FOUNDERS FAIRY TALES: Why AI won't make us all entrepreneurs and ideas for new economic models

Imagine a world where everyone's an AI-powered entrepreneur. Sounds utopian, doesn't it? But this fantasy version of our future - peddled by tech influencers claiming AI will make us all business owners - ignores fundamental economic realities and human psychology.

We dive deep into why the "everyone can be an entrepreneur" narrative falls apart under scrutiny. While AI absolutely democratises certain skills and lowers barriers to entry, the claim that it will transform everyone into successful business owners simply doesn't hold water. Not everyone has the personality, risk tolerance, resources, or time to pursue entrepreneurial ventures - regardless of how powerful AI becomes. The harsh reality? About 90% of businesses fail, and AI doesn't change the fundamental economics of competition.

What AI actually does exceptionally well is augment existing capabilities. We share firsthand experiences with "vibe coding" - using AI to develop functioning software with minimal coding experience. One of us created a complete invoicing application in just 30 minutes! We also explore fascinating applications in personalized health management, where AI helps analyze everything from genetic data to gut microbiome reports, offering insights that previously required expensive specialist consultations.

The conversation inevitably leads to the job market, where we're already seeing companies cite "technological efficiencies" as they reduce workforce numbers. Unlike previous automation waves, these jobs likely won't return when the economy improves. This brings us to potential solutions like Universal Basic Income (UBI), which has shown promising results in small-scale experiments - not just improving well-being but sometimes even increasing employment rates.

Could we build a society where people pursue meaningful activities rather than endlessly chasing consumption? Or are we heading toward increased inequality with a tiny class of AI owners controlling everything? The future isn't written yet, but understanding these dynamics is crucial as we navigate this technological transformation. Share your thoughts with us - we'd love to hear your perspective on preparing for this AI-driven future.

Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Introduction
• 11:23 Debunking the AI Entrepreneur Myth
• 27:40 Practical AI Applications Today
• 42:13 Job Market Reality Check
• 54:35 UBI: Utopia or Unworkable?
• 1:08:54 Episode Closing and Song

Transcript

Matt Cartwright: 0:01

Welcome to Preparing for AI, the AI podcast for everybody. With your hosts, Jimmy Rhodes and me, Matt Cartwright, we explore the human and social impacts of AI, looking at the impact on jobs, AI and sustainability and, most importantly, the urgent need for safe development of AI governance and alignment. You're a slave to fashion and your life is full of passion, it's the way you are.

Matt Cartwright: 0:25

urgent need for safe development of AI, governance and alignment. You're a slave to fashion and your life is full of passion. It's the way you are. You've suffered for your art with your jogging in the park. You know you should go far. Welcome to Preparing for AI with me, william Shatner from Boston Legal.

Jimmy Rhodes: 0:37

And me, Daniel Paz, co-founder of Outlet. What?

Matt Cartwright: 0:44

Co-founder of Outlet, isn't it? We've given him the mark of respect of an introduction of our podcast. I'm gonna have to explain. We don't even know he is.

Jimmy Rhodes: 0:51

I always ask you to explain yourself I'm going to explain it later in the context of the podcast.

Matt Cartwright: 0:56

Okay, that we're about to do you didn't ask me why I was william shatner from boston league, or rather than from star wars, I mean star trek I yeah from star trek.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:06

Um, so, first of all, I've never seen boston league and so I didn't know he was in it.

Matt Cartwright: 1:11

Uh, so and he's the main character oh right, okay, well it's really good. Well, there we go here's the reason we say because you should watch boston legal, because it's brilliant and william shatner's even better than he was probably 20 years 15 years.

Mersey Beat: 1:23

he years 15 years, he's still alive though yeah, he's nearly a hundred.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:27

Amazing.

Matt Cartwright: 1:28

Anyway, this is not a podcast about William Shatner. It's a podcast about AI, would you believe it? And this week we are going to talk about well, kind of loosely, this episode is about AI and entrepreneurship.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:41

Yeah.

Matt Cartwright: 1:42

But it's sort of more about how um ridiculous the idea that seems to be doing the rounds at the moment that ai is going to make everybody an entrepreneur is, and then we'll use that to explore all of the good things that I can do and all the reasons why that is frankly bullshit there is some absolute gibberish going around online.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:58

I've seen um multiple episodes I think now of diary ceo.

Jimmy Rhodes: 2:03

Um, with I can't remember the fella is I'll find out his name in a minute but like people talk like good research for this episode, yeah, but but I mean watch diary the ceo, it's much more popular than us anyway. But, um, like you know, generally people going on there and being like it's fine, yeah, like well, there's different opinions obviously, but you've got like from one end you've got like people saying no one's gonna have a job and it's gonna be absolute carnage, and then other people being like everyone will be able to be an entrepreneur. It's the, it's the ultimate version of the american dream. And I'll be honest, like I mean, I mean maybe we can make a balanced argument daniel priestly, isn't it, daniel priestly?

Jimmy Rhodes: 2:38

he's definitely one of the one of the proponents aussie guy, I think he is, isn't he?

Matt Cartwright: 2:42

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think he's based in London, but he's Australian. He's Australian I like him actually, but he yeah, but this idea and, like you said, it's not just on there the reason we wanted this episode is. It kind of started actually with an episode of Doak that I watched about maybe two months ago with him, and is it Gary Alexander?

Jimmy Rhodes: 3:06

It's Gary, is it gary?

Matt Cartwright: 3:07

alexander, it's gary anyway, isn't it gary?

Jimmy Rhodes: 3:08

the economics guy from london.

Matt Cartwright: 3:08

Oh yeah, yeah, and basically it's him and daniel priestly gary's economic, and gary just tries I do but on this episode he tries to like take down daniel priestly and actually makes himself look a bit of a dick. But this was the first time I heard this idea anyway, like daniel priestly talking about how, hey, I was going to empower everybody to just be an entrepreneur and everyone's going to be. Everyone is able to be a you know, a self-made millionaire.

Mersey Beat: 3:27

And frankly, it's just it's nonsense.

Matt Cartwright: 3:30

Not that people aren't going to be able to do it, because some people are going to become trillionaires, but the idea that everyone can do it and that it's going to bring in equality is what's nonsense.

Jimmy Rhodes: 3:39

Yeah, absolutely. I mean Gary from Gary's Economics is. He's definitely a polarizing character. He polarizes me. To be honest, I swing from agreeing with everything he says to being like nah, it's too much.

Matt Cartwright: 3:54

I agree with what he says fundamentally is wrong. I disagree with his solutions for it because they just don't work.

Jimmy Rhodes: 4:01

They just don't work. But yeah, so the diary of a ceo stuff, like I've seen so much of this stuff and like I mean why? Like the? Actually, the thing that I've never heard anyone talking about, which seems the fundamental thing to me, is the concept that everyone can possibly be an entrepreneur. And I mean I, I guess I guess they're not saying like everyone's going to be a self-made millionaire. They're not trying to say that. They're saying everyone can just do the thing that they like doing, do the thing they're passionate about, but unless, like what is it? We're all going to have lemonade stands. I mean a lot of people. Uh, you know, one of the things I do agree with gary on is like a lot of people, you know they don't. So so ai is going to make everyone an entrepreneur. It's like a lot of people, you know they don't. So so AI is going to make everyone an entrepreneur. It's like a lot of people they're not a, they're not interested in being an entrepreneur.

Jimmy Rhodes: 4:48

It's just not in their mindset at all. It's not necessarily in everyone's. You know the way everyone thinks. In fact, it's not in the way the vast majority of people know. Um, a lot of people freedom in the first place to to take the risk and take the risk, um, and like 90 of all businesses fail anyway. So like it is a huge risk. Like there's all these stats out there, I mean I've, I'll be, I'll be honest. Like I think, like a lot of people, I've had business ideas in my life and I've got really excited about them. And like the natural thing is like I'm gonna be a millionaire, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make so much money, you'll sort of like get quite excited about it. But the like harsh reality is, if I'd gone and done it, those things, but there was probably a 90 chance I was going to fail yep, and other people have done it and you haven't got.

Matt Cartwright: 5:32

I'm not saying you'll never do it, but you haven't got the personality to to do it, otherwise you'd have already done it. Now. It doesn't mean you can't be an entrepreneur to some degree, but talking to me, yeah, to you specifically specifically, bit harsh, no, but I mean if you were an entrepreneur like and I mean the kind of person, because an entrepreneur to me is not someone who does one thing, it's someone who is, you know over and over again is just trying new ideas and trying new businesses.

