Are We Screwed If AI Works? — With Andrew Ross Sorkin
3/18/20261 hr 5 min
Andrew Ross Sorkin is an anchor at CNBC, columnist at The New York Times, and author of 1929, a bestselling book about the worst market crash in history. Sorkin joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss whether AI achieving its potential could lead to a similar crash, either via a labor shock or the disruption of software. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss private credit risks, prediction market gambling, and the SpaceX IPO. Hit play for a dynamic conversation about where AI could lead, and its potential economic benefits or consequences.
Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack + Discord? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 3:37 Could AI's Success Cause a Market Crash? 7:02 The Mass Unemployment Question 34:39 Private Credit Explained 39:09 Private Credit Alarm Bells 42:43 The AI Debt Risk 47:14 The Prison of Financial Mediocrity 54:38 Could We Have a 1929-Scale Crash? 56:11 Fed Independence 1:03:08 The SpaceX IPO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAlex Kantrowitz· Host0:00
Could AI cause a market crash by working too well? Let's talk about it with Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC and The New York Times, and the author of the best-selling book, Nineteen Twenty-Nine, who's here with us in studio today. Andrew, great to see you.
Andrew Ross Sorkin· Guest0:12
Thank you for having me.
Alex Kantrowitz· Host0:13
Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Andrew Ross Sorkin· Guest0:14
Really appreciate it.
Alex Kantrowitz· Host0:15
So the book comes out about four months ago, and I think it's great that we're speaking now because the worry that you had brought up in the beginning, and obviously it's all about the depression and the market crash.
Andrew Ross Sorkin· Guest0:25
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kantrowitz· Host0:25
And the worry that you had brought up was, look, we have seven hundred billion in capital expenditures going towards AI companies, and this could all go bust, and that could cause a cascading market crash. But actually, what we're starting to worry about is the opposite, which is that the technology- What happens if it works? -will work. Um, and right now we ha-- we've had-- we're in a moment where last month, software stocks lost a trillion dollars in market cap because there was this fear that AI could just displace them, and it was moving at a pace that they wouldn't be able to recover from. Is there a worry that we'll have our own type of market crash, but just [chuckles] a completely different way, and that is that AI works and everybody is disrupted?
Andrew Ross Sorkin· Guest1:08
You know, so I'm often asked, um, you know, "Is there a way, a modern-day way to get to nineteen twenty-nine?" And what people are really asking is, "Is there a modern-day way to get to nineteen thirty-two, which is twenty-five percent unemployment in America?" And I always think the answer is actually less of a market crash