6 reasons for why AI people make bold statements
MMaximilian Schwarzmรผller
Business NewsManagementStocksComputing/Software
Transcript
00:00:00I wanna do a little analysis and some deep dive and give you six key reasons I identified for
00:00:08all these bold AI-related statements we're seeing recently, like that AI is coming for
00:00:14all white-collar jobs within 18 months which is a statement made by the Microsoft AI chief
00:00:21a couple of months ago. And yeah, all white-collar work will be automated by AI within or in 18
00:00:29months according to him. But of course it's not the only such case. Recently we had Eric Schmidt,
00:00:35the former Google CEO, telling us at a commencement speech at the University of Arizona that AI will
00:00:43have a profound impact on jobs and that students will need to adapt. And by the way I think he has
00:00:51an important point there. But obviously delivering this message by a smiling CEO or ex-CEO chairman
00:01:02to a group of students and by the way by a person who was in charge of one of the companies that's
00:01:09now leading the entire AI transition, yeah kind of difficult. But I'll get back to his point here and
00:01:16where I agree and don't agree. And then of course we also got Dario Amodei, my all-time favorite who
00:01:23doesn't miss a chance and a microphone to tell us that AI is going to take a significant part of
00:01:30our jobs. It is going to automate all of programming and therefore by extension of course it's also
00:01:36coming for all the other white-collar jobs or a significant part of them at least. And Sam Altman
00:01:42says that not even the CEO's job is safe from AI and yeah maybe there is some truth to that.
00:01:49AI could certainly draft statements like this one here. I agree with that. Though this guy is not a
00:01:56CEO just to be totally fair here. Anyways, six reasons I identified for these statements and to
00:02:04kind of make sense of them because of course it's our future we're talking about here. Humanity's
00:02:10future. And the first point here I think is indeed they sincerely believe it. At least some of them
00:02:20may sincerely believe what they're saying. And that takes me back to Eric Schmitt here.
00:02:26In his speech he did not say that AI will eliminate all white-collar jobs but instead that people will
00:02:36need to adopt and embrace AI. And I think there is some truth to that. I've been saying that too
00:02:43in my videos and episodes. And of course I am creating courses for example on Claude Code,
00:02:50Codex, Claude Co-Work. Besides all those programming courses and I got more programming courses coming
00:02:55up too but I have those courses to teach you the in and outs of Codex or Claude Code and how to
00:03:03efficiently work with these tools beyond the very basics. Because I believe that as a developer in
00:03:10case of these tools but in case of Claude Co-Work as a white-collar worker in general you indeed
00:03:16have to adapt and embrace these tools to prepare for the future. A future where AI will play an
00:03:24important role of course because it already does play an important role and it is an important tool.
00:03:31It can really make you more productive and help you and it will transform jobs. I think there is
00:03:38no doubt about that. But of course delivering this message in the way it was delivered smiling on the
00:03:44stage to students that are ready to start their careers which are now careers full of uncertainty
00:03:52that of course is pretty pretty difficult. Especially since we have all these other statements
00:03:57that tell us that white-collar jobs in general are in high danger. But still I think there is
00:04:03some sincere belief in some of these messages, especially the more moderate ones. Adapting,
00:04:10having to adapt? I'm on board with that. AI wiping out everything? Especially in 18 months?
00:04:17Yeah, we got some other reasons for that. For example that they want to accelerate adoption.
00:04:23You have to keep in mind that pretty much all these people that are making these statements
00:04:29are doing what? Oh, yeah, right. They're selling you the tools. They're selling you the AI models.
00:04:36They're selling you Claude Code and so on. And yeah, I also sell courses on Claude Code. I get
00:04:42that point. I'm very interested in AI not automating away all our jobs though. And I did create an
00:04:49entire video where I shared that AI took the joy out of programming for me. And obviously I'm also
00:04:55adjusting and I'm trying to find some new joy in the way we work. But yeah, believe me, if AI
00:05:01wouldn't exist, I would be perfectly fine with that. But yeah, those people are trying to accelerate
00:05:07adoption. They of course are trying to push people to adopt AI because you will need to to be ready
00:05:16for the future. There is some truth to that as I mentioned. But of course, that is another strong
00:05:22reason for making these bold statements. Now, statements like AI wiping out all white color work
00:05:30kind of difficult because why would you adopt a tool if it doesn't matter anyways?
00:05:35So there probably are other reasons for that. And there are. Because related to accelerated adoption,
00:05:43they of course want to sell their services and tools not just to you as an employee but to
00:05:50companies as a whole. If a company sees the chance of getting rid of employees and instead using AI,
00:06:01that is pretty interesting for some companies, for most companies probably. And of course,
00:06:07therefore, pushing messages like this one that all white color work will be gone could impress
00:06:14some companies and could get some companies to buy more AI-related services, capacity,
00:06:21anything, whatever they need for their business. So yeah, even statements like this can make sense
00:06:27when it comes to selling stuff. Statements like this can also help with justifying restructuring.
00:06:36Both at companies like Microsoft and so on, but of course also at other companies which can now,
00:06:41due to that second point, clearly communicate that they need less employees because of AI. And we're
00:06:49seeing tons of that. We're seeing a lot of layoffs that are always or pretty much always always
00:06:57explained with AI. Or AI at least plays a role in those explanations. We saw layoffs at Cloudflare,
00:07:04at Meta and many, many, many more. You are probably well aware of all these layoff waves we're seeing.
00:07:11And I'm not saying that AI is not playing any role there. It's certainly playing a role, though,
00:07:17as a justification for those layoffs. I mean, it's no secret that all these companies
00:07:24massively over hired during the pandemic and already before the pandemic, if we're being honest.
00:07:30So of course, AI could now be a reason why they're hiring less. But of course, for the mass layoffs,
00:07:37that is very much related to them having too many employees. And AI is a welcome justification there.
00:07:44And therefore, of course, it's good to have bold statements like this that makes this justification
00:07:50so much easier. But let's not stop there. It's also about impressing investors. Maybe not so much for
00:07:59Microsoft, but even they have an interest in pushing their stock price. But especially for
00:08:05Anthropic, for OpenAI, they want to go public this year. And together with SpaceX, we have three large
00:08:15companies that want to go public this year. And of course, in order to drum up demand and make sure
00:08:22that they get the largest share of available liquidity because liquidity will kind of be a
00:08:28problem for all three companies to go public. In order to get the biggest share, the most
00:08:33attention and be the most appealing to investors, also prior to IPOs, by the way, you of course,
00:08:40want to have good financing rounds, you want to have good valuation. So in order for that, again,
00:08:46statements like this. And I don't just want to push this guy here. Also the statements by Dario,
00:08:51they make sense, right? You want to make it very clear that in a world where everything is changing
00:08:58where all the work is being eliminated and automated and done by AI, you are the company
00:09:04that sells the future. You are the company that has the future that has the top AI models. That's
00:09:10such a strong message. So obviously, this is such an important point. And therefore, I believe that
00:09:18is one of the most important reasons for some of these bold statements. And then we have regulation
00:09:26and that you want to shape regulation. So see, AI is clearly ramping up. And everybody's talking
00:09:35about AI, myself included, I'm aware of that. And obviously, due to all these bold statements here,
00:09:41there is more and more resistance against AI. So these statements kind of are becoming a problem
00:09:48for the companies themselves. And I think at some point, they will realize that nonetheless, of
00:09:52course, I think some of these companies, maybe all of them, are trying to make those bold statements
00:09:59also to kind of steer regulation. You could make the argument that because AI has such a huge
00:10:05impact and is so dangerous, we also had statements related to that. Think of the mythos model by
00:10:11Infropic. Because of that, you might want to influence regulators and regulation bodies
00:10:19to maybe restrict the number of companies that's allowed to work on AI models and to kind of really
00:10:27nudge and shape regulation to be in your favor. Obviously, this can backfire, as I mentioned,
00:10:32because all these statements are creating so much anger and hate in the population for very
00:10:38understandable reasons. And it's probably the same for you. It definitely is for me.
00:10:42That there, of course, is a lot of pushback against AI, against data centers. We're seeing that in the
00:10:47U.S. The problem just is, of course, the U.S. is not the only country out there with good AI models
00:10:53or the best AI models. We got China as a fierce competition. So opting out of AI just isn't a
00:10:59solution. You can't just say, okay, we'll pause, we'll not continue developing or we'll forbid it,
00:11:05prohibit it. Anything like that won't work because it's an international competition. Europe is not
00:11:12involved. No worries. But of course, China is. So yeah, that still is another point I'm seeing.
00:11:19And kind of related is the narrative advantage. Because if you are seen or your company is seen as
00:11:28the most aggressive company when it comes to that AI is going to take over all jobs narrative,
00:11:36that may attract talent investors, as I already mentioned, and give you an edge in the competitive
00:11:45positioning. It may attract more customers because when those customers are pushing to buy those
00:11:53services and tools, they may go for the company that has the most aggressive messaging. If for
00:11:59nothing else, then at least for the reason that that company has a lot of exposure in the media
00:12:04and so on. So being the company that's in the media will draw most of the hate on you. So that
00:12:10can become a problem. But of course, at the same time, it can attract customers and talent. And that
00:12:16is, of course, nothing to frown on. As mentioned, I think there are many, many dangers attached to
00:12:22these messages. And I'm certain we'll see those companies kind of go away from these strong messages
00:12:30very, very soon as they feel the pushback and as they see the negative consequences of all these
00:12:36messages. And it's also important for me to state, I truly believe and I think we can see that AI has
00:12:43a strong impact and that we need to adapt. There is no doubt about that for me. But as I also mentioned
00:12:49many, many times before, AI is a useful tool. I don't know what will be the case in a couple of
00:12:56years, in many, many years. I don't know. Nobody knows, including those people. But right now, it's
00:13:02a really, really useful tool. It can be really useful. It can also be really dangerous. Very often,
00:13:08though, no matter which task you're tackling, it can only get you to 80 or 90%. And the remaining
00:13:1520 or 10% are actually the hard parts. And when we talk about coding, if done wrong, if falling into
00:13:24the vibe coding trap, for example, that code of the 80% working application can be so bad that it's
00:13:31pretty much impossible to get to 100%. So you could say you're not even at 80%, then you're at 0%, you
00:13:38will never reach your goal. So that is really, really important to me here. These are all reasons
00:13:45for these statements. That doesn't make them true necessarily, though. And it is worth keeping in
00:13:53mind that AI is a very useful tool, but that nobody, nobody can look into the future. And we
00:14:00just don't know how good AI will get if it can be mostly error free or pretty much error free if it
00:14:08can get us to 100%. Nobody knows that right now. Keep that in mind.
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