The REAL Reason ONLY 5 Jobs Will EXIST in 24 Months

You have made a series of predictions

and they correspond to a variety of

different dates. I have those dates in

front of me here.

What is your prediction for the year

2027?

We're probably looking at AGI as

predicted by prediction markets and tops

of the labs.

So we have artificial general

intelligence by 2027.

And how would that make the world

different to how it is now?

So if you have this concept of a drop in

employee, you have free labor, physical

and cognitive, trillions of dollars of

it. It makes no sense to hire humans for

most jobs. If I can just get, you know,

a $20 subscription or a free model to do

what an employee does. First, anything

on a computer will be automated.

And next, I think humanoid robots are

maybe 5 years behind. So in 5 years, all

the physical labor can also be

automated. So we're looking at a world

where we have levels of unemployment we

never seen before. Not talking about 10%

unemployment which is scary but 99%. All

you have left is jobs where for whatever

reason you prefer another human would do

it for you.

But anything else can be fully

automated. It doesn't mean it will be

automated in practice. A lot of times

technology exists but it's not deployed.

Video phones were invented in the 70s.

Nobody had them until iPhones came

around.

So we may have a lot more time with jobs

and with world which looks like this.

But capability

to replace most humans and most

occupations will come very quickly.

H okay. So let's try and drill down into

that and and stress test it. So,

a podcaster like me, would you need a

podcaster like me?

So, let's look at what you do. You

prepare. You

ask questions.

You ask follow-up questions. And you

look good on camera.

Thank you so much.

Let's see what we can do. Large language

model today can easily read everything I

wrote. Yeah.

And have very solid understanding.

Better. I assume you haven't read every

single one of my books. that thing would

do it. It can train on every podcast you

ever did. So, it knows exactly your

style, the types of questions you ask.

It can also

find correspondence between what worked

really well. Like this type of question

really increased views. This type of

topic was very promising. So, you can

optimize I think better than you can

because you don't have a data set.

Of course, visual simulation is trivial

at this point. So it can you can make a

video within seconds of me sat here and

so we can generate videos of you

interviewing anyone on any topic very

efficiently and you just have to get

likeness approval whatever

are there many jobs that you think would

remain in a world of AGI if you're

saying AGI is potentially going to be

here whether it's deployed or not by

2027 what kind and then okay so let's

take out of this any physical labor jobs

for a second are there any jobs that you

think a human would be able to do better

in a world of AGI still?

So that's the question I often ask

people in a world with AGI and I think

almost immediately we'll get super

intelligence as a side effect. So the

question really is in a world of super

intelligence which is defined as better

than all humans in all domains. What can

you contribute?

And so you know better than anyone what

it's like to be you. You know what ice

cream tastes to you? Can you get paid

for that knowledge? Is someone

interested in that?

Maybe not. Not a big market. There are

jobs where you want a human. Maybe

you're rich and you want a human

accountant for whatever historic

reasons.

Old people like traditional ways of

doing things. Warren Buffett would not

switch to AI. He would use his human

accountant.

But it's a tiny subset of a market.

Today we have products which are

man-made in US as opposed to

mass-produced in China and some people

pay more to have those but it's a small

subset. It's a almost a fetish. There is

no practical reason for it and I think

anything you can do on a computer could

be automated using that technology.

You must hear a lot of rebuttals to when

this when you say it because people

experience a huge amount of mental

discomfort when they hear that their

job, their career, the thing they got a

degree in, the thing they invested

$100,000 into is going to be taken away

from them. So, their natural reaction

some for some people is that cognitive

dissonance that no, you're wrong. AI

can't be creative. It's not this. It's

not that. It'll never be interested in

my job. I'll be fine because you hear

these arguments all the time, right?

It's really funny. I ask people and I

ask people in different occupations.

I'll ask my Uber driver, "Are you

worried about self-driving cars?" And

they go, "No, no one can do what I do. I

know the streets of New York. I can

navigate like no AI. I'm safe." And it's

true for any job. Professors are saying

this to me. Oh, nobody can lecture like

I do. Like, this is so special. But you

understand, it's ridiculous. We already

have self-driving cars replacing

drivers.

