Transcription
You recently wrote an op-ed in The New York Times where you said the AI jobs apocalypse is overblown. Um, you know, what made you write that? What, what kind of spurred that op-ed idea for you and what were you hoping to really get across there?
Well, you know, first of all, I just say that I, when I, I tend as a CEO and somebody that's running a big business, I tend to think in five or 10-year increments. And so, I'm spending a lot of time thinking about how the world's going to unfold over the next five to 10 years and how Goldman Sachs is going to support our clients and participate in that. Um, and how, you know, the evolution of the world shifts what we need to do to be successful as an enterprise. And so, you know, I think over five to 10-year increments. And I would just say I'm extraordinarily excited about the opportunity, particularly for our country, um, to really grow productivity um and grow the economy as this technology is deployed and gets wrapped into enterprises and, you know, helps people be more productive in the context of what they can do. That doesn't mean that it's going to be a straight line and going to be simple. In fact, I'm sure and I stated in the op-ed that there's going to be dislocation as there always has been as technology is scaled and it's deployed, you know, into our economy and as there are economic, you know, economic shifts, you know, over time.
I decided, you know, to write an op-ed. You know, you're putting yourself out there. There are a number of people that are talking about this and, you know, I felt they weren't creating a constructive discussion about the gives and the gets and the balance. And I decided that it was, um, it's an important discussion. There's a lot of change in the world that's happening very, very quickly and that I thought it was important for Goldman Sachs, you know, to weigh in, you know, on on some of that evolution. And so, I don't believe that we're going to have massive structural unemployment, but I do believe that AI is going to interrupt jobs and dislocate. It's moving at a very, very quick pace. We're going to have to upskill people. The labor force is going to have to adjust, but I think it's important to really step back and understand the labor force, understand the construction of the labor force in the United States when you think about these things because then we can make good decisions as we go forward. And one of the things that I stated very clearly in the op-ed is if the disruption gets to a place where it's very dislocating to certain groups of people, then government and business has a responsibility to work on policy to soften that, you know, that journey. But I really do believe as we get 10 years out, just as other technologies have disrupted, we will have reasonably full employment. We will have a very, very productive economy. And in fact, I believe this is going to unleash, you know, a growth movement, a productivity boom that could be quite constructive. Um, and I think it's really a generational thing. You know, we've seen this before with other technologies. Um, I think one of the different things here is the pace of change, the pace at with its with which it's moving, which can make it more dislocating. Um, but I'm incredibly encouraged, but it's going to be a journey. And we want to be engaged. We want to have thoughtful discussions. We want them to be fact-based. You know, people look at the labor force, they talk about, you know, technology jobs, for example. Technology employment in the United States is 2.3% of the labor force. I mean, these are important things to think about. And so, I, um, I'm glad I did it. The feedback I've gotten first and foremost, and I was at a big meeting, you know, private meeting of a large group of CEOs last week. People want to engage. They want to think about it. They want to talk about it. They don't like the doomsday narrative. They want a productive narrative about the goods and the bads and how we balance and how we move our economy forward, how we move our communities forward, how we move our society forward. And that's that's important.
Absolutely. And as we think about kind of upskilling, I think in historical technological cycles, upskilling was all about, you know, learning how to code and learning how to how to do things and go to college and all that. Now it feels like the skills that could be more valuable are skills where you use your hands and things like that. Do you buy into that notion and have you seen as a leader of a very dynamic organization with lots of people in lots of different types of jobs, have you seen AI replace any of them yet?
Well, I, I, you know, I think a little bit the way you frame that is just a little bit to me it's a little bit overly simplistic. Now, let's start with the fact that we live in a service economy and 65% of all the jobs that are created in this country, this country is a very dynamic economy. Over the last 25 years on average every year we've created and destroyed 30 million jobs. 65% of all the job creation comes from small and medium-size enterprises, a lot of which is service-based. There's an enormous amount of the economy that has to do with people serving people.
Mhm.
Okay? And that's not shifting, you know, anytime very quickly. So, we're talking about what's different is we're talking about certain white-collar jobs.
Right.
Okay? And, you know, that's a different disruption. But we've seen disruptions to other jobs that were, you know, that people strove for. If you look and you go back 25 to 30 years ago, as we opened up the global manufacturing economy, we dislocated a number of people and I think there are a lot of things that we can learn, you know, from those dislocations and let's hope as there's change here we find better ways, you know, to manage through some of the dislocation that will come. But the economy is very nimble. New jobs are created. New skills develop. And people will evolve appropriately. And it's just not black and white. People want black and white answers. We were talking, um, you know, in the back in the back room there about writing as a career and, you know, it's it's not going away. It's not going away. Um, and so it's it's just not simple. It's much more nuanced and I think the economy is dynamic. I think people are dynamic and I think people, you know, will adapt but they need time. They need help. Um, and it's our job to figure out, you know, as that comes how to operate and we shouldn't be so sure about how everything plays out. There are a lot of people that are very sure. I'm very unsure. But I think the direction of travel is going to be quite exciting and quite positive when you look at it holistically over a moderate to longer term period of time.
Yeah, one thing you mentioned in your op-ed is just because a job can be replaced doesn't mean
Doesn't mean it will be. Doesn't mean it will be. Doesn't mean it will be.
Um, we've talked a little bit about the social impact of AI but what about kind of beyond jobs? Large data center builders will say that it used to be the biggest hindrance was capital. That's no longer an issue for them. Now it's permitting and going into these municipalities and facing some blowback from the residents of those communities. Um, How do you, how do you kind of see that shaping up amid this kind of over and to the right trajectory that we're on with AI?
Well, like any, like if I mean there are different issues, you know, tucked in that. You know, first of all, you know, communities, you know, communities will wrestle with, you know, the parameters of benefits and drawbacks to having, you know, data centers in their communities and it's different in different communities and you know, that's been the case with all sorts of infrastructure over time and you know, that will evolve, you know, that will evolve the way it evolves but the thing that I'd highlight just when you talk about all this I that I I know is true. Whenever you have a technological acceleration, everybody anticipates, you know, the journey as though it's a straight line in one direction compounding and just the demand for the compute, it's just not going to go in the straight line that everybody's now currently projecting and I think we have to be prepared for that to have an flow. Also, the technology will change. The productivity of the chips will change. The cost of manufacturing will change. The cost of distribution will change. And so, you know, all of this is in the early stages and there are going to be, you know, more data centers, for sure. Um, you know, I think that the implications for power infrastructure are real and we're going to have to wrestle with that more because certainly it can't increase, you know, the cost of power and of course utility services to average Americans. That's not going to work. Um, and so this will continue to evolve, but it's not going to be the demand curve that I think people are expecting. Will not go in a straight line as when you think about other technological evolutions, you know, we don't always get them right. I mean, I, you know, you think back to you think back to, um, you know, kind of to demand for digital infrastructure back in the late 1990s and, you know, undersea cable and things like that, you know, people had enormous expectations of how the information would travel. Nobody imagined wireless. They thought everything would travel, you know, on on fiber optic cable and, you know, what? The world changed. And so the world will change here, too, and we'll have to figure out how to evolve that over time and we will.