Jimmy Rhodes: 5:55

That's me, but without the business. Yeah, exactly.

Matt Cartwright: 6:08

Then you've already kind mean that you are not going to, you know, create a business that makes you a lot of money. But the idea of an entrepreneur is not like I say, it's not about that. The idea of an entrepreneur is it's someone who is. You're over and over again coming up with new ideas and that takes a certain personality time. So I completely agree with you. It's the starting point is it's fundamentally impossible because of pills, personalities. The second thing is it economically doesn't make sense. Now, if they're promoting more of a kind of cooperative idea where we can all do you know a bit of what we like and make enough money to get by, I don't think that will happen. But that's more. You know that that's sort of feasible, because if you did move to a different system, yes, you could have that, that you make something and I make something and we sell it to each other, you know, and it almost becomes a kind of bartering system.

Matt Cartwright: 6:47

Yeah, that's not, that's yeah okay that's a long way up, but what I'm saying is that that's sort of feasible to some degree, that people are all doing something different and are making enough money to to get by on that. But the idea that everyone can just become, you know, rich is also just economically impossible and and that's my problem with people like Daniel is I don't.

Jimmy Rhodes: 7:08

I think what they're talking about is everyone can live the American dream and become really wealthy in that part of that sense of entrepreneur Like cause cause otherwise. I mean, if you're talking about bartering like as a bloke who starts a corner shop and entrepreneur, I don't think so. I mean, I don't mean that's what we're talking about. I I don't think that's what he's talking about, and this is one who's always seeing opportunities, take advantage of them, and then moves on to next thing when it's time to exactly do something else.

Matt Cartwright: 7:33

Yeah, serial entrepreneur, but yeah, so that's um, that's why I guess it's rubbish, but why does ai make that? I guess why. Why does ai make this a thing? And why are they saying that, you know, or he? Because he's not the only one. He he's the kind of example here and and it does seem that daniel priest is the one that is talking about this a lot, but he's not the only person. So why are certain people now saying that, you know, with ai, everyone has this kind of opportunity and do and do people have an opportunity?

Jimmy Rhodes: 8:00

so I think they do. I think right now it's in a. I think, first of all, it's in the relatively relatively narrow domain of online. So you could become an online entrepreneur now with just an idea. You could have very little coding knowledge. You could have. I mean, forget even coding like business knowledge, right? Have I mean, forget even coding like business knowledge, right?

Jimmy Rhodes: 8:27

We're in a world now where, if you've got an idea and you know how to use ai which is not that difficult you can sit down with your favorite ai jippity or claude or gemini and you can flesh out a business plan. You can methodically, step by step. I mean, you can just go on to. You can just go on to uh, let's just use chat gpt. You could go on to chat gpt and say I've got this business idea. I think it's great. I think there's a gap in the market. Um, how do I, from scratch, start a business? You could ask it, you could get it to do a deep research project and be like tell me step by step how to do this, and then it could give you. It could probably tell you step by step. Okay, you need to make a business plan.

Matt Cartwright: 9:08

You need to if it's and then you can tell it okay, make the business plan, and then it will make you the business plan exactly yeah, step by step, how do I do it?

Jimmy Rhodes: 9:14

and then you can probably get to do all those steps and then, okay, maybe it's a little bit more advanced. But if it's something that's like you can do online, um, you know, if it's like an online idea, like I know a new app or a new app ecosystem or you know some sort of ai wrapper, something like that, you can probably get it to like walk you through how to build the, how to do it all, how to build it, how to make it, how to be your own software developer, even if you know nothing about coding how to do vibe coding you can like I mean, it would take a lot of research and you'd have to digest a lot of information if you were starting from absolutely zero, but it's easier than it's been at any point in history before, because you've now got something that can you can sit down with you.

Matt Cartwright: 9:57

Don't have to pay that. Okay, you have to pay a little bit of money for access to a frontier large language model, but you know you don't have to pay for someone to sit in a room with you and go through business plans and help you. You can just sit down in your own time whenever you want, go through with something that is better than you and has much more knowledge than you in in all of these domains and areas and help guide you through it. And it's actually something we did the other day because we had an idea, didn't?

Matt Cartwright: 10:21

we, we both went away, used deep research on different you use gemini, I use claude and we both got it with exactly the same prompt to come up with a report and for both of us it told us that we shouldn't do that business idea yeah I think that's also really cool because actually telling you no.

Matt Cartwright: 10:38

Here's the reasons why this is not a good idea. One of them was we needed three hundred thousand dollars to get started and regulatory issues but like that's also pretty powerful because to find out what you can't do, maybe when you were talking about 90 of businesses failing, well, actually, like here's the thing it might help you to not start a business that's going to fail yeah, we might have gone off and done that, and I don't know, maybe we still will, but we need to do a bit more research.

Matt Cartwright: 11:02

But yeah, 300 000 is almost all of the income from this podcast yeah, exactly, exactly we would be.

Jimmy Rhodes: 11:08

We would be skin.

Matt Cartwright: 11:09

We'd be starting from scratch again, doing a new podcast after that year of trying to build up our nest egg um, but yeah, that, yeah, in that case, we did a feasibility study.

Jimmy Rhodes: 11:18

Like, you can do all this stuff with ai and you like. This is the point. Right, you can have a phd level if you're using the top models, which I mean most of them have a 20 a month tier, which is like you know, I think for a lot of people is affordable you can use deep research now on both grok and, I think, chat gpt without premium subscription.

Matt Cartwright: 11:40

Oh really, I don't know. I'm pretty sure, because you get a limited amount, you don't? Yeah, of course you don't get many, but I think but.

Jimmy Rhodes: 11:46

If you, yeah, so in theory you could do this for free if you if you took, if you took a bit of time, or spread it across models or something like that, if you're smart with it. So yeah, in theory, you can for free now have like the best ai assistance, which are only getting better all the time to like you know, like I say, in across all domains these things are now like at least graduate level, phd level in their respective fields, which you can't hope to be. And that's the amazing thing about it, like, if you, if you leverage the um, the you know sort of the level of intelligence that's been made available to everyone you can potentially with if to everyone you can potentially with, if you're you know, if you're, I suppose you have to be like sort of smart about it or understand what you're doing, but, like you know, effectively you can just gpt your way to a successful business. I think, um, I've made the argument against being an entrepreneur. Everyone can be entrepreneurial. Now, I feel that you can be.

Matt Cartwright: 12:40

But um well, no, we're not, because we're not saying people can't be, we're not saying the individual people can't be, we're saying everyone can't be Everyone can't be the point everyone, I guess, and maybe we are arguing for what he said, Maybe we're misinterpreting what he said or what they cause.

Matt Cartwright: 12:52

It's not true, he's kind of saying anyone he's not, anybody can I don't think so as well as not everybody can some people, a lot of people, don't have time for this stuff right, but I guess it does democratize it in a way that it hasn't been before.

Matt Cartwright: 13:11

I mean, like I think I am going to try and start a business of some kind now. I'm not sure that that's going to be a business. It's going to change my life. It might be something that's going to be a more passive income, but I'm going to do that because ai will help me to do it now.

Matt Cartwright: 13:24

I was kind of thinking of some things before. But, yeah, ai will make this much easier for me as someone who is you know, I don't know in the top 20 of people for using ai or embracing ai, so I'm not most people, but I'm also not at the forefront of ai, so I think it enables someone like me and we talked- I think in the introduction episode that we redid, we talked about ben cook as a kind of generalist.

Matt Cartwright: 13:49

I think that's the kind of example of people who are generalists. It's enabling you to be as a generalist, to be like good at loads and loads of different things and to pursue something that you want to do, but you have to have still the money, the ambition, the sort of personality type, the risk, the time to be able to do it yeah, definitely the time.

Jimmy Rhodes: 14:08

I think time's a big thing, right? So like, if you're I don't know let's say you're in your mid-40s and you have a family and you're like, you know, you're working let's say I'm in my mid-40s and have a family.

Matt Cartwright: 14:19

Yeah, yeah, but let's say you're.

Jimmy Rhodes: 14:21

Let's say let's say, you're in that situation but, like, maybe you haven't got a much disposable income at all, maybe you're working several jobs to just make ends meet. Time is a really important thing and I think that's something that the I think we probably have a little bit more time than a lot of people. I think there are a lot of people who don't have enough time to spend on this kind of thing, don't have the time to go and sit down with an ai language model and dream about this kind of stuff, and that's probably the limiting factor in a lot of cases, um, but anyway, I think it leads quite nicely on um, to what we're actually using it for yes, it does so.