That is not even a question

if it's possible. It's like how soon

before you fired.

Yeah. I mean, I've just been in LA

yesterday and uh my car drives itself.

So, I get in the car, I set put in where

I want to go and then I don't touch the

steering wheel or the brake pedals and

it takes me from A to B, even if it's an

hourong drive without any intervention

at all. I actually still park it, but

other than that, I'm not I'm not driving

the car at all. And obviously in LA we

also have Whimo now which means you

order it on your phone and it shows up

with no driver in it and takes you to

where you want to go.

Oh yeah.

So it's quite clear to see how that is

potentially a matter of time for those

people cuz we do have some of those

people listening to this conversation

right now that their occupation is

driving to offer them a and I think

driving is the biggest occupation in the

world if I'm correct. I'm pretty sure it

is the biggest occupation in the world.

One of the top ones. Yeah.

What would you say to those people? What

should they be doing with their lives?

What should they should they be

retraining in something or what time

frame?

So that's the paradigm shift here.

Before we always said this job is going

to be automated. Retrain to do this

other job. But if I'm telling you that

all jobs will be automated, then there

is no plan B. You cannot retrain.

Look at computer science. Two years ago,

we told people learn to code. you are an

artist, you cannot make money, learn to

code. Then we realized, oh, AI kind of

knows how to code and getting better.

Become a prompt engineer.

You can engineer prompts for AI. It's

going to be a great job. Get a 40-year

degree in it. But then we're like, AI is

way better at designing prompts for

other AIs than any human. So that's

gone. So I can't really tell you right

now the hardest thing is design AI

agents for practical applications. I

guarantee you in a year or two it's

going to be gone just as well.

So I don't think there is a this

occupation needs to learn to do this

instead. I think it's more like we as a

humanity then we all lose our jobs. What

do we do? What do we do financially?

Who's paying for us? And what do we do

in terms of meaning? What do I do with

my extra 60 80 hours a week?

You've thought around this corner,

haven't you? a little bit.

What is around that corner in your view?

So the economic part seems easy. If you

create a lot of free labor, you have a

lot of free wealth, abundance, things

which are right now not very affordable

become dirt cheap and so you can provide

for everyone basic needs. Some people

say you can provide beyond basic needs.

You can provide very good existence for

everyone. The hard problem is what do

you do with all that free time? For a

lot of people, their jobs are what gives

them meaning in their life. So they

would be kind of lost. We see it with

people who uh retire or do early

retirement. And for so many people who

hate their jobs, they'll be very happy

not working. But now you have people who

are chilling all day. What happens to

society? How does that impact crime

rate, pregnancy rate, all sorts of

issues nobody thinks about? governments

don't have programs prepared to deal

with 99% unemployment.

What do you think that world looks like?

Again, I I think

the very important part to understand

here is the unpredictability of it. We

cannot predict what a smarter than us

system will do. And the point when we

get to that is often called singularity

by analogy with physical singularity.

You cannot see beyond the event horizon.

I can tell you what I think might

happen, but that's my prediction. It is

not what actually is going to happen

because I just don't have cognitive

ability to predict a much smarter agent

impacting this world.

Then you read science fiction. There is

never a super intelligence in it

actually doing anything because nobody

can write believable science fiction at

that level. They either banned AI like

Dune because this way you can avoid

writing about it or it's like Star Wars.

You have this really dumb bots but not

nothing super intelligent ever cuz by

definition you cannot predict at that

level

because by definition of it being super

intelligent it will make its own mind

up.

By definition if it was something you

could predict you would be operating at

the same level of intelligence violating

our assumption that it is smarter than

you. If I'm playing chess with super

intelligence and I can predict every

move, I'm playing at that level.

It's kind of like my French bulldog

trying to predict exactly what I'm

thinking and what I'm going to do.

That's a good cognitive gap. And it's

not just he can predict you're going to

work, you're coming back, but he cannot

understand why you're doing a podcast.

That is something completely outside of

his model of the world.

Yeah. He doesn't even know that I go to

work. He just sees that I leave the

house and doesn't know where I go.

