course of action might be,

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to draft an email that a human can look at and say, yes, maybe a few corrections and hit send, save that human a boatload of time in researching, writing out, and just, Make that person's day a whole lot easier.

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So this means that a lot of jobs that people used to be paid to do can now have an AI component so that people can be freed up to do higher level tasks that involve more things like creativity, engagement with humans, instead of worrying about the email piling up or worrying about looking for a clause in a contract or what does this mean.

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Artificial intelligence is going to just free up humans to do more human tasks. Yay. And this means that there are going to be some jobs that it's not always going to be clerical.

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There are going to be some jobs that are more AI able because they are data oriented. Computer, software development, coding is perfect for AI because it takes a bunch of information in and what used to go through a human to send some information out and AI can now do that faster and easier.

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A lot of creative jobs are impacted too. We all know there's right now a rush into the tools for generative AI. That's things like photography writing music on, at the touch of a button. Poof! You've got a song, you can create images.

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A lot of moving video cannot be created. AI. You can have an AI. I am not a bot right now, but I could make myself a bot by cloning my face and my voice and be talking to you. That's interesting.

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The question becomes as these jobs get bubbled up more to you're not going to need so many people to do the grunt work that this next level will be some people in the loop managing some of the higher decisions.

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And, as this technology develops, and the AI engines get smarter and smarter, what we will probably see is that the level of work is going to start bubbling up to the next level of decision making, because the AI agents are now smarter. They can help make mid level decisions, right?

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And then it's going to bubble up. This is just, it's probably going to happen with AI. The nature of work might change, and we have to start thinking about things like what we intend, how, what kind of life, what kind of policies do we want for this technology?

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Basically, if AI starts to now generate a lot of creative stuff, and can write our software for us, and make key decisions, what will humans do? And that's a legitimate question. I think.

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There's always going to be new opportunity for humans, no matter what happens, there's always going to be new things that open up on the horizon, we just don't know what they are yet. So it behooves you, if you are, AI savvy, to be curious, what are the jobs of the future?

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And I'm going to outline a few that I think might be useful. We won't need as many people anymore. It's possible that in the end you might have companies where, you know, if there are a few people at the top managing a few things, managing a bunch of agents, and you can run a company with only a few people.

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We're already seeing that. So it's understandable that people are wondering, well, what happens to people? There are two things that I think might happen. And just stick with me to the end because I'm gonna go kind of out there.

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It might sound a little bit crazy, but a little bit loony, but so I think the best predictor of the future of human behavior is probably past behavior, right? And so this presents some challenges because if we have the idea that more of this productivity is going to be bubbling up,

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we're not going to need as many people. There can be some people in humans in the loop. And as AI gets smarter and smarter, we might need fewer people. All this productivity. The question becomes with all this new money and productivity that's being generated from AI.

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Where is the money going right? And that's a legitimate question that if we continue down the path that we've seen, and we're already starting to see hints of it, what will probably happen is that this money bubbles up to a few people at the top.

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We have already seen billionaires in the AI Space. very much. There are boatloads of millionaires already. We've seen, because all this stuff is bubbling up, we're creating more billionaires. It's only a matter of time before we start to see trillionaires.

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And with this, we have to think, is this really what is Sustainable and desirable for the human species to have a few people at the top that have so much and what's left for everyone else. We're already seeing this tendency.

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It's not. The problem is not the AI. The AI itself can do amazing things. cure cancer, solve global warming. The problem is in the people and the mindset of people implementing AI.

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And right now what's going on is as this wealth gets generated up, the people at the top are tending to buckle down and hoard it. There's this idea that still in, in the mythology of the way some people think that.

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I, by myself, will be smart enough to figure this out, to hoard as much as I can for myself and my family. Everyone else, well, that's your problem. Why do I say that? Because we see this already in the behavior of some billionaires who are looking at this technology.

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And going, I want to make sure that in the coming whatever it is, whether it's climate change or nuclear issues or whatever it is, I want to be sure that me and mine are okay.

