Transcription
Because we've just crossed a threshold that is similar in its capacity to alter the world as the invention of writing. I really think that's that's where we are. We're talking about something that is going to fundamentally alter what humans are, with no plan.
All right, so people are finally starting to wake up to what's coming with sentient AI, and it's about time. I just watched a two and a half-hour debate on the Diary of a CEO YouTube channel, and it might be one of the most important conversations about AI I've seen all year.
So, in this debate, we've got Amjad Msad, CEO of Replet; Brett Weinstein, evolutionary biologist and longtime systems thinker; and Daniel Priestley, award-winning entrepreneur and best-selling author. Now, I know most people aren't going to sit through a two and a half-hour debate. So, I went through it all and pulled the most important, most thought-provoking, and most terrifying moments. Let's get into it.
So, they start off by laying out their general views on AI, where they think it's headed, and how this all might play out. You'll see it in the clips coming up, but Brett Weinstein is kind of the doomer of the group. He's got a more pessimistic, or maybe just more realistic, outlook on where this could all lead. Then there's Amjad, the Replet CEO. He's more of the AI optimist, especially when it comes to how agents will empower startups and solo entrepreneurs. And finally, Daniel Priestley kind of lands in the middle. He's excited about the productivity boost AI could bring, but he's also genuinely concerned about jobs and the potential for massive inequality.
So, with that context, here's the first big moment. Steven Bartlett, the host of the Diary of a CEO, asks Amjad what kinds of jobs he thinks AI is going to replace. Take a look.
"You know, maybe this is useful for for the audience. I think if your job is as routine as it comes, your job is gone in the next couple years. So, meaning if you if in in those jobs like for example, uh, quality assurance jobs, data entry jobs, you're sitting in front of a computer and you're supposed to click uh and and type things in a certain order. Operator, and those technologies are coming on the market really quickly, and those are going to displace a lot of a lot of uh labor. Accountants, accountants, lawyers. Yes. I mean, I've just pulled a ligament in my in my foot, and they did an MRI scan, and I had to wait a couple of days for someone to look at the MRI scan and tell me what it meant. Yeah. Yeah. I'm guessing that that's gone. Yeah. I think I think the healthcare ecosystem is hard to predict because of regulation and and again there there's so many limiting factors on how this technology can permeates the economy because of regulations and and people's willingness to to take it. But you know, things unregulated jobs uh that are purely text in text out. If your job you know you get a you get a message and you produce some kind of artifact that's like probably text or images, that that job is is at risk. So, text in text out jobs are at serious risk."
These are the low-level white-collar jobs that involve things like customer service, data entry, copywriting, document review; basically tasks that are predictable, easily verifiable, and don't require deep creativity or complex reasoning. And that's probably at least a third of the white-collar workforce right now, especially entry-level roles for people just starting out.
Now, here's why that's so scary. Agents are going to replace jobs from the bottom up. They're not coming for your CEO first. They're coming for the easiest tasks first. And unfortunately, those are the exact kinds of jobs most people rely on when they're just trying to get a foot in the door.
And here's the even harsher truth. Most of the people working those jobs aren't going to have the skills or the time or the support to just level up into a "better" role. So, what happens when AI wipes out millions of these roles and there's nowhere obvious for those people to go?
Well, here's what they had to say about that.
"Right. Right. So, so that that will create a world. Yes, there's massive access to opportunity, but there are people who will take seize it and then they'll seize it and and there'll be people who don't. I imagine it almost like a um a marathon race and AI has two superpowers. One superpower is to distract people um such as TikTok algorithm. That's right. And the other superpower is to make you hyper creative. So, you become a hyper consumer or hyper creator. And in this marathon race, the vast majority of people have got their shoes tied together because AI is distracting them. Some people are running a traditional race. Some people have got a bicycle and some people have got a Formula 1 vehicle. And it's going to be very confronting when the results go on the scoreboard and you see, oh, wait a second. There's a few people who finished this marathon in about 30 minutes. And there's a lot of us who finished in like 18 hours because we had our shoes tied together. And I can't understand if we've got equal opportunity why there's so much disparity between how fast, you know, and you know, I'm using an analogy, but this idea that, you know, someone like a lot of people are going to start earning a million dollars a month and a lot of people are going to say, "Hey, I can't even get a job for $15 an hour," there's going to be this kind of interesting wedge."
Now, if you think that sounds dramatic, it gets even worse because Brett points out that this isn't just a temporary disruption. We're heading into a world where billions of people may simply not have the skills to meaningfully participate at all. And the consequences of that could be catastrophic.
