The following is a conversation with Erik brynjolfsson he's an economics professor Stanford and the director of Stanford's digital economy lab. Previously. He was a long long time, professor at mit, where he did groundbreaking work on the economics of information. He's the author of many books, including the second machine age and machine platform, crowd co, authored with andrew mcafee, quick mention of a sponsor, followed by some thoughts related to the episode ventura watches the maker of classy, while performing watches for semantic. The maker of delicious mushroom coffee express vpn. The vpn have used for many years to protect my privacy on the internet and cash app. The app I used to send money to friends. We check out these sponsored description to get discord and to support this package. As aside, no, let me say that the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on our

economy and our world is something worth thinking deeply about. Like good may, topics that are linked to predicting the future evolution of technology is often too easy, falling to one of two camps: the fearmongering camp or the technological utopian as camp always the future will learn ass. The one between I prefer to wear two hats in these discussions, and often between them, often the hat of pragmatic engineer and the head of a futurists This is probably a good time to mention Andrew Yang the presidential candidate, who has been one of the high profile thinkers on this topic, and I am sure I will speak with him on this path. Guess. Eventually, a conversation Andrew has been on the table. Many times are set

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You posted a call on twitter by albert bartlett, saying that the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand aspen, sure function. Why would you say the exponential growth is important to understand? Yeah, quote. I remember posting that it's actually a repressive, something andy mcafee and I said in the second machinery, but I posted in early march when covered was really just being a take off, and I was really scared. There are actually a couple. Dozen cases may be less at that time, but

we're doubling every like two or three days, and you know axiom I got this is going to be a catastrophe as gonna happen soon, but nobody was taking it seriously or not a lot of people are taking very seriously affected. But I did my last dumb in person conference that week I was flying back, las vegas and I was the only person the plane wearing a mask and the flight attendant came over me shook very concerned with her hands, and I shall choose touching me all over which I was thrilled about and she goes aren't. You have I'm kind of anxiety disorders. Are you ok and, as I know, you have its cause, a covert She says this is early march early march, but dumb you know worried because I knew I could see or I suspected. I guess that that that doubling would continue and it did and pretty soon we had thousands of times more cases. Most of the time when I use that quote, I try to you know it

it's motivated by more optimistic things like moore's law and the wonders of having more computer power, but in either case it can be very counter intuitive. I mean if you, if you walk for ten minutes, you get about ten times as far away as if you walk for one minute. You know that's the way our physical world works as to where our brains are wired, but if something doubles for ten times as long, you don't get ten times as much. You get a thousand times as much and after twenty two billion after thirty, it's a a t now so after twenty two million after thirty, it's a billion and pretty soon after that, it just gets to these numbers that you can barely grasp our world is becoming more and more exponential because of digital technologies so more more often our intuitions are out of whack agenda, and that can be good in the case with it creating wonders, but it can be dangerous in the case of viruses in other things, and you think a generally applies, I guess

spaces. Where does apply? Why doesn't? How are we supposed to building intuition about, in which aspects of our society does exponential growth? Well, you know you can learn the math, but the truth is our brains, I think, tend to be learn more from experiences, so we just start seeing more and more often so. Hang around silicon valley hang around a computer researchers. I see this kind of exponential growth a lot more frequently. and I'm getting used to it, but I still make mistakes. I still underestimate some of the progress in just talking to someone by g p, t three and how rapidly natural language has improved, but I think that as the world becomes more exponential, we'll all start experience in more frequently. The danger is that we may make some mistakes in the meat

time using our old kind of caveman intuitions about how the world works, or the weird thing is that one kind of looks linear in the moment. Like the every you know, it's hard to feel it's hard to richest, like introspect and really acknowledge how much has changed in just a couple years it five years. ten years with the internet. If you just look investments, versailles, leaving just social media all this, various technologies that is they're gone to the digital umbrella yeah. It feels pretty common, normal and gradual, a lot of stuff. You know, I think europe parts the world most of the world. It is not exponential, you know The way human is learn, the way organizations change the warehouse institutions, adapt and of all those don't approve an exponential basis, and that leads to a mismatch. Oftentimes between these exponentially improving technologies. what's a changing technologies, because some of them are exponentially more dangerous.

And our intuitions and are human skills and our institutions that they just don't change very fast at all. and that mismatch if it is at the root of a lot of problems in our society, that the growing inequality and other other dysfunctions in our political, and economic systems. So one guy that talks about exponential functions. How does the almost ass he seemed to internalize this kind of way of exponential thinking. He calls the first principles. Thinking, sir, the car you're going to the basics, asking the question like what, where the assumption that the past, how can how can we throw them out the window? How can we do this tax much more efficiently and costly practice that process, and also using that kind of thinking to estimate Sarah via when you create deadlines,

and asked me when you ll be able to deliver on some of these technologies. Now. It is often guess I'm in trouble because he over estimates like here he doesn't mean The initial estimates of the deadlines pay seems to deliver late but deliver right and which was kind interesting like what are your thoughts about this hold on. I think we can all learn from elon. I think going to first principles. I I talked about two ways of of getting more of a grip on the exponential function, and one of them just comes from

which principles you know, if you understand the math of it, you can see what's going to happen and even if it seems counter intuitive that a couple of dozen of covert cases could become thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands of 'em it in a in a month, and it makes sense once you just do the math and- and I think elon try through that a lot. I you know it fares with. He also benefits from hanging out in silicon valley and he's experienced it in a lot of different applications. So you know it's not as much of a shock him any more, but that's a that's something we can all learn from in my own life. I remember one of my first experiences really seeing it was when I was a grad student in my. My adviser asked me to plot the growth of computer power in the: u s a I make my indifferent industries in there. All these you know, exponential drawing curves and how sick holy shit look at this each in each industry, it was just taking off, and you know, you'd have to be a rocket scientist to extend that and say wow. This means that

This was in the late eighties and early nineties that it if it goes anything like that, we're gonna have of magnitude, more computer power than we did at that time and, of course, we do people look at more law, they often talk about. It has just said That's your function is actually a stack of s curves. Basically, it's? U milk or whatever ticket The most advantage of a particular little revolution, and then you search for another revolution is basically revolutions and apple revolutions, giving you question, but how the heck humans keep finding ways to revolutionize things will first, let me just unpack that first point that I talked about exponential curve, but no ex mental curve continues forever. It's been said that, if anything can't go on forever,

eventually it will stop, and- and it's very profound, very profound, but it's it seems that there are a lot of people, don't appreciate that half of it as well either, and that's why all exponential his eventually turn into some kind of s, curve or or stop in some other way, maybe catastrophically and that's of cap with cold. It is well, I mean it wasn't my top and then it would have been at some point. It start saturating the the pool of people to be infected their system, epidemiological model. It that's based on that and its people. With more as law or different generations of computer power. It happens with all exponential curve. The amount remarks thing, is you lose the second part? Your question is that we ve been able to come up with a new s curve. On top of the previous one, that generation after generation with new materials, new processes and just extend it further and further I don't think anyone has a really good theory about why we ve been sir sex successful in doing that is great, that we have

then- and I hope it will continue for some time, but it saw it in one beginning of a theory is that there is huge incentives when other parts of the system are going on that clock speed of doubling every two to three years. If there's one component of it, it's not keeping up, then the economic incentives become really large to improve that one part. It becomes a bottleneck in anyone who can do improvements in that part can repute returns so that the resources automatic I focused on whatever part of the system is in keeping up. Do you think some version of the noise law will continue some version? Yes, it are, it is on. on version that has become more important, something called commies law, which is named after john coup me? Why should mention was also my college remain, but he identified the fact that energy consumption has been declining by a factor of too and for most of us, that's more port. You know the new I phoned came out today as well

recording this, I'm not sure when you're going to make it very soon after this and for most of us, you know having the iphone be twice as fast. You know it's nice, but having it the battery life longer. That would be much more valuable and the fact that a lot of the progress in chips now is reducing energy consumption and is probably more import for many applications, then just the raw speed, other dimensions of more law are in a machine learning those tend to be very eliza bull functions, especially are deep, neural nets and does so. Instead of having one ship, you can have multiple ships or you can have a jp you graphic processing unit. That goes asked her and now special ships designed from sheen learning, like tensor processing units. Each time you switch is another ten extra hundred ex improvement above and beyond moorish law. So I think that the raw silicon isn't it

moving as much as it used to, but these other dimensions are becoming important, more important than were in progress in them are not seeing the way, by opening I wear the show the exponential improvement. of the training of new networks, just literally in the techniques used, so that that right almost like the algorithm, the it's it's fascinating to think like can I actually continue? it was as figuring out more and more tricks or how to train networks fast will faster. The progress has been staggering. You know, if you look at image recognition, as you mentioned, I think it's a function of at least three things that are coming together. One we just talked about faster chips, not just Moore's law, but gp use, tp used in other technologies. The sec It is just a lot more data and we are a wash in digital data today in a way