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So as a billionaire, I'm going to build bunkers underground that cost multiple millions of dollars and stock it with all the resources I need so that my family will be okay when the disaster happens. That's what Mark Zuckerberg's doing with his money,

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instead of the idea that maybe I could use these billions to be part of solving the problem, which would require a different mindset, one of cooperation. The tendency right now is still me mine.

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You can see this in any miniature disaster of a flood or something that's already happening. There is a tendency for humans to hoard and buckle down and just take care of me. Whether it's a feeling like I can take care of me all by myself.

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This is. This is natural. We haven't, as a species, been very good with cooperation. And this tends to tap into a mythology about how we should be self sufficient, self independent, because that's kind of what we were raised to think through the industrial age, right?

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But in this new world, it doesn't work so well. So all this wealth bubbling up, it could be that if we don't change the way we think about resources and the human impulse and we continue down this path, probably you're going to have a few people at the top with trillions and a lot of other people with just, oh my gosh, scrambling.

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This sort of puts economic theory on its ear. You are talking to someone who's studied in graduate school. I finished school with an extremely conservative view of the world when it came to things like supply, demand, basic economic theory.

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Leave the markets alone, let the market find its natural equilibrium, keep taxes low, let the government stay out of everything, and that way the market will find its greatest efficiency. And I really believed that for a while.

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And it wasn't until I started working that I started to notice that, you know, the real world doesn't quite work that way. Because standard economic theory assumes things like everyone has equal access to resources, equal access to information, that information is free flowing.

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That's not how the real world works. Because in the real world, more information is more power. More power means you can change the rules of the game. That the more money you have, the more you're able to put in legislation or change the dynamics of how this whole economic game is working.

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We see that over and over. Sometimes called lobbying, sometimes whatever. And there's no judgment, it's just looking at this is our consciousness level right now. If I can, and if it's legal, I'm going to do it. Or if it's, if I don't get caught, I'm going to do it. For more for me.

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And so this is kind of the way it's been going, but I don't know if we are going to survive as a species if we keep doing it this way. So what is the alternative as AI makes things uber efficient? What are humans going to do?

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For example, If humans are designed to create art, music, literature, that that's part of what makes us human. In the past, you would be paid for the fruits of your creative endeavor. Being an accountant can be a form, an art form, of sitting with people.

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Software development, writing code can be an art form. Most most livelihoods as humans, not just the so called creative arts, but we are meant to create. But the thought was, as you express your creative genius, in whatever way that is, you are paid for it, right?

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That's called salary or sales or whatever. But what happens when AI starts to create everything? That AI can create a photograph just as good as a human, AI can create music at the push of a button instead of a songwriter, AI can generate code.

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Now, what are people supposed to do? Because, it's like, well, if the AI can create stuff just as good as a human, why should I create? Here's what I think might happen. That as humans. We 55

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were innately designed to create regardless of whether we get paid for it or not. Up to now, we have been paid for it, but imagine if you if, think of it this way. Would you stop writing music and singing and dancing and writing art or exploring what you want to do if you weren't paid for it?

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If we were to separate being paid with the art form, what would you do? And I started thinking about every election cycle around the fringes, around the so called lunatic fringe, there's always a conversation around this concept of Universal basic income.

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And when I heard about this, I thought this was nuts. I thought this was some communist or socialist idea. But the basics of this is that the government can provide every citizen a universal basic income to live on.

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And if that were the case, we could alleviate poverty, all these problems of homelessness, that people would have enough to live on. And that has been vehemently protested against.

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In our culture up to this point, because there's this idea that, Oh my God, you're going to tax everybody else to death, and you're going to have a few people living on the dole, you're going to, I'm going to work my butt off, and you're just going to tax me to support someone who's just sitting on their butt all day long and they get paid for doing nothing.

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That is the assumption. And that is also what has been sort of a myth about how humans operate. But the devil's always in the details with that. The assumption is that the government does that. And I actually did some research around where universal basic income has been tested.

