Digital Disruption

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Geoff Nielson

Hey everyone! I'm super excited to be sitting down with Bryan Walsh, Editorial Director at Vox Media. When it comes to the intersection of technology, education and politics. Bryan is an absolute guru. He's been writing on this topic for years and has strong views on how these forces will shape our future. I want to understand what impact AI and emerging tech is going to have on the future of work and the future of education.

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Geoff Nielson

Is it going to disrupt entry level work, more senior roles or both? And what we as people, workers and leaders need to do to be ready? Let's find out.

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Geoff Nielson

Bryan, thanks so much for joining today. Super excited to have you on the show here. You know, I wanted to just start by, you know, diving a little bit into your what I'll call AI impact forecast, I guess. So you've been, you know, covering AI new tech education, impact on society. What do you see playing out in the horizon in the next handful of years?

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Bryan Walsh

You know, it's funny, like right before I came on to record this, I was in a two hour meeting and we were discussing, well, you know, when we start to see the impact of AI on jobs. And I think one thing I've noticed there's there's kind of like a gap in the thinking around those sort of near-term forecasts, like, you can go and you can read something like AI 2027 if you want this sort of extreme version of what could happen really quickly.

00;01;19;29 - 00;01;39;14

Bryan Walsh

But when it comes to sort of what we'll see, or in the short term, that's stuff I think. I think one thing like we're already starting to see adoption. The question is really will that adoption stick? I think, you know, a lot of companies I'm seeing they're trying this out. They're struggling from what I've noticed in terms of really integrating it into their workforces.

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Bryan Walsh

I think for one thing, it's the thing with AI is like, it doesn't come with an instruction manual, right? And one of the things that's helped me best understands how it works and so forth is just that, you know, just work like, sorry doesn't work with your computer program. You kind of have to figure it out as you go.

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Bryan Walsh

And I think that's asking a lot for companies at this moment. But as these tools start to get better and better, as we start to see some real success cases, especially going outside, you know, Silicon Valley, where there's just a natural tendency to adopt it as quick as possible. Then you'll start to see the impact, both in terms of, I think, productivity, but also in terms of, jobs as well.

00;02;16;22 - 00;02;36;17

Bryan Walsh

And you know what? I'm really looking to over the next few years, like a lot of my come down to how the economy itself does, I could see a situation where you get much more rapid adoption. Ironically, if we see a significant economic downturn. And what I mean by that is that, you know, I think we're talking about automating jobs.

00;02;36;20 - 00;02;53;26

Bryan Walsh

Not even the most cold hearted, CEO generally wants to just start firing their human workforce willy nilly and replacing with AI. But if you have a situation where you're forced to make job cuts for structural reasons, suddenly at that point you start to make a lot more sense. We can experiment and see what you can do with automation.

00;02;53;27 - 00;03;08;00

Bryan Walsh

How much can that begin to fill the gap? And that's if we see that happen. I think that could actually accelerate things really even more than any sort of technological leap, just the fact that the economy would need it. Corporate bosses who feel that they can take advantage of that. And that's where we start to see really turnover.

00;03;08;00 - 00;03;25;18

Bryan Walsh

And the other thing I'm looking at, really, the short term is what's going to happen with the youngest workers are already been to see a lot of noisy data that indicates, you know, in this most recent, cadre of grads is having a harder time finding jobs than that. Perhaps they should, given the fact that the economy is still pretty healthy from a job perspective.

00;03;25;21 - 00;03;46;16

Bryan Walsh

If that really starts to stick, that would be really interesting because I think it's logical that the first sort of rung of the ladder to go to be automated will be the ones who are at least experience, where often when you bring them on, you're kind of doing half an apprenticeship. Anyway. If you can start to do that more cheaply with automation, with AI, then you know that you'll do that.

00;03;46;16 - 00;03;59;27

Bryan Walsh

But then, of course, that raises the question is exactly what do they do? And then I sort of raise the question as to what happens in the future with your company. Right. If you just sort of stopped the, new layer of growth for jobs? I don't have a good answer for that. Yeah. I don't think anyone does.

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Bryan Walsh

But that's kind of what we're looking at right now.

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Geoff Nielson

You know, that that part's really interesting to me because, you know, we can talk about them. Is the the cheapest resources or the least experienced resources that are easiest to automate. But, you know, the other thought I had is that I've been playing with this, that they're also kind of the the bottom layer of the pyramid, so to speak.

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Geoff Nielson

Right. Like they're sort of the foundation. And as you said, they're that growth layer because they grow into the rest of the organization. And I don't know, maybe it's is a little bit too rose colored for me to say. They're the leaders of the future. But yeah, what what happens to that cycle if you start to pull some of those people out?

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Geoff Nielson

And I guess when you, when you think about this, are based on the conversations you're having, is it like a wholesale, like like a wholesale, you know, sweep of that layer or is it just, hey, we're going to need fewer of these people than we have in the past, and maybe that even fits better demographically with, you know, the, the, the size of that cohort.

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Bryan Walsh

Right? Yeah. No, I think I, I don't see it happening wholesale overnight. I don't think the tools are ready. And I really don't think the those who need to adopt the tools are ready either. You know, I think there's a disconnect there that would make sort of this happening overnight. Just be really difficult to imagine. Of course, there are other structural reasons why, you know, younger workers may have a harder time getting jobs.

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Bryan Walsh

The company itself is shifting course, you know, very hard. So what will happen with things like trade policy, inflation, all those things are kind of, muddying the picture. But, you know, it is one of the biggest questions I wonder about, you know, because it's sort of unusual, often past settlement to a transformation that I would say, like the younger people were the ones who were leading the way.

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Bryan Walsh

They were the ones taking advantage of new tools. And whether it was things like podcasting, or things like, you know, publishing on the internet, what have you like, that was where it was coming from. And so this idea that, weirdly, this newest wave of technology could come for those younger workers first, it's a little disquieting.

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Bryan Walsh

And I think it's not something anyone in policy really has an answer for. Like, I'll say it again, like it's it's just a little baffling to me. Given all the energy, all the investment, all the attention that's been put into AI, including with some of the sort of most extreme scenarios, but at the same time, it seems like you have more people thinking seriously about the possibility of, you know, an AI apocalypse than you do really thinking about what if this is, you know, a very powerful automation technology, you know, comparable to certainly it wave in the 90s.

00;06;28;00 - 00;06;43;18

Bryan Walsh

But I think even going back further than that, like looking at the industrial revolution, perhaps. Okay, what happens then? Like how do we how it planned for this? I mean, you might have people thinking about universal basic income, things like that, but there are so many steps that have to sort of unfold before you get there. And I look at this, I see a bit of a vacuum.

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Bryan Walsh

You know, we, at Vox wrote a piece we did a couple of months ago looking at, the idea of, like, drop in remote workers, basically like a trying to figure out what are the jobs that seem most likely to get automated first. And you can kind of begin to figure that out based off. Well, you know, how easy is it to do your job with a computer, right, remotely.

00;07;03;08 - 00;07;28;11

Bryan Walsh

And break that down the tasks and you'll see that, like, if you see it that way. I mean, some like a journalist, a fair amount, you know, for a sort of internet journalist like myself, it's not quite there yet. We try, revive, experimented with it. But, you know, I think you have this race between the tools getting better and better, getting more accessible at the same time, like, the bottlenecks tend to come up in companies themselves in, in policy and then in, in people as well.

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Bryan Walsh

But I'll go back to the say that if you start to see separate from this real economic dislocation, just a natural downward cycle or something that's just a product of trade policy, inflation, take your pick, then that becomes something that can be the spur to faster change. But of course, that will also be happening in a moment where, you know, it'll already be a bad economy.

00;07;47;20 - 00;07;51;03

Bryan Walsh

So I'm over terms of what that will be, and then we'll come out of that politically as well.

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Geoff Nielson

You know, related to all that, one of the pieces I've been trying to sort of unravel for a long time is something I view as a paradox. And maybe it's not. I'm curious on your thoughts, but we've already talked about there's sort of these two competing forces within AI and I adoption. On the one hand, you have, you know, CEOs or organizations viewing this as a force for, you know, somewhere between productivity gains and downsizing, right, efficiencies.