Matt Cartwright: 15:10

Uh, yeah, we thought it would be a good kind of example, I guess, of of not necessarily entrepreneurship in terms of, you know, necessarily making money, because who knows whether this will make money, but yeah, exactly. But some of the things that, like, we've been doing in the last like couple of months, because I think this is where, like, it has massively taken off, like that it's not necessarily the sort of exponential growth, it's just like the frontier models. Now we're at a point where it's not that they're 100% trustworthy, but but where it's not now like you're trying to get them to do something. Now, this is fucking rubbish. And I'm having to like we're at a point where it's not that they're a hundred percent trustworthy, but but where it's not now like you're trying to get them to do something. Now, this is fucking rubbish. And I'm having to like retweet, and why has it done this wrong? It's like it's giving you something. That's like most of the way there, almost every time.

Matt Cartwright: 15:54

Yeah, and and like with coding, you know you do vibe coding now in a way that I never did before, and so, yeah, do you want to? I mean, do you want to talk through some of the stuff that you're kind of using it for?

Jimmy Rhodes: 16:10

yeah, yeah, sure.

Jimmy Rhodes: 16:10

So, um, yeah, I agree with you like hopefully some of the stuff that I'm doing will come to something at some point, but up to now it's just been playing around with it, really.

Jimmy Rhodes: 16:19

But I'm a, I'm a, like I say I'm a software developer, like I wouldn't say I'm like a expert level coder across anything, but I'm quite a generalist. I'm good with processes, I'm good at understanding how software works and hangs together and you know why you need a backend, a front end and middleware in between and all this sort of stuff. Like I've got a really good general knowledge of it being as a hands-on coder, probably that great, really like probably average at best in a few specific domains. But the but I feel like I'm a superhero when I use ai because I understand enough about coding to understand the process that you need to go through um with, specifically with vibe coding, and I've kind of I'm not going to go into tons of detail, but I do want to just say what vibe coding is, because I think a lot of people oh sorry, yeah, I've just launched into it- so.

Jimmy Rhodes: 17:08

So vibe coding is for anyone who doesn't know is basically and I wouldn't say I'm in 100% vibing, but vibe coding is the idea that you, you use something like cursor or windsurf and there are other things available now, but these are developer environments that traditionally, you would have written all your own code. In. These ones have AI connected to them. You can also use things like Klein, which is open source. Shout out to Klein. And so what you're doing is you're within this environment, you're connecting it to a large language model, something like ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, whatever, um, and you're just saying I want to build this, I want to build this app. So a good example that I did recently was and this was just for fun I wanted to send an invoice and so, instead of um, instead of, just like you know, producing an invoice, I was like I wonder if I can just make an app that does that? Uh, and using this vibe coding technique, I literally said I want to create an invoicing app. These are the kinds of features I want it to have, and it just went and built it. And this, this is an iterative process. It takes a little while, um, and you have to have um, I'll like. I think you have to have a good process that you understand yourself. It's not as straightforward as just like. Make me this app although it may well be in the future, cause, as with all of AI stuff, this is the sort of worst it will ever be.

Jimmy Rhodes: 18:33

But within half an hour I had a fully fledged invoicing app where I could add clients, and this was to make one invoice I had I could add clients into it, I could create invoices. It got. Invoice I had I could add clients into it, I could create invoices. It got. It had all the styling it had. Like it looked really good, um, and stuff like that. I've used it to create websites before, like just as like demonstrations. I've used it to make a presentation using html, using, like you know, common internet, like website technologies. You can do like anything you can imagine with it.

Jimmy Rhodes: 19:04

Um, the caveat there is uh, and when, I'd recommend, if you want to like get into vibe coding, um, watch videos by matt berman. He does some specific, he does youtube videos, youtube tutorials, he does some specific ones on vibe coding which are really good and where I've I've built on that stuff and developed a bit of my the way that I work with it. Um, I mean, I'm happy to give away tips, but I don't want to go into like too much of a rabbit hole on vibe coding. But essentially it's about, um, how you contain the large language model for want of a better word, so it's coming up with. You can put rules in cursor which basically say okay, when, when, when I'm talking to you, always take into consideration these rules. They're things like document everything properly. Always try to use your existing technology stack. Don't go off and like just install new technology stack and and don't go off and like just install new technology stack and and essentially create workarounds to a problem.

Jimmy Rhodes: 20:05

Um, which is quite important, because these llms, you know, if you don't sort of constrain them a bit, they can go off and do things that are a little bit wacky. Again, I think these things will and are already improving um, but, yeah, like, effectively. It's something where it's a bit of a skill still and I quite like that about it, because now I'm not writing code, I'm learning how to work with um effectively. Something like a, you know, like an employee, would be right. So like it's like I'm directing this LLM, this large language model, to write the code for me. But sometimes it goes off and does something a bit wacky and because I understand enough about coding and all the rest of it, I can keep it on rails.

Jimmy Rhodes: 20:42

Now I absolutely think you can learn all that stuff. I think it's probably a slightly steeper learning curve if you haven't written any code before and you don't understand anything about coding um. But again, I think that'll get easier over time and I think it's stuff that you can learn um. But what's super interesting about it? Like more than anything I've ever done with an llm, it is like working with a. It's working hand in hand with another uh being I can't call it a person, but like I sort of augmenting we use this word a lot about ai augmenting people yeah and again it's kind of copium, you know, sort of saying oh no, don't worry about your job, you'll just be working with ai and it'll augment you.

Matt Cartwright: 21:21

But, like, to some degree it will, and in the short term it will. But that is exactly what's happening at the moment. I completely agree, like I'm. I'm not doing the same as you, so maybe I'll come on to what I do in a minute, but that's the thing that I found at the moment. It it feels like you're working with it rather than just like you're telling it and then you're hoping that it does.

Jimmy Rhodes: 21:44

It's like you're you're working side by side. Yeah, totally, that's the quite exciting thing about it like it really feels like you're working together to reach some objective and you're both playing a part in that, and I quite, and I like that and I and I will be sad when I get taken out of the loop completely eventually, or if yeah, bombshell bombshell yeah, yeah um, I mean, that's probably the best example.

Jimmy Rhodes: 22:09

Um, I've got loads of other examples, I think I think the biggest suggestion I would make to people is, if you're talking to ai nowadays and you want to sort of like figure out how to do something, ais have been around for long enough that you can kind of use these meta prompts so you can say I want to work with AI to do this, how do I do it, and just teach yourself. I want to prompt AI to do something, but what's the best prompt I can use and also consider using? I mean, they all have different names for them, so GPT have something called custom gpts, you like. With gpt it can also learn your, learn you and sort of uh, what's?

Matt Cartwright: 22:46

it keeps memories about you and things like that.

Jimmy Rhodes: 22:48

Memory yeah I think gemini has gems, um claude has projects, have a little play around with them if like, if you play for the premium models which I think you have to to use a lot of these features usually, but have a play around with them, because these are things where you can like.

Jimmy Rhodes: 23:03

You can create your own little custom ai that basically has its own system prompt, which means it will have its own personality, behave a certain way, um, and again, if you don't know how to do that, I'm not going to explain loads of detail here, but you can just ask ai how to do it, like I so commonly. Now, instead of like writing a prompt, I'll be like this is what I want to achieve. How can I best prompt an ai to do that? And that will be my first prompt, and then I take what it gives me and then I use that to actually prompt um the ai, because it's a sort of iterative process where to get the best out of it.

Jimmy Rhodes: 23:39

You know, okay, I mean the other way of doing. It is like really think about what you want to best out of it. You know, okay, I mean the other way of doing. It is like really think about what you want to get out of it. Um, but that's really important is like is like if you were explaining to an another person a task that you wanted them to do, you would have to like clearly explain what you're looking for and what you're what you need out of them, and it's it's absolutely the same with ai. The benefit with ai is you can get it to do so much of it for you, basically, or alongside you.

Matt Cartwright: 24:08

It can support you I've got three examples of things that I've been doing that I think are sort of relevant and useful. People um one is sort of is actually using code. I've got sort of anecdote I told you this the other day but I think it's quite funny that um I was using I can't first using chat, gpt or claude. I think I was using claude um and getting it to write code, python code, and first of all saying like, okay, what you know, talk me through from the very beginning. And it said, okay, you need one of these things you need. Okay, I'll go for Anaconda, so download Anaconda.