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It's been done in Europe. There have been a few places that have tested the idea of UBI. What are the results? Actually, the results have been fairly positive. People reported a huge decrease in stress and anxiety levels because they had enough to live on, to make the rent.

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maybe they weren't uber wealthy, but there was a relaxation into life. Whether it's, less anxiety or I can eat. People aren't sleeping on the streets. No one reported anything bad. Of course the assumption was that it's coming from the government.

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And I don't know enough about these studies. The devil's always in the details. So I can't say. I'm just saying it has been tried. I didn't really hear anything bad about it. But the number one objection right now is, oh my god, you're taxing everyone else who's busting their butt out here.

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Here's a thought though. As AI takes over more and more of our and algorithms, there is the thought that You know, our data that we use, like these companies, whether it's Google, Meta, Twitter, TikTok, all these companies, they are using our data, our personal, like they know what you like to buy, what you like to watch, what you read, what they collect a lot of information about our preferences.

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So that they can market to us, right? If you like this blouse, you might like this one. That's similar. And, from a marketing standpoint, that makes sense. And as a user, sometimes that's good. Sometimes it's a little creepy to see these ads following me around the internet.

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Because once I googled on, I don't know, a basic lawnmower or something, and I see lawnmower ads no matter where I go for the next two weeks. Why? Because they know something about me. And the thing is, that data that they're collecting on me, it has value.

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These companies that are running these AI algorithms are using my data To sell back to me and generate a profit. Even if it's to get engagement on social media. Like over the last 10 years, social media algorithms have learned what kinds of things generate engagement.

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Because they were programmed, they said, your job is to keep people addicted to these platforms as long as possible. Go out and figure out what kinds of data that is. Thanks. It tends to be things like outrageous rage bait, polarized information, but it will work to get people so sucked in there.

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And then, comments, likes, shares, and so the social media companies are like, this is great! We can sell more products, we can get more advertising, our stock price goes up. But you and I both know that also has a negative impact.

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not so great impact on what's happening with society. These algorithms, it's not the people that's the problem. It's these algorithms are promoting more and more division because it works to drive up engagement to sell products.

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Before these algorithms were that big of a deal, people who disagreed with each other could still stand to be in the same room with each other. They wouldn't be at each other's throats. Now, if you find out someone is on the other side, the other team, people can't even stand to tolerate to have one single conversation with them.

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And this is starting to destabilize our democracy with fake news, all this stuff. I'm going to leave that separate, but that is heavily AI and algorithm driven, because it's achieving the goal of engagement.

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So they're using our preference, our data to sell things, and that has value. And it's very extractive of the consumer base. It's pulling information out of you to make more money and sell. Now, what if the thought of UBI is.

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If you're going to use my information to market to me, pay me for it. That these large companies that are making now billions and trillions and it's funneling up, what if the thinking goes, some of that go back to the people whose data you're using, which is pretty much everyone, in some form of universal basic income.

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So what does that mean? If you've got people that are no longer working, you. Because AI is doing practically everything. And again, I'm taking this to a later stage as we get to generalize intelligence, is when the AI is smarter than people.

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Like, people can't even solve the problems because the AIs can do it all for you. Whether it's climate change, curing cancer. It's kind of like what happened a while ago with there was a stock market meltdown with Lehman Brothers.

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You guys remember that? That was a couple of really smart young kids that developed a new financial instrument called derivatives or something. No one could understand what this did, but they were, they packaged this financial instrument and everyone thought this is great because it's making money.

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Even their bosses didn't quite understand it, but it made money, and everything was fine until it wasn't, and then it really wasn't, because no one could make heads or tails of what was going on. That is a risk we run with AI, which is now so much more advanced than what happened with Lehman Brothers, to package all kinds of sophisticated financial instruments.

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That no one human can understand it's too complicated and everything's great till it's not right. So there's a risk there that we are building technology that's so able to do things that humans can't, that we lose touch of what it's doing.

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As algorithms become more pronounced in everything, every business decision, whether it's applying for a job, getting a loan, getting a mortgage, we plop someone's information in there and the AI spits out a yes or a no, and if you're declined for a loan, we really don't know why.