we weren't twenty years ago, photography, I'm old enough to remember, is to be chemical, and now everything is digit. I took her probably fifty digital photos yesterday, I would have done that if it was chemical and- and we have the internet things and all sorts of other types of data, but we walk around with our phone is just by casting a huge amounts of digital data that can be used as training sets and then last banal, these, as they mention open, and I hope, as they make open a I. There have been significant improvements in the techniques in the core idea of deep neural nets has been around for a few decades, but the advances in making it work more efficiently have also improved a couple of borders or magnitude or more. She multiply, together in a hundredfold improvement in computer power, a hundredfold more improvement in data, hundredfold improvement in in techniques of software and algorithms, and soon you getting into million fold improvements. It yes

we brought this up this idea of a gpg three, that it's a soldier, training, the self supervised way and basically internet data, and that's one of the I've seen arguments made and there seemed to be pretty convincing that the bottleneck there's going to be comparable data. There is on the internet, which is a fastened The idea that it literally will just run out of human generally the data to train on itself. I know we made it a point to consume, basically all of human, all drawn digitized, human knowledge and they'll the baron like him, but the the interesting thing with bottlenecks is people often use bottlenecks, his way to argue against action? Growth is say what there's no way you can overcome this bottleneck, but we seem to somehow keep coming up with new ways to like overcome, wherever bottlenecks thea the critics come up with justice.

I don't know how you overcome the data bottleneck but probably more training algorithms. Yet will your dimension that that these? if any albums are getting much better at using smaller amounts of data, we also are just capturing a lot more day than we used to, especially here in china, but but all around us. So those are both important, you know, and in some applications You you can me the data in a video games, some of that the self driving cars systems are assimilating driving and are, of course that has some risks weaknesses, but you can also in if you want to know the exact all the different ways you can beat a video game. You can just simulate all all options can take a step in the direction of autonomous vehicles utopian the city of way more tomorrow and obviously talking to

iran again in a couple of weeks. What's your thoughts on autonomous vehicles like where do we stand? What well at as a as a problem that has the potential of revolutionizing the world? Well, you know I'm really excited about that. But it's become much clearer, that the original way that I thought about it? Most people thought about, like you know, will we have a self driving car or not is way too simple, the the better way to The bodies that there's a whole continuum of how much driving assisting the car can do. I I that you're right next here too door to resolutions, but it does a total access, I love the chair. I folks beer have you talked to give proper a young. going to we're supposed to talk as it's kind of bulgaria, so they're kind of the op ethic. It's a good counter! to see what europe is doing, and hopefully they can be frank in how we think about each other because of her bosom talk about it, but they are much more you. This is a necessity

the guardian angel that watches over you, as opposed to try to do everything I think you're. Some things like driving a highway. You know from allay to phoenix where it's mostly good, whether a straight roads, that's close to assault problem was face, In other situations, you know, driving through the snow and in boston with roads, are kind of crazy and most import. We have to make a lot of judgments about what the other drivers going to do at these intersections. That aren't really right angles and aren't very well described it's more like game theory, that's a much harder problem and requires under banning human motivations, and so there's genuine there are some places where the cars will work very well and others where it could probably take decades. What do you think about the way mom says you mentioned to companies, actually have. Cars on the road is the way more projects more like we're not going to really saying until it's perfect. I'm gonna be very strict about

the streets that we travel on business, better, be perfect, yeah. Well, I'm smart enough to be humble, had not try to get between. I I know there's very bright people size argument. I talked to them and they may convincing arguments to me about how careful they need to be in the social acceptance. I'm some people thought that when the first few people died from self driving cars, I would shut down the industry, but it was more of a blip actually, and you know that was interesting. Of course, there's still a concern that if, if far exit the setbacks. If we we do this wrong, you dope, your listeners may be familiar with the different levels of self driving. You know level one two, three four five, I think of andrew Yang has convinced me that this idea of really focusing on level four or were you only going areas? They are well mapped, rather just going out in the wild is the way things are going to evolve, but

you can just keep expanding those areas where you ve map things really well. We really understand and eventually all become kind of interconnected, and that could be a a kind of another way of progressing to make it more feasible overtime. I mean that's colleague the way more. the wishes. They they just now releasing just like a day or two ago public like anyone. The public in the phoenix arizona, to watch. You know you can get a ride in a way, I would know person no driver taken away to safely driver altogether. Therefore, why there's been no safety driver can cause me. I've been calling that one in particular- but I thought it was kind of funny about a year ago when they had the safety driving. Then he added a second safety driver got the first safety dr would fall asleep. Such other got in the right direction. With that Now they have had their way more partake.

Than a really good job that they actually have on very interesting infrastructure of remote. Like observation- So they are not there not controlling the vehicles remotely, but there is able to is like a customer service. The guy, any time tune into the car They can probably remotely control. It is well, but as sufficiently not the function of the dead guy, instead of being a really because I think the thing is proven harder than maybe some of the early people expected was there's a long tail of weird exceptions. See you can do with ninety ninety nine ninety nine point nine percent of the cases, but then there's Well, the thing that just never been seen before in the training data and human, you no more or less can work around that? Although, let me be clear note, there are about three thousand human fatalities, just the united states and maybe a million worldwide so far from perfect, but I think people have high expectations of machines. They dont wouldn't tolerate that.

Couple of death and damage from a machine, and so we have to do a lot better at dealing with those edge cases and also the the tricky thing that if I have a criticism for the way, my folks there is such a huge focus on safety or people. Don't talk enough about creating products, the people that customers, love. Human beings. Love using now is very easy to create a thing that safe at the extremes, but then nobody wants to get into it back to you, and I think one of part of his genius was with the electric cars before he came along Lecter what kind of under power really light and their respective wimpy cars that you now worked fun in the first thing he did was you know he made a roadster that, when zero to sixty faster than just about any other car, and went the other end, and I think that was a really wise marketing move as well as rice technology move. Yeah, it's difficult to figure out what

right. Marketing move is for a high systems, that's always been now. I think you're requires guts and risk taking which is which is what eon practices I mean to do this aggression helps. Investors are whatever bars got seriously. It also requires a rethinking. What you're doing I think way too many people are unimaginative, intellectually lazy and when they take it, on that basis, it. What are we doing now? How do we make it machine do the same thing. Maybe we'll save some costs will have less labour and yet the It's a mystery, the worst thing in the world to do, but it's really not leading to a quantum change in the way you do things you know when not when Jeff those said: hey we're going to use the internet to change, how bookstores work and we use technology heating, go and say: ok, let's, let's put around bought cashier, where the human kashmir is and leave everything else alone have been a very lame way to automate a bookstore he's like went from soup to nuts to rethink it would get rid of the physical books

we have a warehouse, we have delivery, we have people order on a screen and everything was reinvented and that's been the story of these general purpose technologies. All through history. In in in my books, I write about like electricity and how, for thirty years there is almost no productivity gains from the electrification factories a century ago, not because our is be useless technology. We all know how awesome electricity is. It's cause at first, they really didn't rethink the factories. It was only after they reinvented them and we describe how in the book and then you suddenly got a doubling and tripling of productivity growth, but it's the combination of the technology with the new business models, new business organization that just takes a long time it takes. Some more creativity than most people have key, maybe linger on electricity exists, a fun one idea. What look I'll tell you what what what happened before electricity there were. Basically steam engines are sometimes one

wheels and to power the machinery you had to have police and crankshafts, and you really can't make them too long. They'll they'll break the torsion. So all the equipment was kind of clustered around this one giant steam engine. You can make small steam engines either because of Thermodynamics up, you have one giant steam engine all equipment, cluster, around multi story. They haven't vertical to minimize the distance as well as horizontal. Then, when they did electricity, they took out the steam engine, they got the biggest electric motor they could buy from general electric or someone like that and nothing much else changed. It took until a generation of managers retired or died. Three years later, the people started thinking where we have That way, you can make electric motors. You know big small medium. You can put one with each piece of equipment. Theirs is big debate. If you read the management literature between what they called group cry, verses

unit drive where every machine would have it's own motor, while once they did that, once they went to unit drive, those guys won the debate, and then you started having a new kind of factory, which is sometimes spread out over acres single story and it's, a piece of equipment had one motor and, most importantly, they weren't laid out based on who needed the most power they're laid out based on what is the workflow of materials. You know assembly line. Let's have it go from this machine to that machine? To that once they rethought the factory that way huge increases in productivity is just starting. People like Paul David, have documented this in their research papers and dump in I think that there's a that is a lesson we see over and over. It happened when the steam engine change manual production. It happen with the computerization of people. Like Michael hammered, said. Don't automate obliterate in each case the big gains only came once small entrepreneurs and managers.

