Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity

technology is all around us what are we doing with it where is it taking us what is it doing to our kids pound away these questions every day and let's get some political candidates who run with different Visions let's get some companies that get funded with different visions and and let's see if we can change this enormous ship this is Rob Johnson president of economic thinking I'm here today with Simon Johnson the unheard Community will be quite familiar because of all the extraordinary work he did at the outset of inet around the great financial crisis and many other issues he's been a leading voice in economics people like Dennis Kelleher and others sing his Praises every week to me so uh I've stayed in touch and I'm glad to have you here today we're here to talk about his book power and progress our Thousand-Year struggle over technology and prosperity Simon and Iran assamoglu wrote this book together and I will tell you at the outset of all the books I've read in the last two or three years it's as well written and it's about as important subject if I as I have ever considered anyway Simon thank you for being here thanks for having me so you have this book extraordinary book 500 pages plus all kinds of beautiful Explorations as a doctor-sun diagnosis potential remedies the yin and yang of each prospective scenario and remedy and possibilities Etc it doesn't come across as dogmatic it comes across as thoughtful it comes across as deep what inspired you to write this book what did you see and what did they run C that brought you to the the focus on this effort well Rob as I think you know drone and I've been working together a really long time actually 25 years pretty pretty close and we've been talking about um when societies do better and when when there are problems but it was really the election of 2016 I think that catalyzes to to think that maybe perhaps we needed to focus a bit more on the technology of today and the technology of tomorrow and understand why what many people including me personally had thought was going to be the promise of the internet the promise of digital technology why that had not only failed to deliver but why did it actually created some problems that we had to now deal with and and of course as we started to write it became clear that artificial intelligence and now what everyone's calling generative AI or versions of chat GPT this was going to become really very important for the discussion about um Economic Policy as well as everything else so all these threads sort of came together as we wrote the book Rob and I remember you saying at the outset uh it didn't seem as though I would I say a broad-based public which my own what might call fantasies at the outset were that the broad-based public was going to become invigorated and broader base participation would be the result what you seem to uh indicate right from the start in your first chapter called control over technology is that there seems to be how we say very little what I might call Commons or or governance influence over the structures that have evolved and some of the things like excessive canalization leading to advertising surveillance and other things have created tremendous moral dilemmas and that those good pieces that were part of my and others and perhaps your fantasies may still be achievable but there's some other things that have crossed the road and we've got to address as well yeah absolutely the digital transformation of our economies over the past 40 years has been quite quite disappointing and I think uh it's actually contributed to the polarization of our Societies in in the industrial World certainly because of what it's done to jobs and also what it's done to political discourse so there's a lot of work to be done Rob and that's before AI arrives and for the company yes well it it does seem that the which Michael fear of displacement is not just an American problem I'm doing a lot of work now on the relationship of climate change to subsistence farming in the global South particularly the African continent and people in Africa hold out the promise that forms of education and accumulation of human capital might be at their fingertips but at the same time the uh we might call East Asian development model infant industry protection labor-intensive exports learning by doing and essentially climbing up the ladder to be a developed or an industrial economy is not going to happen in the era of machine learning and Automation and foreign direct investment with those methods rather than labeling labor-intensive methods so I see The Echoes or the impactfulness being a planetary phenomena not just about distribution of wealth and income in the United States though that is certainly a catalyst as your book explains uh to Discord lack of trust lack of faith in governance expertise Academia the media whatever yeah absolutely Rob I mean we have only a few pages on it because the book is already too long but we're very worried about what you can call inappropriate technology going to developing countries which will be exactly as you say technologies that displace workers and create fewer opportunities in the in these economies that really need jobs that could derail development for a billion or two billion or three billion people in the coming decades quite easily how do you see how concentrated power say the ownership of these platforms the billionaires that result from their success how do they how are they able to exercise so much control over what society's adopted Implement well I think um it's because