"I mean, unfortunately, even if there is some small group of elites that are able to go to Hawaii while something else does the mundane details of their business building. We are rather soon going to be faced with a world that has billions of people who do not have the skills to leverage AI. Some of them will be necessary for a time; you're going to need plumbers. But this is also not a long-term solution because not only are there not enough of those jobs, but of course we have humanoid robots that once imbued with AI capacity will also be able to take, you know, they'll be able to crawl under your house into the crawl space and fix your plumbing. So, what typically happens when you have a massive economic contraction that arises from the fact that a huge number of people are out of work is that the elites start looking at those people and thinking, well, we don't really need them anyway. And so the idea that this AI disruption doesn't lead us to some very human catastrophe I think is overly optimistic, and that we need to start preparing right now. What are the rights of a person who has had whatever it is that they've invested in completely erased from the list of needs? Is that person responsible for not having anticipated AI coming? And is it their problem that that they are now starving and they're being eyed by others as, you know, a useless eater? I don't think so. How is it different than uh when the uh uh what's it called the the looming machine came and the textile workers you know that the result of the in the lite sort of revolution? uh h how is it how is it different than any time in history when uh technology uh automated a lot of people out of out of jobs? I would say scale and speed; that's how it's different, and the scale and speed is going to result in a an unprecedented catastrophe because the rate at which people are going to be simultaneously sidelined not just in one industry but across every industry."
I feel like Brett Weinstein is one of the first people I've seen actually talk about this without sugarcoating it. He's not throwing out vague "we'll adapt" clichés. He's laying out point-blank what happens when billions of people get pushed out of the economy by AI.
Because if you only listen to the CEOs of these massive AI and tech companies, it's always the same line: Sure, AI will replace jobs, but it will create new ones, too. And yeah, it probably will. But who's to say the AIs won't also take those new jobs? I mean, we're not just building a new tool here. We're literally creating artificial intelligence. This is not just another industrial revolution. It's not factories replacing farmers. It's not assembly lines replacing craftsmen. In both of those cases, humans were still the center of the system. We just had better tools. This time, the tools are starting to replace the humans entirely. And if AI can think, reason, create, and eventually even act in the physical world through robotics, then for the first time in history, we're building a system that doesn't necessarily need us.
Now, in this next part of the debate, they get into more of the esoteric possible outcomes of the future, where AI doesn't just replace our jobs, but potentially our humanity, too. We're talking about a future that starts to look a lot more like The Matrix or even Ready Player One, where people retreat from the real world because the synthetic one is just so much better. Check this out.
"You know, we talked at the about the birth crisis. And I think a more generalized problem there is creating virtualized environments uh via VR where everyone is living in their own created universe and uh it's so enticing and even create simulates work and simulates struggle uh such that you don't really need to leave this this world and so every one of us will be solopcistic you know similar to the Matrix, Ready Player One. Ready Player One. We're all kind of uh plug even worse than Ready Player One. At least that's a massively worked environment. I'm talking about AI simulating everything uh for us and therefore you're literally in the Matrix. You know, maybe that this is I was about I had that same thought. I've enjoyed this great simulation."
So, yeah, we're clearly heading into some uncharted territory. Whether it's mass job displacement, the loss of meaning, or people opting into synthetic realities, this stuff is real and it's moving faster than most people realize.
But at the same time, and I think this part's important, there is a window of opportunity here, especially if you're someone who is curious, adaptable, or especially entrepreneurial. Because as Replet CEO Amjad Msad points out, we're still early and there's a huge chance right now to be one of the people building the future instead of just being shaped by it.
"Well, first of all, the first thing you need to do, you need to understand is that this moment of time is the least competitive uh moment. Like if you understand how to use these tools, you can start making money tomorrow. like we, you know, I see countless examples of people making thousands of dollars with these hustles that I that I talked about or building businesses that generates millions of dollars in the first couple months of existence. So, I would say start moving now. Start building things. So, it's an unprecedented time of of of wealth creation. Clearly at some point as the market gets more efficient as people more and more people understand how to use these tools um there's less potential for uh you know creating these massive businesses quickly and we've seen this like the dawn of the internet or dawn of the web you know it was a lot easier to create Facebook than it is now then we had mobile and for three four five years it was very easy to create massive businesses and then it became harder. Being just at the edge of what's possible is going to be very very important over the next couple years. And that's that gets me really excited because the entrepreneurs who are paying attention are going to are going to be having the most amount of fun, but they're also going to be able to make a lot of money."
So, yeah, we're definitely at a strange turning point. Some people will lose everything while others will build things they never thought possible. But I'm curious, what do you see coming? Are we heading toward collapse, a major reset, or a whole new beginning? I mean, it feels like no matter how you look at it, what's clear is that massive change is coming and fast. Anyway, thanks for watching, and as always, if you want to stay ahead of where this is all going, make sure to hit that like button, subscribe if you haven't already, and I'll catch you guys in the next What?