dickie reinvented their industries. One other interesting point about all that is that during that reinvention period you often actually now I dont see productivity growth. You can actually see a slipping back. Measured, pretty be actually falls. I just wrote a paper with chad, see reason and in iraq halt the productivity J curve, which basically shows that, in light of these cases, you have a downward dip before it goes up and that downward dip when everyone's train, like reinvent things, and you could say that their creating knowledge and intangible assets, but that doesn't show up on anyone's balance sheet. It doesn't show up in gdp. So it's as, if they're doing nothing like take self driving cars were just talking about it. There have been hundreds of billions of dollars, spent developing self driving cars and basically no show

Or has lost his job, no taxi driver, as I got as a young one, Jacob yeah, so there's a bunch of spending and no real consumer bedroom now they're doing that. In the belief, I think the justified belief that they will get the upward part of the J curve and they will he's a big returns. But in the short run you not seeing it. That's all winning with a lot of other ai technologies, just as it happened with earlier general purpose technologies and is one of the reasons we're having relatively low productivity growth. Lately, I you know, as an economist when things it disappoints, me is it's as eye popping as these technologies are you- and I are both excited about some things they can do. The economic productivity statistics are kind of dismal. We actually believe it or not- have had lower productivity growth in the past about fifteen years than we did in the previous fifteen years in the nineties and early two thousands, and so that's not what you would have expert

If, if these technologies were that much better, but I think we're up in kind of a a long J curve there. Personally, I'm optimistic we'll start seeing the upward tick or maybe maybe as soon as next year, but ah the past, It has been a bit disappointing if you think there's a one to one relationship between cool technology and higher productivity will. Would you place your biggest hope for productivity increases on because you can have said at a high level I, but if I were to think about It has been so revolutionary in the last ten years. I would have fifteen years and thinking about the internet, I would say things like hope them not saying the ridiculous, but everything from Wikipedia to twitter, so, like these kind of websites, not so much a but like I, we expect to see something big productivity increases from just the connectivity,

in people and the access to and from more information yeah. Well such another. I don't quite a bit of research on actually is these free goods like wikipedia facebook, twitter, zoom were actually doing this in person, but now almost everything else I do these days. It is online the interesting about all those is most of them have a price of zero? You know where you pay for wikipedia may be like a little bit for the electrons to come to your house, basically zero right now I had to take a small pause and say I donate to Wikipedia often you should too cause there for you yeah. So, but what does that? Do me for gdp gdp is based on the price and quantity of all the goods things bought and sold, If something has zero price, you contributes to gdp to a first approximation zero. So these digital

It's that we're getting more and more of we're spending more more hours, a day, consuming stuff off of screens little screens big screens and that doesn't get priced into gdp. It's like they don't exist. That doesn't mean they create value. I get a lot of value from the watching cap, videos and reading wikipedia articles and listen to podcast unified, don't pay for them, so we ve got a mismatch there now, in fairness, economists, since Simon Christmas invented gdp and productivity, although statistics in the nineteen thirty, he recognized. He in fact said this is not a measure of well being is not a measure of welfare. It's a measure of production, but almost everybody has kind of forgotten that he said that

and they just use it like. How well off are. We will boost gdp last year was two point: three percent growth or whatever, and that is how much physical production, but it's not the value, we're getting. We need a new set of statistics and I'm working with some colleagues Abby call us and others to develop. So then we called gdp dash b gdp b measures, the benefits you get, not the cost. If you get benefit from zoom or wikipedia or facebook, then that gets counted, in gdp, be even if you pay zero for it. So you're back to your original point, and I think there is a lot of gain over the past decade in these digital goods that doesn't show that doesn't show up in gdp, doesn't shop and productivity by the way productive is just defined as gdp divided by hours worked. So if you miss measured gdp, you miss measure productivity by the exact same amount and that's something we need to fix. I'm working with the statistic

the agencies to come up with a new set of metrics, and I know where the coming years, I think, we'll see what I can do away with Judy p its very useful, but was he a parallel set of accounts that measure that benefits? How difficult to get that be? In the judge? The it's pretty hard mean to think that, where there is, is it hasn't done before? Is that, in our view, It can measure at the cash register what people pay for stuff. But how do you measure what they would have paid like? What the value is, that's a lot harder. You know how much is wikipedia worth to you. That's what we have to answer. To do that, what we do is we can use on line experiments. We do massive online choice. Experiments. We ask hundreds of thousands of millions of people to do lots of sort of a bee test. How much would I have to pay you to give up wikipedia four month, I'm which would have to pay you to southern doc, using your phone and, in some cases, the type of federal? In other cases we actually enforce it, which is kind of expensive like we, we pay somebody thirty dollars to stop

facebook and we see if they do it, and some people will give it up for ten dollar. Some people give it up. Even if you give me a hundred dollars sauce and then you get ahold demand curve, you get to see what all the different prices are and what how much value different people get and not surprisingly, different people have different views. we find it. Women tend to value facebook more than men, old people. and devalued. L a bit more than young people have interesting. I think young people may be no about other networks that I don't know the name of that are better than facebook and die, and so you get to see these like these patterns. But every person's innovate and then, if you add up all those numbers, you start getting a a an estimate of the value, because, first of all, as brilliant as this a work that you will soon eventually

published yeah with his aversion of it in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences about. I think we call it massive online choice. Experiments I have, I should have shall remember the title, but it is on my website so yeah. We we have some more papers coming out on it, but the first one is already out. You know it's kind of a fascinating mystery that twitter facebook, like all the social networks free and it seems like almost none of them, except for youtube, have experimented with removing ads for money. Can you like John? Extend that from a both economics and the product is something that you know. I teach a course on digital business balls. Are you so used to it mit at Stanford? I'm not quite sure I am not teaching until next spring. I'm still thinking about my course is going to be, but there are a lot different business models, and we have something to zero. Marginal cost. There's a lot of forces, especially that any kind of competition that push prices down to zero, but you can have add supported systems you can

and all things together, you can have voluntary mention Wikipedia, there's donations and I think economist underestimate the power volunteerism in and donations. Some unesco public radio. Actually, how do you do this podcast? How is this up? What's more revenue model, there's sponsors at the beginning and then and people? The funny thing is, I tell people they can it's very easy to start timestamps? If you want to skip the sponsors, you will, if free but the it's funny that a bunch of people, so I read the the advertisement and a bunch of people enjoy reading it and they may learn something from it and also from the advertiser's perspective. Those are people who are actually interested. You know, like I mean the example I sometimes get like. I bought a car recently and all of a sudden, all the car ads were. interesting negative exert and they like now that I have the car like its verdict from their own out on paper. That's fine! The car companies! Then really want to be advertising to me. If I'm not gonna buy their products so they're alive,

different revenue models and it's a little company economic theory has to do with what the shape of demand curve is, when it's better to monetize it with charging people verses when you're, better off doing advertising in short when that, when the demand curve is relatively flattened wide, like generic news and like that. Then you tend to do better with advertising. If it's a good, that's only, this will to a small number of people, but they want to pay a lot of very high value. For then you advertising is gonna. Work is well you're, better off charging, for both of them has inefficiencies and then we're gonna to targeting and guess he's other revenue you. It gets more complicated, but there's some economic theory on it? I also think, to be frank: it's just a lot of experimentation, that's needed, because sometimes things are a little counter intuitive, especially when you get into what are called two sided networks or platform effects where

you may grow the market on one side and harvest the rabbit on the other side in your facebook, I am more more users and then they harvest the revenue from advertising so that it's another way of of kind of thinking about it. Is it strange to you that they haven't experimented, for they are experimenting, so I you know that they are doing some experiments about what the wilt wings is of for people to pay I think that when they do the math it it's gonna work outfit that a store better off with an average. seeing driven model but Tom. What about a mix like this is youtube? Is right now You are you allow the person to decide the customer to decide exactly which model they prefer to know that can work really well. You know, and newspapers of course, have known this for a long time. The wall street journal the new york times they have such. she revenue, they also have advertising revenue and da the second back indefinite work,

online is lot easier to have a dial this much more personalized, everybody can kind of roll their own mix and accurate, urgent having little cider about how much advertising you want or are willing to take if it's done right, insincere, compatible, it could be a win win were were both the content providers and the consumer are better off than they would have been before yeah. You know. The done right part is a is really good point like with the Jeff Bazan, the single click purchase on amazon, the frictionless yeah effort there. If I could just rant, second about the wall street journal. All the newspapers you mention is, I have to click so many times yet has subscribed to them. That I am I literally dont subscribe just because of the number of times I click, I'm totally with I don't understand why so many companies make it so hard to meet another example is when you buy a new iphone or a new computer, whatever I feel like. I'm gonna like

lose an afternoon just like loading up and getting all my stuff back in and for a lot of us, that's morbid deterrent than the price, and if they could make it painless. We give them a lot more money, so I'm hoping somebody listening is before making more payments for us to allow your product. You forgiveness linger a little bit on the social network thing because you know there's this netflix a social dilemma yeah I saw that and an interest in harris and company yeah, and you know people's data people it's really sensitive in and soften networks are at the core, arguably of many of societal, like tension