we allow them to to have those positions Rob and I think we defer to the people who run these large tech companies we assume that they know best there's also this broad um assumption among many people including economists that technology is just something that happens to you and you just have to deal with it we wrote the book to try and make the argument that you can shape technology and you can change the direction in which it goes and if that's the case then you can say well you know who's involved in that shaping who can decide to change what technology actually delivers and that we think is the beginning of a different narrative and a much more healthy one yeah it seems there's a confusion in economics that the market and so forth are treated a little bit like deities and technology is being wonderful as opposed to being tools for society to realize its goals and I think that confusion is coupled with another confusion the notion that capitalism is morally legitimate because it's governed by democracy may suffer a little bit Bob Dylan had a song called one too many mornings I often sing it as one too many markets but it might be three too many markets and you mentioned this explicitly in your book the market for politicians survival needing campaign contributions affects laws enforcement regulation who who's on the Committees who gets elected secondly the media doesn't want to affect negatively with scrutiny the people who are its biggest advertisers so the Watchdog is perhaps a little off course as well and then finally you allude to how universities are increasingly dependent on private funding whether it's plutocrats or big corporations how experts are being channeled away from what we might call the public good or the common good uh in light of these Financial dependencies may play a role and maybe Bob Dylan had won too many mornings we might have three too many markets but I uh I saw I saw how you explored all this and you do some beautiful work that's not just conceptual abstract I mean those framings are great but you take us through a series of chapters like the formation of the Panama Canal and what do you call the canal vision what we what are you guys trying to say it I don't I don't want to tip my hand to have had read the book so enthusiastically but what what are you seeing in those chapters it seems to me like you're telling us that this isn't the first time that technology has gotten off course or been implemented unmindfully for its social ramifications yes absolutely Rob I mean we think it's a pretty uh common feature in human history and there are some very prominent examples in the 19th century the Suez Canal and Panama Canal is a particularly compelling example because uh ferdin de lesseps who led the charge on the Suez Canal which was an application of technology that was actually quite well done when he turned his attention to the Panama Canal he had the same sort of blinders on and he he thought it has to be done my way my way is the sewers Canal way there's no other possibilities allowed and that Vision led to disaster in the case of Panama during the uh the French LED effort to to build it so it's really I think a cautionary tale about letting uh Visionaries have all the power and not being able to challenge them when it comes to what exactly you're doing here and what are going to be what's going to be the social impact and sometimes powerful people are making things like canals but when in this case they are making the new Communication System you have a chapter on the power to persuade and that power to persuade when they control the distribution system has to be turbocharged in terms of its capacity to serve them rather than the common good yes very very good point absolutely I mean the people who control the newspapers of course in the 19th century were very powerful the Press Barons they used to call them in England but if you think about Facebook if you think about Twitter other social media or if you go on the other side and think about what's developed in China under obviously an authoritarian regime but also really focused on developing and controlling new means of communication I think you realize that these these things are so Central uh to our societies that it brings in inordinate uh influence and power when you control those and one of the things that isn't how would I say just blocking you from Printing and disseminating or arresting you if you do is when you set up a system like you're describing in China you deter people from even speaking they see that which you might call the cost benefit analysis for their own life is having no upside and tremendous Danger so you get what you might call uncomfortable silences that are quite deep and prolonged yeah sometimes people call that self-censorship I think that's a misnomer it's not self-censive it's really effective censorship that really effective censorship stops you from even thinking about saying certain things and that's definitely what we see um in China for example now but I think also in other authoritarian States Rob we're going to see that more and more and I think we're going to see the word increasingly divided into places that are quite Authority authoritarian using a lot of surveillance technology and a lot of censorship and places that are much more much more open and and where you can debate mm-hmm and and we have seen a couple of what might call Rascals who worked with the intelligence community that you cover in your book illuminate that these things are going on even in the United States yes absolutely I think this the the tendency to surveillance or