AI needs tangible benefits to earn public trust

Transcript

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

1. 51:31

   Well, last question before we get to rapid fire is you and I both know, you know, in the US and in Europe, there's a lot of AI backlash. Now, part of how, as you know, I've been trying to address it is like with books like Super Agency, trying to say, no, no, this is an opportunity to gain agency. The transition will be difficult, but embracing the agency and the transformation, ultimately you have to.

2. 51:57

   But if you do it with forethought and kind of like leaning into it, it can be greatly helpful. What do you think we should be trying to help people in the U.S. and the West understand about why it is that actually embracing AI is more important? And it doesn't mean that there aren't genuine issues in the backlash and obviously work transition, all the rest will be real issues. But how do we help people see that this could be an important part of their future?

3. 52:27

   Yeah, it's I think really at least now. I've come to the conclusion that there needs to be real, tangible, practical, well-understood outcomes that speak for themselves. Because I think what has happened, and this is one of those places where, quite frankly, our industry, even, you know, the way we have talked about it, I mean, when you go out and say, hey, you know, all economic opportunity will go away for knowledge workers or white-collar jobs are gone. And then you're saying, I'm excited about building that technology. Why would anyone want you to be successful? I mean, I don't want you to be successful. I mean, this just makes no social sense. So I feel now, when you have someone in college commencement be booed because they're saying AI, means we have now crossed over to people don't believe us. And rightfully so. So therefore, I think what do we need to do now is

4. 53:38

   time to do the hard work. The hard work is if you're building a data center, let's make sure that that community believes that this data center is great for them. It's for their tax base, for their community efforts, their real estate value, their schools, their water use, right, their electricity prices. It can't be, again, like, oh, I said something. No, it has to be real, right? That's kind of what the way we earn social permission. Same thing, I would say, with employment. We can't abstractly even say, hey, lump of labor fallacy, always there's going to be new jobs. What are the new jobs? What are the wages of the new jobs that I can now go apply for, train myself for, and how do I really start a new company or what have you, right? I think unless we really get clear, or the third thing, which we unpacked a lot, every firm needs to

5. 54:30

   participate in the frontier ecosystem. Oh, it's not like, oh, I'm just a feeder of data to some foundation model. Like that is like, talk about sovereignty and dignity, both being lost, right, simultaneously, right, for countries, communities, and companies. So I think now we have to go all the way and say, okay, this is a positive sum. This is, in fact, the challenges of some of the technology. We are going to really actively work it.

6. 55:00

   We can articulate the tangible benefits. And this is where, again, what you will do at Manus and others are also going to be very, very helpful because the world needs more proof points that this technology is ultimately helping human condition in our societies broadly, not narrowly. Yeah. No, AI for humanity.