Buy food for him. What's the most

persuasive argument against your own

perspective here?

That we will not have unemployment due

to advanced technology

that there won't be this French bulldog

human gap in understanding and

I guess like power and control.

So some people think that we can enhance

human minds either through combination

with hardware. So something like

Neurolink or through genetic

re-engineering to where we make smarter

humans.

Yeah,

it may give us a little more

intelligence. I don't think we are still

competitive in biological form with

silicon form. Silicon substrate is much

more capable for intelligence. It's

faster. It's more resilient, more energy

efficient in many ways,

which is what computers are made out of

the brain. Yeah. So I don't think we can

keep up just with improving our biology.

Some people think maybe and this is very

speculative. We can upload our minds

into computers. So scan your brain

connect of your brain and have a

simulation running on a computer and you

can speed it up, give it more

capabilities. But to me that feels like

you no longer exist. We just created

software by different means and now you

have AI based on biology and AI based on

some other forms of training. You can

have evolutionary algorithms. You can

have many paths to reach AGI but at the

end none of them are humans.

I have a another date here which is

2030. What's your prediction for 2030?

What will the world look like?

So we probably will have uh humanoid

robots with enough flexibility,

dexterity to compete with humans in all

domains including plumbers. We can make

artificial plumbers.

Not the plumbers where that was that

felt like the last bastion of uh human

employment. So 2030, 5 years from now,

humanoid robots. So many of the

companies, the leading companies

including Tesla, are developing humanoid

robots at light speed and they're

getting increasingly more effective. And

these humanoid robots will be able to

move through physical space

for, you know, make an omelette, do

anything humans can do, but obviously

have be connected to AI as well. So they

can think, talk,

right? They're controlled by AI. They

always connected to the network. So they

are already dominating in many ways.

Our world will look remarkably different

when humanoid robots are functional and

effective because that's really when you

know I start think like the combination

of intelligence and physical ability

is really really doesn't leave much does

it for us um

human beings

not much. So today if you have

intelligence through internet you can

hire humans to do your bidding for you.

You can pay them in bitcoin. So you can

have bodies just not directly

controlling them. So it's not a huge

game changer to add direct control of

physical bodies. Intelligence is where

it's at. The important component is

definitely higher ability to optimize to

solve problems to find patterns people

cannot see. And then by 2045,

I guess the world looks even even more

um

which is 20 years from now.

So if it's still around,

if it's still around,

Ray Kerszswall predicts that that's the

year for the singularity. That's the

year where progress becomes so fast. So

this AI doing science and engineering

work makes improvements so quickly, we

cannot keep up anymore. That's the

definition of singularity. point beyond

which we cannot see, understand,

predict,

see, understand, predict the

intelligence itself or

what is happening in the world, the

technology is being developed. So right

now if I have an iPhone, I can look

forward to a new one coming out next

year and I'll understand it has slightly

better camera. Imagine now this process

of researching and developing this phone

is automated. It happens every 6 months,

every 3 months, every month, week, day,

hour minute second.

You cannot keep up with 30 iterations of

iPhone in one day. You don't understand

what capabilities it has, what

proper controls are. It just escapes

you. Right now, it's hard for any

researcher in AI to keep up with the

state-of-the-art. While I was doing this

interview with you, a new model came out

and I no longer know what the

state-of-the-art is. Every day, as a

percentage of total knowledge, I get

dumber. I may still know more because I

keep reading. But as a percentage of

overall knowledge, we're all getting

dumber.

And then you take it to extreme values,

you have zero knowledge, zero

understanding of the world around you.

So some of the arguments against this

eventuality are that when you look at

other technologies like the industrial

revolution, people just found new ways

to to work and new careers that we could

never have imagined at the time were

created. How do you respond to that? In

a world of super intelligence,

it's a paradigm shift. We always had

tools, new tools which allowed some job

to be done more efficiently. So instead

of having 10 workers, you could have two

workers and eight workers had to find a

new job. And there was another job. Now

you can supervise those workers or do

something cool. If you creating a meta

invention, you're inventing

intelligence. You're inventing a worker,

an agent, then you can apply that agent

to the new job. There is not a job which

cannot be automated. That never happened

before.

