#192 - Amy Webb - The Future of Work, AI & Human Labor

**Amy Webb** (0:00)
We could be looking at a future where the economy is thriving but has no use for you and your labor and what your contributions can be. Are we looking at a humanity scale reordering?
I think the answer is yes, and I think we're starting to see that already.

**Peter McCormack** (0:16)
And it feels like AI has just become this accelerant that people don't know what to do with.

**Amy Webb** (0:21)
The key difference with the technology that exists now, whether that is AI or related technology, like biotechnology, which is like biology and I kind of link together, these self-improve and they can evolve in ways that we cannot predict in advance. There's a professor at MIT that talks about in the age of AI, thinkers and think-nots. I don't think the right conversation is specifically which job in which industry will be gone 36 months from now. I think the better question is, who are the people that are more vulnerable? We could have GDP going up and unemployment going up for the first time together.
We are all the transition generation. The current structures don't make sense for the world we're about to live in.

**Peter McCormack** (1:08)
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All right, Amy, I've been so excited to talk to you. We seem to be moving into a new era where we're potentially looking at a reorganization of the operational system for society.

**Amy Webb** (1:44)
Yeah. So first of all, thank you for including me on your US tour. I'm happy to be with you in New York. I really am, legit. I've been looking forward to this as well. Yeah. So are we looking at a humanity scale reordering? I think the answer is yes, and I think we're starting to see that already.
We're seeing the nexus of power shifting a little bit, and that depends on the country. But I think here in the United States, there's definitely been this battle royale pitting the financial sector against the tech sector, against the government sector.
Typically, it would have been years past clear who the winner was. This time, I'm not sure what's going to happen because everybody seems to be exerting enough strength that the others are having to give and take a little bit in a way we haven't seen before. But also, if you go back maybe 10 years, there were a lot of, like all the big consulting firms had their studies out saying, you know, truck drivers are all going to lose their jobs because of self-driving cars. And this is the year that it will happen. And I remember seeing those studies thinking like, did you just hire a bunch of analysts out of, like none of this makes any sense. There's no model that would bear this out.
You know, that being said, it's the white collar people whose jobs are fundamentally shifting, which is not what people had thought. Anyhow, this is all to say, what is a world model to begin with? So if we stop and think for a moment, why are we feeling this sensation of change and profound uncertainty? It's because we all live with these mental models. For sometimes a really long time, and some of that comes from what we've observed. Some of it comes from science fiction.
And our expectations for what reality is going to be wind up being pretty different from what reality actually is. And that gap is what makes us have these feelings of anxiety, and like we don't have any more control, and we don't have any agency, which is not the case. But it's this sense of like everything is changing, and I can't do anything about it, which all ties back to that question about the operating system of humanity and all of these things that are shifting. Yes, a lot is, but some of it is also just our perception, I think.

**Peter McCormack** (4:27)
Yeah, we get a lot of emails to the show, and talk to a lot of people about AI. There's also a regular program in the UK called Question Time, where they have four or five politicians and the audience asks questions and they didn't...

**Amy Webb** (4:38)
Do they answer... Now I got to ask you questions. Do they actually answer the questions or is it just gobbledy good talking points?