Some of the most important things happening in society so feels like it's important to get this right. It is both from a business model perspective inches. Like a trust perspective. I still get a. I mean it just still feels like I know, there's experimentation going on. It still feels, like everyone is afraid, to try different business models like really try. Well, I'm worried that people are afraid to try different business models. I'm also worried that some of the business models may lead them to bad choices. And you know dan economy and talks about system, one in system to sort of like a reptilian brain, to react quickly to what we see see something interesting. We click on it. We retweeted verses Our system, too, you know, are frontal. Cortex is supposed to be more careful in rational that really doesn't make us many decisions as it should. I think, there's a

tendency for a lot of these social networks to really exploit system. One are quick, instant reaction make it so we just click on stuff and pass it on and not re think carefully about an that system it tends to be driven by no sex violence, discussed anger, fear. You know these relatively primitive kinds of emotions, maybe they're important for a lot. Purposes, but they are not a great way to organise a society and, most importantly, when you think about this huge amazing information infrastructure, we ve had its connected billions of brains across the world. Not just we not access information got, contribute to it and share it Arguably the most important thing that that network should do is favour truth over falsehoods and the way it's been done and not, MR intentionally, is exactly the opposite, maya, my mit,

colleagues, we are all in, and Deborah Ann and others at mit did a terrific paper, the cover of science and when they die. Will we all feared, which is that lies, spread faster than truth on social networks? They looked at a bunch of tweets, we tweets and they found that false information was more likely to spread further faster to more people, and why was that? It's not because people like lies its because people like things that are shocking, amazing. Can you believe this something that is not mundane, not that something everybody else are new and The most unbelievable things well lies, and so you if you want to find something unbelievable, it's a lot easier to do that if you're not constrained by the truth, so they found that the that motion, valence of false information was just much higher, was more likely to be shocking and therefore more likely to be spread.

Another interesting thing was that was necessary driven by the algorithms. I know that there are systems It is incentive to two facts, and others have pointed out in youtube. Something algorithms unintentionally were tuned to amplify more extremist content, but in that study, twitter, that sunan and deb and others did, and they found that, even if you took out all the bots and all the automated tweets, you still had lie spreading significantly faster. It's just the problems with ourselves that we, can't resist passing on the salacious content that but also blamed the platforms, because you know there's different ways. You can design a platform. You can design a platform in a way that makes it easy to spread lies and to retweet and spread things on, or you can kind of put some friction on that and try to favor truth. I had dinner with Jimmy wales once you know the guy who helped founder,

what we ve media and- and he be convinced me that look you know you can make them design choices, whether its at facebook, twitter hat, wikipedia read it whatever and pending on how you make those choices. You're more lucky or less like to have false news, create a little bit of friction like you said you that's, the inciting fracture, could be speeding. The true sooner either way? But I don't really understand is it true that lower yeah yeah, amplifying it and giving a more credit- and you know like it in academia which is far far from perfect, but you know when to some affair, has important discovery tends to get more cited and people kind of look to a more intuitive. It tends to get amplified a little bit, so you could try to do that too. I don't know what the silver bullet is, but the meadow point is that if we spend time thinking about it, we can ample

I truth over falsehood and am disappointed in in the heads of these social networks that they haven't, been successful or maybe haven't tried, is hard to amplify truth and part of going back to what I said earlier is these revenue models may push them more towards growing fast, spreading information rapidly getting lots of users which isn't the same thing as finding truth yet mean implicit in what you're saying now is a hopeful message that, with platforms, we can take a step towards greater and greater popularity of truth, but the more cynical view is that what the last few years have review

build is that there's a lot of money to be made in dismantling that even the idea of truth that nothing is true and ever as a thought experiment. I've been you know, thinking about if it's possible that our future will have like. The idea of truth is something we won't even have do. You think is possible, but in the future that Everything is on the table in terms of truth and were just swimming in this kind of digital economy, where ideas are just little. toys they're not at all connected to reality. Yeah, I think that's definite possible, I'm not a technological determinist, so I don't think that's inevitable, but nothing is inevitable that it doesn't happen. I mean it that I've come away with every time. I do these studies- and I emphasise it in my books elsewhere- is that technology doesn't

shape our destiny. We shape our destiny so just by us having this conversation, I hope that your audience is going to take it upon themselves as they design their products and they think by their use products as a managed companies. How can they make conscious decisions to favor truth over falsehood, favor, the better kinds of societies and not abdicate and say? Well, we just build the tools. I think there is a a saying that the that was the german scientist when their working on the the missiles in later or do you know this about? Our job is to make the missiles go up where they come down that someone else's department- and you know, that's obviously not there. I think it's obvious. That's not the right attitude, if the technology should have that engineers should have. They should be very conscious about what the implications are and, if we think carefully about it, we can avoid the kind of world that you just described where, where the truth is all relative,

are going to be people who benefit from a world of where people don't check facts and where truth is relative, in popularity or or fame or money, is or thug animal to truth, but one of the reasons I suspect that we ve had so much progress over the past few hundred years, the invention of the site, A method which is a really powerful tool or met a tool for finding truth and favouring things that are true versus things that are false if they dont pass the scientific method there, less, like to be true, and that has this, societies and the people and the organizations that embrace that have done a lot better than the ones who haven't, and so I'm hoping that people keep that in mind and continue to try to embrace not just the truth but methods. led to the truth, so maybe on a more personal question, if one were to try to

The competitor to twitter Would you advise. Is there any me, maybe the bigger them. The main question is that the right way to improve systems yeah? No, I think that the underlying premise behind to withdraw these networks is a myth using that we can communicate with each other in an hour Is it a lot? There's a part of twitter called econ twitter. Where are we economist, a tweet each other and talk about new papers. Something came out in the n b e r national bureau of economic research and we share, but people critique it. I think it's been a godsend because it's really sped up the scientific process. If you can call economic, scientific, doesn't get divisive and that well, sometimes yeah sure sometimes it does. It can also be done in nasty ways, and you know that it's a bad parts, but the good parts are great because you just speed up that clock. Speed of learning about things you know instead of

like an old old days in waiting to read in a journal or the not so old days when you'd see it posted on our on our website? You'd read it now on twitter, like people will distill it down and is a real art to to getting to the essence of things. So that's been great. but it certainly will not fit. Twitter can be assessed. Pool of misinformation. Like I just said, unfortunately, misinformation tends to spread faster on twitter. Then truth, and there are a lot of people who are very vulnerable to it. I'm sure I've been fooled at times there are agents, whether from russia or from political groups or others that explicitly create efforts at misinformation and effort, at getting people hate each other or even more importantly, I've discovered is up, is not picking. You know the idea of not picking up with some good term. Not picking is when you find like an extreme night case on the other side, and then you amplify them and make it seem like that typical of the others-

I see you not literally lying you taking some idiot, rating on the subway more just Do you know whether there in the K, K, K or anti far whatever they just an you? Normally, nobody would pay attention this guy, like twelve people, would seem to be the end in dead with video or whatever you you get many tens of millions of people said and I've seen this. Then I look at an angle. I can't leave her person descending says so terrible and let me tell all my friends about this heresy and that and it's it's a great way to generate division. I I talked to a friend who studied russian misinformation. Panes and their very clever about literally being on both sides of some these debates. They would have some people pretend to be part of the alarm. Some people pretend to be white nationalists and there would be throwing epithets at each other saying crazy things at each other

and they are literally playing both sides of it, but their goal wasn't for one or the other when it was for everybody to get be hating and distrusting everyone else, so these tools can definitely be used, for. and they are being used for that. It's been super destructive for our democracy in our society and the people who run these platforms, I think have a social possibility a moral and ethical personal responsibility to do a better job and to shut that stuff down as well down, but it took design them in a way that that you know, as I said earlier, favours truth over over falsehoods and favours positive types of communication, verses destructive. Once just like you said it's us on us, which I tried to be all about: love and compassion. And to an early one of the things not pickings fascinate him, one of the things that people do as I