00;08;19;03 - 00;08;39;13

Geoff Nielson

And then, on the other hand, you have individuals who are workers or they're using, you know, using it for their own small business. And there's this talk track of, well, it's going to make you more productive, it's going to make you more employable. But there's there's just an inherent friction there. Right? Because one of the things I sense is that there's a reluctance to adopt this technology.

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Geoff Nielson

If people believe that it's also going to lead them in some way to replace them or lose their job. Do you I mean, first of all, do you buy that framing? And and how do you see this whole, you know, these two modes kind of coming together and, and playing out?

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Bryan Walsh

No, I think that's a very smart framing. I think, you know, there is a lot of ambient fear around this technology. I, you know, within my own workforce, people I work with, I mean, I think, we've already had an experience going through the internet and the really wrenching changes that meant it has meant for media. And now you have AI and it's it's much easier to focus, I think, on the potential downsides, because what, you know, a CEO might cure productivity and think, oh, that's great growth.

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Bryan Walsh

Someone else here's productivity. You think you can do more with fewer people. And at the end of the day, if we're really talking about this, I mean, that's kind of what has to happen, right? You know, like it doesn't create, really significant productivity gains unless you're getting to a situation where each worker can do a lot more.

00;09;39;00 - 00;09;56;11

Bryan Walsh

And while the hope and what we've seen, I'm sure you know, in past automation waves is that over time, that's exactly what happens. You see economic growth, you see dislocation in the short term, especially in certain classes. But overall, people find new jobs and new economies and usually making more money, and the whole economy gets better off.

00;09;56;13 - 00;10;16;19

Bryan Walsh

Now, the downside there is like that short term pain can be quite wrenching. And for people who are caught in it, it could mean lifelong economic loss. So just because the country gets better doesn't mean you yourself get better. And I think it'll be easier for us to point to those examples of people being hurt by this than the sort of broader improvements you might get.

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Bryan Walsh

And I think, you know, again, it's going to really depend on the kind of company and the kind of business we're talking about, you know, and some I think, you know, software, for instance, we already seeing that anything to do with Silicon Valley, I think, you know, there'll be far fewer barriers to adoption. They'll be equally doing it, in fact.

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Bryan Walsh

But if you look at other areas like, you know, including sectors that really need productivity growth and something like education, for instance, or health care, you know, you're starting to see it some in health care, I think, you know, first off, with really cool tools around things like ambient listening, the ability to capture, conversations in doctor's offices, turn that into information.

00;10;51;25 - 00;11;10;22

Bryan Walsh

Is usable data really free them up from some of the really onerous, paperwork that they'll have to do. You'll start to see that. But at the same time, like, would you start to see AI diagnostician that I, I doubt and frankly, you know, something like the medical profession has a lot of ability to sort of throw up barriers as they have in other areas.

00;11;10;24 - 00;11;26;22

Bryan Walsh

So what you'll get is this very spiky kind of wave of adoption and effects. And I think, you know, how that break down, it'll come down to technology. But really, I think politics in control there will actually matter more in terms of the power of different kinds of lines of business, different kinds of workers as well.

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Geoff Nielson

So let me let me maybe put an even finer point on that, because I think we're, we're we're already getting to what I wanted to talk about next, which is, you know, broadly, who do you see as being the winners and losers of this disruption?

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Bryan Walsh

I think I see the winner. I mean, those who can obviously start won. The companies that are making, I think are just winners without judgment trouble. And they won't all be winners. And I, I'm looking at the duration now. I think, you know, we've had this saying around, Fox that like 2025 is like the year of AI prioritization.

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Bryan Walsh

I think that's a word. Basically we're taking this from a technology, something that people can actually use. All right. And I think what you see in what Jeff has been doing, which came out with Google, the ability are really focusing on trying to meld this with existing tools. Ultimately, like the companies that are able to do that best, that are able to lock that in, are the ones that succeed.

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Bryan Walsh

So something that shot, I think, you know, is already beginning to get close to kind of like Coca-Cola status, I suppose, right. Like in terms of their becoming the kind of default. And that leaves, say, like a company like anthropic, you know, they're making really great technical products, you know, like struggling. And I wonder how long they'll be in independent.

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Bryan Walsh

And then, of course, a Google, you know, for all the challenges they've had, has this huge base to, to to go from, has this huge sort of work with Google work sweep all those things. So I think those companies you can lock into products will win. You know, I think beyond that, when it comes to sort of a more individual level, I think, yeah, there will be a benefit to being a first adopter.

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Bryan Walsh

You know, I think whether you're talking about someone who does work like I do, whether you're talking about someone who does work, consulting, or something like that, all those kind of fields individually, if you're able to sort of master this technology yet you can put yourself forward, you can become more productive and you can Twitter.

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Bryan Walsh

I mean, it's kind of a cliche, I think, but like this idea that it's not the AI will take your job, but the person who can understand the AI. I'd use the AI that that is true to, to a certain extent. So I think, you know, again, going back to those people in those companies that work in fields that can be done remotely, that can be automated, they should be the winners overall, although a lot of people in those industries might suffer quite a lot, just location in terms of losers, I think, you know, again, like I said, the companies that cancer of walkthrough AI into products will struggle.

00;13;41;27 - 00;14;03;01

Bryan Walsh

Those who, really struggle internally to figure out how to use these. Well, so I think it comes down to how nimble can you be around, understanding the tools, figuring how to work them into your workflow. And at this point, that's really an open question. And, you know, it took years for the IT revolution to really start to show up in productivity standards.

00;14;03;01 - 00;14;21;04

Bryan Walsh

I mean, it was like a joke for the longest time because, and I think who's I think is Eric Brynjolfsson, with Stanford now as a sort of Jay Kirby productivity. Right? We're like, it takes time. And investment to figure out these new technologies. You don't see it immediately. And then once you get around that starts going up.

00;14;21;07 - 00;14;39;19

Bryan Walsh

I think we might be at the point where that is starting to happen. Still lots of things that get in the way. Like we still could have technological barriers. We could have a situation where what if something goes really wrong, you know, like, something like a Three Mile Island situation for I don't think we're at the stage where that's likely just because there's integrated enough to the real economy.

00;14;39;22 - 00;14;59;06

Bryan Walsh

But if that were to happen, that can throw the brakes on things really fast. I think it's very hard for both politicians and for just ordinary people to imagine, you know, as how they could be dangerous. How can you be threat until you actually see it in the real world? So there could be a million movies about dangerous AI, or even more so, a million think tank reports.

00;14;59;09 - 00;15;16;11

Bryan Walsh

We won't really see that until something bad happens, whether that's cybersecurity or something like that. So that's sort of out there too. Is something that could break. And then of course, we just just hit the natural barriers to, you know, whether that's in terms of the ability to power these data centers, which here are the United States, where I am like, I think that's a real question.

00;15;16;13 - 00;15;34;24

Bryan Walsh

I don't know if we can do that. You know, that's not something can be fixed with AI. That's something that has to be fixed with policy. So that could be a barrier. Then, of course, you just run into situations around training data or some kind of, you know, scaling law begins to break down and suddenly we'll look back in a few years and time being like we were all too optimistic at how fast what actually happened.

00;15;34;26 - 00;16;02;20

Geoff Nielson

There's there's so much in that answer that I want to dig into. And, my mind is going in a thousand different places, but maybe, maybe let's start with the Three Mile Island comment, because that's really interesting to me. And I think it's, you know, part of that ambient fear that a lot of people feel, there's so much conversation now about, you know, AI from everything as a tool to make you 5% more productive to, you know, going to have a doomsday event that wipes out the human race.

00;16;02;27 - 00;16;25;22

Geoff Nielson

When you think about how, you know, some sort of, some sort of catastrophe befalls us with AI at some point that that makes us reflect on that. Do you have a perspective on how that might unfold and how that probably won't unfold just based on, you know, all the conversation happening around it?

00;16;25;24 - 00;16;48;06

Bryan Walsh

Yeah, I think in terms of how it might unfold. You know, I worry about the effects of use of AI, and that's sort of tied into, you know, create cyber security issues. Like, I think it's well known at this point that, you know, countries like China, like Russia, probably have pretty good penetration into, like physical infrastructure in the US.

00;16;48;07 - 00;17;07;28

Bryan Walsh

You know, that's probably going to be AI enabled, not necessarily I but if we really start to see something that a computer can do that causes real life fatalities, you know, let's imagine sewer system being shut off, a power plant being destroyed, something like that. That would be even if it's not necessarily directly from AI, that would be something I think would really freeze progress.

