Episode 015 - Be Terrified, Just Don't Sit There: Peter Swain on AI and the Job Ladder

um so it all actually came down to open ai's mission statement So when OpenAI launched, their mission statement was to remove the tax of human labor from the economy.

And when you peel that back a few layers and you start thinking about what that means, it's quite terrifying.

Because every technology throughout the whole of history has been about helping a human do what they do better, cheaper, quicker, faster.

Let's take this.

We're using Riverside to have this conversation.

Well, we could have both got on a plane.

We could have both gone to a studio.

Riverside hasn't enabled us to do something we couldn't have done in the past.

It just lets us do it better, cheaper, quicker, and faster.

AI is not about helping humans do things better, cheaper, quicker, faster.

AI at its core is about replacing humans doing the job entirely.

And that is either the most empowering moment in humanity or it's the most negative, dangerous, toxic moment in humanity.

And as a father of two young kids, to me it was, well, I have to try and steer this.

I have to be part.

I once asked my granddad Carmen where he was when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

And his answer made me laugh at the time, but I think it's really relevant.

His answer was he was at the pub having a drink.

Because what we look back on as the most historical moment and this massive thing, some people at the time didn't realize it was going to become this most historical, massive moment of all time.

I don't want my kids asking me where I was during the most formative revolution in how humans human.

And I said, yeah, I was selling funnels or ads or raising capital.

I wanted to be able to say, yeah, I was right in the middle of all of that.

Yes.

No, it's fascinating.

You have a point too, right? Like where were you when we land on the moon or nine 11 happened, like things like that, like where were we? Um, and you bring up a really good point where we have this fear of AI, even though, It's supposed to help us, right? Like you said, it's supposed to help do our jobs so that we're able to do other things.

So as a result, there's plus and minus to that.