WEBVTT 00:00.720 --> 00:05.160 I want to talk about a conversation that's a little forward-looking, but it's coming 00:05.160 --> 00:05.460 quick. 00:05.580 --> 00:08.960 We've been talking about this before, but this is this rapid rollout of artificial intelligence. 00:09.200 --> 00:13.740 And just to see if context, we came out of the COVID pandemic and AI was dropped in our 00:13.740 --> 00:14.040 lap. 00:14.820 --> 00:15.200 Coincidence? 00:15.540 --> 00:15.880 Who knows? 00:16.020 --> 00:21.200 Maybe history will show that, but it's dropped in our lap and all of a sudden it's aggressively 00:21.200 --> 00:23.560 accelerating into every aspect of our life. 00:24.000 --> 00:28.380 And we as citizens are going around, looking around, going, wait a minute, this thing's 00:28.380 --> 00:29.120 moving really fast. 00:29.120 --> 00:31.340 We've got to have some big conversations here. 00:31.440 --> 00:36.060 One of them is about jobs, employment, and universal basic income. 00:36.680 --> 00:39.960 And an interesting point, Yvon Noel Harari, he is a historian. 00:40.260 --> 00:43.280 He's also really likes the WEF. 00:43.460 --> 00:47.220 He had a point that I want to really spotlight here. 00:47.320 --> 00:47.700 Take a listen. 00:49.340 --> 00:56.680 Now you can think about the AI revolution as simply a wave of immigration of millions 00:56.680 --> 01:04.800 and billions of AI immigrants that will take people's jobs that have very different cultural 01:04.800 --> 01:10.880 ideas and that might try to gain some kind of political power. 01:11.980 --> 01:16.540 And these AI immigrants, these digital immigrants, they don't need visas. 01:17.220 --> 01:22.080 They don't cross the sea in some rickety boat in the middle of the night. 01:22.440 --> 01:24.040 They come at the speed of light. 01:25.240 --> 01:32.740 And I look, for instance, at far-right parties in Europe, and they talk so much about the human 01:32.740 --> 01:36.520 immigrants, sometimes with justification, sometimes without justification. 01:37.100 --> 01:44.680 They don't talk almost at all about the wave of digital immigrants that is coming into 01:44.680 --> 01:45.020 Europe. 01:45.900 --> 01:50.760 And I think they should be much, if they care about the sovereignty of their country, 01:50.760 --> 01:56.320 if they care about the economic and cultural future of their country, they should be far 01:56.320 --> 02:01.700 more worried about the digital immigrants than about the human immigrants. 02:02.640 --> 02:07.880 I mean, it's a good point, right, like focus on the real issue. 02:07.980 --> 02:12.960 And it's a trippy thought, right, that for all the immigration and what it can do to jobs, 02:13.080 --> 02:17.660 what if it's millions of immigrants that I think you could argue have the intelligence 02:17.660 --> 02:22.380 of a nil-bill laureate and are going to work for less than minimum wage? 02:24.000 --> 02:27.560 And yet, we're just all looking and complaining about other issues. 02:27.800 --> 02:31.920 And this one is, as he says, moving at light speed right now. 02:32.900 --> 02:33.300 Absolutely. 02:33.480 --> 02:35.600 And I want to read something that puts a fine point on it. 02:35.700 --> 02:38.000 In fact, I read this, and it really stopped me in my place. 02:38.120 --> 02:39.960 So this is an article called The Great Decoupling. 02:40.520 --> 02:44.460 And the title is White Collar Displacement Ignites 2026, UBI Firestorm. 02:44.620 --> 02:46.460 It says that the United States enters 2026. 02:46.460 --> 02:50.540 The long-predicted AI revolution has transitioned from a Silicon Valley slogan 02:50.540 --> 02:52.700 to a disruptive economic reality. 02:52.840 --> 02:56.660 For decades, automation was a specter haunting factory floors and warehouses, 02:56.700 --> 03:01.420 but the last 18 months have seen a dramatic shift towards the white collar cliff. 03:01.820 --> 03:04.360 This displacement has catapulted universal-based income 03:04.360 --> 03:08.120 from the fringe libertarian experiment to the center of its 2026 political agenda. 03:08.560 --> 03:12.140 It goes on to say that significance of this moment cannot be overstated. 03:12.280 --> 03:14.940 Unlike previous waves of automation that replaced physical tasks, 03:14.940 --> 03:20.240 the current egentic era of AI targets the core of the middle-class professional identity, 03:20.620 --> 03:24.680 cognitive reasoning, and project management, and specialized knowledge. 03:25.060 --> 03:29.300 As corporate earnings reach record highs due to AI-driven operational efficiency, 03:29.680 --> 03:34.320 while entry-level professional hiring has plummeted by nearly 40% in some sectors, 03:34.500 --> 03:37.800 the debate over who owns the wealth generated by artificial intelligence 03:37.800 --> 03:39.980 has become the defining issue of the year. 03:39.980 --> 03:46.040 So as we are given AI to transcribe our Zoom calls and make some better meme images 03:46.040 --> 03:52.820 with Google Gemini, corporations are using it to vastly accelerate their efficiency 03:52.820 --> 03:56.100 and thus take people out of the job market. 03:56.280 --> 04:00.140 So the question is, are we stumbling into a universal-based income? 04:00.560 --> 04:04.280 And we have the State of the Union address that's going to be on February 24th 04:04.280 --> 04:08.320 by President Trump, and a lot of people are looking forward to that 04:08.320 --> 04:12.660 and saying, is there going to be conversation about an AI dividend 04:12.660 --> 04:16.180 or something that's going to be given to the public, some kind of stipend or something 04:16.180 --> 04:18.180 because of this job displacement? 04:18.400 --> 04:23.460 And that would really be the first specter of this universal-based income we're seeing. 04:23.940 --> 04:27.660 And again, I'm going to point to Florida here because we have a lot of governors 04:27.660 --> 04:31.880 and people that are standing up in politics and wanting a different change here. 04:31.940 --> 04:33.320 This is Governor DeSantis in Florida. 04:33.680 --> 04:36.640 He says, he took the X. He said, why would people want to allow 04:36.640 --> 04:38.980 the human experience to be displaced by computers? 04:39.340 --> 04:43.180 As a creation of man, AI will not be divorced from the flaws of human nature. 04:43.280 --> 04:45.960 Indeed, it is more likely to magnify those flaws. 04:46.160 --> 04:46.720 It is dangerous. 04:47.900 --> 04:52.460 This issue, I think, is going to become, you know, 04:52.740 --> 04:57.040 a more and more major topic on the high wire because it's concerning me. 04:57.180 --> 04:59.040 I have a son that's 17 years old. 04:59.040 --> 05:00.360 He's a junior in high school. 05:00.600 --> 05:02.240 My daughter's 11 years old. 05:02.600 --> 05:05.660 And I'm trying to imagine what the future looks like for them. 05:05.660 --> 05:10.340 I'm trying to imagine, am I in the same position to guide my children forward 05:10.340 --> 05:14.200 for their careers and their ideas of who and what they want to be? 05:14.760 --> 05:16.780 Am I in the same position my parents were at? 05:16.860 --> 05:20.400 Because, you know, my son talks about, you know, perhaps being a lawyer. 05:20.740 --> 05:25.260 And what freaks me out is really, I imagine there will still be lawyers 05:25.260 --> 05:30.140 standing on floors of courtrooms, at least for, you know, the near future. 05:30.540 --> 05:31.800 But what about all the researchers? 05:32.080 --> 05:34.820 What about all the entry-level jobs coming in paralegals? 05:34.820 --> 05:36.740 Or all the work that you could do? 05:37.000 --> 05:40.220 You know, whether it's an internship, why is any lawyer going to bring on 05:40.220 --> 05:43.320 an intern to research other cases? 05:43.540 --> 05:44.860 Can you do some case studies on me? 05:45.000 --> 05:48.860 When AI is going to do that better than anyone can imagine. 05:49.400 --> 05:52.700 You know, why is anyone, how much of medicine is going to get wiped out? 05:52.800 --> 05:57.020 If your child wants to be a doctor, if the doctors mostly have become, 05:57.240 --> 06:00.900 you know, essentially agents for the pharmaceutical industry, 06:00.900 --> 06:04.680 almost virtually, you know, how much of the medical profession is just, 06:04.880 --> 06:06.820 here's the drug for that problem. 06:07.020 --> 06:10.200 Here's the drug for your reaction to that drug for that problem. 06:10.340 --> 06:12.300 Oh, you have another problem. Here's the three drugs. 06:12.380 --> 06:13.460 And we know that's what's going on. 06:13.820 --> 06:15.460 AI can do that way better. 06:15.660 --> 06:18.960 It certainly, as well as any doctor, that job's gone. 06:19.140 --> 06:23.180 So to your point, all of these, what used to be what you wanted 06:23.180 --> 06:26.680 your child to go to school for, they seem to be the one, 06:26.680 --> 06:30.900 those careers are almost in the firing line more than a plumber, 06:31.300 --> 06:33.280 more than an auto mechanic at the moment. 06:33.440 --> 06:36.400 I know Elon's working on some robots to do that stuff. 06:36.540 --> 06:40.840 I don't know how far down the line, but I'm in a quandary right now 06:40.840 --> 06:45.320 on, you know, what is it I want my child to be good at? 06:45.480 --> 06:48.440 Right now, I'm like, you just better be good at surviving, 06:48.660 --> 06:51.940 being creative, being able to think outside the box to bob and weave 06:51.940 --> 06:55.720 because your world is about to be decimated. 06:55.720 --> 06:58.220 And then you think about universal basic income. 06:58.640 --> 07:02.500 Let's just take away the greatest motivating factor all of us had 07:02.500 --> 07:06.620 that got us off of our bed, whether it was in college or after college 07:06.620 --> 07:08.520 or going out to get a job and that's survival. 07:09.520 --> 07:12.800 You know, survival is what kept me alive in New York when I was, 07:12.820 --> 07:15.720 you know, trying to get that job waiting tables while I was 07:15.720 --> 07:19.680 pursuing a career in the arts, simply having to survive. 07:19.880 --> 07:20.820 That was taken away. 07:20.820 --> 07:25.440 How many people lose really the will to fight or live? 07:26.320 --> 07:29.860 How much of the society will be what smoking weed and playing 07:29.860 --> 07:30.820 video games? 07:31.320 --> 07:34.960 And I guess the great overlords will keep voting for them to 07:34.960 --> 07:36.340 get a raise to do that. 07:36.420 --> 07:39.240 More UBI for the people that aren't working. 07:39.860 --> 07:40.660 I don't buy it. 07:41.540 --> 07:42.060 Yeah. 07:42.200 --> 07:43.140 And what's it replaced by? 07:43.260 --> 07:43.760 That's the question. 07:43.960 --> 07:44.360 What's replaced? 07:44.580 --> 07:48.060 What replaces that drive if in the monetary system is not 07:48.060 --> 07:49.820 perfect, but I think you and I both agree on that. 07:49.820 --> 07:50.860 But what replaces that drive? 07:51.880 --> 07:52.660 Is it creativity? 07:53.220 --> 07:55.200 Is it some type of blissful life? 07:55.380 --> 07:58.420 Or is it more of a dependence on who's giving out the UBI, 07:58.660 --> 08:00.140 which is most likely going to be the government? 08:00.640 --> 08:03.200 And that's a recipe for disaster as we've seen throughout history. 08:04.920 --> 08:07.880 Well, Jeffrey, I appreciate the reporting. 08:08.260 --> 08:09.320 Fantastic work. 08:10.240 --> 08:12.520 Again, I think this is going to be a super interesting year. 08:12.740 --> 08:15.120 So many things are moving really, really fast. 08:16.020 --> 08:18.880 And I love that you're just, you know, keeping it all. 08:18.880 --> 08:21.760 I, you know, I in front of us, let's not worry, you know, 08:21.920 --> 08:24.660 yeah, immigration, but what if immigration is coming light 08:24.660 --> 08:27.140 speed and it's coming after all of our jobs in a different 08:27.140 --> 08:27.460 form? 08:27.580 --> 08:28.820 We've got to keep our eyes on all of that.