00;17;07;28 - 00;17;30;16

Bryan Walsh

I think as well. The possibility of really ramped up AI misinformation somehow misleading people in a dangerous kind of way. You know, when I see things like the, the video, image, I saw video generation, you know, it's getting so good that it just feels like almost it's shocking to me that hasn't happened yet, where we haven't had a real situation where fake video really convinced people.

00;17;30;16 - 00;17;56;23

Bryan Walsh

Now, you know, in some part, maybe that's because we have it in the back of our heads. And in general, we just don't trust media, of all kinds, as much as we used to. But, as it gets better and better, I worry about that, too. The real fear I have is. And this has come up recently in some of the sort of safety cards around, cloud, for instance, the ability to really enable some kind of bioterrorist attack.

00;17;56;26 - 00;18;14;27

Bryan Walsh

That's a scary thought. You know, I think it's very unlikely still, because even if you have a model that can tell you exactly how to do it like I do it, it's not that easy. Thankfully. But, you know, as we start to see that, like, there's no getting around the fact that AI is a enabling technology in a lot of ways.

00;18;14;27 - 00;18;30;10

Bryan Walsh

You know, it reduces the skill set needed to do all kinds of things, like for me personally, reduce the skill set I needed to do maintenance, air conditioner because I could just ask you what to do for. So that is I could reduce the the sort of skill set you need to do something very dangerous, very bad.

00;18;30;13 - 00;18;45;23

Bryan Walsh

And then I also think, I worry this is a longer term concern, but, you know, a certain kind of skill erosion that happens is become do dependent on this. And that's where it goes. It's enjoying go back to young people because they're also the same class that's graduating. Now. I believe they were either sophomores or freshmen. When ChatGPT first came out.

00;18;45;25 - 00;19;01;27

Bryan Walsh

And we've seen the impact this has had on cars. Like one of my favorite stats around YouTube is where you can see like user ship go up during school year and then come summer goes down, it gives you a sense of how a lot of people are using this. You know, I do wonder long term what that will do to us, you know, becoming too dependent on that.

00;19;01;27 - 00;19;17;19

Bryan Walsh

I already feel myself a little bit like that, like I now I really Google anymore. I used to have to be to a lot. I ask questions, and, you know, I'm coming in there with like, 20 years of experience of doing it mostly on my own. But it's amazing how fast if you don't keep using those skills, they can kind of integrate.

00;19;17;22 - 00;19;34;12

Bryan Walsh

And if you're starting with someone you know, it's a little similar to like the idea of like losing that first, rung on the job ladder if you didn't get it in college either, like I do wonder what kind of skills these students will have. Maybe it those be really good at using. Hey, I don't know. Yeah. But I don't think that's automatically the case.

00;19;34;12 - 00;19;42;22

Bryan Walsh

I think, you know, it's especially for the kind of things you do in school. It's much more easy. Use that a crutch as substitute. That has to be somehow like enabling yourself to do more.

00;19;42;24 - 00;20;05;21

Geoff Nielson

So let's let's talk about education for a minute. What we've kind of naturally come into my sense is the entire education system is under threat in a way I certainly haven't seen in my lifetime. And it's a, you know, it's a very many headed threat at this point. It feels like. But certainly I is one of the one of the big components there.

00;20;05;23 - 00;20;26;02

Geoff Nielson

Do you have any sense of, you know, what are the best universities and colleges doing differently? What are the best professors and teachers doing like did? Has anything started to emerge about what to do or even, you know, lessons about certainly what not to do because it just it just seems like there's so much fog of war here?

00;20;26;04 - 00;20;42;14

Bryan Walsh

The number one thing not to do I've seen is nothing. If you don't change how you were educating people about you, you're not going to educate them. Because if you're giving them things like papers, the commute out of home, there's really no way to get around the fact that, like, it will be almost logical for them to use chat.

00;20;42;16 - 00;20;58;23

Bryan Walsh

And this is not just in, you know, this isn't all universities, all levels. I think we're seeing this, just because the shortcut is there. So, you know, I think that's one thing. And then, you know, there is how many you could use, detection tools, but those are not reliable. You're too likely to get false positives or missed things increasingly.

00;20;58;23 - 00;21;14;18

Bryan Walsh

And kids are getting smart enough, they can kind of go in and the AI there even tools to do that, apparently. So you have to change that. I mean, some of the most basic things that I've seen professors do is go into in-class assignments, blue books, if you don't know how, if you had these when you were, you know, before.

00;21;14;18 - 00;21;35;22

Bryan Walsh

But like, I remember having to open up a book that had an essay question and write it out with a pencil, I feel really sorry for the college professor who had to grade my handwriting. But like, you know, there was no way to use automation tools for that. I think there's also really smart professors. I mean, what I really look to is, Ethan Mark, who's a business professor at the Wharton School, Pennsylvania, from the start with chat.

00;21;35;22 - 00;21;55;06

Bryan Walsh

He's really integrated that into his work with his business school students. And that's smart because they will be using this, and it would be strange them not to know how to use it. So I think, you know, the ones who are being creative about how we can both ensure that, like when you're testing students in one way or another, you're actually testing them, not their tools.

00;21;55;09 - 00;22;13;12

Bryan Walsh

That's good. But I think also, especially if you're dealing with, whether it's a business school or other areas where you're likely be using AI more and more in the future, if you can integrate that into your education system, I think that's great. And then, you know, interestingly, like if you look outside the kind of North American college system, there's a lot of potential.

00;22;13;13 - 00;22;33;02

Bryan Walsh

I do like to focus on the the positive things that we can see. And there's a lot of potential for automated one on one tutoring, especially in the global South. There's been a number of really interesting research studies, I think, in Nigeria around that. These are places where there simply aren't enough teachers, are enough tools. That's where something where, you know, you're it's it's a go from zero to something.

00;22;33;04 - 00;22;48;16

Bryan Walsh

And we can only expect those tools to get better. That's really promising to me because I think there's a huge education gap around the world that I can help close. Even here in the nine states where, you know, you mentioned all the attacks that are happening on education, from whether it's the white House or the lingering impact of the pandemic.

00;22;48;16 - 00;23;07;06

Bryan Walsh

You know, one issue I have been writing about for a long time has been this lingering linger, long, lingering learning loss we've experienced and that it's very serious. This is overlapping with all the things we're seeing with automation. One of the best ways to solve that is, is through, personalized tutoring. And of course, there aren't enough human tutors to go around.

00;23;07;09 - 00;23;24;28

Bryan Walsh

Maybe I can help in that way. So I think it's a mix of some sort of old school ways of just getting off computer altogether with assessment, but also, definitely trying to sort of integrated in a creative way. I think just during the lecture and the take on paper, you know, that won't do anything for anyone anymore.

00;23;25;01 - 00;23;42;27

Geoff Nielson

Right? So it's a combination of actually, you know, coming to terms with the fact that students are using AI and we need to make sure they know how to use it properly, as well as making sure we don't lose that actual critical thinking and understanding, skills that are so important and having a track that.

00;23;42;27 - 00;23;57;28

Bryan Walsh

I mean more that I would I yeah, yeah. I mean like, yeah, it's like, this is when you need, you know, the critical understanding to know what's real and what's not. You know, that will become ever more important, you know, so you have to have that and, you know, it's it's a lot easier said than done.

00;23;58;00 - 00;24;18;20

Bryan Walsh

I think school's been trying to reach critical thinking for for years, really, ever since we've moved beyond just more of an ordered actor kind of rote method of learning. It's like, oh, let's teach them how to think. It's not as simple as that. It requires really talented teachers, which is a whole other story. But, you know, there is a more positive vision of this where, you know, you can personalize education.

00;24;18;20 - 00;24;38;01

Bryan Walsh

That's always been something that's lacked. And certainly in the US educational system, you know, it's it's just not meant to teach individuals, meant to teach people in classes, sort of, if we can get beyond that, if there are ways to use these tools to really personalize and with also sort of keeping students from the natural tendency to try to do less, that could be really great.

00;24;38;08 - 00;24;51;08

Bryan Walsh

But, you know, we're not I have not seen a lot of examples of that so far. And right now, what are you looking at? Test scores or any sort of measurement like that. Like educational. United States is is not great, at least when you.