think even more dangerous is not picking applied to individual statements of good people. So, basically worst case. cecil in computer science is taking sometimes our contacts, but sometimes in context a statement. One statement: by per Some like I've, been because I've been reading the rise and fall. The third reich and often talk about hitler and this progress with folks it is so, is another dangerous. But I'm all leading in the heart of his well. It's actually a safer place. Then people realise its history in history, in long form is actually very fascinating to think about, and it's, but I could see how that could be taken totally out of context and is very worrying about the decision of research, not just the december things, but they're sort of premise or anything. You say at some point: someone can go back and find something

three years ago, perhaps jokingly, perhaps not maybe just wrong anymore. You know and like that becomes they can use that to define you if they have Indeed, we all need to be more we're, giving I mean somewhere in my twenties. I I thomas, I was going through all my different friends and I was like you know it. Every one of them has at least like one nutty opinion yeah. there's like nobody who like completely except me of course, but I'm sure they thought that about me too, and I and she just kind of like learned to be a little bit tolerant, that like okay, there's just ah yet I I wonder who their sponsor letty lays on their like, I think, ultimately, is about leadership. Like the previous president, Barack Obama's been, I think, quite eloquent a walk in this very difficult line of talking about cancer. Culture was a difficult,

his skills yeah cause- you say the wrong thing and you piss off a lot of people, and so you have to do well, but then also the platform. The technology is a should slow down, create friction spreading this kind, and not picking in all its forms actually know at an inn. Your point that we have to like learn over time how to manage it and use it. We can put on the platform and say you guys, design it bank, as it were idiots about using it in a nobody, can send a platform that withstands at an and every new technology. People learn it interesting when someone invented fire, great, cooking and everything, but then somebody burned himself and then you had to like learn how to like avoid. Maybe somebody emitted a fire extinguisher later and was oh, so you kind of like figure out ways of of working around these technologies, somebody that had seatbelts etc. And that certainly true with all the new digital technologies that we have to figure out, not just technology separately

spit, but ways of using them. That emphasise that are more likely to be successful, the dangerous so you've written quite a bit about how artificial intelligence My change our world. How do you think if, if we look forward again, it's impossible to predict the future? But if we look at trends and from the past and we tried to predict what's going to happen in the rest of the twenty first century? How do you think I will change our world be questioned and I'm mostly a techno optimist. Not at the extreme you're, the singularity is near end of the spectrum, but I do think that we are likely and for some significantly improve living standards. Some really important,

Progress even just the technologies there are already kind of like in the can that haven't diffused. You know when I talked earlier about the J curve. It can take ten twenty thirty years for an existing technology to have the kind of profound effects and when I look at whether it's vision, systems voice recognition problem solving systems, even if nothing new got invented, we would have a few decades of progress on I'm excited about that and I think that's going to lead to us being wealthier healthier. I mean the healthcare is probably one of the applications from most excited about, and so that's good news I think we're going to have the end of work any time soon and there's just too many things that machines still can't do when I look around the world and think of whether it's it's childcare or healthcare, clean the environment and interacting with people scientific work, artistic creation it. These are things that, for now, machines are able to do

as well as humans. Even to something is mundane, as you know, folding laundry or whatever, and many of these I think I'm gonna be years or decades before machines catch up. I may be surprised on some of them, but but overall and there's plenty of work for humans to do. There's plenty of problems in society that neither human touch so we'll have to re will have to, as machines are able to do, some tasks people are going to have to rescale and move into other areas, and that's probably what's gonna, be glad for next year, Ten, twenty three years or more are kind of big restructured, oh society will get wealthier and people will have to do new skills? Now, if you turn the doubt further, I dunno fifty or one hundred years into the future, then you know maybe all bets are off. Then it's possible that that machines will be able to do most of what people do. one or two hundred years if it gets even likely, and at that point then we're more and these sort of abundance economy than were in a world where

There's really little for the humans can do economically better than machine means other than be human? and are you know what that will take? The train edition as well kind of more that transition of how it meaning in life and what our values are, but but shame on us. If we, I drew that up, I mean it should be like great great news, and it kind of saddens me that some people see that as like a big problem- and I think I will be Wonderful, if, if people have all the health and and material things tat they needed in, can focus on loving each other in discussing philosophy in playing in doing all the other things that don't require work, do you think you'll be surprised to see what the twenty before the travelling time, I'm years into the future, do you think you'll be able to like if I gave you a month to like talk to people now like as a week, would you be? Would you be able to understand what has gone on? You mean if I was therefore a week yeah, if you're there for a week or one hundred,

years in the future here. So, like so I'll give you one thought: experiment is like. Isn't it possible the were all living in virtual reality by then yeah. No, I think that's very possible united played around with some of those we are had says there are great, but I mean the average person spends many waking hours staring screens right now in other kind, low reds compared to what they could be in thirty or fifty years, but certain the games and why not been a mother interactions could be done are now be a pretty from world that we'd all. You know in some ways be richards we wanted. You know we could have castles and I could be travelling anywhere. We want and- and it could obviously be multisensory, so that would be they'll be passed when your letters there's people. I know you patio, was gone and others, and there are people. Nick Bostra makes the dissimulation argument that maybe we're already the authority that so but

but in general, or do not even think about in this kind of way. You're self critically think how good a you as an economist predicting what the future looks like it starts getting. I mean I feel regionally comfortable next to no five ten twenty years in terms of that path when you start getting truly superhuman artificial intelligence kind of by death, mission. Competitor, think a lot of things that I could have thought of and create a world that even imagine da. So I am not sure I can. I can predict with that world is going to be like one thing I researchers safely. Researchers worry about is, what's called the alignment problem when an eyes that powerful Then they can do also two things. We really hope that our values, our line with our values and is even try.

he defining what our values are. I mean first off, we all have different values and secondly, maybe if we were smarter, we would have better about is like you know I like to think that we have better values than he did in eighteen, sixty and up or in the year, two hundred bc on lot of dimensions, things that we consider barbaric today, and it may be that, if I thought but it more deeply. I would also be morally evolved, may that'd be a vegetarian or where do other things that that are right now with my future self would consider kind of immoral. So that's a tricky problem getting the ai to do What we want, assuming its even a friendly, I may I should probably mention theirs. Not trivial. Mother branch. Were we destroy ourselves right, I mean there's a lot of. exponentially improving technologies that could be ferociously destructive weather.

It's a nanotechnology or biotech weapon eyes, viruses ere, other things that nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons, of course, here coal technology, good old growled nuclear weapons they could die, could. Devastating or even existential new things yet to be invented. So that's a branch that we know. I think it's pre significant and there are those who think that one of the reasons we haven't been contacted by other civil actions right is that, is it once to a certain level of complexity and technology vicious, me ways to go wrong. There's a lot of ways to blow yourself up and people off, or I should say, species and falling into one of those traps. The great filter, the great filter I mean there.

An optimistic view of that. If there is literally no intelligent life out there in the universe or at least in our galaxy, that means the weave passed at least one of the great filters. Some of the great filters right. We survived now at night I think ethics, robin hansen. Is it good with? Maybe others never good. We're thinking about this? That. If there are no other intelligence creatures out there and that we have to be able to detect. One possibility is that there's a if are ahead of us and when you get a little more advanced, maybe in one hundred or one thousand or ten thousand years, things just get destroyed for some reason, yeah. The other one is the great filters behind us that will it'll be good. Is that most planets don't even evolve, life or if they dont evolve, lighted involve intelligent life. Maybe we ve gotten past that and so now, maybe we're on the good side of the of the great filter. So. If we set a wine back and look at the the thing more, we could say some

the more comfortably at five years in ten years out, you, written about jobs and the imf, act, answer of our economy and jobs in terms of artificial intelligence that might it might have it's a fascinating question. What kind of jobs are safe? What kind of jobs or not- and he may be speak to your intuition about how we should think about changing the landscape of work. Sure absolutely well. This is a really important question. Bigot, I think, we're very far from artificial general intelligence, which is a lie that can just to the full breadth of what humans can do, but we do have human level are super human level, narrow intelligence, narrow, artificial intelligence, and obviously my calculator can do math lot better than I can in this lot of other things. Machines can do better than I can so, which is which we were actually set out to address that question with Tom Mitchell. I wrote up

paper called what can machine learning do there was in science and we went and interviewed a whole bunch of ai experts and kind of synthesised what they thought machine He was good at and wasn't good at DA we came up with. We called a rubric. Basically a set of questions. You can ask about any tasks that will tell you whether light score, high or low, on not suitability for machine learning, and then we've applied that to a bunch of tasks in the economy effect there. Data set about the task? The? U S, economy brought called own at the? U S, government put it together, proud bureau. Labour statistics the vague divide, the economy to about nine hundred and seventy occupations lightened bus driver, economist, primary school teacher radiologist. And then for each one of them they describe which tasks need to be done like for radiologist. There are twenty seven distinct tasks, so we were through all those tasks to see whether or not a machine could do them and what we found