the preference for surveillance is strong uh among all government officials and if you don't have sufficient constraints then there will be abuses including in the United States so we need to be very honest about that with ourselves and very forthright and and proactive in in forestalling those kinds of efforts I would suggest and we're and we're seeing some of the whistleblowers being either hiding out in Russia or being put on trial in other words if if we portray what a system is and everybody votes for it that's different than in the quiet imposing something and not allowing anybody to describe its strengths and weaknesses and one of the things I want to comment on in this is as leading economists at MIT you and dayron deserve a lot of Applause for the ways in which you not in a hostile way I feel like you're trying to help us build the next North Star but you put forward what you think is going on in a very courageous way well I appreciate that Rob I think we are trying to be honest with ourselves and with our readers and friends and colleagues uh and you know if we can't do it in the United States uh if we can't do it from positions of tenure at major universities um where can we do it honestly um so we will see how that discussion goes of course and we'll see what catches hold in the US and around the world it's it's quite gratifying that we've already lined up about 18 or 19 uh translated versions that will be published so there's a big demand out there for for engagement with these issues and and we hope to stimulate that as much as possible let's talk a little bit about the different things that you see that give you heartburner or cause for you endurance uh uneasiness I I've seen we talked a little bit earlier about the tantalization with how you say raising advertising by telling people what they want to hear and studying the audience and giving different audience members different things but they're they're all kinds of things that uh refract that sense of common purpose that these communication channels create and surveillance being one but you had a menu of three or four things that you thought were we might call the categories you could explain each title and what you see inside the Box that are what I'll call candidates for reform right when I think first and first and most important is control over data it's very clear that what has happened is we've we've put a lot of our own information our data our photographs on the internet uh hoping to share them uh with with friends and family and they've been acquired without our permission to train generative AI that's a that's a major problem that needs to be addressed I think the second piece that's really quite Salient is surveillance and that's something that obviously predates AI there's been plenty of surveillance building up but it's really we think going to reach a new level of um efficiency which means squeezing workers and that is also something that needs to be needs to be prevented and and then there are also as you mentioned just now various forms of manipulation the ways that that we as consumers allow ourselves to be manipulated by the people who have these data who have the algorithms and who are being pretty cynic about what they want us to do so there are plenty of minefields all around these issues do you see things like Congressional hearings about the issues or antitrust committees worrying about something that I would guess many of these platforms you would say are almost a different kind of Monopoly there's increasing returns to very very large scale but then once they dominate the environment they can exercise a will not that's it's not them serving the market it's the society implementing what furthers their financial well-being yes I look I I think some of the Congressional activity uh some of the think tanks that are focused on Monopoly abusive enough people they've done a great job in raising awareness but I think that we need to go beyond some of the traditional antitrust measures and really think about other ways to put pressure on these large companies to break themselves up for example I like the idea that Kim klausing from UCL law school has of um imposing a surcharge on corporate profits if you're above a certain level let's say 10 billion dollars a year because that will give the companies an incentive and their shareholders who want to know why we don't break up the company and get into the lower tax bracket so I think that's sort of encouraging the companies to allow a proliferation and a diversity of of business models um and ways of thinking about the development of Technology that's a very important goal that we shouldn't lose sight of I've noticed through many of the chapters how much what I will call Applied micro of incentive structures and deterrents and so forth that you explored it's it's not um some abstract thing you seem to have you and thereon have zoomed in on particular things and one in in particular is not to let I a I choose the path of displacing workers entirely but perhaps augmenting being a complementary with an e raising of the productivity of workers which will augment their wage or augment their training or uh how you say Inspire further employment and so I I thought you're particularly in your last I guess it's the chapter before the bibliographical uh history which was a beautiful chapter unto itself but because it's really nice to know where you were inspired for people who want to dig deep and that last chapter does that but the one just before that which is exploring remedies I remember hearing about forming narratives and then creating