Matt Cartwright: 24:43

You do this, this, this anyway, like an hour, an hour and a half, trying to do stuff. And there's some issue with with not not so much with the code, but there's an issue with setting up and getting basically Anac, different sort of workspaces, to work together. And I was like, this still isn't working, tell me why. And then it said, oh well, okay, why don't you just try google collab? Because actually google collabs better and it's easier and it'll definitely work and it's much better for the project that you're doing.

Matt Cartwright: 25:10

So, like, this is where this is where, like, because I didn't ask it first of all like tell me which is the best thing. I just said, okay, talk me through step by step. It didn't actually talk me through the best thing, but once we got going and got in colab as someone who has, well, actually I say I've never written code when I was like seven years old, eight years old, nine years old, I used to code on a zx spectrum. I used to write programming. So I have got some coding experience, but it's like it's literally like 30, something 35 years ago ago.

Jimmy Rhodes: 25:39

But anyway, like I've done a bit of HTML and stuff like years ago, but I want to come back to your example in a bit, but I'll carry on for now.

Matt Cartwright: 25:48

Starting to write code, like the last time that I was, or before this time. The last time I'd been doing it I was using chat GPT, and it would have been probably last September, october and so maybe November. So so it's basically like four months, four, five months in between the difference from when I was trying to write it then. That actually was quite helpful to me because, as someone who didn't know code, I was having to work out what was wrong and I was having to go in and help rewrite the code myself to using it now with Claude.

Matt Cartwright: 26:20

I never had to do anything I never had to change it, every single bit of code. You ain't mind, I've given me what I wanted, exactly because I had to say, oh, actually I want you to do this, but the code was perfect every single time. So this is a fairly basic thing. I was doing data analysis, so I was trying to, you know, get data quite big sets of data, of words, actually, like it was qualitative data is quite difficult to sort through and to pull out patterns and pull out keywords and stuff like that, and I would say, like, what's a good way to do this? And it would recommend ways to do it. I'd say, yeah, okay, we want to do this and I want to put it in this format, and it would give me the code to do it. So, like as someone who was working on a project that was not, you know, related around making money but was related on data, like as someone who doesn't really have a coding background, I was able to get it to just give me python code and do it.

Jimmy Rhodes: 27:06

I mean that that sort of yeah, for me was and it was mind-blowing how much it had progressed in four or five months yeah, and you say give you python code, but like, not only give you python code, but walk you through on windows or whatever platform you're on, like how to install python, how to get it up and running, so like pretty much like yeah, so you can say I don't know anything, what is?

Matt Cartwright: 27:23

I don't even know what python code is. Tell me what it is right. What do I need to download this, this, this? Okay, now, I've done this. Now, how do I integrate you with it?

Jimmy Rhodes: 27:30

and it will talk you through every single step and I think that's a bit of an eye-opening experience and, like, if you haven't coded before and you're even slightly interested in it, it could be a quite a nice intro into it. Because actually, when you read python code, especially python code written by an ai, which is actually quite neat um, when you, when you read it, you can kind of tell why.

Matt Cartwright: 27:48

Absolutely yeah, yeah you very quickly pick up patterns in it. Yeah, the other one I wanted to talk about. I've maybe talked about this, you know, in the past, but like you know my other kind of interest and and sort of health and interests and sort of health and sort of alternative and alternative therapies, functional medicine, that kind of thing. So I have a project set up in Claude and I have several documents. So in Claude you can upload several documents in there. So in there I have documents which have my sort of daily supplement protocol. It has my sort of weekly general exercise and when I do red light therapy sessions, all of that kind of stuff I put into a particular file so it has access to that.

Matt Cartwright: 28:28

I also have a gut microbiome analysis which I had done here. I have a gene analysis which I've had done and all of those results. Now some people might say, well, I don't want to upload this stuff, I don't want it to be in there. So you've got to think I guess you know if you're worried about that privacy thing, this is maybe something you don't want to do.

Matt Cartwright: 28:44

Jippity's getting trained on your good well the thing is I'm like I had it done in china, so the least of my worries is is, you know, claude, having my data. But I put all that stuff in there and I've done separate kind of chats on each of those things to say, okay, pull out this information. I know about things like my hla genome, which is how you basically present antigens and stuff like that. This is really quite kind of cutting edge stuff. Um, I know about, uh, from that, how I will react to viral infections, what are my risks of autoimmunity. I know for my kind of gut bacteria, what are the likely things that I've got now in that project.

Matt Cartwright: 29:21

Anytime I want to go with something and say this has happened to me, rather than if you just said to a like chat gpt, oh, you know, I've got my stomach hurts. What do you think it is because of all that information that's in there. If I say to it like I want to lower my cholesterol, it can say your cholesterol last year was this. You've lowered it by that. This year. You take this supplement and this supplement. You do this every week. Instead of doing two sessions of high intensity every week, you should do three sessions. Why don't you try reducing the amount of this that you do so like, because I think one of the things about ai that is so I know this is not entrepreneurism, but one of the things that is going to be so powerful is making health care and nutrition personal right, that that is like the biggest difference that is going to be so powerful is making healthcare and nutrition personal right, that that is like the biggest difference that is going to be in the next few years. And kind of the healthcare space is, when you look, it's not comparing you to population averages, it's looking at you as an individual.

Matt Cartwright: 30:11

All of this information. I could have got this kind of information before and I wouldn't know what to do with it. I would have had to go and pay for a doctor to tell me about it and I have to try and remember it. I couldn't bring together a gut microbiome analysis with my blood test results, with my exercise regime, with what supplements I take. I couldn't bring all that stuff together in one place. But by having it in one place, it has enough personal information. Now, I'm not saying it's 100% accurate.

Jimmy Rhodes: 30:34

I was going to say that's my question.

Jimmy Rhodes: 30:45

It's not going to be 100% accurate, but it's not going to be 100 accurate, but it's more accurate than anything else. I yeah and I'm not, so I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna make a massive counter argument. I'm like my, I suppose, my, I suppose my question is my, my reservation is like you're someone, I think like you're passionate about this area. You know a lot about it. You've put all this information in. You're like, you know and you understand enough of it. Like, would you recommend this to the average person? Like, specifically, it's?

Matt Cartwright: 31:06

really interesting what you say, because I've had this conversation this week with people in a a kind of social media group who who like similar people, who are interested in similar stuff but don't know as much as me these these people actually approach me about stuff and they were like oh, how do you use this?

Matt Cartwright: 31:20

and and I do have reservations, because there are not a huge amount of times, but there are times that it will tell me something I will know that's incorrect. I will say no, that like. Here's a really, really niche example. Recently this was actually not in this cloud project, but chat gpt I was talking about something called b5p. B5p is a highly bioavailable form of vitamin b2 and chat gpt started talking about it as vitamin b5 because they picked up the b5 at the beginning.

Matt Cartwright: 31:47

Now b5 and b2 are completely different things. They might be called b completely different things. Most people would not have spotted that yeah but I know what b5p is.

Matt Cartwright: 31:55

So I think and it could be recommended, you take grams of something exactly, you would take a different amount so so so there are risks to it, um, but having said that, you know, I would say if you don't understand the subject matter, you're not going to be asking that niche a question yeah like helping you to understand those reports, like just a really simple thing like a blood test result.

Matt Cartwright: 32:17

You know when you get a blood test on, it's got arrows up and down. You don't know what it means. You can ask it, you know, you can put that information or you can track changes. I think you're right. You've still got to be someone who has an interest and knows enough. Enough, or when you're getting recommendations, you've got to challenge them.

Matt Cartwright: 32:33

Yeah, you use a different large language model or just say to it are you sure what's the evidence behind this? But it's still incredibly powerful, like to be able to to, to say like I can look at certain things now and be like okay, actually, this thing, that has always happened to me for my life. Maybe it's because of this and I never would have thought of that, but now you've identified this. Actually this kind of links together and if you care about this stuff I'm just giving one example you might be passionate about something else you're passionate about, about you know your, your diet and what you eat. But it's so powerful to be able to help you to understand it and it is the reason I use is another example at the moment of augmenting you. It's working with you, you're having a conversation with it. It's not telling you what you need to do. It's giving you ideas. I think when you ask, like what should I take for this is a terrible idea when you have to have an idea of what you want in the first place.

