The Acceleration of Artificial Intelligence

and myself on the phone and Silicon Valley. Martin, good to have you back with us. You know robots. Katie and I were talking a little bit in the break. Uh. For older folks, maybe you think about Lost in Space. You might think about Star Wars. You think about Amazon Distribution centers, Boston Dynamics, Spot or Big Dog Robots. You wrote your previous AI, um, your previous book. I should say what back in you talked about AI there. What's what's changed between the Rise of the Robots and the

Rule of the Robots. Well, the story is that artificially telling is accelerating. It's getting more and more powerful, and it's really becoming almost like the utility. It's becoming like electricity. So it's going to be everywhere um and and in some cases it will be you know, physical actual robots, um. But a lot of times it's algorithms working behind the scenes, really impacting every aspect of our lives. So it's really I think it's going to be one of the main

forces that shapes our future. It's really gonna have tremendous influence. Katie is really worried about one thing. Go ahead, When do I have to worry about when a robot is going to take my job? Martin, I think about a lot. I don't think. I don't think about any any movies, just job security, right. I mean, it's it's a huge issue, and it's what I started writing about in Lines of the Robots in this book. I continue that, and you know,

I think it's going to be a relentless trend. Um. The pandemic in some ways has actually accelerated it because we had this requirement for more social distancing. Right, if you can use a robot or an algorithm to do a job, then it means fewer people in that space u um. And after the pandemic, of course, or you know, around now we we we've actually run into a worker shortage where um for various reasons, people have not yet returned to the workforce, and that is also actually accelerating

and pushed to automation. There are lots of stories in the news about restaurants and retail scores and so forth that they're beginning to embrace automation because of this shortage, and that's going to continue to accelerate into the future. You know, eventually more people will return to the market or to the job market, and of course businesses aren't going to abandon these technologies, so they're going to continue

to get better. Robots are going to get more dexterous, more able to do more of the things that people can do, and the same is true of artificial intelligence algorithms. You know, it's going to really impact work across the board, from both unskilled work and more skilled work as well. We've talked with John Taffer bar Rescue about increased automation and restaurants, and he's talked about the lack of workers

coming back to the restaurant industry. Is this a good thing going forward in that lower level, lower paying service jobs are getting replaced by automation and robots, and that gives workers an opportunity to elevate uh their skills and their job opportunities. Yes, I mean to the extent that that happens, right, But my concern, I guess, is that there are going to be a lot of people that

there are going to struggle to find that better position. Uh. Not everyone has the skills or a particular talents that you might need. For example, when more routine jobs disappear, the kinds of jobs where people tend to do the same types of things again and again, then yes, there are may be other opportunities in areas like, for example, jobs that really require forming a deep relationship with other people, UM think of a nurse or something like that, right.

Or there might be more opportunities in really creative fields where you're kind of thinking outside the box. But not everyone is is equipped to do that kind of work. I mean, you can't expect that everyone is going to become a a computer program or robotics engineer or or um a counselor to help people. I mean needs require specific talents, right that not everyone has. So I do think there's a real risk that a significant fraction of our workforce is gonna really struggle to keep up with

these trends. And Martin quickly, I'm curious what kind of timeline we're talking about, because you mentioned that the pandemic has accelerated it, the workers shortage has accelerated it. But at what point does AI actually become, you know, as common as electricity. I think over the next ten years certainly will we'll see that develop. Um. It's it's to a very real extent, is happening already. I mean AI is is in almost everything. Um. And that's going to

be even more true. Um. And and again it's going to get much more powerful. UM. Jeff Bezos, for example, said that within ten years he expects to have robots that can basically do what people do in terms of grasping objects, which means that Amazon warehouses, you know, would probably need a lot less people and they have right now. Right. So it's just one example, but we're going to see that nearly across the board in terms of the capability

of this technology. And as you said, then we need to upscale and train a lot of workers, which has been an argument that you've heard from go all the way back to I think Alan Greenspan in terms of, you know, training workers for the jobs that are needed for tomorrow. Hey, we're going to continue with Martin Ford. He's entrepreneur, he's an author. His book that he wrote, of course, The Rise of the Robots, that was a New York Times bestseller. His new book, Rule of the Robots.