movements sometimes foundations or public goods and then you did some work on the analogy with essentially decarbonization energy sector and how we inspired with warning of what could happen or what was happening and how we could move and then you create incentives and then the private sector comes in and what you might call implements the new design but but the narrative the how you say political organization Rising awareness and then the incentives I thought was a really nice mix well thanks uh thanks Rob that means a lot uh you know we've uh had a lot of experience with attempting to turn out our ideas into uh not just policy but also messages that people could relate to and around which um different people in the policy space can can rally and I and I think um the the kind of a combination you're talking about where you you show people a link from the the general framing of the issues to the specific measures that could actually change incentives I think that's um that that that's that's what you need to show people that's when people ask for and and for good reason and you've shown a little bit how it worked in the past the monopolies after the Civil War the muckrakers various different new organizations particularly related to labor unions and then essentially by the time of Franklin Roosevelt and so forth the the tide was turning or even Teddy Roosevelt the tide was turning but these um what you might call recipes that you create in an abstract since do have historical precedent this isn't just a pipe dream of a good feeling it's actually worked in the past in some of the analogies that you illuminate in the middle chapters yeah absolutely in fact it's it's probably the only thing that's worked in in the Pastoral because you need countervailing power to offset the the very large monopolies that develop around new technology it happened in Railways it happened in oil uh it happened to some degree in electricity it happened in cars um and in in um in some of the post-war developments semiconductors for example so in each one of these instances you need to have some Civil Society organization some governmental uh regulation and and official action and and and people need to understand why does this make sense why can't we just leave things to the market so I think you always have to have a conversation of this kind every generation has to redo it I suppose but um it it it's it's unavoidable but what you're showing in your book is the repeated challenges and there are methods for addressing those challenges we happen to have a new challenge on Deck right now but this kind of process has been uh activated in the past with substantial success so the last chapter where you're putting together how to address this challenge is a great Guiding Light but it's also backed up by the fact that it these methods have been successful previously yes and I think that's that's important evidence Rob and it's it's quite reasonable for people to say when they read a book like this you know why should we believe that your approach is going to work such an extent you can anchor it in history uh primarily American history because we think that the US is at the Forefront of the technology and has a particular responsibility a need to issue to address these things but it's also I think a lot of West European history and the history of that tradition of democracy because again that that's very relevant for thinking about what has happened over the past 300 years well my own career started after finishing a PhD I went to the Senate budget committee and I won't name the senator but I mean I work for Pete dominici but it was another Senator was sitting next to me on the floor and he said I'm really worried about these deficits exploding and he looks at me and he says well you're an economist so what would you do about it and I said I would have every Media Company have to set aside what I'll call public Windows of time for political debate and not charge you like you were selling soap and I would uh make Federal expenditures for all the campaign financing so you didn't need donors because I said then you wouldn't sell policy and then you would have a much smaller deficit and he started laughing he says God you're right on target he said but the problem is if I did that bill I might lose 99 to 1 because incumbents want insurance that they can come back and they got to have an edge relative to Challengers and so some of these things might make a more responsive democracy but the people who have to make the decision are more concerned about how they say their own security and future in position than something that puts all their Feats to the Flames that might lead to some of them leaving well maybe we should put that one back on the table though well precisely because it addresses this the key one of the key markets that you pointed out that's problematic and remember that in the Progressive Era they did introduce direct elections to the Senate um and they did make other other adjustments as sort of the Constitutional operational side of the Constitution but direct election of senators was a big one in terms of undermining some of the um some of some of the power that very large companies have so I I think I think it should all be in play yeah yeah the only place the only chapter I didn't see in your book uh was about the Supreme Court and whether the people who determine whether what passes fits with historic precedent they can't be on the payroll either absolutely that there's a there's a particular level of concern that one would have if if they lose their legitimacy let's talk about what