Jimmy Rhodes: 33:24

I think it's suggestions yeah, your point there being because you were talking earlier on about um, you know, you, the genetic analysis and the gut microbiome analysis and and this is all about like this is what you're talking about with individualized medicine and this is becoming a thing now. So everybody is like slightly different, right? Everyone's got a slightly different genome, people have different blood types, people have different gut microbiomes and all of those things mean like one person can be completely fine with drinking milk. The person next to them can be lacto intolerant and, like, have a really bad reaction to milk every single time. This happened with um.

Jimmy Rhodes: 33:59

You know a close relation of mine who like, like, was, you know, lactose intolerant, lactose intolerant didn't understand what was going on as soon as stopped drinking milk Absolutely fine, and so and this is like you know, this is, this is like across everything, and so I totally I mean I haven't done it myself, but I'm thinking of doing like some of this um microbiome and genetic analysis to have a just to see what it says. I'll be really interested because there are times when I've had dodgy guts and stuff, and not just from having too many beers the night before.

Matt Cartwright: 34:37

Okay, well, if everyone's not going to be an entrepreneur, um, just in case, anybody can, but not everybody will um, and this is the podcast for everybody and people are not going to make money by either.

Matt Cartwright: 34:49

Well, they might make money from vibe code. They're not going to get make any money by and analyzing. They've got microbiome, although they might live longer and have a better life, but they're not going to make money. So should we talk about what's actually happening to the job market? Because we are starting to see cuts made and this is a difference now, I think, in the last and have a better life, but they're not going to make money. So should we talk about what's actually happening to the job market, because we are starting to see cuts made? And this is a difference now, I think, in the last few months is like they're mentioning technology. They're still not mentioning AI explicitly, but they mentioned technology.

Matt Cartwright: 35:11

So a friend of mine works for an organization which, admittedly, is kind of data-driven, but they cut 20% of their global workforce and they've said this is due to the need to embrace technological efficiency, which is ai yeah, so so, like we're seeing it, it's not excel spreadsheets, it's not um, and we're also seeing like weirdly on the other hand, because you like, of course, you always get this with stories where you know you get the one side, then you get the other side, still saying, oh well, it's just nothing.

Matt Cartwright: 35:38

A bizarre thing I saw the other day was just talking about translation in particular and saying in the us the amount of translation jobs increased last year by around seven percent. So like it's complicated really, apparently. Okay, I mean, this is a stat, so it could have been invented by an ai. Yeah. Yeah so so I don't know. But but we, you know, there was another stat, wasn't there, about computer programmers and it was, like you know, massive job losses and it was 2.3%, which is not nothing, but it's not catastrophic job losses.

Jimmy Rhodes: 36:09

So my point is they said it, they said it, they said by 30 percent, but it was like oh, right, yeah the baseline point 2.3 percent to 2.5 percent or 6 percent or something, one of those dubious statistics although that's not 30 percent. But anyway, well, it was a low number it was statistics in it, yeah, so what's happening? So what is happening, uh, what?

Matt Cartwright: 36:38

is the job market to the job market as it started? Is everyone losing their job?

Jimmy Rhodes: 36:42

no, I don't think so. I think I. I think with this, like there's there's waymo's going around. I mean they're, if they're not on fire in la, um, there's, there's waymo's going. Do you know why that was? Did you see why that was so?

Matt Cartwright: 36:55

no, so the reason I didn't, but I, I it's just I I called this, didn't I like things being set on fire?

Jimmy Rhodes: 37:00

it was one of my predictions, but they're not. So this is the interesting thing. So, apparently, because I was like, oh, they're just setting cars on fire, for the sake of it, it's nothing to do with that. So the waymos all have loads of cameras on them and the cameras are always recording and so they can be used to, basically by the police, as evidence, and so they're just like destroying the cctv that could incriminate them still sort of because of ai kind of yeah, I guess, but anyway, so assuming your waymo is not on fire, um, you know, I think that I think we still haven't seen with.

Jimmy Rhodes: 37:31

What we're seeing now is the tip of the iceberg. Like the first companies that definitely, definitely made huge cuts you know it was there was twitter, facebook, google and then facebook have openly said like they're getting 20 30 percent of their coding done by ai. Now we talked about vibe coding in detail earlier on. I mean, why wouldn't these massive tech companies that are building the ai models like be at the absolute forefront of this and so that stuff's going to trickle down? Admin jobs like? I'm using ai at work now to do admin stuff like 100.

Jimmy Rhodes: 38:05

I'm using ai to do admin stuff like it's. It's trickling in everywhere and it's like you know, okay, right now it's. I think we're still right now at the point where almost all of it is somebody using an ai to do something.

Matt Cartwright: 38:20

To save, time To save time right.

Jimmy Rhodes: 38:22

So that's quite a manual process. Still, it's like you're telling the AI what to do. You're going to get agentic AI very soon. Agentic AI is going to change the whole landscape. Agentic AI is the start of AIs that you can just say, okay, I basically farm 20% of my job out to you now, because 20% of my job out to you now, because 20 of my job is admin, yeah, and arguably you could possibly do that already through automation and the rest of it, but this is easier. This is like it's democratizing.

Jimmy Rhodes: 38:50

Automation is what agentic yeah, absolutely yeah, you don't have to be a developer anymore. You just have a chat with an ai that says, yeah, I can do that for you, and you plug it in and away, it goes, and then seven months later it can work for longer without supervision. Yeah, you know, um, very much like a I don't know what you so okay. So if you, if you, let's say, for example, you take someone on straight out university, they need a lot of supervision. Yeah, to begin with they can probably work for like half an hour to an hour on their own before they come back to you and they're like, okay, what's my next task? Right? And then, as you go on and you become more senior, you can work for days on end without any instruction from your senior manager, right, and that's the trajectory that this ai is on.

Jimmy Rhodes: 39:32

It's literally exactly the same. You know you're going to get these ais, agentic ais. They're going to enter the market and they're going to keep coming back to you and be like, okay, so what do I do next, boss? So what do I do next? But then in six months time or a year's time, they're going to go off and just get on with stuff and then and do a lot more stuff because they'll be so efficient in how they do it and so and so, and so it doesn't answer your question.

Jimmy Rhodes: 39:53

No, it doesn't. It's very political at all, but like but. But we are already seeing. I think we're already starting to get used to seeing news articles that talk about AI is automating this job. Cuts have been made because of technological efficiency, a lot of stuff around. We're not recruiting anybody else, we're doing a job hiring freeze because X, y and Z. I do think when a Gentic AI comes in, it's going to sort of be another shift where it's going to be. I'll be honest, I've read stuff that's like that's just going to create more jobs, it's just going to create more jobs, it's just going to create more jobs. I don't get it. I just do not see where it is.

Matt Cartwright: 40:29

This idea that of more productivity because we'll just produce more stuff is like the world doesn't need more stuff. That's not the problem. The world has got right it doesn't need more stuff. Producing is my opinion.

Jimmy Rhodes: 40:41

We need more plastic. That's what we need.

Matt Cartwright: 40:44

So I actually I think I may have mentioned this, but I finished a master's recently and I wrote the final project on AI, or what I called it sustainable AI transition for the UK's public sector. So it was particularly looking at like how could the UK public sector is what I chose. It could have been, you know, any country, to be honest, but how can they? Kind of sustainable transition is basically one where there are still jobs and where we kind of maintain sort of social sustainability. Rather than this, not about environmental sustainability, it's about social sustainability.

Matt Cartwright: 41:17

And one of the people I interviewed, a good friend of mine called joe um. He actually said, I mean, he hadn't. He'll happily. Let me say this he hadn't thought a huge amount about ai until we did this interview, but he said well, the thing that he he really thought was using ai.

Matt Cartwright: 41:36

Now, it's not about and this this is obviously very specific to where he works, but he was saying it's not about people being afraid of AI replacing jobs. It's jobs are going anyway, because in a lot of areas you know, the public sector is one example but it's happening in the private sector, with the economy, the way it is in a lot of the world. You know, for economic reasons reasons, people are reducing jobs down and actually a lot of organizations are seeing ai as a kind of mitigator of we. We need to save money and we need to save money. We're going to have to have less people and ai will mitigate some of that. So we need to embrace it as a way to mitigate it. So they're losing jobs and ai is replacing jobs in a sense so it's replacing work, but ai is not actually causing the job losses.

