The Outsider Perspective Issue 448 | The Beltway Outsiders

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Good Friday Morning! Except for Barak Obama, who is really going through it. I wouldn’t want to be two men in America: Will Smith or Barack Obama. Both men are married to women who seem bent on destroying them at all costs.

Obviously, Michelle Obama has stoked the divorce rumor mill for months now. This week, she said, “‘I’m so glad I didn’t have a boy,’ Obama exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t you throw in a third?’ Martinez said with a chuckle to the mother of two. ‘Because he would’ve been a Barack Obama,’ [the] former president’s wife quipped to laughs.”

I’d rather get divorced than take that. Or be like Will Smith and have my wife read off the family’s dirty laundry around a table for a podcast audience. It’s bizarre—best of luck to them.

This week, I’m delving deeper into artificial intelligence. There’s a lot to discuss on this as we enter the fourth industrial revolution – links to follow.

Quick Hits:

A look at Israel from a conservative Jewish perspective. I enjoy the Commentary Magazine podcast, which airs daily; you can listen to or watch it on YouTube for free. They are particularly invaluable during moments when Israel is a hot-button issue because they are steeped in both the U.S. political world and Israel. The episode for Thursday was a good one, where they discussed what was happening and what could be next. I recommend it. For National Review readers, this is the publication where Noah Rothman first began writing.
The American Almanac is growing! I want to express my continued gratitude to those of you who subscribe, share, and help us grow. You can subscribe here for free.

Where you can find me this week

Please subscribe, rate, and review The Horse Race on YouTube — the reviews help listeners, and readers like you find me. Make sure to sign up for the Conservative Institute’s daily newsletter and The American Almanac.

Trump And Israel Forge A New World – Conservative Institute

Israel’s Victory Humiliates Iran, Russia, and China – Conservative Institute

The Supreme Court Gets It Right On Tennessee Transgender Law – Conservative Institute

Artificial Intelligence Takes Another Leap Forward

The First Industrial Revolution occurred in the 18th century, originating in the United Kingdom, which had become the world’s economic powerhouse. That’s when factories first started to take over the world; you see the modern world beginning to take shape.

The Second Industrial Revolution took place between the American Civil War and the First World War. We commonly refer to that as our Gilded Era. The two World Wars bookended the beginning of the 20th century, just before the onset of the third Industrial Revolution, known as the Information Age.

The advent of the computer and widespread internet access have defined this era. Corporate employees became known as knowledge workers, and we valued them for that head knowledge.

The third industrial revolution is dead. The transition into the fourth Industrial Revolution is here. The concept of the Fourth Industrial Revolution was first coined in 2015 by Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. They believed they had a handle on it by pointing to advancements such as robots, AI, and gene editing. All of those were in their infancy, so we haven’t truly been in that age until now.

We’re in it.

In May, ChatGPT alone surpassed Wikipedia in monthly website views. It’s ranked sixth on the world website list, with Wikipedia in 8th. When I began college, there was an uproar among professors over students using Wikipedia to learn topics quickly. That era is dead.

I was listening to an interview with Andrew Yang on CNBC, where he made a similar point about AI changing everything. He and the panel were reacting to a story about Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who told employees to learn AI or be prepared for layoffs. The company turned around and demanded that employees move closer to hub cities, return to the office, or resign.

Amazon is cutting its headcount due to AI advances right now. This is not a future thing. One of the largest retail and tech giants on the planet is reducing headcount because they’re using AI to replace those employees. Yang made the point that we may enter a period where companies increasing headcount, which was a good thing in the past, may be viewed negatively in the coming years.

He said that because he’s talked to CEOs who have expressed that view.

In the past, previous revolutions have destroyed specific job sectors but also created new ones. Farm laborers and serfs moved into factories, manufacturing, and eventually corporate jobs. There’s been this massive lift of humans into jobs that paid for an enormous boom into the middle class and societal wealth (especially in America).

The changes brought about by AI are happening so rapidly that jobs are being eliminated before replacements can be created. Fiverr’s CEO (a company that helped create gig jobs) wrote a letter to all employees telling them the same thing: “AI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it’s coming for my job too. This is a wake-up call.”

I believe the optimists are correct that new jobs will be created from AI. However, the destruction is happening much faster than the creation. Unemployment is edging up, with jobless claims climbing. I know AI is playing a role.