00;24;51;11 - 00;25;09;28

Geoff Nielson

You know, looking into your crystal ball. If you look at the whole education system ten years from now, you know, do you think it's going to be five, 10% different from how it is right now, or is it going to be 80% different? Like, how great is the need for it to reinvent itself? And, you know, to what degree do you think the ability is there to capitalize on that?

00;25;09;28 - 00;25;36;08

Bryan Walsh

I mean, the educational system is gigantic. And it's like steering a battleship. So the idea of really rapid, like 80% change in a decade is just fundamentally hard to imagine, like least on the whole, you know, I think you'll have individual professors, individual schools that really will change a lot in order to begin change. You know, I would bet for something like 20% maybe, you know, I think like, one these days, we'll figure out you can't use a test.

00;25;36;08 - 00;25;54;26

Bryan Walsh

Different like that has to happen. So that's one thing then I think. Yeah, like you will see. Also like another part going on here when you're looking at traditions, say higher education here in the US is that you're and I think elsewhere in North America, you're facing a demographic shift that's going to be really dislocating for colleges, even if nothing else where we're talking that what's happening.

00;25;54;27 - 00;26;14;10

Bryan Walsh

Yeah. You will simply have far fewer students. A lot of colleges, especially more expensive smaller ones, will go out of business. It's already happening. There just aren't enough customers. And if you, you know, if you sort to cut off the supply of students from outside North America, then you really start to see some problem. So I think you'll see a fewer colleges.

00;26;14;10 - 00;26;32;02

Bryan Walsh

I think perhaps you'll be able to see one scale up, like where you see a sort of a flow to quality. You know, at the most elite universities, United States, there are far more students who could go there were smart enough, and you could definitely succeed there than they've allowed to have spots. And one could argue that that's a mistake.

00;26;32;02 - 00;26;53;13

Bryan Walsh

Like, you know, we should be trying to ramp up the ones who are best at this. You know, so I think that might begin to happen. I do think as well, like, there might be a situation where people start to rethink college. That's already begun to be the case. You know, you're starting to see especially coming out of endemic that were sort of a bit of a decline that's reversed for now, which I wonder, quite honestly, is a bit of a leading economic indicator.

00;26;53;13 - 00;27;11;09

Bryan Walsh

Anytime you start to see, kids go more into grad school or law school, that's usually a sign that they don't see a great job market. And it's a good place to hide out for a couple of years. But, you know, I think we'll we'll start to like, how valuable are colleges? How much do you need that?

00;27;11;15 - 00;27;34;00

Bryan Walsh

Like, I can't imagine suddenly you'll see widespread being like. Well, these degrees mean nothing. But I do think that, it will be less the kind of, there's the funding norm that maybe it was, you know, for most of the 21st century. And students might have more choice for that. Perhaps there are things like trade schools, or they could have more short, career focused tracks.

00;27;34;02 - 00;27;48;19

Bryan Walsh

Again, right now, probably more people go to college to really benefit from it. You can see that in the fact that a lot of people United States start college and don't finish, which often then leaves them with the worst of both worlds. They don't have a degree, but they often have a debt. Maybe that will begin to change.

00;27;48;26 - 00;28;12;10

Bryan Walsh

And if you start to see companies being more open to not just looking at the credential of a college education for everything that could shift things, but then, you know, again, we were just talking about, you know, wiping out, really entry level jobs. So what would that mean for it? I, I've really a hard time knowing, but certainly like, if you're less confident in the premium you'll get from your college education, you're probably less likely to pay up for it, off the bat.

00;28;12;10 - 00;28;30;04

Bryan Walsh

So I think you'd see fewer going, what they do then, you know, I mean, if you're thinking of jobs that that are more automation proof, like anything can be done in person, the electricians who are going to have to, you know, keep this grid going, things like that. Historically, there haven't been enough of those, workers.

00;28;30;07 - 00;28;46;28

Bryan Walsh

Maybe that changes. We talk a lot about a manufacturing wave in United States. Maybe I'm. I'm actually pretty skeptical of that for a lot of reasons. One of which is like, we actually have a lot of open manufacturing jobs right now that have been filled. But again, you know, give it a few years and perhaps that'll sort of change people's opinions.

00;28;47;00 - 00;29;11;03

Geoff Nielson

Just just following that thread for a second. And again, I want to deliberately put a fine point on it. But if you were talking to someone who was 20 or, you know, the parent of someone who's 20, what, you know, what's your kind of best advice or guidance for, you know what the next handful of years of their, you know, their life, their career, their education should look like so they can best position themselves for success?

00;29;11;05 - 00;29;35;26

Bryan Walsh

I mean, I would say a lot of the same rules still apply. Like I think like skill in Stem will be useful for a long time. It's possible like, you know, just coding is not going to pay off the way it used to. And that's already the case. Those jobs, even if they haven't, declined. And you've seen a lot of, big tech companies really sort of pulling back from the huge amounts of hiring that were doing in the pandemic.

00;29;35;28 - 00;29;50;01

Bryan Walsh

That won't be as good as it used to be, but you're still put yourself in a better position if you can sort of immerse yourself in that world, you're more likely to have the skills to to figure out what comes next. I think, you know, so I would just yeah, I would recommend that they do that. Not everyone has that aptitude.

00;29;50;01 - 00;30;05;05

Bryan Walsh

I'm an English major. Personally, I would not. I love books, but but it's in good conscious. Any any 20 year old friend of mine to to do that. You know, I think, you know, it's also a matter of,

00;30;05;08 - 00;30;22;27

Bryan Walsh

Curiosity. How can you demonstrate that? How can you feed that? You know, these are kind of boilerplate answers, but there's a reason why they've worked. You know, you think about, like, who? Who do you want to hire? Like, what are you looking for? Were you that. I think about that sometimes. And I'm looking for, you know, eagerness to work.

00;30;22;27 - 00;30;44;23

Bryan Walsh

I'm looking for curiosity. I'm looking for willingness to try things. Experimentation maybe becomes more less about, you know, what specifically? You knew then what kind of person can you become, if that makes sense? And how do you demonstrate that, in the future, that you're someone who is flexible, that you're someone who, you know, wants to grow, wants to learn continuously because that, you know, will be even more necessary?

00;30;44;23 - 00;30;46;00

Bryan Walsh

There used to be other.

00;30;46;02 - 00;31;07;08

Geoff Nielson

Yeah. Now that that that makes sense. And it resonates with me too. And I don't know if you found this in your career, Bryan. I like coming to terms with it more and more, that it just feels like skills are a lot more teachable than attitude. Like, as you said, like people who come in with curiosity, with drive, with like a real willingness to, you know, roll up their sleeves and try things.

00;31;07;08 - 00;31;21;17

Geoff Nielson

It's just to me that so much more valuable in someone coming into the workforce than I know how to use this exact, you know, program or system. And yeah, it feels like, you know, that's only going to become more pronounced.

00;31;21;19 - 00;31;42;03

Bryan Walsh

And I wish there were a better way to identify that. And that's that's something, you know, quite often, like when you were doing job interviews, I found you you're what you find yourself doing is assessing the person as they are or what are they done where they learn, where they go to school was their last job. When you really need to do is figure out, how can I predict who this person will become while they're with me?

00;31;42;06 - 00;31;57;07

Bryan Walsh

You know, and you know, the sort of experimenting with what are the questions you ask for that? How do you sort of indicate that, you know, maybe one day I will help me just decide that off the bat. I don't know, but, you know, that's what I think. You know, if you're an employer, that's what you should be looking for.

00;31;57;10 - 00;32;08;05

Bryan Walsh

Really thinking of that. Because also, the past will tell you less than it used to, I think, because it will not resemble the future, even more than it has in the past. It's a bit circular.

00;32;08;07 - 00;32;27;08

Geoff Nielson

So just just following that thread for a minute. Do you have any thoughts on what the workplace of the future looks like, what the organization of the future looks like? And you know what? What skills are going to be more and less important? As you know, organizations try and succeed and thrive in this new world.

00;32;27;11 - 00;32;48;17

Bryan Walsh

I think in terms of skills be important. I think management skills actually, I think, you know, in some ways these tools might give us the ability to manage larger groups, managing AIS to certain extent. So I think figuring out, how one can do that best, you know, how do you measure that? How do you get better at it?

