S11 Ep4: The crisis of constant crisis with Danny Dorling

I thought-- It's quite interesting that that was not the same-- I mean, I notice that immigration is there, but well down the list, for example.

It, it's very low.

I mean, this is Ipsos data that I use, which comes out monthly over thirty countries, including India, and there's separate data from a Chinese Academy of Social Science Survey of China.

Uh, because I was interested in what do the majority of people view as the biggest crisis, and they're asked this question and asked it repeatedly.

Uh, uh, and the thing which most shocked me, um, actually made me quite ashamed, uh, was seeing that the biggest crisis in the world, uh, according to most of the people who are surveyed in these countries, uh, or the now the second biggest, but it was the biggest fifteen years ago, was fear of unemployment.

Uh, and we don't tend to talk about that much, but it's, it's the reality of even if unemployment levels are low, the fear of not being wanted is latent in our societies.

And I'm making it worse now because I'm mentioning a crisis you may not have thought about.

[laughs]

Um, but, but it's very instructive to see what, what people in general see of crises and also what, uh, people paid to study crises see.

I mean, people who are paid to study crises are endlessly worrying about computer viruses.

Um, but they, you know-- and that's partly how you make your money 'cause you worry firms to say, you know, you could be taken over by a computer virus, which is possible.

But actually, it's not the population's biggest fears, which are much more down to earth.

It's possible that artificial intelligence maybe, uh, could go rogue on us and actually could eliminate the human race, and that's now being billed as an ar- an AI, an AI crisis, you know.

It's possible.

We, we, we always have relatively some, some relatively temporary crises, uh, which kind of disappear.

Uh, killer bees is one, uh, of the idea that bees were gonna mutate and, um, deadly bees would come up from Mexico to United States.

So there are these temporary crises, and I personally like to think of AI as something that we'll look back in ten years' time and say, "Oh, that was so twenty twenties when they thought it was gonna get rid of all these jobs." And, you know, everybody bought shares in the AI companies, and then they lost their money.

I suspect that's right.

I mean, there are da- there are menaces with AI, but I'm, uh, it is...

But as you say, it is kind of wearying to kind of be besieged by this kind of crisis talk.

And as you say in the book, I mean, the- there's, uh, there's a whole new industry of risk assessment.

I mean, I sit on a number of boards of charities and other ki- and other organizations, and there's always part of the board meeting is kind of [laughs] the chair of the risk assessment committee reads, gives you their assessment.