you think particularly the union Iran wrote about in the last chapter are the things to do now vis-a-vis what I'll call digital transformation whether it be in the workplace or in our communication system well I think we've already touched on the main ones the ones that we feel have the best chance of getting traction particularly bipartisan traction rocks I think that's very important uh the first one is securing data and securing people's rights to data and then using that as a bargaining chip with the large companies so uh Gerald Lanier has this idea of data unions and and using that as a way to to pull um to exercise power and pull some of our Market power including around images that are on the internet that are being um freely used without permission the second point is around surveillance a very strong safeguards on on workplace surveillance that you need we need some new regulations on that but also the use of surveillance in society I think shoshana zuboff's age of surveillance capitalism would really Pioneer work uh in in this space and we agree with her that it's a huge problem that needs to be confronted um and then there's the issue of what are you going to do about the monopolies the data monopolies that develop and I think there um we like the idea of Kim klausing which is to have um extra high profit tax on Mega profits to create an incentive for the companies to figure out how to break themselves up and um create more competing business models for Which Way technology is going to go if all of Technology developments in the hands of two companies I don't think we're likely to get we're not likely to to enjoy the outcomes from that process and you do cover a lot of what your mark called the historic evolution of Google and Facebook and others uh I did see in your references that you saw some people who which Michael already embody the spirit of what you'd like to see there was a woman in Taiwan who you said had been quite a leader in Eli Pariser and his colleagues uh that were what you might call mapping the way forward to what a good system would look like because I I do think because we're almost in the realm of Science Fiction meaning the existing systems you can diagnose are new but seeing what to build uh seeing how to get it built which is the political economy I thought you did a masterful job but I'd like to also feel comfortable that we have three or four principal Architects for the common good system and and I thought at least two of them you mentioned quite enthusiastically yes so those are people we have a lot of admiration for they're definitely pushing in the right direction I think more broadly uh we're big fans of Wikipedia Robert and the way that Wikipedia structures data shows the sources forces people to think about what they're seeing as opposed to relying on a chat GPT which um pretends or purports to give you a definitive answer I I think this is about um encouraging human cognition human information processing human critical thinking and that's the Cornerstone of everything if we if we become overly reliant on one single supposed Oracle then I think we can become compliant and we become dependent on that Oracle and that is that would be regrettable so we're we're pretty Advocates of of or supporters of people who are trying to encourage various forms of what sometimes called plurality um in the world today called the historic in the literary influences that you bring to bear people like George Orwell or Aldous Huxley uh they seem to paint pictures of dread in other words they they are bringing to our consciousness what isn't right but these people I mentioned that you I learned about from your book are actually trying to take us to what is right and I think in a period like you mentioned earlier after the 2016 election when the polarity and the hostility and the which you might call tactics of refutation and uh are so vivid it's very important to have people that aren't just critics but are Visionaries of a constructive future which I believe you and Daron are as well but but bringing those other people to the table uh I think is is more the medicine now than clever imaginative critiques or protest songs or anything of that sort uh I I agree Rob wholeheartedly and that's part of what we try and do at MIT is encourage our students and support our colleagues who are developing technology we think could move in this kind of Direction because we're we're not against technology we're all against technological change we want to encourage it to be more human-centric and and more useful to people and less focused on displacing people or pushing them aside or causing them to lose their jobs because while some of that might be unavoidable that's not the right Focus if you want shared Prosperity when I came back from India recently I was I was going to ask you about because there is another place where there is very concentrated wealth like plutocracy and many many people at the lower end but there seemed to be there a great enthusiasm because essentially the marginal cost of integrating people into the market or teaching them through digital channels or whatever they seem to be holding out a tremendous hopefulness for the elevation and development of India because of the Advent of digital transmission paths do you sense that kind of enthusiasm in other parts of the developing world or in your own experiences related to India well there's definitely enthusiasm Rob but I think we're also very worried about what generative AI will do so why don't I wouldn't say anybody has fully established exactly how it impacts the organization of work