00;32;48;17 - 00;33;04;06

Bryan Walsh

I think that's really important because it's, you know, when we're talking about rapid change to something, good workers are the ones who are going to have to adapt to that, but they will do it much more effectively if they have a management team that's engaged and able really to work with them. So sort of those kind of, you know, we call them people skills.

00;33;04;07 - 00;33;22;08

Bryan Walsh

I guess sometimes they're called soft skills, but there's no doubt they're really important. I think anyone who's been in the workforce training time knows that, because you're seeing the difference between someone who has those skills and someone who doesn't as a whole lot more pleasant to work under someone who has it doesn't. So that's one thing I think, in terms of what the workplace will look like.

00;33;22;10 - 00;33;38;12

Bryan Walsh

You know, it's funny, like, I felt like I just spent years writing about remote work. Is it here to stay? Is it not here to stay in hybrid? You know, I think we've settled into some kind of in-between, you know, the idea of going back to office parks full time and all the rest that just doesn't make sense.

00;33;38;12 - 00;33;58;28

Bryan Walsh

And I have a hard time believing that, you know, the preponderance of AI tools is going to arrest that. I think it will just accelerate more. That said, like, again, for the same reason I just talked about people skills like there, I think companies that put in the effort to create workplaces that people want to be in at least some of the time and are very mindful about how that's used.

00;33;59;00 - 00;34;22;26

Bryan Walsh

You know, one thing you can't do anymore is this kind of, well, everyone's going to show up and it'll all kind of work out itself. You know, you've got to be a lot more deliberate in terms of building that workforce, in terms of managing that workforce. So I think you'll still see something hybrid. But the companies that succeed were the ones who figured out how to use that hybrid time in person really effectively, and also to sort of figure out ways to, keep people tethered even when they're not there.

00;34;22;28 - 00;34;47;01

Bryan Walsh

So that I think that's one thing. I think it will be smaller. You know, I think I could see smaller teams. Cosmology was able to do more, you know, so the idea of massive workforces, that seems less likely. You know, I'm very interested to see what will happen with, new businesses and startups, you know, I mean, because it's a lot easier, I'm sure, you know, like to to institute new rules, to try new things when you're starting from scratch.

00;34;47;01 - 00;35;11;09

Bryan Walsh

You know, I've in my 20 plus years of being a journalist, like, I started my career at time magazine, which when I started there had already been around for like 65 years. I think at that point you certainly have ways of doing things. And, you know, there was definitely a challenge of changing when things have been that established, people been there that long, then I've worked at a place like Axios, you know, sort of a new media startup newsletter business.

00;35;11;09 - 00;35;30;27

Bryan Walsh

Like everything was being invented from scratch, and it was where people were taking those lessons from those older, more established companies. They left applying them and what they wanted to keep, what they wanted, just and, you know, was a lot more nimble in that way. So I think, you know, obviously, like, we'll startups, you know, I know there was a there was a trend where, you know, we were going for like the really Lean startup, you know, like really few workers.

00;35;30;29 - 00;35;52;03

Bryan Walsh

That seems possible. I've also seen like some companies having pull back from that. Companies like Klarna like talk to big Game about, you know, being able to automate almost their whole workforce. But actually that turns out there are some complexities there. But that's it. Like, I think if you start to see, you know, I think the most ambitious, you know, ideas or something like when's the first one person billion dollar startup?

00;35;52;05 - 00;36;10;05

Bryan Walsh

I, you know, I want to say that's impossible, but is it, you know, I mean, a world where that's possible is a world where we're going to have really fundamental change. I think even if it's only a few sectors, we can do that, let alone what that means in terms of everything else, you know, the share of capital and so forth and so on.

00;36;10;05 - 00;36;22;05

Bryan Walsh

So, you know, I think smaller, more nimble. I think, again, the portions of management, you know, the importance of getting the most out of the people you have, that's going to be the sort of formula for success in the future.

00;36;22;07 - 00;37;02;11

Geoff Nielson

So, so coming back to the this, you know, this notion of winners and losers and you touched on this already. But one of the big debates we're hearing about, and maybe it's a false debate, is whether AI and some of these emerging technologies are going to disrupt the big players here, right. And create the opportunity for, you know, whether it's a one person billion dollar company or just, you know, a wave of upstarts like we saw with the advent of, of web, of social media, or whether these tools actually better position the incumbents and make them stronger and help them get farther ahead and, you know, grow their moats.

00;37;02;14 - 00;37;11;14

Geoff Nielson

Those are two very different narratives. Do you have, you know, a prediction or a perspective on, you know, which is the more likely outcome?

00;37;11;16 - 00;37;35;07

Bryan Walsh

You know, I think, I do think that there will be a bigger incumbent advantage now under the rules of AI than was the case in, say, web 2.0, what you point out, you know, and the reason is because these are huge capital intensive industries, right? I mean, like, it requires a lot of money, as we've seen with Jack between others to scale up an AI company.

00;37;35;08 - 00;37;58;26

Bryan Walsh

It is not like getting Facebook off the ground. Right. You know, and of course, like you also have to, you know, the cost of running these models, cost of getting customers, cost of serving customers is really expensive. It doesn't scale in the same way that it did. I think when you were just adding social media users. So that tells me that, like those companies that have that capital will have a bit of a moat, certainly have more resource to play with.

00;37;58;29 - 00;38;15;20

Bryan Walsh

That said, like, I think it'd be absurd to think that nothing will change, right? I mean, like Google is a good example. You know, it is not in the position it was a few years ago, you know. Yes. Does it still have mostly a lock on search? Yes. Is search changing in a way that maybe you can't control?

00;38;15;20 - 00;38;34;20

Bryan Walsh

Also true. You know, so that's that was like and I think of that as the novelty that seemed totally unbreakable. Yeah. It was. And then you can look at a company like Apple that should be succeeding. You know, it has been on the on the front line of every sort of consumer facing technological revolution, and it's really struggling.

00;38;34;20 - 00;38;53;17

Bryan Walsh

And that comes down to who can do this better and who can't, you know. And that really comes down to individual decisions in the court of CEOs. Who do you hire to run your AI system? What are you trying to do? What are your sort of standards? So we have a situation where Apple and Google, two of the most powerful tech companies of forever, basically, you know, really lose market share significantly.

00;38;53;20 - 00;39;13;25

Bryan Walsh

And I would not have predicted that they seems invulnerable. But, you know, we're seeing a lot of institutions that seemed invulnerable, proven more vulnerable. You know, Harvard University, I would have bet would be around long after the United States was gone. Maybe not. You know, so I think, you know, one hand. Yes. Like, the resources matter.

00;39;13;28 - 00;39;22;08

Bryan Walsh

But at the same time, I think, you know, there will be winners and losers even within the big giants here. And then we rooting for new companies to make inroads in that.

00;39;22;10 - 00;39;34;01

Geoff Nielson

Why? And it sounds like what you're saying. And, you know, I'll be a little bit flippant with this, but even within, you know, the grand horse race here, we can expect a lot of position changing among the runners.

00;39;34;01 - 00;39;48;09

Bryan Walsh

Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I mean, look, what if, you know, I don't think it's too likely, but what if anthropic, you know, in six months time really gets AGI. I mean, yeah, all bets are off then. Then we start to sort of change the math of everything. And all of these predictions kind of go out the window.

00;39;48;09 - 00;40;15;27

Bryan Walsh

Right? And it is a scientific challenge first and foremost. Right. Like, yes, you need the horsepower in terms of just data center. You need the energy. You need all those things, in other words, are cheap. But, you know, there might be someone out there, who makes a breakthrough and that situation where if you can do that, that breakthrough, then metastatic, it sort of multiplies itself beyond, I think, what we've seen in the past, you have any single one.

00;40;15;27 - 00;40;32;01

Bryan Walsh

So there's a reason why, you know, you ask me for career advice, when career advice would be becoming an AI scientist, I suppose. Because they're going to benefit and, you know, the talent that war for that talent are really matter because it can really decide the difference, like I think, right. Honestly. Like who? You know, who Apple chose to run.

00;40;32;01 - 00;40;48;27

Bryan Walsh

I maybe a major problem with their company going forward. Again, a company that seemed just sitting on top of the world. And they face other challenges. I mean, obviously, you know, there's manufacturing tariffs and all the rest, but it just shows how those decisions can make a huge, huge difference. Right?

