Key Points
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Doug and Lee discuss the potential for AI to both boost productivity and cause widespread job losses, with studies suggesting millions of positions could be replaced by automation worldwide.
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Lee notes that while new technologies often create new types of jobs, the shift may still lead to economic strain and higher unemployment, especially as AI takes over roles in industries like manufacturing and farming.
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Summary
Doug McIntyre and Lee Jackson discuss the growing concern that artificial intelligence could replace millions of jobs across multiple industries. Doug references studies, including one from Goldman Sachs, predicting large-scale job losses while acknowledging AI’s potential to boost productivity. Doug warns that such efficiency could raise unemployment rates and potentially trigger a recession while Lee counters by noting that technological revolutions have historically created new job ( though he admits this transition may not be easy for everyone). Both conclude that while AI will bring progress, it also poses serious risks for workers who may struggle to adapt to the changing economy.
Transcript
Doug McIntyre: Lee, there is an argument that, you know, AI will eliminate 10 million jobs to the United States. Goldman Sachs had some study about a year ago that said worldwide AI could destroy 300 million jobs. I don’t know. You know, that’s a, the Goldman Sachs thing, you know, or a McKinsey thing. Oh, yeah, we’ve got it all figured out. 10 years from now, we know exactly what’s gonna go on. But the, but the, the truth of the matter is that there does appear to be a capacity for a lot of companies to take certain things that people have to do and replace them with AI. Now, it may not be perfect. You may not be able to get rid of a thousand people because you’ve got a great AI infrastructure. Maybe it’s only 125, but if you believe what a lot of pundits and also people who are smart and experts in in tech and employment. AI could drive tremendous productivity in our economy, but it could also eat through a lot of jobs. It seems to me that in some ways AI hurts the economy very badly.
Lee Jackson: Well, you know, and there’s always new jobs created when a new technology came in. You know, like, like the old story about, well, when the car came in, it put the people that made horse carriages out of business and well, yeah, but those guys all ended up working at Ford or you know, whatever. So I’m sure there’s a degree of that, but I had an interesting thing happened this weekend. My, my wife and I sold some chairs there ’cause we just didn’t have room for ’em and some nice folks came to, got it. The guy was a project manager at the, a big, uh, caterpillar facility here in northeast Mississippi. You know, we talked about how, you know, Caterpillar’s been on fire and this, and I said, I hope you have a ton of it. And he was a super nice guy and he said, and we, we, we talked about AI and all that. And he said, oh, there, there’s AI factored in, in big cat machines that that can be run, you know, from a control room. You know by one dude, there’s not guys out in the field doing, you know, stuff like for what, whether it’s farming or other stuff. They run it from a control room with like a video game controller. He said they had a lot of AI applications. I thought, wow, at Caterpillar, well then it’s gonna be everywhere.
Doug McIntyre: So I think people ought to look at this and I don’t know what the trade is here. If you’re an investor, you sort of have to, this is complicated. You’ve gotta ask yourself what happens if AI is so successful that you start to see it take enough jobs to knock unemployment up by 1% or 2%, so you get a slowing economy. You get to 5% unemployment, which is, you know, a lot of economists call full employment. But if that goes from 5% to six or 7% because of the efficiencies AI is creating. It starts to push you in the direction of a recession.
Lee Jackson: You would think so. It’s interesting, but I never forget about it. It’s when people like, well, what are gonna people do if they don’t have a job? Well, you can always give the advice that, uh, when they shut down the pipeline, they learn how to code. Well, everybody can’t learn how to code. And I think that there’s, there’s gonna be a, there’s, I don’t know if it’s, if it’s retail jobs or if it’s service jobs that can be done via AI. Not exactly sure which will get hit the hardest, but I think you’re right. And I think when it does hit in, it’s like these people may not have a place to go.
Doug McIntyre: Yeah.
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The post Goldman Sachs Is Saying 300m Jobs Will Be Lost to AI appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..