All the inventions we previously had

were kind of a tool for doing something.

So we invented fire. Huge game changer.

But that's it. It stops with fire. We

invent the wheel. Same idea. Huge

implications. But wheel itself is not an

inventor. Here we're inventing

a replacement for human mind. A new

inventor capable of doing new

inventions. It's the last invention we

ever have to make. At that point it

takes over and the process of doing

science research even ethics research

morals all that is automated at that

point.

Do you sleep well at night?

Really well.

Even though you you spent the last what

15 20 years of your life working on AI

safety and it's suddenly

among us in a in a way that I don't

think anyone could have predicted 5

years ago. When I say among us, I really

mean that the amount of funding and

talent that is now focused on reaching

super intelligence faster has made it

feel more inevitable and more soon

than any of us could have possibly

imagined.

We as humans have this built-in bias

about not thinking about really bad

outcomes and things we cannot prevent.

So all of us are dying.

Your kids are dying, your parents are

dying, everyone's dying, but you still

sleep well. you still go on with your

day. Even 95 year olds are still doing

games and playing golf and whatnot cuz

we have this ability to not think about

the worst outcomes especially if we

cannot actually modify the outcome. So

that's the same infrastructure being

used for this. Yeah, there is humanity

level deathlike event. We're happening

to be close to it probably, but unless I

can do something about it, I I can just

keep enjoying my life. In fact, maybe

knowing that you have limited amount of

time left gives you more reason to have

a better life. You cannot waste any.

And that's the survival trait of

evolution, I guess, because those of my

ancestors that spent all their time

worrying wouldn't have spent enough time

having babies and hunting to survive.

Suicidal ideiation. People who really

start thinking about how horrible the

world is usually escape pretty soon.

One of the you co-authored this paper um

analyzing the key arguments people make

against the importance of AI safety and

one of the arguments in there is that

there's other things that are of bigger

importance right now. It might be world

wars, it could be nuclear containment,

it could be other things. there's other

things that the governments and

podcasters like me should be talking

about that are more important. What's

your rebuttal to that argument?

So, super intelligence is a matter

solution. If we get super intelligence

right, it will help us with climate

change. It will help us with wars. It

can solve all the other existential

risks. If we don't get it right, it

dominates. If climate change will take a

100red years to boil us alive and super

intelligence kills everyone in five, I

don't have to worry about climate

change. So either way, either it solves

it for me or it's not an issue.

So you think it's the most important

thing to be working on?

Without question, there is nothing more

important than getting this right.

And I know everyone says it. you take

any class but you take English

professor's class and he tells you this

is the most important class you'll ever

take but u you can see the meta level

differences with this one

another argument in that paper is that

we all be in control and that the danger

is not AI um this particular argument

asserts that AI is just a tool humans

are the real actors that present danger

and we can always m maintain control by

simply turning it off can't we just pull

the plug out I see that every time we

have a conversation on the show about

AI, someone says, "Can't we just unplug

it?"

Yeah, I get those comments on every

podcast I make and I always want to like

get in touch with a guy and say, "This

is brilliant. I never thought of it.

We're going to write a paper together

and get a Nobel Prize for it. This is

like let's do it because it's so silly.

Like, can you turn off a virus? You have

a computer virus. You don't like it.

Turn it off. How about Bitcoin? Turn off

Bitcoin network. Go ahead. I'll wait."

This is silly. Those are distributed

systems. You cannot turn them off. And

on top of it, they're smarter than you.

They made multiple backups. They

predicted what you're going to do. They

will turn you off before you can turn

them off. The idea that we will be in

control applies only to pretelligence

levels. Basically what we have today,

today humans with AI tools are

dangerous. They can be hackers,

malevolent actors. Absolutely. But the

moment super intelligence becomes

smarter, dominates, they no longer the

important part of that equation. It is

the higher intelligence I'm concerned

about, not the human who may add

additional malevolent payload, but at

the end still doesn't control it. If you

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