The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Will AI Steal My Job? (Testing ChatGPT) || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

Worried AI is going to steal your job and kick you to the curb? If you watched the video, you can probably see why I'm not worried about my job security. While AI is going to change the way we do a lot of things, it still needs some time before it's cracking the kind of nuanced jokes I'm famous for. Note: This video was recrorded prior to the GPT-4 update. Full Newsletter:

Hey everybody, it's Peter Zion, and today we're going to talk about the future of global trade. Now, the world of international trade is constantly evolving. It's important to keep up the latest trends and developments. From emerging markets to geopolitical conflicts, there are many factors that can impact global trade. We'll be discussing some of those today. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and let's dive into this exciting and ever-changing topic. The world's changing fast and technology is a big reason why. Now, you've probably heard about automation and AI and they're really shaking things up in the business world. I mean, who knew robots would be better at the packing boxes than humans? Now, we just need to make

sure they don't even know us. One thing we're seeing is that emerging markets like China and India are becoming major players from global trade. They've got big populations, that are growing middle class, which we used to buying more stuff, and that's great news for businesses that want to sell to them. So if you've got a product that's hot in India, get ready to see those profits skyrocket. Just make sure you have a good recipe for curry, because you might be too oppress some clients. But there are some challenges too. The United States, for example, has become more productive of its industries, which has led to trade tensions with other countries, and Brexit has made things a little bit more complicated between the UK and Europe. I mean, who doesn't

love a good geopolitical drunk, right? And then there's the going on of the Ukraine colony. Now, I know what you're thinking, wow, this is getting heavy. But hey, on the bright side, it's not all doom and gloom. You can still order your favorite Ukrainian vodka online and have it delivered right to your doorstep. So let's raise a glass to international trade, even in touch of conflict. So what does all this mean for the future? Well, it's hard to say for sure, but one thing's for sure. We are in for a wild ride, and as a geopolitical strategist, I'll be keeping a close eye at things, and I'll share my insights with you as we navigate this ever-changing world. Thanks for tuning in, and remember, laughter is the best medicine, even when they're talking about

serious topics. Okay, now, that was not my words. That is chat. GEP who was asked to write a script for me. It took about 60 keystrokes and it came up with that. Now from a geopolitical analytical point of view of my own, it's out of crap. It's at best freshman, not even sophomore, but remember that chat GDP is barely into beta testing right now. And the fact that it was able to analyze what I've written and said in the past and pick up on my cadence and insert the odd joke even if they were just horrible jokes is an indication of what's coming down the pipe. And for folks that don't require my depth of knowledge in order to tease out things like the caveats and long-term forecasts, you got to admit that just kind of splotting that

on the wall like spaghetti for a first try was disturbingly good. Now, this isn't going to disrupt every industry, but now that the context and the grammar and the sentence structure is something that AI can do, we're going to be seeing this get more and more mature as it builds in more information. Now, from my point of view, as somebody who's authored a few books, copy editors are in trouble because this thing was flawless from a grammatical and a copy editor point of view, and again, it generated this thing in less than a second. But when it comes to drawing connections between different topics or, say, diving into demography, all it knew was to say the word demography,

all it knew was to say the word trade and protectionism. It doesn't have a deeper understanding of what those mean in a broader context or in a human context. So at the pace we're going, my job is still good for prom with the rest of my professional career. But for folks who are dealing with low value-added white-collar work, or even mid-value where the strength is

out the cross context and the cross-disciplinary experience, but simply running the numbers, and I'm thinking here about basic accountants, this is a pretty problematic innovation for you. So the trick will be for folks who are a little lower on the value added totem pole to figure out how to use this technology themselves to leverage themselves among their peers. Using this, I probably couldn't put together too much of a framework, but most of the people are not in my field. And in terms of teaching someone English, oh my God, what a great tool. So is it the end of the world for all of us? No. Are the machines rising up? No. Clearly the value added in this system is still relatively limited. But it does have the capacity to form complete

sentences and paragraphs and thoughts now. And as it gets better, it'll start handing ornaments on those in a way that are already start to challenge those low and mid-level white collar jobs. Now, the way of the economy is of all the globally anyway, we're going into a system where there's more breakup. I'd as capital costs get higher because of the retirement of the baby boomers, we are seeing different industries suffer and benefit in different ways. So for the tech industry, for example, having really, really cheap capital, a lot of people are the 20s and 30s is the lifeblood, and that's not the world we're in. And so we've seen significant layoffs as they can't maintain more output without inputs that are of lower cost. But as the world to globalizes, manufacturing's moving around, and countries like the United States that still want stuff are going to have to build up themselves. Well, higher capital costs are great for that, but if you are building something real in an environment of shortage is relatively easy capital and even workers, what we're seeing now is kind of the revenge of the real, as you will, as intangible goods no longer have the demographic and economic and capital situations.

that they need to thrive. But if you want to build industrial plant to build a real physical product, all of a sudden, in relative terms, it's gotten a lot easier because the Googles and the Facebooks of the world are not sucking all the oxygen out of the room and all the capital out of the markets.

It's part of the transformation of where you hit. ChatGVP is going to push in the opposite direction on a lot of those trends, which means that all those white collar workers who have done really, really well in the last 20 years, suddenly have some competition at the same time the base inputs, capital, labor for their industry are starting to dry up somewhat. It's a real reorientation. And if you're in the

bottom half of the income scale, you're more likely to be blue collar, you have a really, really good decade ahead of you. Okay, that's it for me. I'll see you guys later.