interestingly, while reliance day whether at some awesome yeah. Thank you. So what we found was that there was no occupation in our data set, were machinery and just round the table and did everything and there was almost your patient machine learning didn't have like a significant ability to do things like take radios, alot of people. I heard saying it the end radiology and one of the twenty seven tasks is red. Medical images really important. I'm like a kind of a court and machines have basically gotten is good better than radiologists is just an article in nature last week, but no, they ve been publishing them for the past few years, showing that tat. She. Learning can do as well as humans on many kinds of diagnostic imaging task, but other things radiologist do you know they sometimes administer conscious sedation. They sometimes do physical exams. They have to synthesize the results and explains it to the other but

doctors or to the patients in all those categories. Machine learning isn't really up to snuff, yet so that job we can achieve a lot of restructuring parts of it they'll hand over to machines, others humans will do more of less been more or less the pattern, all of them. So you know to oversimplify, but we see a lot of restructure in a reorganization of work and its real gonna be a great time. It is a great time for smart shipowners and managers to to do that. Reinvention of work, not gonna, see mass unemployment to get more specifically to your question, the kinds of tasks that machines tend to be good at are a lot of routine problem solving mapping. inputs acts into outputs. Why do you have a lot of data on the end taxes in the wise inputs now puts you can do that kind of mapping and find the relationships they tend to nothing. very good at four even now find, border control and dexterity emotional intelligence, and

and human interactions and and thinking outside the box creative work. If you give it a well structured task, machines can be very good at it, but even asking the right questions. That's heart! There's a quote that to Andrew mack, can I use in our book second machine age. Apparently up pablo picasso was shown in early computer. came away kind of unimpressed. He goes well you all of us is all that. Does his answer questions and to him. They interesting thing was asking the questions try to replace me jpg three dairy, although some people they come a robot. You have this cool plot that shows a judgment but where economists, land were only the x axis, is the income Yes, and then, though, why axis? I guess, Aggregating information, how replaceable the jobbers or but there's an injury, I believe machine learning index exactly so we

have all night Herndon, seven new occupations to cool shot and either scattered and all in all four corners have some occupations, but there is a definite pattern: which is the lower wage occupations tend to have more tasks that are suitable for machine learning like cashiers, I mean, was gone to a supermarket or cvs knows that mcnally read barcodes, but they can recognize you an apple and an orange and and a lot of things cashiers humans used to be needed for and at the end of this other end of the spectrum. There are some jobs like a airline pilot. that are among the highest paid in our economy, but also a lot of them are suitable for machine learning. A lot of those tasks are and and then, yeah he emission economy. I couldn't help peeking at those in and their pay a fair amount, maybe inasmuch as some of us think we should bits but but they are. I have some testers for machine learning, but for now at least most of the tests are, economists do or didn't end up being in that category, and I should say I did

Like created data, we just the analysis and let's get what came out of it at overtime, that scatter plot will be updated, as is always the technology improves, but dumb We just interesting to see the pattern there and it is a little troubling in so far as if you just take that technology as it is today is likely to a worsening inequality on a lot of dimensions. Summit on this topic the effect of a higher an hour. A landscape of work as one of the people that have been speaking about it in the public domain public debt. Courses, the presidential candidate, Andrew yang yeah. What are your thoughts about Andrew. What are your thoughts about? You be I that universal basic income that he made one of the corridor by the way he has hundreds of ideas about like everything is heritage is quite interesting. Yeah, a boy you.

us about him and what are you? That's why you be? I let me answer. You know that the that this question about his broader keep me no approach. First, I'm I just love that he's really thoughtful analytic all. I agree with his values, so that's possum an end, and he read my book and and and mentions that. Sometimes it makes me even more exciting and the thing that we made the centrepiece of his campaign. Was you be I and I was originally kind of a fan of it and then studied a more became less of a fan of beginning to come back a little bits. Let me tell you a bit of my evolution. Economists we have by looking at the problem of people not have enough income in the soup was things will only right, I'm a czech problem solved, but then I talk to my sociologist friends and peep being, and they really convinced me that just riding a czech doesn't really get it. The core values of voltaire once said that that works all three great ills, boredom vice and me.

Reed, and you know you can do with the new thing by writing a cheque, but people need a sense of meeting meaning they need something to do, and dom. When not you know, say, steel workers are coma winners lost their jobs and which is given checks. Alcohol ism depression in divorce, all those social indicators, drug use, all went way up, people just or happy just sitting around collecting a check, I may it's part of the way they were raised. Maybe it's something innate in people that they need to feel wanted and needed. So it's not as simple as just writing. People a check you need to also give them away to have a sense of purpose, and that was important to me, and the second thing is that, as I sit mentioned earlier, you know we are far from the end of work. You know I don't buy the idea that there's just not enough work to be done. I cease like our city, these need to be cleaned up and meet me robots can't do most of that. You know we need to have better.

Here we need better healthcare. We too can take care of people, mentally ill or older, we too, Pierre, our roads, there's so much work that require at least partly maybe entirely a human component. so rather than like right. All these people off what's find a way to re purpose them and keep them engaged now. That said, I too would like to see more buying power from people who are sort of at the bottom end of the spectrum. The economy has. been designed and evolved in a way that I think very unfair to a lot of hardworking people. I see super hard working. People aren't really seeing their wages grow over the past twenty thirty years, while some other people who have been super, smart and or super lucky have and have had. had have made billions or hundreds of billions, and I don't think they need those hundreds of

to have the right incentives to invent things. I think, if you talk to almost any of them, so I have no, they don't think they can extra ten billion dollars tat to do with their doing most, probably with we'd love to do it for a billion or maybe for nothing. Firstly for nothing, many of them here I mean you know I just a point to make is: is you know like? Do we think that bill gates would have founded microsoft of tax rates? Were seventy percent while we know he would have, because they were tax rates of seventy per cent when he founded it. You know, so I don't think that's as big a deterrent and we could provide more buying power people. My own favorite tool is at the earned income tax credit, which is basically a way of lamenting income of people who have jobs and giving employers an incentive to hire even more people. The minimum wage can discourage employment, but the earned income tax credit encourages employment by supplementing people's wages. You know, if fought, the employer can only afford to pay him ten dollars for a task.

The rest of us picket kick in another five or ten dollars and bring your wages up to fifteen or twenty total, and then there or buying power. Then entrepreneurs are thinking. How can we caters them? Hack will make products for them and it becomes a self reinforcing system where people are better off. entering and I had a good discussion where he suggested instead of up universal basic income, he suggested, or instead of an unconditional basic income, how bout a candy no basic income. Where the condition is. You learn some new skills. We need to restore workforce, so let's make it easier for people to la find ways to get those skills and get rewarded for doing them and that's kind of a neat idea as well. That's really interesting! So I mean one of the questions was the dreams of you be. I is that it provides some little safety

while you retrained while learning e new skill, like I think I guess, you're speaking to the intuition that that doesn't always like there needs to be some incentive to risk to train to learn new thing. I think it helps. I mean there are lots of self motivated people, but there also people that maybe the little guidance are or help and and and- and I think it's really hard question for someone who, losing a job in one area to know what the new area should be learning skills in, and we could provide a much better set of tools and platforms that map did ok, here's This gives you already have here's something that's in demand: let's create a path for you to go from where you are too, where you need to be So my total, how do I put it nicely about myself until he clues about the economy, not totally true, but pretty good approximation fewer to try to fix our tax tax system?