one thing that chat GPT seems to be doing is is taking away jobs for low-level people who are doing very relatively simple tasks or you could call them entry-level positions and there's quite a lot of those jobs as you know in India in fact that's that's the India's big stepping stone into the global economy so I I think we worry that while there might be an impact on manufacturing which you put you you pointed out earlier we might loosen those labor-intensive uh textile jobs for example we may lose even more of those labor-intensive text jobs right the people who input text the people who who do medical records processing the people who run call centers I think that losing that rung in the ladder would be a really bad blow to India I think that's right I know a number of I'd worked for years on Wall Street and I know a number of firms that had essentially created research departments in India that and now I'm seeing things like tradesmith which has got a new system which is an AI system for picking stocks or analyzing stocks that is by all my sense would be it might be its annual fee might be two months of what a wage is in India uh it's it's not a big expensive thing and it would be very dangerous to the security analysts wherever they sit on Earth yes I think there's a particular threat that we can see to anybody who writes things that are permutations on things that have been written before so yeah if uh I think a good example is the mailings you get from Realtors which obviously there's a formula the characteristics of the house some fluffiness about the neighborhood and and then some words about how the Market's doing but that seems somewhat formulaic and it seems relatively straightforward to use an algorithm to write that in fact I think sometimes that's already being done so that kind of writing I think and those jobs which are um quite well paid in in this economy and other economies those jobs are absolutely in the line of fire when I was in India people were talking about this kind of New Horizon unknown nature of Technology unknown potentials and so forth you and I have worked on the analysis not only of the political economy but the Advent of financialization do you see a an analogy or a similarities between your study of finance and which you might call the common platform related to the bailouts and so forth and the regulation systems and the international integration and what now people are experiencing with regard to Tech yeah I'm afraid I do Rob I mean as you know we worked long and hard at we mean me and you and our friends to sort of change that what was the predominant Vision that Finance could do no wrong and that the finance guys had all the answers and they were they could have any degree of Leverage any amount of debt they wanted they could do any kind of options trading they wanted and I think because of the financial crisis 2008 The View that came out of that was that you need uh tighter constraints around what the financial system can do with regard to systemic risk individuals can do things that are risky fine it's if it's their money but if they have a knock-on effect for the entire system we need people to be much more careful and I think today in 2023 we're grappling with at least Echoes of what we saw in 2007-2008 but the Echoes are not that strong at the moment Rob in part because the vision changed and the rules changed and the behavior changed now on Tech I think it's it's very analogous that there is a vision of machine learning creating machine intelligence which is this I think completes misleading term but the idea is that you want to replace humans in production in service sector everywhere in the economy and and that they can do I mean sometimes there's it's not very effective Tehran and Pascal Restrepo coin to term so-so automation like uh self-checkout kiosks at the grocery store they don't boost productivity that much but they do tilt the balance of power between the owners or the grocery store and the workers and consequence and then they're also popular perhaps with analysts so they that technology does get adopted and I think we're grappling with another Vision Rob that's become too predominant too prevalent and and somewhat dangerous doesn't mean we're anti-tech I'm not anti-finance we need a financial sector I don't want a financial actor that blows yourself up I don't want a tech sector that destroys millions or tens of millions of jobs without giving us an opportunity to build new jobs new tasks new things humans can do in the Spirit of Transformations that Innovation often bring there seems to be perhaps an enlarged Market for education it is in your mind I think I remember reading this in the book that this could be a platform for subsidies or grants or for whether it's companies retraining people to step up to the new technology whether it's people changing from what you might call working with their hands to working in the digital realm at a different place but having what I called a running start the qualifications is there perhaps something that could be publicly funded that is what you might call the conveyor belt to transformation through education using these Technologies yeah I think that's a great idea Rob something we'd strongly encourage we don't think that education alone is enough we do think the change in the direction of Technologies is super important number one priority yes but if you change the direction of technology to make education more effective that could be extremely helpful for many many people and help them connect with the new opportunities the new jobs and and really make the