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It's kind of a black box over there. These are considerations. But as we move into more and more advanced AI, it will approach a point where the AI is smarter than us, able to make decisions, anticipate things we haven't even thought of, create all kinds of possibilities that we just never thought of.

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Then wouldn't it be great if the fruits of all of this intelligence and uber, uber, uber productivity, instead of funneling up to one or two people as trillionaires because no one needs to be that wealthy, what if this money could be redistributed back to people?

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What if you didn't have to work? That what if everyone had a universal basic income? What would you do with your days? What would you do with your time? I'll bet you, you would still create, even if you don't get paid for it.

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Why? Because the act of creation is joyous just for that. Singing, dancing, writing things, sketching. Maybe you like to work on cars. Maybe you like to, I don't know, what would you do if money wasn't the main driver?

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Up to now, people have never had the opportunity to even think that way. Unless you're already, wealthy or something, it was just assumed that you would be paid for the fruits of your labor, and then a lot of your time was spent figuring out, well, what is it that I want to do, and how can I make money doing it?

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But what if everyone didn't have to work nearly as much, maybe 20 hours instead of 40 and 50? So there's still maybe some humans in the loop. And everyone got some sort of income from this vast Productivity gain. It's given back to the people. What would you do with your time?

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It's an interesting thought that you might be creating anyway. For the sheer joy of it, knowing that if I create a piece of art, I know people can just go to AI and press a button and get a piece of art. And, but I enjoy creating this photograph anyway.

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And from a consumer point of view, you could press a button and just get a photograph of exactly what you want. But you might also really enjoy connecting with the creator of finding out more about the person who created this. This is how art more used to be, right?

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So consumers would have a choice. Do you want to watch an AI generated movie of dancing? Or would you like to go to a live performance with your friends? And share an experience, or maybe even take a dance class yourself.

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Right? There's a huge difference between the output that AI can generate, and your experience as a human, generating because you just love to be creative, and experiencing because you just love to be with humans, versus just taking an output of AI.

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I think there are some jobs we can all agree on. That even if they could be done by AI, would you want them done by AI? For example, would you like the nanny of your child to be an AI robot?

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I mean, you could, I imagine someday you could have an AI robot who could be a nanny, but is that what you would want? I think we all can intuitively sense there's something missing there. Would you want your therapist To be an AI bot, where you sit down behind the computer and you're getting your therapy through an AI bot.

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I would say that anything that's truly intimate and connecting in nature, I don't think people want an AI for them. That means what we yearn for is beyond what AI can provide. It's connection, it's experience.

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That we can't duplicate that, no matter how brilliant the AGI is. That is what makes us human. Creating, experiencing. Maybe. If we didn't have to work so hard for a living, you would spend more time helping people less fortunate.

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Would you be rescuing dogs? Would you be helping your neighbor? Or supporting someone who's going through a hard time? Or I don't know. Spending your time with kids that need a mentor, things that you might have always wanted to do, but there was either no time or you felt the financial pressure.

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It's just food for thought. So, it's interesting. We would have to make a conscious decision at some point. How much is enough that as we AI ify the jobs and the productivity goes up, I know.

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That the money starts to flow up. At what point does it tip too much into what's unhealthy? My position is that I don't think a trillionaire is the natural order of things. Because in nature, you never see one creature consuming everything, getting obese, and destroying everything in its path.

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You're either going to get cancer because it's just Uncontrolled growth or, the environment is completely depleted and there's nobody left and pretty soon everybody, everything dies, right? When it's consumed like that.

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Why if there is some way at some point, what is the tipping point where we say, okay, we really can't afford all the money to go up to a select few people. Let's Find some way to keep this system generative down to the people whose data we're using and let the bots and the AI do the big stuff of solving cancer, the climate change problems, like the things that people really struggle to do.

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Let them run that. And this excess profit. go back to humans, and people might discover what it's like to be human again. When people didn't used to work this hard, way back in our history, people didn't work that hard.