00;40;49;00 - 00;40;55;12

Geoff Nielson

Right. So so yeah. Said another way to EV. Literally everyone is vulnerable here. And yeah I'm talking.

00;40;55;12 - 00;41;15;19

Bryan Walsh

About like this kind of massive technological shift. If you're talking about an intelligence explosion like that actually being cheaper than nothing is safe. Yeah. Then I feel right. You know, I think people like, again, like, I 20, 27 writers have been a really great job of sort of thinking through some of the it's very hard to think through, you know, bit by bit that scenario.

00;41;15;24 - 00;41;36;15

Bryan Walsh

But you know, in reality, like, I think I would, I would hesitate to really make any predictions at that point. I don't know, because then you're talking about something becomes a geopolitical object. You're, you're you're talking about power shifts, you know, an international scale. It kind of makes like, I'm going to predict what happens with the markets next year, kind of feel not that important comparison.

00;41;36;18 - 00;42;12;21

Geoff Nielson

Yeah. So so, you know, geopolitical shifts we've talked about as this technology expands like it that the resource requirements are somewhere between exponential and asymptotic. You mentioned earlier in our conversation the word policy a few times. What what role do you think policy plays. You know blanket whether it's with the big tech firms, whether it's with any given sector, whether it's with, yeah, anywhere from national security to just I don't know, I guess I guess kind of securing and easing the path forward for, you know, citizens of the US and beyond.

00;42;12;24 - 00;42;40;19

Bryan Walsh

Is a really hard question. I mean, here in United States, at least, because you have a it is we should not underestimate the fact that it is just really, really, really difficult to get regulation right when you're dealing with emerging technology. You know, it's almost like a paradox, like when that technology is, you know, still small. You have the power to regulate it, you know, because they haven't gotten the point of like a Facebook or neta, you know, where they have so much market share and they can kind of push back and regulation.

00;42;40;21 - 00;42;56;00

Bryan Walsh

You know, you were at that stage where they are not too long ago. Problem is, when it's that small, you also don't know where it will go. You don't know how to regulate in a way that won't smother it, which I don't think anyone really wants. But also that will be safe. And so like period. That is just a really hard challenge.

00;42;56;02 - 00;43;17;14

Bryan Walsh

On top of that, you know, the fact that, you know, the ideal version of this would be something Congress is doing that's not really within its capability anymore. Both because of the way Congress is run and also because, frankly, there's just very little scientific understanding there. You know, they've gotten better. Like, it's not quite as bad as the old days where, you know, systems of tubes or whatever with the internet.

00;43;17;16 - 00;43;36;16

Bryan Walsh

But it's still, you know, quite hard to do, you know, and same time, like, there's no clarity in terms of, like, what you what are you regulating for, right? Are you regulating for safety? Right. There's been efforts at that. They haven't really succeeded. Even California's bill didn't totally get through the governor's veto. Are you regulating for worker protections?

00;43;36;16 - 00;44;03;27

Bryan Walsh

Are you regulate because that comes with its own dangers. It comes with the fact that some classes like a favor and others not, are you regulating for what the economy should look like on the other side of this? You know, the main tool of the government has been using around tech has been antitrust law. That's a really crude instrument, I think, you know, and also, I think the very fact that we just talked about where even the big incumbents are at threats, you're kind of to my, my mind kind of dampens that argument.

00;44;03;27 - 00;44;21;08

Bryan Walsh

You can use that because I don't think that's the case. So, you know, I, I what I'm hoping for really is, you know, maybe this is something that's almost a new political movement, and it still has to wait for us to really see this happen, for it to really come to being that, okay. What what kind of do you want?

00;44;21;11 - 00;44;41;04

Bryan Walsh

Right? Like try to regulate towards that, not try to regulate in the sense of stopping individual things. But rather like try to imagine the political economy that you would ideally want. And how do we sort of create the rules that can get us there? And that is going to mean thinking about really hard questions like, what happens if we start to see huge numbers of entry level white collar jobs disappear?

00;44;41;07 - 00;45;05;21

Bryan Walsh

Okay. What do you do with those people? You know, what does it mean if, you know, fewer people have to work there? Those are good question to have on one hand, but it is a wholly different side of the one we've all lived in for ever, basically. And, you know, I see smart thinkers in the outside sort of thinking about this, but it hasn't really filtered into, national policy yet.

00;45;05;21 - 00;45;32;10

Bryan Walsh

To. And then on top of that, frankly, you know, we're just things are a bit messy, to say the least, in the U.S. government right now. And there's it's caught between the strange on one hand, more tech, right kind of pedal to metal acceleration ism. So so I think, in the budget bill that was being debated recently, in the past, they'd stuck in a rule that said no state or local AI regulation for ten years, which I'm pretty sure is not actually legal based off budget reconciliation rules.

00;45;32;10 - 00;45;50;18

Bryan Walsh

I could be wrong. So you have that, but then you also have a government that's very nostalgic, you know, that I could see totally flipping on this. And I don't know how that's going to work its way out, but the ideal version of that is that there's some sort of effective synthesis between those two voices. In reality, it seems more like a bit of a ping pong.

00;45;50;20 - 00;46;06;10

Bryan Walsh

And, you know, I wish I knew better what would happen after that. But I think the reality is, is, we see this all the time is you just don't really get regulations, like, for the fact, like you can do it on a hindsight basis is really, really hard to do it in advance and to do without getting it wrong.

00;46;06;10 - 00;46;08;13

Bryan Walsh

And we're in other.

00;46;08;15 - 00;46;29;28

Geoff Nielson

And it's it it's so interesting to get your perspective on this, Bryan. And it's you know, to me, it's so obvious to like, I really hear your natural curiosity about all of this and kind of the, you know, there's these factors and, you know, asking these really big questions in terms of your perspective and just your outlook.

00;46;30;01 - 00;46;47;28

Geoff Nielson

Are you more kind of optimistic or pessimistic when you look at this future economy, the future political economy? Are you looking at it with, you know, fear and trepidation? Are you looking at it like, wow, there's this, you know, this unlimited potential to unlock you? How do you sort of see that shaking out?

00;46;48;00 - 00;47;22;29

Bryan Walsh

You know, I, I look at it in this way and I look it's informed by thinking about history. Right. So we face putting the aside for a second, we face a number of you call them accidental challenges, right. Climate is one. We still have old ones like you Europeans. We have the resurgence of conflict. You know, we will have demographic challenges are quite serious in the future or the coming right now for some countries, we faced things like that before, you know, back in the early 20th century, there was a real shortage of fertilizer.

00;47;23;01 - 00;47;48;10

Bryan Walsh

Haber Bosch came around to create that process suddenly of artificial fertilizer, that without that we would not have the population we have now. So that was a technological sort of leap that enabled us to kind of get ahead of that challenge. I think right in the fall down is and it partially is because being somewhat pessimistic about effective political change, I do place a lot of hope in technological change to help us get past those challenges we face.

00;47;48;12 - 00;48;19;21

Bryan Walsh

So, you know, with something like, I, I feel like I said, I sort of lean on this side that we can't afford not to pursue it. That we face challenges that require scale up intelligence. And that is how we'll get there. Now that, you know, if you want to talk to me in 15 years time when I'm in the, human robot war, you know, you can remind me of what I said that, but I do think, you know, I feel optimistic in that sense, that intelligence historically has been a good thing for humankind, brings bad things to.

00;48;19;23 - 00;48;54;08

Bryan Walsh

But mostly it's been it's been good. Being able to sort of scaled up in this way could be massively good for society. You know, what I fear is really the it's not the I fear, it's the humans. Right? Like I fear the destabilizing effect that, really rapid change could bring about, not just in terms of the political economy, but on an international scale, like we are at a moment now where, like I said, conflict is is at a higher rate than has been before, where, you know, we have a serious superpower confrontation or rivalry between the United States and China.

00;48;54;10 - 00;49;15;23

Bryan Walsh

Historically, when you see that happen, bad things tend to occur. And I worry about that, and I worry that, like, and this is something that's very involved in the I 2047 paper, that this could be the instigation for conflict, a much bigger scale because suddenly will seem really essential, because there's a certain first mover advantage for countries if they're the ones who can achieve this.