Matt Cartwright: 42:20

the job loss is caused because of the economy and then ai is being used as a kind of way for us to fill in the background. I think that is like a really, really interesting perspective, because you know, when you're talking about tech companies and they're losing jobs, definitely because the ai is cheaper, because you know they're in a position where, okay, they might not be, they might not be in profit at the moment because they're spending so much, but they're flush with cash. They've got huge amounts of money, but in the rest of the world you've got an economic situation where public and private sector organizations are feeling the pinch and are having to lay off people, and AI is going to help them mitigate some of that. So AI is replacing jobs, but I would sort of argue at the moment it's not necessarily the driver of the loss of those jobs.

Jimmy Rhodes: 43:06

Yes.

Matt Cartwright: 43:07

At the moment.

Jimmy Rhodes: 43:08

We've talked about this on the podcast before. The difference is from previous times because this has happened before, right, so these things go in cycles. You get a lot of job losses because the economy is not doing very well. The difference this time is not coming back when the and I think we might have even said this before on the podcast but when when the economy picks up again, once things get going, if ai is, like now, doing well in fact, it will only pick up if ai is like the only driver of a recovery, to be honest, is going to be ai?

Jimmy Rhodes: 43:37

yeah, possibly, but either way. Either way, when things pick up, that that's the difference. Right is like if we're having job losses now and then it's been masked by the fact that it's like well, it's the economics, you know situation, um, but this stuff's improving so quickly that then, once you get out of this situation, there's just going to be more jobs for ai to do. It ain't going to be like oh, we're going to recruit a load of people now, um, but we've also got declining population almost everywhere, so well, the weirdly, we don't know, do we?

Matt Cartwright: 44:10

we have a declining population in seemingly every country and yet the global population is still increasing. So I sometimes don't understand it, but apparently the population of africa, for example, is still growing rapidly and it's mitigating a lot of that. I mean, let's not go into a sort of immigration thing here, but we have definitely an issue of declining populations in some places.

Jimmy Rhodes: 44:31

But then we have a lot of movement and we have a lot of the trajectory is that it's decelerating rapidly and we're going to go into population decline.

Matt Cartwright: 44:38

Yeah, well, we've got depopulation through vaccines and, uh, house 5g yeah and uh, the global cabal global cabal so that's yeah, if you've listened to the podcast before.

Jimmy Rhodes: 44:54

That's not coming from me. Um yeah, but but so so I think I do think it's complicated. I still think it's something to keep an eye on. I thought our podcast was originally like jobs, jobs, jobs.

Jimmy Rhodes: 45:07

It hasn't really been that for most of the, you know, most of the time. But I think, I think this is a thorny situation where I don't I don't know where I mean it's. You know it's mixed up in a load of other political stuff right now, to be frank, um, but for me, I'll be honest, my, I will say it right now, my position is and has always been, and I don't care what, um, you know, some of your top bods in Google say about oh, it's just going to create more jobs. I don't, I don't get that, and if I'm, maybe it's because I'm not smart enough, but in my opinion, ai is going to do, it's just going to start doing white collar jobs. It's just going to be your admin assistant, and so you don't need an admin assistant, and that's going to be the beginning. It's going to be effectively your secretary or 90 of a secretary's job.

Matt Cartwright: 45:55

So just before we move, because we're going to look, find a part of the episode. We're going to look at, like, what the solution is. We're going to look at like what the solution is. So we're going to look at things like UBI, you know, different kind of economic models, but just before we move on, what about sort of jobs that are not white collar jobs, jobs which are not using a computer? What about? You know? Because years ago the thought was when AI comes in, it's robots automating things and taking away manual work. When ai comes in, it's robots automating things and taking away manual work. You know, I think there's no doubt now that if you're a plumber, you've definitely got more time than if you are a you know, an admin assistant in a gp surgery. But how long have they got? And should we all be pivoting towards manual work and farming, um, possibly like I.

Jimmy Rhodes: 46:39

So I think this is much harder to say because we haven't like, whereas, whereas whereas I would say that, um, like things like llms and agentic ai are clearly on a trajectory and don't like like anyone who's like remotely knowledgeable on this stuff, is only predict, predicting like it's almost an exponential trajectory. But even if it's not, we're going to like these agentic ai like they are coming, they are around the corner. With robots, it's less clear because it's really quite difficult to create robots that can have sophisticated interactions with the physical environment. Um, plumbers a really good example right, they're like just about getting robots that can stand in one place and stack dishes in a dishwasher or something like that. As Some of the examples that we've seen, they are nowhere near the like fidelity that you would need to have to be like in a narrow crawl space plumbing basically to use that example.

Matt Cartwright: 47:43

And then there's we're not going to go into too much detail, but you know, I still think the biggest barrier for all AI adoption is trust, and I think people are too people are too trusting of large language models because they think it's just a computer um, but they won't be as easily trusting of you know, no matter what you make it look like, it looks creepy and it's going to take a long time for people to be okay with something coming into their house where their kids and their pet is and, you know, coming and fixing something and not just mowing them down.

Matt Cartwright: 48:12

Because we have all seen films where where you know we've all seen terminate. We've all seen films where there was a robot that did something.

Matt Cartwright: 48:20

We haven't necessarily all seen well, maybe everyone's seen the new mission impossible film but films where you know an ai and it's kind of current guys has done something bad so I I think that's a big barrier for adoption so if you're training now to do something, then definitely you've got more years left in you if you go and do something more manual yeah, I also feel like when they cock up, they'll just do something catastrophic, like I.

Jimmy Rhodes: 48:44

Like I don't know, it's just a feeling, but, like you know, if you had a plumber robot it would saw through a pipe and flood that entire property yeah and then just it doesn't know how to fix it because, it doesn't have in its memory how to it can.

Matt Cartwright: 48:58

Only it's only been programmed to come and do the thing it's meant to do. When it goes wrong, it doesn't know what to do something like that.

Jimmy Rhodes: 49:03

Yeah, I mean, obviously they're not programmed, but like it feels. Like it feels like some stuff like that is just quite far away really.

Matt Cartwright: 49:18

So I think this is the most fun bit, actually. So I titled it why UBI Won't Work. But then you said you think it will, so maybe it will work. But we had an episode where we talked about it. So UBI Universal Basic Income or NBI National Basic Income the idea is basically you have a set amount of money and everybody gets that.

Matt Cartwright: 49:37

So you know, certain cities and countries have experimented with this. So let's give an example. In the UK, let's say, every individual gets £20,000. That's their baseline. That's a universal basic income for every individual. You fund that, you know, basically taxes on ai or you or through sort of productivity gains. And the fact that ai makes everything cheaper everyone gets 20 000 doesn't mean people can't have more. You can go and work and earn extra if you can, but you have enough to be able to live. So that means that we don't have people you know, ideally, who are living in poverty. We have a better, uh sort of floor for society, but in a sense we probably then have a better sort of floor for society. But in a sense we'd probably then have a lower ceiling because most people can't push themselves up. So you'd get a more equal society with the UBI.

Matt Cartwright: 50:20

I think it won't work, and I think the Useless Eaters episode you can go and listen to is one of the examples why it creates a class of people who are not contributing. And then I think, whether there's a global cabal or not, there are. At least you know a exists, a fairly powerful part of society that would not want and doesn't like people who are not productive and contributing to it and therefore I think it's not sustainable. I also think, for countries like the us that are just built on this idea of you know you don't get anything for free, you work for it they don't have a social model. It's very difficult to imagine that kind of happening, but I think you maybe slightly disagree. So, um, why do you disagree? Or do you? Maybe you don't disagree?

Jimmy Rhodes: 50:59

I do disagree. Um, I mean to start as referring back to the experiments that you referred to, um, and for different reasons they succeeded in different ways. But there have been experiments into ubi. They are small scale. Yeah, I was gonna literally say that, I was gonna preface it with small scale, um, but yeah, there's been a fin, there's been a study in finland and obviously all of the nordic countries. They're way more sophisticated than the rest of the world already. I'm not saying that sarcastically, like they are um, kind of like I think, leading the way in terms of some of some of the social experiments they do and things like that. I think it's fair to say um, and quite sensible and leading on happiness indexes in general already even though it's pitch black for half of the year, and they should all be committing suicide exactly they.

Matt Cartwright: 51:47

I mean that's very negative take, but they, but yes they, they're doing remarkably well I'm sorry I have to go back on that because actually weirdly they do have very, very high suicide rates at the same time as they have these happiness things.

