00:00All this recent panic over AI is missing something important, evidence.
00:05This post by tech entrepreneur and investor Matt Schumer has been seen more than 80 million times on X.
00:12It's a rundown of all the ways AI would decimate different jobs.
00:16Lawyers, financial analysts, customer service representatives, doctors, even journalists like me.
00:23To get ready, we all need to practice using AI for an hour a day to upskill ourselves and get
00:29ahead of the tsunami.
00:30In the words of the young and very online, people are shook.
00:33But that's partly also because a lot of people now are experimenting with this new crop of AI tools that
00:38can do things, not just say things.
00:41They are AI agents.
00:42And that is triggering a lot of soul searching about what that might mean for people's livelihoods.
00:47But here's the problem.
00:48Of the nearly 5,000 words in Schumer's post, there's little to no concrete evidence that these AI tools are
00:55going to put millions of white-collar workers out of work anytime soon.
01:00Instead, it's anecdotes about leaving a laptop and coming back to finished code or a law firm replacing their junior
01:07lawyers.
01:08The reality is that U.S. productivity statistics are up slightly, but generally within their historic range.
01:14And the Yale Budget Lab has found no discernible disruption to the broader labor market since ChatGPT's launch.
01:21Even a randomized controlled trial that Schumer cherry-picks from in his post found that experienced software developers actually took
01:29longer to complete tasks when they used AI tools.
01:33And Swedish fintech firm Klarna had to rehire staff last year when it replaced 700 humans with AI.
01:39But the visceral reaction to Schumer's post does help explain why the market is in turmoil.
01:45AI is trading on vibes.
01:48One minute we're in a bubble, the next we're on the verge of the singularity.
01:52But maybe two things can be true at the same time.
01:55AI's impact can be both overhyped and real.
01:58And its uses will be uneven, gradual, and impossible to predict.
02:03That's the boring truth, however unlikely it is to go viral.
Comments