Who Will Adapt Best to AI Disruption?

**Nathaniel Whittemore** (0:00)
Today on the AI Daily Brief, a new study that looks at who is best suited to deal with AI-driven job displacement. And before that in the headlines, OpenAI joins Microsoft in making new commitments to the communities in which they're building out AI infrastructure. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI.
All right, friends, quick announcements before we dive in. First of all, thank you to today's sponsors, KPMG, ZenCoder, Robots and Pencils, and SuperIntelligent. To get an ad-free version of the show, go to patreon.com/aidailybrief, or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts. And if you are interested in sponsoring the show, send us a note at sponsors at aidealybrief.ai. Lastly, if you want to up your skills, it is not too late to join our New Year's AI Resolution. We've got over 5,000 people participating now. You can find all about it at aidbnewyear.com. Welcome back to the AI Daily Brief Headlines edition, all the daily AI news you need in around 5 minutes. We kick off today with the latest AI company to commit to making sure their data centers are good neighbors. Recently we've been tracking what hopefully becomes a wave of commitments from companies that are building these data centers to ensure that there aren't negative externalities for the communities in which those data centers are located in. If you are a regular listener, you will know that I think this is coming too late, but I am glad to see it happening. And frankly, I think that we should aspire not just to not being disruptive, but to actually being a positive partner. The latest company to make these commitments is OpenAI who, in a blog post introducing the new initiative, which they call Stargate Community, they wrote, Across all our Stargate Community plans, we commit to paying our own way on energy so that our operations don't increase your electricity prices. They noted that every community will require efforts tailored to their unique conditions, but OpenAI said that their plans could include bringing their own power resources or paying for local grid upgrades. Turning to water use, OpenAI said their impact would be minimized by using modern closed-loop or low-water cooling systems. They wrote that these are, quote, innovations in cooling water systems designed that drastically reduce the water use compared to traditional data centers. Water required by our facilities should be a fraction of the community's overall water use. For their first data center in Abilene, Texas, they quoted the local mayor stating that a year's worth of water use for the data center would be half as much as the county uses in a single day. In addition, OpenAI is committing to regional workforce development in the communities around their data centers by establishing OpenAI academies. They said this initiative would include credentialing and clear pathways to high-quality jobs aligned to local employers and the regional AI industry. The company said that they would also engage with local labor unions and other partners to support the skilled trades required to build and operate the facilities. The post concludes, Stargate is a physical infrastructure program that requires deep partnership. We are reliant on and grateful to the communities that make it possible and were committed to showing up as long-term partners. In a somewhat related story, the White House is pushing for an emergency power auction in the Northeast to deal with spiraling energy costs. Last Friday, the administration published a plan to require tech companies to indirectly fund the construction of new power plants. In agreement with multiple state governors, the White House intends to compel the nation's largest grid operator, PJM Interconnection, to hold an emergency wholesale power auction later this year. The auction would allow tech companies to bid on 15-year contracts for new electricity generation capacity. The goal is to provide PJM with the certainty they require to accelerate construction while also moving the cost burden on to the tech companies. As the regulations currently stand, expansion is largely financed by increasing rates on existing customers. New power contracts help, but until now, they have only been offered for 12-month terms. PJM services more than 67 million people stretching from the Northeast all the way to parts of the Midwest. They are currently forecasting a 17% jump in peak demand across their system by 2030 The involvement of bipartisan governors is noteworthy, as electricity has become a major issue in multiple local elections. Democrat Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro claimed that PJM has been quote slow to let new generation onto the grid at a time when energy demand is going up. Shapiro is up for re-election in November, and energy costs have been one of the key issues on the campaign trail. The question ultimately will be whether an emergency auction will bring meaningful relief for consumers given the long lead times for new power plants. The long-term nature of the plan is absolutely a welcome change, but who knows if it will be enough to defuse the issue by November. Now moving back to OpenAI, in addition to Stargate Communities, the company also announced their new Education for Countries program. They wrote about the need for such a program in the context of the capability overhang which we covered earlier this week. They wrote, Education systems are a critical route through which this gap is closed. Studies project that by 2030, nearly 40% of the core skills workers rely on today will change, driven largely by AI. By embedding AI tools, training and research into the core infrastructure of schools and universities, education systems can evolve alongside these shifts and better prepare students to thrive in a world with AI. The program will see OpenAI work with foreign governments and universities to bring AI into education systems, and in addition, OpenAI will provide tailored training through their OpenAI Academy and certification system. The first cohort of partner countries includes