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On average, I believe the anthropologists have said people worked on an average of maybe 15 hours a week. That was when people were chasing hunting and gathering. That most of the time was spent with each other. Telling stories. Hanging out.

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Maybe we're going back to that. Because now, people don't have to exchange something for money. Whether it's Grunt work, or feeling like the starving artist that I'm going to make this amazing piece and get paid two cents for it. That's not very soul affirming.

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Maybe we're approaching the point where if you, whatever you like to do, do it. And if you want to sell it and someone wants to buy it because they want the experience of engaging with 104

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you, great. There's always going to be room for people, live performances, live storytelling, anything that's an experience. No one wants to just sit behind a computer. Computer and hit a button and just sit there and consume. We wanna be part of creating the moment with a human right.

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Can you feel that? And that might be what makes people happy, and if there's enough to live on, let the bots solve the big problems of the day with curing cancer. What do you think? So I think we have a choice that will be coming at some point.

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Do we want to continue down the same path that we are on right now, which is more hoarding? Me myself and I, I, me, me, me. Because it's a natural response because we're scared. We don't trust each other. Let's batten down the hatch, build a bunker that's millions of dollars worth underground and everyone else, well, but me, myself and I,

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it's this myth that I alone can transcend all this through my own brilliance. Or is there this. Awareness is the only way through this. We might have to learn how to cooperate with each other. And I was watching a podcast somewhere else, and I thought it was so apt.

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And this thought leader was saying, he encouraged everyone to join groups. Fifty people working together towards something is so much more powerful than a hundred, two hundred people at home sitting there by themselves trying to figure it out.

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And right now, we're not so good at cooperating. It's not so much the cool thing. Right now we admire brilliance. And transcending the soloist, but we are approaching a point in humanity where we're going to need more cooperation.

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So that means our ideas of economics, supply and demand, the way we exchange money for our services, the way we create, just because we're meant to create just for the pure enjoyment and experience of it with someone else. That's got to change. Could be pretty cool.

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So do we want to go the trillionaire route where everyone is scrambling down here and a few wealthy people think that they can transcend the system that eventually just dies from climate change? Or do we want to move this way, towards a more generative, sustainable model?

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Maybe instead of working all day, maybe you've got your heart on finding ways to clean up the ocean, or find ways, sustainable gardening, or, I don't know, it does not matter. You don't always have to be a creative art the way we think in terms of music, dance, maybe you like woodworking, working on cars or rescuing cats or something.

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Everyone is meant to create and contribute. That's a given. Just up to now, we've been, this idea that you gotta get paid for it, or unless you're independently wealthy, and that has always been a given. One of the things that has looked like the fly in the ointment and as we move from where we are now, up leveling the quality of work so that people don't have to work so hard.

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What would you do if you're a business owner? What would you do if you had an extra two hours in your day? You might have better work life balance. You might spend time with your family. What if your staff wasn't constantly frazzled and stressed and could spend more time talking to each other? Or customers on the phone that are needing assistance.

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I mean, this could and my hope is that there's a feeling of spaciousness and not, oh, let's squeeze the turn up even harder and make one person do the work of 100 just because we can. That might happen. But my hope is that we're actually opening up more space.

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For creativity and human and as the technology develops, finding ways to create a sustainable way of life because AI Is not going away. It's just going to keep getting smarter and smarter, right? So we've had to find some way to coexist as humans without putting ourselves at risk.

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That means we're going to have to have conscious decision making about how we use this tech. It can't just be a free for all, let the market decide because Yeah. Would you want that? I think we're going to have to make a conscious decision of how we want to use these tools.

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I hope this has been useful. I know it's a little wild to share this with your friends. I could be completely wrong because no one knows right now. But as someone who's spent 15 years on in people's inner worlds of what makes people tick, anxiety, stress, and as working with people and AI, this blend, we must blend them together for our benefit.

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AI must serve humans, not the other way around. So what would you do if you didn't have to work so hard for a living? Share this with your friend. I welcome your comments. Till next time. Oh, subscribe to the channel for more thoughts, crazy thoughts like this.