These discussions are SO frustrating as everyone pussyfoots around the major concern of Americans. How do I get the money to pay my bills? Step me through that. If you pay people 35% more, won't that just cause more inflation and the people without those magical jobs be left further behind? How doesn't most of the working class end up homeless? Don't give me your fantasies that suddenly big business is going to magically share the wealth out of the goodness of their hearts. They are not sharing it now or when they are laying thousands off. Why would they? What would cause them to start? Incentives have to line up, regulation and enforcement will have to make things happen. People are scared. You all have the comfort and confidence knowing you already have plenty of resources, so you don't seem to feel or get the very real fear Americans feel.
Kudos to Oren and his two guests for their courage of wading into this most combustible territory. As Shawn O'Biren said at the end, this is only the beginning of a long struggle, hopefully through more dialogue and less violence, to adapt our society to the latest technological innovation. History has proven that (1) resistence to innovation is futile. You could smash a piece of machinery or burn a factory here and there. But someone else will apply it somewhere else and one day conquer you economically or millitarily; (2) resistence to change is part of human nature, it's like inertia in physics. It cannot be ignored, let alone sneezed at as the elites are apt to do. As Alex Karp said, those who are innovating and profiting from new technologies must understand or made to behave in such a way that resistence is NOT treated as evil but normal human behavior. It's part of their social responsibility to manage it or, ala Alex, face pitch forks, deservedly so; (3) Having a seat at the table, as Shawn O'Brien stated, is not always possible or desirable. How many innovations would have been made if everyone had a seat at the table at the very beginning? Fundamental innovation is like grouping things in thick fog, even the innovator her/himself had little clues of what he or she is doing. Carrying more people on their backs will for sure kill any of such effort. Innovation will forever be a minority business. It does not mean that it should forever remain a secret until the last minute. The testing and scaling up, certain the release of a new technology should and must involve more people and society at some point. That's when having more people at table should and must happen. That's usually what middle management is for. Alex is mistaken when he stated that AI would make middle management go away. If it did, things will blow up for sure and everyone will reach for their pitch forks.
Very interesting. If AI is going to be as big as people think this conversation needs to be developed. I read the transcript since I can do that 10x faster than watching so I might have missed something. It would be helpful if the transcript would identify the speaker since I sometimes wasn't sure.
I think Oren is trying to do what I call populist fusion. There has always been a Left stream and a Right stream to populism but fusion hasn't really happened since the days of William Jennings Bryan. Right now partisanship is getting in the way of a potential for a win-win deal. People tend to think that negotiations are about compromise between incompatible demands. Really useful negotiation go outside that paradigm to create structures where everybody wins.
Having done labor negotiations from the management side, I do have experience in this. In my case it was public sector working for a school district. I was the chief negotiator for management in trying to create a pay for performance plan and at the same time the negotiator for the district on the compensation side of traditional bargaining. One role required me to be very collaborative with the union and the other required me to be a hard ass. Union negotiators had the same problem but we all managed to keep it together. What we came up with was, AFAIK, the only negotiated pay for performance plan for teachers. There have been some others but every one I know of was imposed. It was also comprehensive, designed to completely replace the traditional plan over time. The idea was that the teachers get more money than they could expect in traditional bargaining and more autonomy in structuring their careers, the district gets a better cadre of teachers (lots of funding for professional development and successful outcomes) and everyone gets better student achievement. We had a successful negotiation, got the deal ratified and got public support for the funding package. Then it was on to implementation. I wish I could say it was a long term success. It may have been personnel turnover. The Superintendent retired, I retired, some key people from the union retired or went on to other things and things fell apart. Even though I was a management guy, I blame management for the failure. The union kept trying longer than management and the power imbalance drove a decline in real compensation for teachers. Eventually, just as Mr. O'Brien would have predicted, the union successfully revolted. The strike leaders were guys I had worked with on the plan and had actually had personally designed aspects of it. Made me sad but I can't say I blame them. Strike succeeded and compensation mostly reverted to the traditional dysfunctional step and lane structure. Lesson I learned that strong intergenerational structures need to be developed to make such a deal sustainable. Easier said than done, I know. I tried but in the end, they weren't strong enough to withstand a malign management side focused on the short run.
