Tyler Cowen on Why AI Hasn't Changed the World Yet

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

You know, not a novel observation here, but I do think that if like in early 2022 or late 2021, you had, someone had revealed to you all of the amazing things that we could do with AI these days, I think you would have expected that either the broader economy or society would be more different than it has been. Like, by and large, you know, I think most people's jobs are done roughly the same way. Sort of society still seems to operate, although maybe a little bit worse every day. I don't know. But like, I just don't think like it's a mind blowing technology, and yet by and large, like it hasn't had the economic disruption that I think many people would have guessed.

Tracy Alloway (1:07)

Maybe I'm cynical on the subject, but I always say never underestimate the human capacity for stasis, I guess, and making things much more difficult than they actually need to be, and putting up bureaucratic barriers, regulatory barriers and things like that. So it's not that surprising to me, but it is true, you have a lot of economists out there who think there was going to be this massive productivity boost, right?

Joe Weisenthal (1:30)

Well, it's certainly tech people. Like, I don't know, like economists, you know, they're like, oh, we're going to have a productivity boom, we're raising our estimates from 2% to 2.25%. And then you have a lot of...

Tracy Alloway (1:41)

Everything's relative, Joe.

Joe Weisenthal (1:42)

And then, you know, we talked to Kathy Wood one time, and I think she, what did she predict? 20% real GDP growth for 20 years, or you certainly have these people in Silicon Valley, deflationary boom post-scarcity, any minute right now. Some real gaps, I would say, between how a lot of economists think about some of these things and the numbers that an economist would be comfortable using versus maybe literally everyone else.

Tracy Alloway (2:08)

Kathy Wood, certainly.

Joe Weisenthal (2:09)

Many others, yeah.

Tracy Alloway (2:10)

You know what I think about is how different would your career and my career have been had AI existed in 2008, 2006 when we were starting to blog, basically?

Joe Weisenthal (2:23)

It's a really good question, and I don't know the answer because part of me thinks, well, that whole path that was defined in my career would not have been there, it would not have existed, or maybe. But on the other hand, maybe in 2006, I would have been just like I was super early into blogging, super early into experimenting with AI news, and it would look different, but maybe I would have rode some different way.

Tracy Alloway (2:48)

Different, but the same.

Joe Weisenthal (2:49)

Yeah, different, but the same. I think it's pretty hard to tell.

Tracy Alloway (2:53)

One thing I know is back then we were writing to optimize Google results.

I know social media was disseminating stuff as well, but Google was the main platform for a lot of stuff. I'm sure if we were doing it now, we would be optimizing for ChatGPT or perplexity or someone like that to actually pick up the content. That's the audience.

Joe Weisenthal (3:17)

Yeah, it is. I think especially any commercial publisher that's trying to do a scale. I think a niche voice expert could still have like their audience that comes to them directly.

Tracy Alloway (3:28)

Of course.

Joe Weisenthal (3:28)

But like at scale, for sure, every publisher is trying to figure this out. Anyway, we really do have the perfect guest, someone we should have had on the podcast years and years ago. It's almost surprising that it's the first time we've had him on.

Tracy Alloway (3:42)

It is crazy.

Joe Weisenthal (3:43)

It is crazy, but it is someone who I think is like at the intersection of everything that we're talking about because he's an economist. He knows the tech really well, the tech people know him, the tech people love him. He may even be one of the preferred economists for this. I feel he's like the economist that all the people in the AI world want to get his take. A long-time blogger, both of us gave up on blogging. We have our newsletter, it's close enough, but it's different than blogging. Someone who's stuck with the medium for a long time, one of the true original econ bloggers that I've been reading for over 20 years. We're going to be speaking with Tyler Cowen. He is the host of the Conversations with Tyler podcast. He also obviously is one of the two bloggers that I've been reading the famous Marginal Revolution blog, economics professor at GMU, appreciator of ethnic foods all around the DC, Northern Virginia, Maryland area. Someone known on the internet for a long time. Tyler, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots. Really thrilled to have you here.