Estonia, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Trinidad and Tobago, and the UAE. Google is also doubling down on education as a major focus for their AI organization. In collaboration with the Princeton Review, Gemini can now serve free, full-length practice exams on demand. The feature will begin with practice SATs, with Gemini providing instant feedback for students. In addition, Google has awarded half a million dollars in funding to Cal State Fullerton to support AI literacy training for educators. Associate Professor Bridget Drucken said, When teachers understand how AI systems work, including how to build, evaluate, and use them thoughtfully and responsibly, they can guide students in asking good questions about technology rather than just consuming it. Now, as you can tell, all of these headlines are sort of all part of a larger story, which is society's adaptation to AI. That, of course, has been a major topic of conversation at Davos this week as well. The latest to comment on that is Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who warned at Davos that AI risks losing public support if the technology doesn't deliver clear benefits to everyday people. In an interview from the WEF, he said, We as a global community have to get to a point where we're using this to do something useful that changes the outcomes of people in communities and countries and industries. Otherwise, I don't think this makes much sense. In fact, I would say we will quickly lose even the social permission to actually take something like energy, which is a scarce resource, and use it to generate these tokens. Discussing AI job disruption, Nadella rejected the idea that this is something external happening to society beyond intervention, commenting, Going and thinking of these as somehow living outside of the realm of human agency is probably not the right way to think about it. He's also not super convinced that AI leads to a world with no human work required. In fact, he believes the opposite, comparing this moment to the adoption of the personal computer. Nadella said, In the early 80s, if someone had come to us and said that 4 billion people are going to wake up every morning and start typing, you would have said, why? We have a typist tool and that's good enough, we don't need 4 billion people. Nadella is also a firm believer in Javon's paradox when it comes to AI. This axiom implies that cheaper AI will drive up demand rather than lead to a market crash. He said, If you buy my entire argument that we've got a new commodity, its tokens, and the job of every economy and every firm in the economy is to translate these tokens into economic growth, then if you have a cheaper commodity, it's better. Overall, Nadella's view is that AI is a technology that will become deeply ingrained in society and the economy rather than an external actor disrupting human flourishing. He said, All of these token factories are part of the real economy, connected to the grid, connected to the telco network. That's what's going to drive at scale, whether it's the global south or in the developed world. Two others who commented on the speed of AI disruption at Davos were JP Morgan CEO Jamie Diamond and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. In a very frank and stark discussion at Davos, Diamond said that companies and governments cannot ignore AI or put their head in the sand. He said, It is what it is. We're going to deploy it. Will it eliminate jobs? Yes. Will it change jobs? Yes. Will it add some jobs? Probably. It is what it is and you can hope for the world you want, but you're going to get the world you've got. He added, Your competitors are going to use it and countries are going to use it. However, it may go too fast for society, and if it goes too fast for society, that's where governments and businesses need to, in a collaborative way, step in together and come up with a way to retrain people and move it over time. Diamond gave the example of the 2 million truck drivers in America that are likely to be pushed out by autonomous driving in the medium to long term. He said, Should you do it all at once if 2 million people go from driving a truck and making $150,000 a year to a next job that might be $25,000? No, you will have a civil unrest, so phase it in. Now playing his role at Optimist in Chief, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang argued that labor shortages rather than mass layoffs were going to be the issue that society needs to face. He said, Energy is creating jobs, the chip industry is creating jobs, the infrastructure layer is creating jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. This is the largest infrastructure build out in human history. That's going to create a lot of jobs. He also reiterated a point that he's made before, that this particular tech revolution was actually creating a ton of opportunity in the physical trades. He said it's wonderful that the jobs are related to tradecraft and we're going to have plumbers and electricians and construction and steelworkers. In the United States, we're seeing a significant boom in this area. Everyone should be able to make a great living. You don't need a degree in computer science to do so. And while some people were quick to argue that the jobs that Jensen is talking about are very temporary and will only last until data centers are built, others from very different walks of life embraced the message. Mike Rowe, who you might recognize from the Dirty Jobs Show, talked about this discussion between Jensen and Larry Fink and said, I couldn't make it to Davos this year, but I'm delighted to see that my message has. Obviously, our workforce is nowhere near ready for what's coming. In fact, we're not ready for what's already here. We're going to need to dramatically rethink the way we train the men and women who will build the infrastructure in question and the speed with which we do so. I'm heartened and encouraged to see Silicon Valley at the table. Now, of course, this debate is going to continue. In fact, AI disruption is also the topic of our main episode, so that is going to do it for the headlines, and to that other topic, we will now move.