We're gonna continue that conversation. Well, still with us is Martin Ford. He's an entrepreneur and author. He wrote The Rise of the Robots, How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything. His new book is on shelves now. That is the Rule of the Robots, How Artificial Intelligence will Transform Everything. And Martin, you know, we've had you with us and we've I feel like we've been using the term robots and AI kind of interchangeably. But is there a distinction

that we should draw there? They often are used somewhat interchangeably because people, you know, think in terms of software robots. But you know, the way I would define it is that artificial intelligence is clearly the underlying technology. It means, you know, building machines that begin to exhibit what we would call intelligence. Now when you turn it into a physical machine, something that you know can physically manipulate the world. Then then you're talking about a robot. But actually most

of artificial intelligence is really just software. You know, it's intelligence being deployed on computers UM, and that definitely has is going to have just as big an impact, if not more than than actual robots. Well, you know what's interesting is Katie's got a story that's actually on the Bloomberg Terma. It's among our most read and it's talking about UM Martin. It's talking about Goldman Sachs specifically, how they are looking for the next future tech leaders, basically

the next batch of Thangstock. So the disruptors, the innovators in your book, you talked to a lot of it. When it comes to a I for our audience, I'm always thinking about the next trends. You know, who are the Apples? Who are the Googles? Who are the facebooks of tomorrow? Tell us about some of the people you spoke with some of the companies that really stood out

for you. Well, the people I spoke with our our artificial intelligence researchers UM for the most part, and they work a lot of them work at companies like Google and Facebook. Uh. But what I would say is that AI is going to kind of underlie everything in the future, and so the companies to emerge across different industries UM as leaders are going to be those that really deploy this technology effectively. It's going to become really just a primary essential tool that UM is going to be critical

and creating value. And those companies that do it early on and can deploy this this technology more rapidly are very likely to have a first mover advantage UM. So you look at companies like black Rock, for example, they're suggested heavily in AI, UM Bridge that are confirmed, right, yeah, yeah, exactly, Bridgewater they they've really you know, utilized it. Goldmen Sax is another one certainly absolutely that they themselves have invested

in in a so on Wall Street. The companies that do this, of course, are gaining an advantage because you know, the hedge funds are using artificial intelligence to trade and the forecast and and so forth. It's true across every every industry. UM Retailers like Walmart are are investing heavily in in AI, and they're gonna i mean just to bring automation into stores, but also in terms of logistics, planning,

UM and so forth. UM Basically, any company that controls a lot of data, it's going to be in a position to use artificial intelligence to essentially harvest the data that value in that data um and and to leverage that in different ways. When you talk about data, I think about China, who's going to be especially based on some of the recent moves by Beijing and Chinese government officials and policymakers that they will be accumulating batches of data like no one else. What advantage do you think

that that gives China going forward? Yeah, I mean this is a huge issue. This is one of the most important chapters in my book about the race between the United States and the West generally and China. And China does have a number of advantages. As you say, They've got huge amounts of data because they've got an enormous population four times our size UM and in many ways

they're also more connected than we are. You know, they rely on They've got a uh an app called we Chat, for example, that everyone uses on our smartphone to do virtually every kind of transaction throughout their economy. So they are much more reliant on mobile processing UM payments. For example, in the United States is and that just means more data. So they've got enormous amounts of data that they can

work with. They have less really constraints on you know, because of issues like privacy and things like that, UM in terms of companies being able to access that data across areas healthcare and so forth, UM and in other advantages because they've got such a huge population, there's got an enormous number of talented engineers right that are coming up through the system that have a very very strong interest in learning about building artificial intelligence applications and they're

you know, rushing to do that. They're all, you know, across the business landscape in China, there are huge numbers of startup companies, many of which are are now unicorns billions, and all the startups UM compete competing, especially in areas like facial recognition and so forth. So there's a very strong level of competition there. And you know, what's happening in China is very much supported by and to some

extent funded by the Chinese government. Right they have an explicit strategy to make China into a leader in artificial intelligence. They want to at least get parody with the US and perhaps maybe by the year you get beyond this. So well, Martin, that gets into an area that I really want to talk to you about because you know, we know the companies are really putting their muscles behind it.

And when it comes to countries, the nations you just mentioned China trying to get to parity with the United States. Where does the rest of the world fit in, Well, many other countries are also about important initiatives. Israel is very strong in artificial intelligence, as is you know, Russia, of course, um, and you see more evidence of it in Europe. You know, it is the nature of the technology that, um, it doesn't matter that much who creates it,

who who develops it. It's going to be everywhere. So artificial intelligence you're going to be deployed everywhere in every country. So it's going to revolutionize um, you know, pretty much every economy, I would say, so. So well, you know what's interesting too though, right, there's tremendous upside to some of that, But we talked about some of the dislocations

potentially for many of the workforce. I also think about things like military and defense increasingly that is already automated, and it's whether you're using drones it's more like a video game. It's not hand to hand combat, although we know that there's still a lot of that that goes on unfortunately. But I do wonder is that a downside that increasingly if it's a I used for weapons and just got about thirty seconds here, I mean, that's one

of the downsides potentially. Yeah, that's one of the scariest scenarios that you could have truly automated weapons that can attack people, kill people without anyone specifically authorizing that. And then the really scary thing is what if weapons like that fall into the hands of terrorists, you know, outside of legitimate the Sherry control. Well, Martin, that's that's truly scary. It's so good to check in with you. It was when we talked about Rise of the Robots, and so

great to catch up on your new book. Martin Ford. Check out his new book. It's called Rule of the Robots. How Artificial Intelligence will transform Everything.