And maybe from another side, if there is fundamental problems in taxation or Furthermore, the problems of butter economy? What would you tried to fix? What would you try to speak to you know? I definitely think our whole tax system are polluted. Or an economic system has gotten more more screwed up over the past twenty three years. I don't think it's that hard to make headway in improving it. I dont it. We tend to tony reinvent stuff. It is what what elsewhere with indian others called economics, wonder why you're there just some basic, and symbols that have worked really well in the twentieth century that we sort of forgot you in terms of investing in education, investing in infrastructure, welcoming immigrants having a tax system that was more progressive and fair. At one point,

Tax rates were on top incomes were significantly higher and they ve come down a lot to the point where in many cases their lower now than they are for for poor people soap, and we could do things like earning. the tax credit to you, a little more wonky, I'd like to see more pegu the in taxes. What that means is you tax things that are bad instead of things that are good so right now we tax labor, we tax capital and which is unfortunate because one of the basic principles of economics, if you tax something you tend to get less of it, so you know right now, they're still, work to be done and and still capital to be invested. But instead we should be taxing things like pollution and congestion and and if we did that, we would have less pollution, show a carbon tax in almost every economist would say: it's no brainer whether their republican or democratic, craig man, q is how to do it bushes cost of economic advisors are or or

six mousie, who is there another republican economists in korea and of course, a lot of a democratic economists agree as well, if we tax carbon raise some hundreds of billions of dollars. We could take that money and redistribute it through earned income, tax, credit or other things so that overall, are taxes to become more progressive. We could tax congestion one of the things that kills me as an economist is every time I sit in a traffic jam. I know there's completely unnecessary it's. This is a complete waste of time. and you just visualize the cost and productivity that all these countries active, because they are taking cost for me all the people around me and if they charge to congestion tax, they would take them same amount of money and people would be, would streamline the rose like when you're in singapore, the traffic just close, because they have a congestion tack. They listen to economists, they invited me and others to go, talk to them, and then we I'd still be paying

hey you, congestion taxes instead paying my time, but that money would not be available for healthcare, the available for infrastructure or be available to give to people, so they could buy food or whatever. So it's just it saddens me when you know we sit, who is sitting in traffic it's like taxi me in and take that money in dumping in the ocean just like destroying it. So there are a lot of things like that that economists been I'm not I'm not like doing anything radically or at most you know could economist with, with which I probably agree with the point by point on these things, and we could do those things in our whole economy become much more efficient it become fair, invest in r and d and research which is close to a free launch is what we have. My erstwhile mit colleague bob Solo got the nobel prize not yesterday, but but but three years ago, for describing that most

prove is a living snares from come from tech, progress and paul roma related nobel prize for noting that investments in r and d in human capital can speed the rate of tech progress. So if we do that, then will be healthier and wealthier from an economic perspective. I remember taken and undergrad econ. Come on a one? It seemed from all the place I saw them are indeed and other groups on this closer free lunches. Right as we have, it seem like obvious that we should do more research. It is like what what like He knows know what we should do basic research. Let me go. Let me just be clear: it'd be great if everybody did more research and I'd make this huge be to applied development versus basic research, so applied development. Like you know, how do we get this at this self driving car? You know feature to work better in the tesla, that's great for private companies, because they can capture the value from that if they make

better self driving car system, they could sell cars that are more valuable and then make money. So there's an incentive that there's not a big problem there in and smart companies, amazon, tesla and others are- are investing it. The problem is with basic research like coming up with core basic ideas, whether it's in nuclear fusion or artificial intelligence or biotech there. If someone invents something it's very hard for them to capture the benefits from it's shared by everybody, which is great in a way, but it means that they're not going to have the incentives to put as much effort into it there Do you need it a classic public good there? You need the government to be involved in and the u s. Government used to be investing much more in r and d, but we have slashed that part of the government really fool. Finally- and I were all poorer, significantly poorer as a result, growth rates are down we're not having a kind of scientific progress we used to have

It's been sort of asia, a short term you're eating the seed corn, whatever metaphor you want to use where people grab some money put in their pockets today, but five, ten twenty years later there la poor than the otherwise would have So we're living through a pandemic right now, globally in the united states for economics perspective. How do you think this pandemic will change the world? It's been remarkable and you know it's horrible. How many people have suffered that might have death the economic destruction? It's also striking. Just that the amount of change in work that I've seen I'm in other has twenty weeks I've seen more change than there were in the previous twenty years. This mean nothing like it. since probably the world war, two mobilization in terms of reorganising our economy in the most The first one is the shift to remote work and

the I and many other people stopped. You know going into the office and teaching my students in person or just studying this with a bunch of colleagues at mit and elsewhere, and what we found was that before the pandemic, at the beginning of two thousand and twenty about one in six will over fifteen percent of americans were working remotely when the pandemic hit that grew steadily and hit fifty per cent roughly half of americans working at home, so a complete transformation. and of course it wasn't even it was like everybody did it if you're an information worker professional? If you work mainly with data, then you're much more likely to work. if you are manufacturing worker, in a working with other people or physical things, then wasn't so easy to work at home and instead those people are much more likely to be come, laid off or unemployed. So it's been something that that had very disparate effects on different parts of the workforce. Do you think, do you think is going to be sticky in a sense that after

vaccine comes out and they commonly reopens you think remote work will continue. That's a great question. I my policy is there s a lot of it will, of course, some of which go back, but a surprising if it will stay, I personally, you know. For instance, I move my seminars from academic seminars to zoom and I was surprised how well it worked so well. Yeah I mean, obviously we are able to reach a much broader audience, so we have people tuning from Europe and in other countries, I'm just all over the state for that matter. Also, actually that is in many ways is more egalitarian. We areas the chat, feature and other tools and cried students, who might have been all shy about. Speaking up, we now kind of have more of ability for lots of voices. and their answering each other's questions. You gonna get parallel like. If someone had some question about

Some of the data, our reference or whatever that someone else in the chat would answer it. In the whole thing just became like a higher, been with higher quality things. That's why I thought that was kind of interesting. I think a lot of people are discovering that these tools, that we know thanks too to technologies, have been developed over the after that decade, there are a lot more powerful. We thought I mean of all the terrible things we've seen with covert and the real failure of many of our institutions that I thought would better one area that spin a bright spot is our technologies. You know been with him a pretty well in all of our Emel and other tools, so just do no scaled up kind of gracefully. So that's been up. That's been applause. Economists call this question of whether a go back a history, As for who the question is like when you boil an egg after it gets cold again it it stays heart, and I think that we're going to have a fair amount of

teresa in the economy. We're going to move to this new. We have moved to a new remote work system and it's not going to snap all the way back to where it was before One of the things that worries me is that the people with lots of followers on twitter and people with voices. Oh that can voices that can be magnified by you know reporters and all that kind of stuff are the people that fall into this category that we were referred to just now, where they can still function and be success. for it would promote work, and then there is a kind of quite quiet suffering what feels like millions of people whose jobs are disturbed. profoundly by this pandemic. But they don't have many followers on twitter? What are we and end up again

I apologise, but I've been reading the rise and fall of the third reich and there's a connect into the depression on the american side. There's a deep, complicated connection to how suffering can turn into forces That potentially changed the world and in destructive ways It's something I worry about what yes, the suffering to materialise itself in five ten years there's something you worry about thought about. It's like the censure of what I worry about an enemy break it. the two parts, it is a moral and ethical aspect. It we need to relieve the suffering. I mean, I'm I'm. Share the values of most americans. We like to see shared prosperity are most people on the planet and we would like to see people nah falling behind in they have fallen behind not just due to covered, but in the previous couple of decades a meeting income has barely moved in it.

and how you measure it and the incomes of the top one percent have have skype kitty and are far those due to the ways technology has been used farthest been due to frankly, our political system has continually shifted, more wealth and to those people who have the powerful interests. So there's just a a, I think- are a moral imperative to do a better job and ultimately we're all going to be wealthier. If more people can contribute more people have the wherewithal. But the second thing is that there's a real political risk and not a political scientist, but you don't have to be one, I think, to see how a lot of people are really upset with. Getting a raw deal and die. They are going to know they want to smoke the system in different ways. In twenty sixteen and twenty eighteen and and and now I think there are a lot of people who are looking at the political system and they feel like it's. It's not worth For them- and they just want to do something radical on fourchan Demagogues have harnessed

in a way that is pretty destructive to the country. And I an analogy I see is what happened with trade. You know, almost every economist thinks that free trade is a good thing that, when two people voluntarily exchange almost by definition, they're both better off if it's voluntary and so generally, trade is- is a good thing, but they also recognize that trade and lead to uneven effects that there can be winners and losers in in some of the people who didn't have the skills to compete with somebody else or didn't have other assets, and and so trade can shift prices in ways that are averse to some people, and so there's a a formula that economists have, which is that you have free trade. But then you compensate the people who were hurt and free trade makes the pie bigger and since the pies bigger it's possible for

everyone to be better off. You can make the winners better off, but you also compensate those you do don't win, and so they end up being better off as well. What happened was that we didn't fulfil that promise. We did have some more increase free trade and eightys and ninetys, but we didn't compensate the people who are hurt, and so they felt like that. The people in power reneged on the bargain and I think they did, and so then there's a backlash against trade, and now both political parties, but especially trump and company, have really push back against free trade. Ultimately, that's bad for the country. Ultimately, that's bad for living standards, but in a way I can understand the people felt they were betrayed technology. Has a lot of similar characteristics. Technology can make us all better off. It makes the pie bigger, creates wealth and health, but

also the uneven, not everyone automatically benefits is possible for some people, even a majority of people to get left behind. While a small group benefits what most economists would say. Well, let's make the pie bigger berlin make sure we adjust the system, so we compensate the people who are hurt. And since the pie is bigger, we can make the rich richer. We can make the middle class richer with make the poor richer mathematically everywhere, could be better off. but again we're not doing that and again people are saying this isn't working for us and again, instead of fixing the distribution, a lot of people are beginning to say: hey technology sucks, we've got to stop it, let's throw rocks at the goo bus, let's blow it up, let's blow it up, and you know there were the luddites almost exactly two hundred years ago, who smashed the looms and spinning machines because they felt like those machine we are helping them. We have he'll imperative, not just

do the morally right thing, but to do the thing that is gonna save the country, which is make sure that we create not just prosperity but shared prosperity. So you ve been at mit for over Thirty years, I think Don't I one hold out, am I now that's bet it's true and you're now move to staff training, the same thing about how great a is What's that moving like what its east coast the west most whenever these draconian mit was been very good to me continues to be very good to me an amazing place. Theirs, I can t have so many your friends and colleagues there, I'm very fortunate to have been able to spend a lot of time at mit stanford's, also amazing and part of way to track them out. Here was not just the weather, but also you know silicon valley, let's face it. Is really more of the epicenter of the technological revolution and I want to be close to the people who are inventing aid.