Jimmy Rhodes: 52:00

So it's a bit of a it's a bit of a sort of maybe it's just like everyone's knocking themselves off and the rest are actually happy. Well, no, I think, I think, like genuinely, I think like the I'm joking the 24 hours of darkness.

Matt Cartwright: 52:12

It does have an effect, but then it's mitigated by the stuff you're saying, which is a social system that is better and more equal society. Like that's the thing. Socialist countries like that have a more equal society, don't they?

Jimmy Rhodes: 52:22

They're super progressive. I mean the example of the Finnish sorry, finnish, yeah, it's Finnish Focusing on wellbeing they had 2017 to 2018, 2000 unemployed individuals got a monthly payment of 560 euros. Um, it found modest impacts on employment, but participants reported lower levels of stress, better health, higher levels of life satisfaction and confidence in the future than a control group. Uh. One other example in the US, actually Stockton, california and this is really interesting but sort of at odds with what we're talking about, because we're talking about there's not going to be any jobs, so we need UBI. But from 2019 to 2021, 125 residents got £500 a month for two years. It showed that unconditional cash payments had a positive impact on financial stability, unsurprisingly, I suppose. Um. And employment, though. So full-time employment amongst recipients went up by 12 percentage points. Um, improved mental health, uh, decreased rates of anxiety and depression, and I can imagine that. So, like people who are sort of really struggling in and out of employment and all the rest of it and then just constant pressure to just be able to get by.

Matt Cartwright: 53:37

Take any job.

Jimmy Rhodes: 53:37

Yeah, and I've I know we're not even going to get a job take any job you can and then be like in a job and be unhappy.

Matt Cartwright: 53:44

I can imagine being also don't know whether that job like no security in that job.

Jimmy Rhodes: 53:47

So you're constantly worried whether that's the last week of your work and yeah, I can imagine being given like this sort of basic level of like five hundred dollars a month, and then maybe you can just take a little bit longer and find a job that's a bit more appealing and sort of like there's not be so worried and not be constantly, constantly on edge about about it, yeah so.

Jimmy Rhodes: 54:05

So I think you know. I mean, obviously, we're talking about a world here where, arguably, there aren't going to be any jobs and so UBI is all we have, which is a very different situation to what they're talking about here. But I think, fundamentally, like, if you take the money out of it, what is UBI about? Ubi is about that right. It's about not having the fear of like being like. Forget the money aspect of it. If someone could say to you don't worry, you're not going to be homeless, you are never going to be, that you know. You're never going to sink so low, um, that you just going to get kicked out on the street. You're going to be homeless. You're gonna have no access to medical, you're gonna have no access to anything Like. It's almost like just a basic level of you're going to get looked after, it's all right, bro, whatever happens, you're going to be okay. And that part of ubi I'm like well, why wouldn't you do that?

Matt Cartwright: 54:58

I don't disagree. I don't disagree. I just like I say I think it doesn't work because I think it like. On the one hand, I think it, there are just too many people who would be against the idea. Look at how many people are against the idea like freeloaders. They don't like people who would be against the idea. Look at how many people are against the idea of like freeloaders. They don't like people who are not contributing. And I think I can see a model. So this is I call this jokingly because when we talked about this the other week, I called it new communism right and they called it new communism.

Matt Cartwright: 55:27

I think, like when we talked about it and said like, oh well, you can't pitch the idea of communism to Western people, I said, look, I'm not pitching communism because communism didn't work and it doesn't work. But the fundamental idea behind communism if you really strip it back originally right about communism, is it's supposed to be about being fair. It didn't work, but it's supposed to be about being fair. So this idea new communism that I can see of possibly working although I'd it would be a rocky journey to get there is that people get that universal basic income but they still have to contribute something towards society. So you know, I'm not saying everyone goes out and picks rubbish up off the street, but there are lots of things. That's a good suggestion, but yeah. But I mean it's one thing, but there's lots of things that you could do plant more trees, you know, just keep things in better shape.

Matt Cartwright: 56:15

Now I don't know how that would work in a sort of liberal and open society, which is why I kind of jokingly call it new communism. But I can see a way in which this, this and, like I say, new communism is a joke. It's not communism, it's something different. But where that is attached to an income, so it's like you get this income but you still have to do something. You don't have to work 40 hours a week, but you've got to contribute to society. You've got to go and do something. Fine, that's absolutely fine. I think, is a way that it could possibly work, because you're not creating then a class of useless eaters. You're then creating a class of people who are contributing something to society, and I think that makes it more sustainable and I totally agree.

Jimmy Rhodes: 56:54

So if the concept of ubi is we just give people cash, yeah, and forget about the problem, absolutely, I totally agree with you. If the concept if and and this is where maybe, like you know, maybe I didn't fully explain myself but if the concept is ai is going to take, ai is going to do a lot of the maybe not even take all the jobs.

Matt Cartwright: 57:17

We don't need to take all but a lot.

Jimmy Rhodes: 57:18

But like maybe it's going to, maybe it's going to automate a significant amount of the relatively administrative stuff that can be automated, plus even some more, like even a lot of white collar jobs, but let's say it's going to automate a massive amount of jobs. The answer is not just like throw a bunch of cash at society and forget about it absolutely not. It is about how do we transition to exactly what you're talking about, like educate people. Like it starts with education, right so, and this is we probably don't have time to discuss all this but it starts with changing the education system. With education, right so and this is we probably don't have time to discuss all this but it starts with changing the education system.

Jimmy Rhodes: 57:54

The education system right now is all about preparing you for a job later in life. So what does that education system need to look like? It needs to be preparing you for something different, right? And I'm not going to say I have all the answers, but again, like coming back to what you said, like contributing to society, like that's something that education should do already and people should be doing already, but maybe that's part of it like, like, how do you? Because people want purpose I totally agree with that and and. And. So you know, rather than being paid to go and pick litter on the street, it's like, well, you get given cash. Everyone's just going to do that. I would say I'm going to contribute to it.

Matt Cartwright: 58:32

I would say all like young, really young kids. I think of my daughter now, who's, you know, not yet six, but like she talks about things like you know recycling and I kind of say to her well, actually what we need to do is not have the waste in the first place, but like she would want, like at this age, she would want to save the world.

Matt Cartwright: 58:49

She would love the idea of making the world a better place and as you grow up, you move away from that because you're like oh actually, I need to do this to earn money. In a sense, if you could keep people having that purpose of being like, you can pursue the purpose that you want because you'll have enough by doing that.

Matt Cartwright: 59:04

You can be idealistic, yeah, careers in the world that are going to earn you loads and loads of money most people actually like. The reason you want to earn more and do more actually is because that's kind of you know to get by, you're competing with people. If everyone is on a lower um sort of got a lower ceiling but a higher floor and there's a smaller space in between. There it's easier for you to be kind of satisfied with with less, with having enough to like not, yeah, to not be rushing around and like have to.

Jimmy Rhodes: 59:35

You know, someone tries to talk to you and you just have to sort of like go, yeah, I'm just too busy, and you have to rush off and do the next thing all the time like, and so I don't know like. It sounds to me like this is where it's getting a bit too idealistic and rose-tinted glasses and you know ai utopia, but like a world where, like, people aren't in a rush to run around because they don't have to get to the next appointment all the time, and so you can just be a little bit kinder to your fellow person well ai has has the sort of possibility to make the world more equal.

Matt Cartwright: 1:00:11

It also has the possibility of making the world incredibly unequal and I think what I, what I really think will happen is I think we'll have a very, very small class at the top. I think this is inevitable minuscule of 0.1 percent of trillionaires. And if they just have money, that's fine. If they have power, this is a problem. But then, below that, I do think that for most people growing up now, the ceiling of what they can earn and and own and have never going to be a breakout is going to be lower but.

Matt Cartwright: 1:00:41

I think the floor, hopefully, is going to be higher and therefore for people like our generation who've grown up in this world, it's going to be quite difficult to adapt to that. For younger people up, if you can create that society, it's going to be rocky for a generation or so, but you potentially then have a better world where it's not about just seeking more endless stuff for the sake of it, because actually one thing is like the world has been driven to sort of this consumer capitalism, because that is how the ruling classes make money right Out of people. That is how the ruling classes make money right out of people. But actually if the argument is, well, actually they don't need people anymore to make money, because they don't need consumption, because actually they just need control over ai and production, then actually it's sort of like they don't need to take advantage of people so much anymore. This sounds like the hunger games well that's the dystopia.

Mersey Beat: 1:01:33

The more you describe it well.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:01:34

No, like it sounds like it's like.