participation in that new Prosperity much broader so I want to be clear for our listeners about that you don't want to leave technology alone to smash up all kinds of people in their careers that we got to be mindful of what's implemented exante but in the event of transformation we might be able to enhance or turbocharge the transformational assistance using technology that's a good formulation Rob um very good we'll put that on on our Amazon Web book site well I think the uh you guys have almost opened a Floodgate I don't think there's a week when I go to a convening about what inet's doing or a dinner party with people from China or whatever were these issues aren't at least broached a little bit and now you've created a focal point around which we can all explore invigorate our imaginations look at some history go deeper and and and I think making this a centerpiece conversation we have a commission on global economic transformation at inet co-chaired by Mike Spence and uh Joe stiglitz the questions of globalization what is a nation-state anymore and how can it protect its people and how keep can it keep its big money from running offshore and hiding so the resources can't be taxed the financial system which you and I've worked on and talked about climate issues and climate issues as a public good and all over the planet but technology Mike Spence James manika have been the quarterbacks in that realm but seeing technology I mentioned earlier how to deploy it constructively to invigorate India and Africa as well as what to do to channel it not to damage other people but to enhance other people and and I don't know whether you know how would I say one can be spiritual or religious and there might be the equivalent of Saint Peter or not but if you want to get through the Pearly Gates doing well and doing good at the same time might make a better chance of getting a pass to get into that Arena where what's the scariest place from your and thereon's conversations what's the scariest place on earth related to the technology challenges now well I I think uh the situation Russia's invasion of Ukraine uh Rob is is very dangerous in many ways but if you think about the technology when we develop technology in the past and and when we've intensely looked for malevolent uh applications like during World War one right where uh the technology that was behind artificial fertilizer was turned into poison gas uh the production of poison gas by the same scientists I think that sort of distortion of technology and and focusing on killing people that's very problematic and I and I think um there is potential always potential for more of that particularly when technologically advanced countries um are drawn into prolonged conflict so I think we really need a de-escalation well we need Russia to leave Ukraine actually and then we need a de-escalation around Russia and we need China to recognize that and we should recognize that ourselves if we can quiet down the world and push more of the technology into productive peaceful purposes everyone gains hmm and do you think that the how'd I say new digital technology has played a big role in the onset of the or the implementations in the Ukraine war there's certainly a lot of applications I mean based on what I read in the newspapers there's certainly a lot of applications of drone technology uh and that's yeah definitely digital technology and and there may be a change in the sort of um digital control and digital interface uh used on the battlefield again the stories about that um and of course missiles uh rob a very prominent uh how do you protect your civilians how do you protect all the civilians in your countries against any single one Hypersonic missile that's fired from far away that comes at you at five times or ten times the speed of sound I mean these are very hard technological questions this is and we don't seem like we're uh negotiating like Gorbachev and Reagan did in Iceland about how to how to de-escalate and tune these things down and on Old Daniel Ellsberg who appeared at one of my young scholars events a couple years ago he's very concerned that it's not just say a fight between two countries that matters that the upper atmosphere can be destroyed by the explosion of these bombs which can destroy the ability to create food and feed all the animals and humans on planet Earth his book the Doomsday Machine uh shows then this is not what I'll call a science fiction writer or some ominous these are things that are published in science and nature magazine by very very capable scientists this he just happens to have worked in that realm of National Security and illuminate it but do you uh how would I say a lot of I have young children so I'm asking a question a lot of people are very concerned about what's happening in brain development and formation of children say from ages 8 to 12. because of iPads and uh iPads iPhones it's all that kind of or the equivalent on Samsung one not picking on a company this but the digital consumption did you in in preparing for this book did you come across some uh concerns from the medical world or the neurological World about that facet of uh either what I'll call biological health or mental health well there's certainly a lot of concern Robert and plenty of debate I'm not sure that the evidence is yet uh definitive on that but we we do emphasize that the you know the need for uh people to continue thinking critically to understand what is being done to them in that environment by you know various forces attempting to manipulate them and so on and and I think that um many of those abilities are