Where a lot of it is being invested mit for that matter in in europe, in china and elsewhere, india, but but being a lot closer to some of the key technologies, which was something that was important to me and and It may be shallow, but also do enjoy the good weather, and you know I felt a little ripped off when I came here: months ago. In immediately there the fires in their eyes were burning, the sky was orange and theirs, heat waves, and you know so it wasn't exactly what I've been promised, but our fingers crossed it'll get back to a better, maybe namibian a brief aside been some criticism of academia and universities and different avenues and eyes a purse whose gotten to enjoy universities from them the pure play ground of ideas that it can be always kind of try to find the words to tell people that these are magical

is? Is there something that you can speak to that as beautiful or powerful about universities. Loescher, I mean first off I mean economies. Have his concept called reveal preference? You can ask people what they say. We can watch what they do, so obviously, by reveal preferences. I love academia after I could be doing lots of other things. That is something I enjoy a lot, and I think the word Google is exactly right list, it is for me. I do I love Hopefully my dean will be listening, but I would do this for free yeah. You know it's it's just what I like to do I like to do research. I love to have conversations like this with you and with my students with my fellow colleagues. I love being around the smartest, People can find and learning something from them in and having them challenged me, and that just gives me gives me joy

every day. I find something new and exciting to work on and a universe environment is, is really feel with other people who feel that way, and so I feel very fortunate, be part of it and I'm lucky enough to set that I'm in a society where I can actually get paid for it and put food on the table while doing stuff that I really love and some day everybody can have jobs that are are like that, and I appreciate those not necessarily easy for everybody to have a job to do both love and also they get paid for so there things that don't go well in academia, but by and large I think it's a kind of you know: kinder gentler version if a lot of the horror efficient, you know we sort of cut each other. A little slack on things like you know, honest a lot of things. You know, of course, there's harsh debates and discussions about things and some petty politics here and there I personally try to stay away from most of that sort of politics is not my thing, and so it doesn't affect me most of the time. Sometimes a little bit.

but dumb, but not being able to pull together. So we have a digital economy lab. We get all these brilliant pride students and undergraduates and post docs that are just doing stuff that I learned from it Every one of them has some aspect of what they're doing that. Just I couldn't even understand its way: way, more brilliant and its that's really to meet actually really enjoy that being in a room with lots of other smart people, and ah and Stanford had made a very easy to attract those people. I just you know sam into a seminar whatever and the people come that come on our work with me. We get on in the wake of datasets in it it saw it's come together real nicely and the rest is just fun. It's fun, yeah, Now, if you look for work on important problems in open- and we were doing things that I think are our first order in terms of what,

important in the world in that's very satisfying to me. Maybe a bit of a fund question what three books technical fiction, philosophical You ve enjoyed had been began then your life. What I guess I go back to like my my tea. Years, and- and I I read sit- our thoughts is a philosophical book and kind of helps. Keep me keep me sent Not only has the herman has exactly don't get too wrapped up in material thing, or other things and just sort of try to find peace on things. A book that actually influenced me. A lot in terms of my career was called the worldly philosophers by robert, how brenner touchy about as he goes through a series of different copies written, are very lively form and it probably sounds boring, but it did describe whether it's Adam smith, Karl Marx or John maynard keynes, and each of them sort of what their key insights were, but also kind of their personalities, and I think that's. One of the reasons I became an economist was was just

understanding how they grapple with the big questions have the world. So would you recommended as a good whirlwind review of the history of economics, yeah yeah. I think that's exactly right. You're gonna, take you through the different things, and you know you can understand how they reach thinking some of the strengths and weaknesses. it probably is a little out of date now and needs to be updated a bit. But you know you could at least look through the the first couple hundred years of economics, which is not a bad place to start a more recent. Really. I mean a book I really enjoyed is by my out. My friend and colleague, max tag. Mark called lie three point out: we should have on your pie cast. If you have an already. He was episode number one. Oh, my god, he's back he'll, be back he'll, be back soon no he's terrific. I love the way his brain work and he makes you think about profound things. He's got such a joyful approach to life. And so that's been a great book and adler. I learned a lot from it. I think everybody beat. That explains it in a way, even though he's so brilliant that you know everyone

I understand that I can understand. You know that's three, Let me mention maybe one or two others I mean I recently I dont more from last by my my sometimes co author andrew mcafee. It made me optimistic, How we can continue to have little rising living standards. While living more lightly on the planet fact because of higher living stance. Because technology, because of digitization I mentioned, we don't have to have a big, an impact on the planet and that's a great story to tell any document it very carefully. In up a personal cover self help book the. How can a useful people is, is atomic habits which I think it's what's his name, James, clear, the against clear he's, just yes, name! Is he d rights very clearly and you know most of the senses. I read in that book ass, a guy. I know that, but it just really helps to have somebody like remind you and tell you in kind of just reinforce it and end up so build habits in your life. They? U you hope to have

if they have a positive impact and don't have to make it big things, it can be just tiny little exactly as in the comic it's a little bit of a pun. I think he says you are one atomic mister really smaller you to take these little things, but also like atomic power. It can have a big impact as funnier the biggest ridiculous question, especially to ask an economist, but also human being: what's the meaning of life I hope you got the internet from somebody out, but they were also work on that one, for what is it? You know actually learn a lot from my son luke and I hear he's a nineteen. Our bees, always love philosophy, and he reads way more sophisticated philosophy than I do, we we, I once took him to oxford and he spent the whole time like pulling all these obscure books down and reading them. And couple of years ago This argument, and he was was trying me that hedonism was the ultimate. You know, meaning of life, just pleasure that seeking an affair

How does the attack was ready? a really good like intellectual, are, you may vary too close? I just didn't strike me as right and I think that and you know, while I am kind of utilitarian, like you know, I do think we should do the greatest good for the greatest number. That's just too shallow, and I think I've convinced myself that real happiness doesn't come from seeking pleasure. It's kind of a little. It's ironic like. If you really focus on being happy, I think it it doesn't work. You gotta like be doing something bigger it's I think, the analogy sometimes uses you know when you look at a dim star in the sky. If you look right at it, it kind of disappears, but you have to look a little to the side and then the part if your your retina, that are better at absorbing like you can pick it up better as the same thing with happiness. I think you need to suit of find something other goal something to meaning in life, and that ultimately makes you happier than if

Go squarely at just pleasure, and so for me you know the kind of thing First, I do that I think is trying to change the world, make the world a better place, and I'm not like an evolutionary psychologist, but My guess is that our brains are wired not just for pleasure, but were socially miles and were wired to like help. Others- and ultimately you know that something. That's really deeply rooted in our psyche and if we do help if we do or at least feel like we're helping others, you know our reward systems kick in and we end up being more deeply satisfied than if we just do something selfish and shallow beautifully put, I don't think, there's a better way to end it. Eric you're, one of the people when I first shut up at mit. The main new, proud to be at mit says so sad that you are now at Stanford but, as I'm sure you'll do wonderful things stand for his well. I can't wait till future books and people should deaf harried will. Thank you so much and I think we're all we're all party invisible college as we can

You know we're all part of this intellectual and human commute. Where we all can learn from each other. It doesn't really matter physically, where we are so much anymore, beautiful thanks to talking today my pleasure thanks for listening to this conversation with Erik brynjolfsson and thank you to our sponsors and Sarah watches the maker of classy, while performing watches forcing medic. The makeup wishes mushroom coffee, expressly p m the vp I've used for many years to protect my present internet and catch up. The up I used to send money to friends. Please check out the sponsors and description to get discount and to support this package for Joe. This thing subscribe on youtube review for starting up a podcast follows purify sport patron

it got me on twitter at lex Friedman, and now let me leave you with some words from albert einstein. It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. Thank you for listening and helped us You next time.