00;49;15;25 - 00;49;33;04

Bryan Walsh

That sounds great on their end. But when you destabilize of that degree, you invite counteraction and that strikes me as very hard to control. And that's kind of what I worry about. Like on the, like, big scale worries. Like I feel both optimistic, you know, most of the days about what this can do on a sort of sector by sector basis for human beings.

00;49;33;04 - 00;49;55;17

Bryan Walsh

And I hope that, like, we can use this in a way that that creates value for everyone. Ultimately, even through a period of, of of of pain and adjustment. But I do worry that, on an international scale, that kind of sort of race, or conflict really could get out of control. And that's the kind of reward AI that could happen without AI at all.

00;49;55;19 - 00;50;09;14

Bryan Walsh

You know, that's been the case in the past. But I worry that this is the kind of thing that can be can take an already, destabilizing international situation and really sin first, and then no one knows what happens.

00;50;09;16 - 00;50;31;24

Geoff Nielson

Right? The, that first mover advantage, with AI, without AI, that's become one of the overarching narratives of the technology in general. And I've heard it time and time again that it it has to be an arms race. You're sorry it doesn't have to be an arms race, but it has to be a race of some sort because it's winner take all.

00;50;31;26 - 00;50;53;25

Geoff Nielson

And this is how all these, you know, mass organizations, into some degree, you know, nation states are justifying this investment, these building of, you know, data centers. When do you there was kind of an implication there that. That's right. And that you buy into that. I just want to I want to confirmed you because I, I also hear people tell me the other side of it, which is, you know, that's BS.

00;50;53;25 - 00;51;01;29

Geoff Nielson

That's just that's just cover so that they can get more investment so that they can try and get ahead, you know, where where's, you know, where's the truth.

00;51;01;29 - 00;51;33;23

Bryan Walsh

Yeah, I, I do lean on this sort of first mover advantage. Like I do think if we assume this technology is as powerful as it is the can be, I suppose, and another part of it is how rapidly it progresses. Then that to me just makes the first mover advantage. All the all the greater. Right. You know, like I think I think back to, the early days, the Cold War, with what became an arms race there.

00;51;33;26 - 00;51;52;12

Bryan Walsh

Once you know, the US, for a brief period of time, was the only nuclear power out there. At the same time, like, it, it it's not have the like it was limited what that meant. But like, if I read about superintelligence, then, you know, the the like the difference between the day before and the day after seems massive to me.

00;51;52;14 - 00;52;14;03

Bryan Walsh

And you can be only a couple months behind, but you might be behind permanently, you know, that I really couldn't go out on a limb there because like, that has not been the way it works usually. Like, there's never been something that is so dominant that it just freezes power dynamics in one place. Maybe this could be, I also understand that, you know, it makes sense.

00;52;14;04 - 00;52;35;12

Bryan Walsh

I do think there's a certain amount of cynicism that goes into, where there's companies or others who were kind of using this idea of a race to whether it's sort of stave off regulation, whether it's to get more resources. Yeah. Like I, I can see that, like, certainly there is a, benefit to them, that goes beyond the real geopolitical questions at stake here.

00;52;35;12 - 00;52;46;18

Bryan Walsh

But, you know, and I just think they're probably more right than they're wrong there. And that's a scary thought because then, you know.

00;52;46;21 - 00;53;00;06

Bryan Walsh

You know, it's easier to go back to the nuclear arms race question like that was a state race, right? Like there were, you know, it wasn't like, I don't know. GE had its own nuclear arsenal that was developing. It was United States with South Union. It was it was a nation state then. That's not the case here.

00;53;00;06 - 00;53;21;07

Bryan Walsh

It's this weird mix. Right. All the sort of bigger players in the West at least, are all private. You know, they're they're not they're not sort of state owned, maybe a little differently elsewhere. Certainly state influence in the place, like China. How does that work out, honestly? Because those companies have their own interests that are separate from the countries they happen to be based on.

00;53;21;09 - 00;53;42;05

Bryan Walsh

You have new players like the Middle East, like what role will they play where they have what they can offer is a tremendous amount of capital and the ability to generate a lot of electricity. I don't know how to work out, you know, so I think, well, at the same time, like, I really do worry that I think this is real, that the race idea, speed up safety.

00;53;42;07 - 00;54;01;09

Bryan Walsh

At the same time, I think there's real that there's truth behind that. There's truth behind the fact that that it might be a winner, a winner take all race. And that's a dangerous dynamic. I wish I knew a better way out of that, but I'm hoping smarter people than me were thinking about that. But, it does certainly look like that scares.

00;54;01;12 - 00;54;21;26

Geoff Nielson

Yeah, it's it it's interesting. And it's so, as you said, there's there's there's so much uncertainty and so many unknown unknowns at this point that it can really it can really shake out so many different ways. Well, you know, Bryan, we've covered in this conversation so many different aspects. So so many big questions and so many big kind of potentialities.

00;54;21;29 - 00;54;41;11

Geoff Nielson

We're in a space right now where there's so many what ifs, there's so many big questions. And there's also so many big answers, like, so many big statements about, like, this is what the future is going to look like. I'm curious whether it's AI hype or just, you know, kind of boosterism around anything that's going to happen in the next handful of years.

00;54;41;14 - 00;54;53;18

Geoff Nielson

Are there any narratives you're hearing out there right now that you're just like, this is like, this is this is not going to come true, that this is, you know, clearly somebody with their own agenda that that, you know, you challenge.

00;54;53;21 - 00;55;01;16

Bryan Walsh

Right? I certainly think, like the people who are like,

00;55;01;18 - 00;55;24;04

Bryan Walsh

Knee jerk, this will never happen. Like, that's the people I really don't believe in. It could could be case. I just find it unlikely, I think. And it tends to it tends to sort of view I, through the lens of past failed technological transformations, you know, like a metaverse, whatever. Maybe how you ever you feel like crypto or something like that.

00;55;24;06 - 00;55;46;00

Bryan Walsh

That certainly come back. So I find that unlikely. I think the ones I think are dangerous are the idea that, like, we can do the there'll be no pain and no suffering along the way like that seems unlike that seems just not possible to me. There's no way that a transformation this grand cannot have extreme pain.

00;55;46;03 - 00;56;09;01

Bryan Walsh

And dislocation in the shorter term, you know, so if you're saying that if you're, like, a real sort of acceleration is then like, there's no downsides here. I don't know what world you're living in. You know, I think beyond that, one one hands like, it really is helpful when people are doing forecasts to be specific to create like here is a vision of how things can be, because that's the thing you can sort of test against.

00;56;09;01 - 00;56;37;13

Bryan Walsh

You can sort of falsify, at the same time, if someone's telling you that is the way things are actually going to be, then almost certainly they're going to be wrong. It's funny, like thinking back to, you know, let's go back like 15 years, 2009 or so. If you ask someone like, what was social media due to the world, you probably would have gotten a lot of talk about, you know, revolution in Iran, you know, or Egypt, the Arab Spring, that's what, you know, it's going to connect us all.

00;56;37;13 - 00;56;54;21

Bryan Walsh

It's going to sort of drop all these boundaries of states like that didn't quite happen. So there are things we could be predicting now that we will this be fundamentally wrong about the nature of, the technology itself and how will be used by people, you know, I mean, that's something we we don't often think about, I think, is that it's not just how the technology is developed.

00;56;54;21 - 00;57;09;11

Bryan Walsh

It is then how it's implemented. And that's going to be different from place to place, person to person. So I think I like to think in scenarios. I like to think in different possibilities. I think that's the best way to think about this. Not as like one way, but here are some different possibilities that can happen.

00;57;09;11 - 00;57;28;28

Bryan Walsh

Whether you there's one where things get out of control, very destructive, very fast. There is one where progress is much slower, whether for technological reasons or for, political resistance. Probably like a good scenario where there are some short term pain, but the benefits are really big. That's where you get that ten, 15% growth a year, which is just off the charts.

00;57;28;28 - 00;57;33;21

Bryan Walsh

Really. And ultimately, that would be a much better world to live in. I think the the what we have now.

00;57;33;23 - 00;58;00;20

Geoff Nielson

While it sounds like the unifying factor across your, you know, the scenarios you've got in your mind is still that it's going to be a bumpy ride and there's going to be some pain and there are going to be some losers. And so with that in mind, you know, in your mind, do we have a responsibility collectively to minimize some of that, or is it to try and figure out how we can make it less painful for some of the people who are going to be disrupted here?