ChatGPT’s emergence in 2022 has had a profound impact, radically changing the landscape. AI used to be a technology reserved for high-end companies. The AI programs I used when I started as a lawyer were nothing. They were barely usable, and I considered them scarcely usable pattern recognizers.

What we’re seeing now is beyond anything I’ve ever seen. In the past month, AI has taken another leap.

Google VEO 3 is the best video creation service I’ve ever seen. AI-generated videos have exploded across the internet over the past 3-4 weeks, all created using the VEO 3 tool. If you haven’t seen it, check this thread on X/Twitter and realize this: nothing in those videos is real.

If you’re on social media, you’ve probably seen vlogs by Bigfoot, Yeti, Stormtroopers, the American Revolution, and more, where people are creating entirely new takes on everything using a single video creation tool. Are these likely to have been touched up a bit by professionals? Probably. Are some of these videos by individuals life-like and Hollywood movie studio quality? Yes.

And that is before we get to the big kahuna arriving, possibly this summer: ChatGPT 5. OpenAI has released a range of new models that have blown my mind as I’ve worked with them.

Are there still mistakes? Yes.

But realize the standard we’re holding them to: perfection. We do that because we expect that from machines. Humans will never hit this degree of work or accuracy.

I’m not a doom-and-gloom user of AI, nor am I an eternal optimist. Both sides are right. This is neither a good nor an evil thing. It’s a productivity tool on a scale, unlike anything we’ve ever seen. The negatives are very real, as are the positives. And there’s no stopping either.

There’s no slowing it down because this is an arms race. Companies are in a race against each other to develop AI-driven tools, and countries are at war with each other on it. This is a two-country race between the United States and China.

On the negative side, my view is that by 2030, we will see massive upheaval in white-collar jobs due to AI. Companies are already reducing the number of entry-level jobs due to AI. If we get a recession, it will wipe out the rest.

That’s the other thought I’ve had on the negative side: the next recession is going to hurt worse than 2008 because AI will allow companies to maintain productivity levels without the employees. That realization will mean that the recovery after the next recession will be slow, rigid, and abysmal. It will make the Obama recovery (which did not end until around 2017/18, a decade) look great.

On the positive side, AI will empower a single person to drive the world in a way they never have before. The future will be driven by those who understand AI and have a clear vision of how to deploy it effectively.

I was working with ChatGPT on a finance-related side project this week, and it was fully capable of coding and building a custom program to do everything I needed it to do. I was chatting with a friend about that, and he said the coding ability isn’t quite there yet. But we’re headed that way soon.

If you can dream it, AI can create it. That’s the future we’re walking into. And I do mean everything: Art, music, writing, coding, law, and everything else. AI has the power to be the ultimate leveler, where anyone can create an earth-altering creation with the right prompting, hard work, and follow-through. This is not blind optimism. I’m seeing the results myself, as are others.

Because every month that passes, AI becomes better than the previous month. The people who believe AI is a nothing burger are wrong. In the past, I used to argue with a few of them. However, the technology is advancing so rapidly now that I’m just waiting for those kinds of people to get run over. The advancements won’t slow down.

To them, I’d give the advice that (and I’m not making this up) ICE T (yes, that one) gave to his followers on X/Twitter:

People are Upset with Ai… I’m fully aware that it can and will be used for a multitude of purposes… But advanced Tech is coming if you like it or not.. MY advice.. LEARN as much as you can about NEW things or get left in the past… ‘Quincy Jones’ Gave me the deepest Game ever… “If you wannna LOSE a fight, Fight the Future.”

The future is here. And it is racing forward at light speed.

Links of the week

Fake Israeli Phone Call Triggered Meeting Of Iranian Leaders. Then Israel Targeted Meeting Location – The Daily Wire

European ministers to hold nuclear talks with Iran on Friday in Geneva, source says – Reuters

The Genocide Lie: The Propaganda Machine Turning Victims into Villains – Courage Media

The Scandal of the Biden ‘Tell-All’ Books – Commentary Magazine

Harvard Law Review Axes 85 Percent of Submissions Using Race-Conscious Rubric, Documents Show – Free Beacon

“No Kings” Is Not Enough: The Democrats’ latest mirage. – The Liberal Patriot

Educated Bet: Massachusetts Schools May Risk Top Ranking to Lift Struggling Students – RealClearInvestigations

Governors’ Sanctuary Excuses Don’t Add Up – Chronicles

Border Secure, Wages Up: May numbers from CBP are mind-boggling – Center for Immigration Studies

X/Twitter Thread(s) of the week