March 25, 2024· 54 min

The Economist Who Believes AI Will Be Great for the Middle Class

David Autor

Orality

Model

50%

Speaker Breakdown

HostTracy Alloway(1,871 words)

M:94%

HostJoe Weisenthal(1,677 words)

M:29%

GuestDavid Autor(6,305 words)

M:27%

Oral Indicators

Agonistic35%

literally, completely, basically

Engagement62%

you, our, your

Memory Aids100%

listen, now, like

Repetition100%

it's (84x), right (82x), like (81x)

Parallelism100%

And I'm Tracy Alloway...., And so you see all these headl..., And we've seen some hints of t...

Sound Patterns92%

99 question(s), alliteration: "markets move", alliteration: "barclays brief"

Formulaic Phrases2%

i mean

Literate Indicators

Hedging9%

maybe, quite, could

Passive Voice5%

is employed, be automated, are open

Abstract Nouns25%

investment, recommendation, moment

Subordination7%

though, although, because

Sentence Length37%

Avg: 14.4 words/sentence

Word Complexity50%

investment, analyze, anticipate

Academic Markers0%

Impersonal Style38%

668 personal pronouns found

Descriptive Style98%

literally, completely, exactly

Description

AI is an incredibly exciting space, provoking both great wonder and fear. One of the big worries obviously is: What will happen to everyone's job? Will it make more people's livelihoods obsolete, causing even greater inequality than we have now? On this episode, we speak with an economist who argues that this concern is not just misplaced, but exactly wrong. MIT's David Autor, famous for his work on the China shock, contends that the last 40 years of advances in computer technology have been a major driver of inequality, but AI should be seen as an entirely different paradigm. He argues that human work, aided by AI, will remove the premium captured by extremely high-paid, experienced professionals (like doctors or top lawyers) as their capabilities become more diffuse. He also discusses what policy choices the government should be making to improve the odds that AI will prove societally beneficial. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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