00;58;00;25 - 00;58;12;19

Geoff Nielson

And if we do, you know, does that fall on individuals? Does it fall on organizations? Does it fall on governments like what does that look like if we're going to minimize that to some degree.

00;58;12;20 - 00;58;30;07

Bryan Walsh

Yes we do, I think and also I think we need to you know, there's a self-interest element here too. If I were in charge of the company, I would be thinking about this. I would be trying to figure out what role can we play in reducing that pain, because if you don't in a democratic system like this one, you can be the subject to a serious backlash.

00;58;30;07 - 00;58;46;00

Bryan Walsh

I mean, just, you know, look at some of the other companies in Silicon Valley and see how that can work out. So, yeah, I think I think that's the case that you do need to think about that. There has to be real action there. I think that will come and should be coming from the companies themselves. Ultimately will have to be political.

00;58;46;02 - 00;59;01;10

Bryan Walsh

You know, I'd love for a new political movement to come out of this. I don't know what it would look like. But if this is as important as that, you know, the thing with the Industrial Revolution led to massive political changes in terms of how we're organized, new parties, things like that. We might need something along those lines.

00;59;01;15 - 00;59;20;27

Bryan Walsh

Ultimately, we may need to even reimagine what it means to be a person. Right? If work and even an economic role is no longer central to who we are, we're going to need to figure out something else, to fill that gap. And we don't really have these nine states, so we don't really have it at this moment.

00;59;21;00 - 00;59;32;13

Bryan Walsh

That is exciting because it opens up a whole kind of space to to figure out what it means to be a person. It's also like, if we can fill that space, I think scary things can flow in that vacuum.

00;59;32;15 - 00;59;43;14

Geoff Nielson

Right, right. So it's it's a time for reflection and, and individually and collectively figuring out what life looks like, you know, in this kind of assisted world.

00;59;43;16 - 00;59;44;14

Bryan Walsh

I do, I do.

00;59;44;17 - 01;00;22;25

Geoff Nielson

Yeah, yeah. Bryan, before I forget, I did want to ask you about journalism and what this means for journalism, which, you know, I know it's it's like one lens here out of many. But, you know, in some of the conversations I'm having on this show, you know, I hear everything from these technical, you know, I generative AI is going to, you know, get rid of 90% of journalists because, you know, organizations are just going to, you know, fall in love with, you know, I'll say again, somewhat flippantly, like, oh, you just have I spit out another top ten list or just create, you know, slop content that people won't read.

01;00;22;25 - 01;00;40;28

Geoff Nielson

And that's that's the new face of journalism. Or on the other end, you know, if you're an investigative journalist and you're doing research using something like deep research to help you do this in a way that's much cheaper and more scalable than it has been in many decades. And it actually is kind of a force multiplier for journalists.

01;00;41;00 - 01;00;44;05

Geoff Nielson

What's your outlook as someone who's kind of in the, you know, eye of the storm here?

01;00;44;05 - 01;01;03;14

Bryan Walsh

Yeah, two things. One, absolutely. It could be used to sort of amplify the power of individual journalists. I think, especially when it comes to those can process information quickly. You mentioned something like investigative reporter can use that to aid. Yes. There's no doubt about that. The bigger problem is less really the tools and selves. And where does it go?

01;01;03;17 - 01;01;23;15

Bryan Walsh

You know, what we face in journalism is an audience problem above all else. I mentioned I started my work at time magazine. Back then it was in paper firm. Our competition was like the other magazines for the most part, or things you can read now, anyone who's on the internet, or publishing is competing against everything else, and it's Netflix, against this podcast, against a video game or whatever.

01;01;23;17 - 01;01;40;25

Bryan Walsh

And so, I do everything that you should I because the explosion of content is that will make it even harder to identify, to find an audience. And that ultimately is what we need to do if we don't have the audience, I think we're doing really matters. That's less of a that's been a problem. It's been ongoing for a long time before I really came to the scene.

01;01;40;27 - 01;02;09;04

Bryan Walsh

I guess a hope could be that, like, there could be, AI tools that identify better sources that begin to sort of know, to discern quality. You know, Google is never very good at that. Given the entire world of search engine optimization, you know, engineering, I hope maybe if they, I guess, be, you know, artificial general intelligence or even superintelligence, I hope it can tell the difference between good news and poorly done news.

01;02;09;06 - 01;02;30;18

Bryan Walsh

But those are actually really separate from me. I think at the end of the day, these are questions that have existed in the business for quite a long time. There's no easy solution to them. You know, again, I hope that maybe these tools can be used to sort of gamify higher quality targets. I think there's always some evidence that, you know, they can sort of raise the epistemic quality, you know, by working with users.

01;02;30;21 - 01;02;41;23

Bryan Walsh

It can also be used against that in that way. I guess my hope is that that I hope is that, like, it, it can be used as educational tool that I can sort of support higher quality sources of information that would ideally include.

01;02;41;23 - 01;03;07;03

Geoff Nielson

Us while there. There's that that's really interesting and it's something I didn't think of that I wish I thought of, which is the, the audience problem, as in some ways being more pressing than the, the AI one. And, and for me, it, you know, as a podcast host, it's interesting because now there's like, you know, you talk a little bit about epistemology, about truth and that journalism and, and that at odds with sensationalism.

01;03;07;03 - 01;03;30;12

Geoff Nielson

And how do you have the headline, how do you get the click, how do you compete with compete in the economy of attention? And, you know, what does that mean for journalists and what does that mean for for truth. And I mean, my sense is we're kind of at a point of no return there, right? Like you can't just go back and convince people that they need to be, you know, stop clicking on the, you know, exciting headline and.

01;03;30;15 - 01;03;48;10

Bryan Walsh

All those things. You know, a lot of them are sort of leftover from business models that exist anymore, you know, from a geographic monopoly that news sources had within a limited geographic spread that's gone. The internet changed that forever. You know, I think the future, you know, it's it's a little boring, but like, it's more of a 1 to 1 reader to audience relationship.

01;03;48;10 - 01;04;08;13

Bryan Walsh

That's why things like Substack have taken off in that wake up kind of way. You're filing less a brand and you are individuals and sort of you can establish trust that way. I think that's the future to a certain extent. The problem is like, it's inherently more limited. You know, like the idea of mass media in that way won't come back, in the same sense.

01;04;08;13 - 01;04;27;18

Bryan Walsh

And so what does that mean for the body politic? It has been great so far. Again, I, you know, some sort of longshot hope that I can play some role in filtering out information that'll be really important. But will that over outweigh the AI slop that will be used to create just flooding the the bandwidth everywhere?

01;04;27;18 - 01;04;29;16

Bryan Walsh

I not I'm kind of skeptical.

01;04;29;19 - 01;04;53;01

Geoff Nielson

While you used to word that's really interesting to me, which is trust. Right. Because if we're if we're in this kind of, you know, flood of slop and low qual, you know, quantity over quality, is there an opportunity for, you know, whether it's individuals or Substack to, to build trust. And that will in some way becomes the inoculation against all this misinformation disinformation?

01;04;53;01 - 01;05;15;27

Bryan Walsh

I think so, yeah, absolutely. That's already happening. Again, it's a scale question, and we're talking about orders of magnitude smaller scale. When you're in terms of free or reaching. So, yeah, that's, you know, that's, that's, that's a bit troubling. And also, you know, there's concern that you could kind of cut off this or an economy that generates information that you then use to both train and sort of these models run on.

01;05;16;00 - 01;05;34;25

Bryan Walsh

I look at Google and what it's doing with AI summaries, and I cannot think like it's kind of getting its own scorn because the weak economy is what makes the advertising economy that gives them all that money, and they seem to be hell bent on destroying that if they feel like probably that they're in an existential fight over AI and therefore can afford not to win that.

01;05;34;27 - 01;05;45;18

Geoff Nielson

Yeah, yeah, a lot to digest, a lot to think about. Bryan, I wanted to say thank you. So much for joining us today. It's a super interesting conversation. I really appreciate your insights.

01;05;45;20 - 01;05;49;24

Bryan Walsh

Thank you very much. Great to be here. And.