AI investment could make the economy more fragile

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 32:47

   Yeah, for a big environmentalist. But then there is actually getting things done. So, you know, you have this big permitting bill that's going to get voted on. But I think there's interest and you're hearing people talk about doing things on AI regulation. You know, you can imagine things potentially on immigration, at least around the corners of it. Because now it's hurt both parties. Now it's hurt both parties.

2. 33:08

   But that doesn't mean they'll be able to do it, right? I'm just saying that there's a bucket of how much do you work with the other side and even work with Donald Trump to get things done. And I mean, after 2018, there were things that got done. And particularly once you got into the pandemic period, I mean, there was huge agreements between, you know, the Nancy Pelosi-led House and Donald Trump. And then there is what I would think of as like power building an agenda setting, which is not so much what you pass through the House or the Senate, but beginning to hammer out, say, what is the Democratic position look like on health care reform that they would bring into a 2028 and then 2029, you know, first campaign and then governing agenda?

3. 33:47

   what is the democratic position on AI regulation? How do Democrats in general begin to create a sense of what the center of the party, not like the centrists in the party, but the center of the party believes? And I think you're going to see a lot of work done on, say, Medicare for more policies, which are going to unite the sort of more moderate and the more like left parts of the party. I think you're going to see a lot on AI, a lot beginning to be thought through on sort of, you know, pre-K and other forms of child care.

4. 34:16

   So how they balance it and pretty how they balance the first two, you know, confrontation and compromise, that's going to be a lot of the a lot of the work. The only other thing I'll say, though, is that when I look at the next two years, I think a lot is going to go sideways and it's hard to predict exactly what. But the economy looks very shaky to me, given how much is built on an AI CapEx boom, which could very, very, very easily collapse into a market correction. You have the Iran war, right, which could explode into something completely different or, you know, Israel could, you know, launch a gigantic round of new attacks. There have been talk about, you know, would Iran use chemical weapons? I mean, there's all kinds of ways that could go sideways even more so than it already has. There's Russia, Ukraine. There's AI, not from the economic

5. 35:06

   standpoint, but, you know, rogue swarms of AIs hacking into China. There's China and Taiwan, There's Donald Trump's health. He's an 80-year-old who's very increasingly discursive and all over the place. There's all the corruption around him. There is so much that is unknown.