00:00Welcome back to Bloomberg This Weekend. I'm Christina Ruffini. And I'm David Gura. The AI transition may be faster, bigger
00:06and more disruptive than the industrial revolution, Martha Gimbel writes. She's the director of the Yale Budget Lab. But if
00:12we want to have a flourishing economy in society on the other side, learning from what our predecessors went through
00:17is even more important this time around. And that is exactly what literature is there to help us do.
00:22So in this week's forecast, Gimbel suggests a handful of novels from the 19th century that she says can help
00:28us navigate technology changes in the 21st century. And she's joining us now. Martha, thank you so much for being
00:34here. First of all, what are your thoughts? How much do we know about how much AI is going to
00:40disrupt the labor market economy and society?
00:44We really have no idea, right? You have a range of predictions out there. But at this point, we're all
00:49just guessing. And so I think rather than all of us sitting in our offices and pontificate and trying to
00:56figure this out better than the next person, it's really useful to kind of take a step back and think
01:01about where we've been.
01:02Before we get to your recommendations, the books that you recommend, what broadly can history tell us about the moment
01:08that we're in right now?
01:10We're constantly bombarded with people saying this is novel terrain. AI is going to be even more revolutionary than anything
01:15we've experienced in the past. How much does history offer good counsel?
01:20I think the thing that we really learn from history, right, is that no matter what the size of the
01:25disruption, no matter how quickly it happens, it's disruptive.
01:29And there are people who benefit and there are people who suffer. And society has to figure out how to
01:34deal with it.
01:35We haven't yet had a technological revolution where society as a whole wasn't better off at the end of it.
01:41But that doesn't mean that that was true for everyone. And that doesn't mean that people were better off immediately.
01:47The transitions are hard and a lot of people suffer during them.
01:50Yeah. In this article, you say you're grateful for the Industrial Revolution, but you wouldn't have wanted to live through
01:56it.
01:56This is not encouraging for this moment that we're in right now.
02:03So what are the lessons from the past on how to endure times of upheaval like this?
02:09I mean, I think one of the things and the themes that you see coming up repeatedly in literature and
02:15in discussions at the time is kind of,
02:17what is society's and the individual's responsibility in a time of change?
02:23You can be someone who is just thinking about what this means for you and trying to navigate it that
02:30way.
02:31But the people who hold on and the people who do the best are the ones who are thinking about
02:37what this means for,
02:38in the 19th century, their village, but, you know, their broader community and how they fit in as part of
02:43that.
02:43So let's take through these, starting with a book by Elizabeth Gaskell.
02:47Why is North and South one that you've recommended?
02:49So North and South is sort of the usual Industrial Revolution novel that everyone goes to.
02:54I should say it's one of my favorites.
02:57But one of the great things about North and South is it's about a woman who moves north from the
03:02south of England,
03:05who is really not familiar with what is going on from an industrial perspective.
03:09She's moving from a more agricultural environment.
03:12She herself is not economically affected by what's going on.
03:16But because she is a neutral observer, she can kind of see how things are changing and, you know,
03:23how the new capitalists are interacting with their workers.
03:26What's the new sort of power and agency that workers were feeling at the time and how that gets really
03:32complicated.
03:32And she has to figure out what's good from the new version of the economy that she wants to bring
03:38into her life
03:39and what she wants to hold on to from the old.
03:41We also have Shirley by Charlotte Bronte and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
03:45And we were speaking before in the break.
03:47I am a longtime Dickens hater.
03:49And you said you're not a fan of the Brontes, but you put them on your list.
03:53Why?
03:54I did.
03:54I have to admit, I am not a Brontes person.
03:58They can be very emotion heavy, for lack of a better phrasing.
04:04But, you know, I think the thing that's really interesting about Shirley is it is fundamentally about a textile mill
04:10owner
04:11trying to figure out how to navigate the new moment.
04:13And he's trying to figure out, you know, what is his responsibility from an economics perspective,
04:18but also still being there for his workers, for people in his community.
04:24But also one of the things I think is really interesting in Shirley is it talks about the role that
04:28the Napoleonic Wars
04:29and the export restrictions played in what happened.
04:33And that made a huge difference in the path of the Industrial Revolution for people.
04:38And it's really interesting to see him kind of work that through throughout the book.
04:42In that moment of the Industrial Revolution, there were the Luddites,
04:45those who were pushing back so actively against this kind of technological progress.
04:51What can we learn from them as they were featured in many of these books?
04:56I mean, I think one thing that you've seen in these conversations about AI is sometimes you hear people saying,
05:03you know, this is new, this has never happened to high paid workers before, workers who do prestigious work.
05:10And I think the unfortunate thing for many white-collar workers to realize is the Weavers were the white-collar
05:16workers of their day.
05:17You know, if you read about their lives, they had flexible work schedules.
05:21Sometimes they decided to take the day off and, like, work from Brighton.
05:24I mean, it was, it sounds simple.
05:26Because it was portable, right?
05:27They could go anywhere.
05:28They could be outside.
05:29They could be inside.
05:30And that all changed.
05:32Right.
05:33And they had control over their hours.
05:35Some of them only worked four days a week.
05:37I mean, again, as I'm talking, I think to a lot of people, this is going to sound somewhat familiar.
05:40And then all of a sudden, there was this huge hit that they didn't see coming.
05:46And they had to adjust.
05:48And unfortunately, that adjustment did not go well for most of them.
05:51All right.
05:51Martha Gamble, thank you so much.
05:52I will try to take inspiration and stop being a Luddite when it comes to AI.
05:56But we really appreciate your perspective.
05:58You can read more about this story and get a jump start on your week ahead with the forecast newsletter.
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