best developed early on without over-reliance on digital Technologies the question though in digital would be how do you use the access to all of this data data that you know you and I When We Were Young didn't have access to a tiny fraction of that even even in the best uh Public Library but yeah young people can access a lot of information what do they do with it right to what extent does it help them make better decisions or are they just more confused more Angry more polarized I think those are absolutely pressing issues that we need to continue to work on even as AI probably exacerbates some of those issues so the key with regard to AI the key fear is that it will displace the need for people yes absolutely I think that is the the main problem um that it will replace people in jobs very quickly now automation always replaces people that's the definition uh if it's very productive Automation and it creates a lot of new tasks which is what happened in the U.S Auto industry in the early 20th century then you get you get better outcomes but if the form of AI just displaces people doesn't generate new tasks and also it's not very productivity enhancing even then then you have a problem then you have um you're much much less likely to get good outcomes well having grown up in Detroit and watched automation machine learning and globalization without much transformational assistance uh how would I say what they call the diseases of Despair were quite evident among the adult community uh in those years when I grew up and uh so I I have a what you might call a haunted memory of of transformational despair and hopefully it all ends up but as somebody said to me this digital thing will all take out in two or three generations I said what are you going to do with the human beings for two or three generations yeah I think that that's two three generations I mean that's that's not acceptable right I I'm from Sheffield in the north of England uh Rob and I I left as a young as a young man but um that's that's a part of the world that really struggled not with digital transformation but with with other earlier industrial Transformations yeah and it's you know it's quite sad what happens to many people who's the guy who wrote a book The Long Revolution uh he uh he talked a lot about the need to transform education in the different regions uh and the the elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge are in one path but people from Wales and others are not going to get admitted because they were considered a different kind of worker and uh creating which might call the rungs in the latter for transformation creates uh perhaps a more enthusiastic or less despondent Society come too close to the end here just quickly you've offered this book what would you like to see happen and how can people like my audience as activists we have 20 000 members of our young scholars initiative they will be highly curious we all read the book what do you want us to do uh let's have lots of arguments I think Rob I think arguments discussions proposals counter proposals that's the way that's the way we made progress on finance I would say right very active engagement you know lots of people lots of people for whom you know you might they might say well it's not my job good if it's not your job make it your passion right dive into these issues confront them the technology is everywhere technology is all around us what are we doing with it where is it taking us what is it doing to our kids pound away these questions every day and let's get some political candidates who run with different Visions let's get some companies that get funded with different visions and and let's see if we can change this enormous ship which is technology development change its course or maybe it's not one ship maybe we need to break it up into lots of smaller ships that go in different directions and then we see what those those can deliver but I do think the energy of readers the energy of people um you participate in your network for example Rob is incredibly important that's what gave us previous waves of reform in the US and elsewhere and I and I think that's our main hope going forward well how would I say I'm I'm on I'm with you I'm gonna I'm gonna work hard on this one I watched your beautiful work and I want to I want to make another quick advertisement your book with James quack 13 Bankers everybody that just saw Sun Valley Bank ought to order a copy of that and catch up with the Echoes because they got to sort out what's what's really dangerous now and what's not and that book was another Guiding Light in that other sector a not at Monty and others all loved that book I remember uh when you presented it to us but right now I think when I think about Scholars I think of multi-disciplinary integration I think of their emotional maturity and compassion and I think about something that's almost magical of choosing the right thing to focus on you're three for three man way to go thank you congratulations to dayron as well all right really appreciate it Rob you'll always mean a lot to us always thank you so much well thanks for being with me today and uh I'm probably gonna be calling you back because young scholars in this you're going to want you guys to uh do an event with them shortly delighted we always like to work with you you and your colleagues Rob

Channel: New Economic Thinking

Views: 8,508

Keywords: economics explained, economic collapse, societal collapse, 13 bankers, financial crash, financial crisis, learn economics

Id: hFXZdp5bzF8

Length: 50min 59sec (3059 seconds)

Published: Wed May 17 2023