Matt Cartwright: 1:01:36

It sounds like it's like the hunger games, but where they don't make poor people fight each other like it's so close though yeah, it's on a knife edge well you well, you know, elysium, or, like you know, I come at this from the point of view of I don't think it's going to end well.

Mersey Beat: 1:01:51

No.

Matt Cartwright: 1:01:52

So yeah, maybe that is the case.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:01:56

In Time was a favour of mine. I think I've mentioned it before. If you haven't seen it, it's quality, justin Timberlake, I have seen it.

Matt Cartwright: 1:02:04

Yeah, I have seen it. Yeah, I have seen it. Anyway, my final idea on this as one alternative model.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:02:10

Everything you've just said sounds like that, but like just just the nice thing.

Matt Cartwright: 1:02:15

Yeah Well, this is where I hope it will be. I'm trying to be more, more positive today than usual, and the final idea that I had on this was actually just I have mentioned this a while ago on a podcast because I heard this quoted from. I can't remember who it was now, but it was someone who was, I think, working, I think working with Trump or someone in Trump's. They'd been advising some part of the Republican government anyway, but they had, because this is why this was quite surprising they had talked about how they thought that the way this would work and the only way and they were very much against kind of UBI and it wouldn't work for the same reasons as I've said but that what they would end up having was taxing use of AI or incentivizing employment of people to the point that you know you have to make employing a person basically more financially viable than using AI, than using AI.

Matt Cartwright: 1:03:08

Now, I remember when we had this conversation, your criticism was you're creating jobs which are pointless. Well, maybe that's the case, but there are lots of jobs in the world, particularly we've seen this maybe less so now, but in China over the years people who have got jobs because they need to create jobs, so it's not something that has never happened before. It will be unusual for the US, but it's not a case of. This is a best case scenario. It's well. Is this more feasible and more acceptable than the scenario of everyone not having a not having anything to do?

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:03:38

Maybe in the short term, but it just seems so like.

Matt Cartwright: 1:03:41

so I don't Well it will be a reactionary thing in the short term because governments will panic when they realize what's what's happening.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:03:48

The long-term vision and I, you know this is where okay, so I don what's happening. The long-term vision and I, you know this is where okay. So I don't agree with the idea that everyone could be an entrepreneur. I do agree that ai could create this incredible amount of creative freedom and that creative freedom doesn't have to be capitalist yeah has to make money, type creative freedom.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:04:08

This could just you were aspiring artist. You can't make any money out of it in the capitalist word world, so you work in McDonald's or Starbucks right now, but actually now you can just go and do that instead. And again, maybe this is slightly idealistic, like if I think, if I say to myself what would I do if I could? Just if I could, just, you know, within reason, within reason, do what I want, but not be, not have a nine to five job. I can think of so many things.

Matt Cartwright: 1:04:40

You're not most people are you.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:04:45

I don't. Well, I don't think I am most people. I think I'm a lot of people, though I don't. I think. I think I think you underestimate how many people are like, probably have a creative spark in them and it's just snuffed out because they are. You know, it might be they're really creative, but they're not really smart in other ways and so, or they're not, I wouldn't even say smart, I don't think it's even smart.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:05:03

I think maybe not advantaged, maybe didn't have the opportunities in life in other ways and so they've ended up in this situation where they're just like working in a factory, working in a whatever, like it's just the situation. You, you're born in the town that's next to the place I mean I'm going back like 100 years in the uk but you're born in the town that's next to the mine, and so you go and work in the mine.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:05:24

That's what but like you might be basically einstein, but you're working in the mine because that's what you do. Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm talking about, I think.

Matt Cartwright: 1:05:32

I think you're underestimating people, but it's how you get there right that's, that's the problem and it's like so let's, let's look at a. And there's a final point, I guess. Here let's look at a situation which I think is sort of realistic style within the next five years, 20 of jobs are lost. Right, that's never been seen outside of the great depression no so you have to react to that.

Matt Cartwright: 1:05:55

If you're a government, you're not just going to. You can't just put in a ubi or any system like that, because that is a complete change of an economic model that it's going to take years for people to get their heads around and be able to accept. So in the short term and the short term is quite a long time how do you mitigate that? I think the reaction is you have to stop all these job losses. How do you stop these job losses? You have to make them unaffordable that's.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:06:20

That's the way to do it smoothly.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:06:23

If you don't do that and you don't introduce ubi, then, to be frank, it goes the way of revolution, which is yeah, we've talked about before it goes one of two ways, like if you, if you make everyone unemployed and poor, you get a revolution at some point, and it's horrible and it's horrific, and it out the other side, you end up with something that's a lot closer to the utopia we're talking about. If you don't do that, then how do you get there? You get there by smart government planning, which almost never happens. It might happen in China, actually, ironically, but like probably doesn't happen in most of the world, and so, yeah, I mean that's my answer.

Matt Cartwright: 1:07:00

So it's a revolution.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:07:02

Well, I don't know if it is, but it might be.

Matt Cartwright: 1:07:04

I mean I think I've said this many times I think it will be. I don't know to what degree, I'm not sure. I necessarily think it will, because I think, like with all things before you get to that stage, like once the rioting, once the people on the streets, once the you know, the rejection of sort of ai and the sort of burning down of factories, the every single electric vehicle getting smashed up, once that kind of stuff starts, I think then that provokes the reaction that means you don't, you probably don't get to the point of the revolution, because you probably reacts before that but I think it's like a semi-revolution.

Matt Cartwright: 1:07:40

I think you semi see that. I mean I've said this many times, I think. I think I said by the end of next year. I'm not sure about my timelines, we need to revisit the, the predictions, but there will be mass, mass rioting and mass protests and social unrest yeah, once things really start to kick in.

Matt Cartwright: 1:07:57

And it's just how far does that go before you see a reaction? Or maybe there are very, very clever people in governments who are working on this and we just aren't giving them enough credit yeah, yeah and if and if and if.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:08:08

I mean and actually that's the thing that's changed, I think, in the information age versus previous, if you're talking like over the last few hundred years, we are in that age now of information People are able to especially with things like AI, are able to you know, yeah, I mean, there isn't no beating around the bush like manipulate populations, things like that, manipulate information, and so maybe it won't go that way and maybe.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:08:37

But the only way it doesn't go that way is if you mitigate for it somehow and that might be creating like for a better word, like vacant, fake jobs, which I I don't think is a great idea. Um, I think a better idea is to get out ahead of it and just find a way to support people. I'm not saying what is a great idea.

Jimmy Rhodes: 1:08:50

Um, I think a better idea is to get ahead of it and just find a way to support people I'm not saying what's a better idea, I'm saying what will actually happen well, but again like I mean, yeah, I mean maybe I'm wrong, but like it does feel like this in this day and age, like I can't see how the revolution thing right, for example, like it'll be really obvious that we're going in that direction, and then I won't let it happen. Something will self-correct. Yeah, maybe I won't let it happen, but I don't think people will let it happen. I think we've. I think we've seen this stuff too many times in the past. But I don't know, I don't know what. I can't predict the future.

Matt Cartwright: 1:09:23

I'm not nostradamus, and apparently he was crap anyway was a shame, because if you could have predicted the future, we could have ended this episode with you just giving everyone the answer as it is. They'll have to go away and make their own minds up yeah, the answer is crack on, see what happens good stuff, right.

Mersey Beat: 1:09:46

Thanks for listening everyone uh, see you all in two weeks upright can all be entrepreneurs in the AI moonlight.

Mersey Beat: 1:10:14

Ai won't make us all bosses.

Mersey Beat: 1:10:17

No, no, no. That's not how economics go. Go, go. When everyone's the CEO who's gonna work the floor below. Jimmy's talking about UBI says it's the way. Give everyone some money. We'll be dancing all day. But Matt just shakes his head and says that's communism. Mate, won't fly in the West until it's far too late. I won't make us all bosses. No, no, no. That's not how economics go. Go, go. When everyone's the CEO who's gonna work the floor below. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The machines keep on learning. Yeah, yeah, yeah, while the world keeps on turning. But when push comes to shove and we're all useless eaters, we'll be singing a different love song to our silicon leader. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the machines keep on learning. Yeah, yeah, yeah, While the world keeps on turning. But when push comes to shove and we're all useless eaters, we'll be singing a different love song To our silicon leaders. I won't make us all bosses. No, no, no. That's not how economics go, go, go. When the West finally sees we're all on our knees, that's when UBI flows, flows, flows.