Everybody, Peter Zion here coming to you from the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. Taking a question from the ask Peter forum, specifically in artificial intelligence. The question is, if we’re looking at labor shortages, because the baby boomers the largest generation largest workforce we’ve ever had is now retiring and the new generation coming in Generation Z or the Zoomers? is the smallest generation ever. Are there things that can be rounded out and fixed with increases in productivity, such as artificial intelligence? And they The answer is maybe a couple problems here. First of all, we are very unlikely to be able to sustain the level of production of artificial intelligence capable chips that is necessary to fundamentally make over the American or global workforce. The problem is that there are 1000s of companies that have to be involved in order to manufacture those chips in the first place. Yes, yes, yes, 90% of them do come from a single town in Taiwan. And there’s a security issue there. And I don’t mean to belittle that, but it’s really a bigger problem. Because most of those companies that are involved in the supply chain to keep those fabrication facilities running, only make one product for one end user, which is TSMC, and Taiwan. And if something happens to them, or none of them are really just a handful of them, then we’re going to lose the ability to make the chips at all. So the idea that we can have massive swaths of server farms, crunching data for artificial intelligence, it’s probably not going to happen this decade, it might not happen next decade, we’re gonna have to build a new ecosystem for that. And that just takes time. The second problem is the nature of artificial intelligence itself. There’s becoming this saying is I want artificial intelligence to do the dishes so that I can spend more time writing, I don’t want artificial intelligence to do my writing so that all of this left is the dishes. But this is the problem. Artificial Intelligence helps with white collar work, helps with brain work helps with correlation helps with correlation, things like paralegals, researchers, writers, editors, all that are the sorts of jobs that are going to be slimmed down, most likely because of it. And that’s not where the labor shortage is in the United States. Over the course of the last 50 years, the baby boomers have really focused on getting their kids to college, and getting them into high value added white collar jobs. But in a world where the Chinese are fading very quickly, and where the United States has experienced an industrial Renaissance, we instead need electricians, and we need welders and we need linemen, we need people to physically move and make things that’s not white collar work, that’s blue collar work. And artificial intelligence cannot help nearly as much with that. So artificial intelligence is going to be part of the future. But I don’t think it’s going to happen as fast as folks happen. And when it does happen, it’s going to remake industries, like finance, moving money around more efficiently so that the swaths of cadre that we haven’t say New York, suddenly all of a sudden have less to do, it’s going to increase the capability of white collar workers and make them more productive. So we don’t need as many people I’d say, like the back end of doctors offices processing all the insurance claims, it might be able to help crack the genome to make agriculture more productive. And it’s certainly going to be involved in use in defense and cryptography in order to increase security, but it’s probably not going to be a huge part of manufacturing. And for that to happen, we don’t simply need AI. We need robotics, mobile robotics, and AI at the moment is not there, it’s progressing. But that’s probably going to be a significant issue in the 2040s not the 2020s. So can it help? Sure, at the margins, but you’re probably still going to have to do your own damn dishes.
Can AI replace those retiring boomers?
By Straight Arrow News
The workforce is aging, with baby boomers retiring faster than new workers are entering the job market. This raises concerns about who will fill the gap left by the retiring population. Some predict that artificial intelligence (AI), which is rapidly being integrated into the workforce, might serve as a substitute for human workers.
Watch the video above as Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan explores AI’s impact on the aging workforce and examines whether this technology can effectively replace it.
Be the first to know when Peter Zeihan publishes a new commentary! Download the Straight Arrow News app and enable push notifications today!
Excerpted from Peter’s July 31 “Zeihan on Geopolitics” newsletter:
As the baby boomers age into retirement and Gen Z fails to satisfy the gaping hole left in the labor market, will artificial intelligence be able to help mitigate some of the fallout?
AI has solidified its spot in the labor mix of the future, but “when?” and “how?” are the looming questions. Producing AI-capable chips remains highly complex and reliant upon a web of critical international suppliers. Until that supply chain is slimmed down and fail-safes are added, production disruptions will continue to be a huge factor in limiting the AI buildout.
On the other front, the nature of AI lends itself to better take on white-collar work. Most people picture AI taking care of the manual and mundane tasks no one wants, but it is better suited to a lifestyle “in the office.” So, the places we need the help most, like blue-collar jobs, won’t get much help on the AI front.
AI’s transformative effect is coming, but it won’t occur as quickly as many expect. Think in the 40s rather than the 20s. When it does arrive, the productivity in white-collar jobs will skyrocket, but fields that really need some extra hands (or hand effectors or whatever you call robots’ metaphorical gripping mechanisms) will still be scrambling to navigate the labor shortages.
This video was recorded in mid-July, prior to Peter departing on his backpacking trip.
Everybody, Peter Zion here coming to you from the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. Taking a question from the ask Peter forum, specifically in artificial intelligence. The question is, if we’re looking at labor shortages, because the baby boomers the largest generation largest workforce we’ve ever had is now retiring and the new generation coming in Generation Z or the Zoomers? is the smallest generation ever. Are there things that can be rounded out and fixed with increases in productivity, such as artificial intelligence? And they The answer is maybe a couple problems here. First of all, we are very unlikely to be able to sustain the level of production of artificial intelligence capable chips that is necessary to fundamentally make over the American or global workforce. The problem is that there are 1000s of companies that have to be involved in order to manufacture those chips in the first place. Yes, yes, yes, 90% of them do come from a single town in Taiwan. And there’s a security issue there. And I don’t mean to belittle that, but it’s really a bigger problem. Because most of those companies that are involved in the supply chain to keep those fabrication facilities running, only make one product for one end user, which is TSMC, and Taiwan. And if something happens to them, or none of them are really just a handful of them, then we’re going to lose the ability to make the chips at all. So the idea that we can have massive swaths of server farms, crunching data for artificial intelligence, it’s probably not going to happen this decade, it might not happen next decade, we’re gonna have to build a new ecosystem for that. And that just takes time. The second problem is the nature of artificial intelligence itself. There’s becoming this saying is I want artificial intelligence to do the dishes so that I can spend more time writing, I don’t want artificial intelligence to do my writing so that all of this left is the dishes. But this is the problem. Artificial Intelligence helps with white collar work, helps with brain work helps with correlation helps with correlation, things like paralegals, researchers, writers, editors, all that are the sorts of jobs that are going to be slimmed down, most likely because of it. And that’s not where the labor shortage is in the United States. Over the course of the last 50 years, the baby boomers have really focused on getting their kids to college, and getting them into high value added white collar jobs. But in a world where the Chinese are fading very quickly, and where the United States has experienced an industrial Renaissance, we instead need electricians, and we need welders and we need linemen, we need people to physically move and make things that’s not white collar work, that’s blue collar work. And artificial intelligence cannot help nearly as much with that. So artificial intelligence is going to be part of the future. But I don’t think it’s going to happen as fast as folks happen. And when it does happen, it’s going to remake industries, like finance, moving money around more efficiently so that the swaths of cadre that we haven’t say New York, suddenly all of a sudden have less to do, it’s going to increase the capability of white collar workers and make them more productive. So we don’t need as many people I’d say, like the back end of doctors offices processing all the insurance claims, it might be able to help crack the genome to make agriculture more productive. And it’s certainly going to be involved in use in defense and cryptography in order to increase security, but it’s probably not going to be a huge part of manufacturing. And for that to happen, we don’t simply need AI. We need robotics, mobile robotics, and AI at the moment is not there, it’s progressing. But that’s probably going to be a significant issue in the 2040s not the 2020s. So can it help? Sure, at the margins, but you’re probably still going to have to do your own damn dishes.
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