These discussions are SO frustrating as everyone pussyfoots around the major concern of Americans. How do I get the money to pay my bills? Step me through that. If you pay people 35% more, won't that just cause more inflation and the people without those magical jobs be left further behind? How doesn't most of the working class end up homeless? Don't give me your fantasies that suddenly big business is going to magically share the wealth out of the goodness of their hearts. They are not sharing it now or when they are laying thousands off. Why would they? What would cause them to start? Incentives have to line up, regulation and enforcement will have to make things happen. People are scared. You all have the comfort and confidence knowing you already have plenty of resources, so you don't seem to feel or get the very real fear Americans feel.
For your kids anyway: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
"The proper response to the introduction of new labor-saving technologies is a commensurate reduction in the hours of labor." Samuel Gompers
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
Do you want Nazi socialist government telling people how many hours they must work a week? Capitalism is freedom.
Kudos to Oren and his two guests for their courage of wading into this most combustible territory. As Shawn O'Biren said at the end, this is only the beginning of a long struggle, hopefully through more dialogue and less violence, to adapt our society to the latest technological innovation. History has proven that (1) resistence to innovation is futile. You could smash a piece of machinery or burn a factory here and there. But someone else will apply it somewhere else and one day conquer you economically or millitarily; (2) resistence to change is part of human nature, it's like inertia in physics. It cannot be ignored, let alone sneezed at as the elites are apt to do. As Alex Karp said, those who are innovating and profiting from new technologies must understand or made to behave in such a way that resistence is NOT treated as evil but normal human behavior. It's part of their social responsibility to manage it or, ala Alex, face pitch forks, deservedly so; (3) Having a seat at the table, as Shawn O'Brien stated, is not always possible or desirable. How many innovations would have been made if everyone had a seat at the table at the very beginning? Fundamental innovation is like grouping things in thick fog, even the innovator her/himself had little clues of what he or she is doing. Carrying more people on their backs will for sure kill any of such effort. Innovation will forever be a minority business. It does not mean that it should forever remain a secret until the last minute. The testing and scaling up, certain the release of a new technology should and must involve more people and society at some point. That's when having more people at table should and must happen. That's usually what middle management is for. Alex is mistaken when he stated that AI would make middle management go away. If it did, things will blow up for sure and everyone will reach for their pitch forks.
Very interesting. If AI is going to be as big as people think this conversation needs to be developed. I read the transcript since I can do that 10x faster than watching so I might have missed something. It would be helpful if the transcript would identify the speaker since I sometimes wasn't sure.
I think Oren is trying to do what I call populist fusion. There has always been a Left stream and a Right stream to populism but fusion hasn't really happened since the days of William Jennings Bryan. Right now partisanship is getting in the way of a potential for a win-win deal. People tend to think that negotiations are about compromise between incompatible demands. Really useful negotiation go outside that paradigm to create structures where everybody wins.
Having done labor negotiations from the management side, I do have experience in this. In my case it was public sector working for a school district. I was the chief negotiator for management in trying to create a pay for performance plan and at the same time the negotiator for the district on the compensation side of traditional bargaining. One role required me to be very collaborative with the union and the other required me to be a hard ass. Union negotiators had the same problem but we all managed to keep it together. What we came up with was, AFAIK, the only negotiated pay for performance plan for teachers. There have been some others but every one I know of was imposed. It was also comprehensive, designed to completely replace the traditional plan over time. The idea was that the teachers get more money than they could expect in traditional bargaining and more autonomy in structuring their careers, the district gets a better cadre of teachers (lots of funding for professional development and successful outcomes) and everyone gets better student achievement. We had a successful negotiation, got the deal ratified and got public support for the funding package. Then it was on to implementation. I wish I could say it was a long term success. It may have been personnel turnover. The Superintendent retired, I retired, some key people from the union retired or went on to other things and things fell apart. Even though I was a management guy, I blame management for the failure. The union kept trying longer than management and the power imbalance drove a decline in real compensation for teachers. Eventually, just as Mr. O'Brien would have predicted, the union successfully revolted. The strike leaders were guys I had worked with on the plan and had actually had personally designed aspects of it. Made me sad but I can't say I blame them. Strike succeeded and compensation mostly reverted to the traditional dysfunctional step and lane structure. Lesson I learned that strong intergenerational structures need to be developed to make such a deal sustainable. Easier said than done, I know. I tried but in the end, they weren't strong enough to withstand a malign management side focused on the short run.
For a populist fusion (from a retired blue-collar worker): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW