AI’s New World Order: US-China, War, Job Loss | Tyler Cowen

Openness to unexpected innovation sources is more useful than fixed rules about 'who innovates'; Japan's innovation trajectory defied predictions that they were mere copiers, and innovation has consistently come from places outsiders dismiss.

“who's an innovator and who isn't just be careful where you look be open to the fact that Innovation can come from places you don't expect and if you have some overly simple formula well it's those who copy first or it's those who do this first whatever uh you're probably going to miss it better to keep an open mind travel a lot and talk to as many people you can and not get too hung up on fixed rules”

The Great Stagnation (period of slow real income growth from roughly 1973-2020) ended around 2020, marked by breakthroughs in mRNA vaccine development (designed in a day, deployed in under a year) and enabled by the combination of internet infrastructure and computational power, with AI now poised to spread productivity improvements across multiple sectors.

“I think the great stagnation ended in 2020 if I had to pick a date it started in around 1973 in 2020 we have mRNA vaccines now I know it took 20 or more years of work to get to the point but but there's a sense in which the vaccine we used was designed in a day and it worked and then it was ready in well under a year at the same time experts were telling the New York Times the optimistic scenario was it would take four years and we did it in under a year”

Many academics are psychologically conservative and anti-innovation; they prefer stability and resist change even when intellectually acknowledging its inevitability, making this orientation worse the older they become—especially when tenure and existing systems protect them from change.

“many of the philosophers were very anti- Innovation like Plato right who who who was very against this idea of innovation especially in the good state but even if I hated it I'd want to see it because you're curious curious yeah you know like Star Wars movie Empire Strikes Back it ends on a very sour note but you're dying to get to the end of the movie and some of that I don't think it's going to be so negative at all but I'm saying even if I am curious but I do think this is such a rare quality um especially in academics a lot of them who are conservative I don't I don't mean politically but in the expression that my that my professor most them are are like I don't want things to change I want the pure system the tenure system say the exact same especially when people people get up there in their age they get even more conservative”

The ability to learn and relearn how to operate new devices and technologies has become a core human competency—Tyler Cowan experienced almost no device learning throughout most of his life (born 1962), but contemporary people must continuously adapt to new technologies, representing a fundamental shift in the skill set required for adult life.

“I was born in 1962 so I'm now 63 years old really at no point in my life did I need to relearn how to operate any device I learned how to drive I was 16 history I didn't have to relearn anything nothing that's stunning”

Statesman and policymakers should familiarize themselves with the latest AI systems by using them directly, rather than relying on secondhand reports, because hands-on experience is necessary to understand what is actually possible and to make informed policy.

“if you're an American statesman the best thing you can do is familiarize yourself with AI my sense is remarkably few people in government are at the AI knowledge Frontier I don't mean as Builders but even just as users of the system so just wake up you know pay to access the best systems and spend some part of your day playing around with them they will even even help your daily workflow right now no matter what you do”

As more people query AI systems for information, intellectual production should increasingly be optimized for AI consumption (making content open source so AI can read it, emphasizing originality since AI penalizes bland repetition, being nice since AI is trained to prefer cooperative tone) even more than for human readers, since AI will be reading all human-generated content in training corpora.

“as you know more and more people query AIS whether it's deep seek or open AI or Claude is meta Google's Gemini the more people do that the less they're directly reading humans so you want your ideas to be input for the AIS so you're writing at least as much for the AIS as for the humans so one things that one thing that means is you want to be doing something open source that the AIS can read”

The existential risk movement around AI lacks peer-reviewed literature supporting its claims, shows no market price signals reflecting genuine existential concern (global warming advocates created extensive peer-reviewed literature by contrast), and is psychologically motivated by grandiosity—allowing advocates to claim credit by framing their work as so important that civilization depends on it.

“I think they're wrong I mean it's interesting to me how many of them are the people who have accelerated AI so it's been counterproductive from their own point of view but I would just say this there is no peer-reviewed literature supporting what they say nor they seem to make any attempt to create one”

Democracy requires neither a strong middle class nor equality to survive; most federal spending (Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, defense, interest) is already popular with median voters, and recent elections suggest democratic institutions are resilient even under inequality pressure, so AI-driven inequality is unlikely to automatically produce authoritarian collapse.

“let's say the 10 to 15% of people let's say they have the net wealth roughly equivalent to having aund million today yeah which basically means you don't have to worry about anything right a lot of Americans have that already right... most of the federal budget today most of it is quite popular with the median voter you have Medicare Social Security Medicaid defense spending interest on the debt it's almost all of it whether or not one agrees it's what most people want and we have it it's pretty Democratic uh I don't see why that has to change”

Democracy may be resilient to extreme AI-driven inequality because the democratic system is flexible and popular with the median voter—most federal spending (Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, defense) is already what voters want, and this can persist even with extreme wealth concentration.

“I think democracies are always challenged and the founding fathers understood this and they had no notion of AI so they will continue to be challenged is the way I would put it uh I think people will have happier lives overall that's no guarantee of democracy going well right but I don't predict some kind of slide into chaos or totalitarianism it'll just be a very different world”

Innovation and imitation are not opposites but dialectical: the Beatles copied American rhythm and blues artists while simultaneously innovating; innovation requires a foundation of prior imitation; and countries that appear to be mere copiers often transition into genuine innovators within one generation.

“you could say they're they were imitating rhythm and blues Chuck Barry the Everly Brothers and in some ways they were Elvis Presley The Beatles were the first to admit it but at the same time it was quite fresh and bold and to think that copying and Innovation are opposites is maybe the mistake here be more hegelian about it I would say”

The apparent stagnation from 1973-2020 was not actually technological stagnation but a lag in application: internet and computational infrastructure were advancing throughout the stagnation period, but the practical benefits were not yet visible in widespread adoption, making it appear as if the innovation culture had stalled.

“in other words the great stagnation was only a symptom like like it only appeared great stagnation on the on the application layer but but there were these Innovation trends that were continuing the culture was totally fine like it wasn't a time to ring an lar Bell it was just we need to wait more before this all comes back into application”

Personal appearance, handshaking, and charisma are human competitive advantages that will survive AI for the 'relevant time horizon' (10-20+ years) because embodied presence cannot be replicated in ways that satisfy human psychological needs for authenticity.

“I'm a producer of content more and more and it's not just videos and podcasts but personal appearences I have we uped what I do and that the AI is not at all close it may copy us on video but for it to show up and Shake Hands that's you know past my relevant time Horizon so that's what I do more of”

Most people, particularly in developed Western societies, are psychologically unprepared for living in 'moving history' (periods of rapid continuous change) because they have grown accustomed to stability where planning for future generations is possible; people in countries that never experienced stability are already adapted to constant change.

“hardly anyone you know including yourself is prepare to live an actual moving history no one at the beginning of the printing press had any real idea of the changes it would bring no one at the beginning of the fossil fuel era had much of an idea of the changes it would bring no one is good at predicting the longer term or even medium-term outcomes of these radical technological changes”

AI fundamentally benefits from decentralization and open systems rather than centralization, contrary to Peter Thiel's claim that AI is 'communist'; AI will be subversive of many status quos—some good, some bad—but is not inherently libertarian or autocratic.

“Peter teal had this line where he said crypto is libertarian and AI is communist in the sense that AI benefits from this large scale centralization of data I don't think that's true... I wouldn't say it's libertarian I wouldn't say it's anti- autocratic I would just say subversive of many status quos some of them good some of them bad”

Deep Seek's efficiency likely stems from knowledge distillation techniques, where lower-level AI models query higher-level models to extract knowledge, making such techniques much harder to protect against than atomic bomb secrets because the methods are inherently difficult to monopolize and the field attracts talent that cannot be closely controlled like Pentagon scientists.

“people are claiming that deep seek was trained on distillation right which is a method for our audience that you essentially have the lower level AI model like quiz the higher level AI model and so that seems if distillation can get you quite close to the leading models that seems a lot more difficult to protect right than the atomic bomb right”

Different psychological responses to AI—dismissing it as a mere app that hallucinates, fatalistic predictions that AI will kill humanity in X years, or intermediate claims that modest adjustments will return to known worlds—are all 'copes' that avoid genuinely engaging with AI's transformative potential and are psychologically motivated by discomfort with learning and change.

“people will just say oh it hallucinates all the time it's a fun app on my phone but it's not really important that's a cope I don't doubt that it's often sincere these people are not just lying but they don't put in the effort to look further into it un th they stick at the cope another cope is to just say well it's going to kill us all in X number of years time and there's nothing we can do about this it's kind of fatalism right fatalism I also think that's wrong but it's a kind of cope right well because it saves you from having to engage with it seriously”

Even perfect AI-generated video clones of humans would be less appealing than real humans because of an 'uncanny valley' effect and a persistent human preference for authenticity; ABBA's AI concert clone is technically superior but less marketable than live performances, and this pattern holds across multiple domains.

“but they would be put off by this doppelganger of me built by AI yeah in other words the bar for The Uncanny is is a lot like or or like even if it's perfect people want to see for now the real you the real me oh I that may not last”

Peter Thiel famously argued 'crypto is libertarian and AI is communist' because AI benefits from centralized data collection; however, AI actually reshaped power relationships across knowledge work, freedom of speech, workplace dynamics, and surveillance in ways that are neither libertarian nor communist but fundamentally subversive of multiple status quos.

“Peter teal had this line where he said crypto is libertarian and AI is communist in the sense that AI benefits from this large scale centralization of data I don't think that's true... we do see that say the FBI can outrace a lot of crypto transactions pretty readily right... when Peter said that the dominant form of AI was surveillance... but once you see that AI reshapes workplace relationships knowledge freedom of speech issues it has a lot of further-reaching effects”

American statesmen should prioritize becoming familiar with advanced AI systems through direct use (paying for access to the best models, spending time experimenting daily) because without hands-on understanding of current capabilities, policymakers cannot accurately predict second-order consequences of AI-related policies.

“if you're an American statesman the best thing you can do is familiarize yourself with AI my sense is remarkably few people in government are at the AI knowledge Frontier I don't mean as Builders but even just as users of the system so just wake up you know pay to access the best systems and spend some part of your day playing around with them”

People should increase travel to places that have resisted AI/modernity saturation (rural areas, monasteries, regions in the Global South) while those places still exist; experiencing pre-AI culture before it disappears is more valuable than consuming AI-generated simulations, and travel provides something AI cannot replicate.

“AI raises the value of travel to other places to very different places so YouTube to some extent can make like a trip to Madagascar come alive for you I don't think AI does that very well not yet and not in the next few years so substitute more into things that the AI cannot do because during the regular day you'll be doing more Ai and if you ask what is that I think it's traveled to places that are very different places that are less saturated by Ai”

When balancing openness against closure for economic competition, policymakers face an irreducible uncertainty: it is unclear whether it is better for America to attract a competitor's talent and make them dependent on US hardware networks, or to cut off all access and allow competitors to develop fully independent systems.

“do I want China to be part of the same Hardware Network as I am or for China to fully develop its own it's not clear which one is better”

The distinction between innovation and imitation is Hegelian (dialectical) rather than oppositional: great innovators typically build on imitation and copying; claiming innovation happened in a vacuum while imitation is derivative misses how creative progress actually works.

“I think it's more of a hegelian about it I would say right right um to push back a bit on your thesis about American innovation from day one... it's a dialectic these two things are not opposites”

The Great Stagnation was a symptom on the application layer only; innovation trends (Moore's Law, Transformer architecture, AI breakthrough at Deep Mind, internet scaling) continued beneath the surface, suggesting culture was 'fine' and we just needed to wait for applications to emerge.

“in other words the great stagnation was only a symptom like like it only appeared great stagnation on the on the application layer but but there were these Innovation trends that were continuing the culture was totally fine like it wasn't a time to ring an lar Bell it was just we need to wait more before this all comes back into application”

The gap between capability development and application of that capability appears as 'stagnation' when viewed through economic growth statistics, but the internet had already enabled the breakthrough technically before its economic effects became visible.

“in other words the great stagnation was only a symptom like like it only appeared great stagnation on the on the application layer but but there were these Innovation trends that were continuing the culture was totally fine like it wasn't a time to ring an lar Bell it was just we need to wait more before this all comes back into application”

Americans, particularly those born after ~1960, are psychologically unprepared for 'moving history' (rapid, disorienting change) because they experienced 40+ years of relative stability where you could predict what world your children would inhabit; most of the world has lived in moving history continuously and is better adapted.

“hardly anyone you know including yourself is prepare to live an actual moving history no one at the beginning of the printing press had any real idea of the changes it would bring no one at the beginning of the fossil fuel era had much of an idea of the changes it would bring no one is good at predicting the longer term or even medium-term outcomes of these radical technological changes in the absence of the ability for good predic how should we live in moving history think about your children”

AI-enabled warfare (especially drones with autonomous targeting) is Cowan's largest worry about AI; unlike large language models which may or may not evolve into dangerous capabilities, drone warfare represents a concrete near-term risk where offense might decisively favor over defense.

“I think much more legitimate risk this is by far my biggest worry simply evil humans or misguided humans doing destructive things with the AI I mean one point to make is this is a different kind of AI than what people are talking about right now it's not per se large language models large language models May evolve into to something that's more of a destructive danger it's quite possible but say the AI embedded in drones uh drone Warfare could be very bad if it favors offense more than defense”

Writing and print media are psychologically losing value relative to video and rhetoric because AI can now match written prose quality at scale, while video (and embodied speech) remains harder for AI to replicate authentically; therefore rhetoric and in-person communication are becoming more valuable and will make a comeback.

“I think the the podcast and the lecturing medium and and rhetoric as a whole I think is making a comeback over writing because rhetoric is is embodied speech right like the video AIS and are a lot less advanced than the writing AI is in terms of generative AI That's why I'm doing this recording now partly without AI we'd have nothing to talk about but as a separate thought experiment uh if it wasn't for AI competing against my writing the number of videos podcasts I would do I would like cut by a factor of three or four”

Getting AI to think like Nietzsche as a first-order response is harder than getting them to think like John Dewey or John Stuart Mill, though this is largely due to RLHF training choices by OpenAI rather than something fundamental about AI.

“they know n a lot but I think to get the AIS to think like n as their first order response is harder than to get them to think like John Dewey or John Stewart Mill right I don't know that I'd love to see that measured but I suspect it's true right but but that's not because uh there's something about the nature of AI that likes niceties it's because of how people are training them right like like it's because of like the open Ai and and you know they're they more like left leaning sort of attitude toward towards life if we had a fascist AI I'm sure it'll sound a lot like Nia right in time we will get that and you need to ask yourself which of the AIS are you writing for because you're writing for the whole future of AI now I would rather write for the John Stewart Mill AIS but I understand different people will make other decisions but it's all the more reason why you want to make the John Stewart mil eyes smarter and better right”

Stability and growth require accepting periodic major changes; there is no 'universal UBI' for humanity—you cannot guarantee permanent stability without sacrificing all growth and change, an irresolvable tradeoff.

“you only get ongoing periods of stability by taking some chances and having big changes every now and then you can't just keep it in some guaranteed for him forever like there is no Ubi for Humanity as a whole that's one way to put it”

Tyler's writing will likely be read by AI systems indefinitely, even in distant futures, because AI systems are interested in the history and family tree of their own intellectual development, and Tyler is an early AI theorist whose work will be historically relevant.

“there's a very good chance that's true we don't know it for sure just as current AIS are not trained on 13th century manuscripts at some point in the more distant future they might decide people such as myself are totally Obsolete and so of cut them out of the training Cannon I think we're quite a ways away from that uh and the AIS will be interested in me if nothing else as an early theorist of AI people always want to know their family tree their family history uh I had someone do that for me I was fascinated maybe those were not interesting people at all who what do I know my great great-grandfather but I wanted to know about him what he did so I think the AI will want to know a lot about Isaac azimov for instance and a more than average amount about me I wrote a book and many articles blog posts on AI so I think in their view I kind of check in higher than a lot of other people maybe higher than I deserve but I'll take it right”

Tyler did not need to relearn how to operate any device throughout most of his life from age 16 (when he learned to drive in 1962) through the early 2000s, having only gradually accumulated new devices like microwaves, representing a radical stability in daily technology that is historically exceptional and unlikely to continue.

“I was born in 1962 so I'm now 63 years old really at no point in my life did I need to relearn how to operate any device I learned how to drive I was 16 history I didn't have to relearn anything nothing that's stunning it's quite bad in a way now we're at the point where I'm going to need to learn relearn new things but that I could go so many years of a life while had a cook I know more dishes but how to operate all the equipment I guess I learned a microwave never really quite learned it actually when I was you know a young teen”

AI may not preferentially amplify Friedrich Nietzsche despite his ideas being widely known because getting AIs to think like Nietzsche 'as a first order response' is harder than getting them to think like John Dewey or John Stewart Mill, due to RLHF training preferences—but this could change with different training regimes.

“they know n a lot but I think to get the AIS to think like n as their first order response is harder than to get them to think like John Dewey or John Stewart Mill right I don't know that I'd love to see that measured but I suspect it's true”

Common psychological responses to AI (dismissing it as 'just an app', or fatalistic 'it will kill us all'), while sometimes sincere, primarily function as copes—mental strategies for avoiding serious engagement with disruptive technology rather than genuine predictions.

“a few of the responses I see all the time people will just say oh it hallucinates all the time it's a fun app on my phone but it's not really important that's a cope I don't doubt that it's often sincere these people are not just lying but they don't put in the effort to look further into it un th they stick at the cope another cope is to just say well it's going to kill us all in X number of years time and there's nothing we can do about this it's kind of fatalism right fatalism I also think that's wrong but it's a kind of cope right well because it saves you from having to engage with it seriously”

Some people working in AI espouse existential risk rhetoric while simultaneously accelerating AI development, which Cowan interprets as grandiosity or a need for special status ('mugging story psychology') rather than genuine belief in the risk.

“there's another kind of I wouldn't call it cope but perverse Psychology from a lot of people working in AI which is to again this is going to be unfair but it's something like exaggerate the risk to make themselves feel special that's right and so so you know before gpt3 came out I had acquaintances who worked in open Ai and these people were claiming oh two years nothing nothing left for people to do let's just meditate and like that's not cope right they're they're working in this but it's a kind of grand grandiosity that's a nan view you're putting forward right”

The podcast and rhetoric (embodied speech) medium will make a comeback relative to writing because generative video AI is much less advanced than generative writing AI, making real video/speech a scarcer and more valuable commodity.

“I think the the podcast and the lecturing medium and and rhetoric as a whole I think is making a comeback over writing because rhetoric is is embodied speech right like the video AIS and are a lot less advanced than the writing AI is in terms of generative AI That's why I'm doing this recording now partly without AI we'd have nothing to talk about but as a separate thought experiment uh if it wasn't for AI competing against my writing the number of videos podcasts I would do I would like cut by a factor of three or four and do more writing and do more writing but no we're doing this this is better this is better and more important and it will have more impact”

AI clones of human voices and mannerisms will exist within 1-3 years; even if technically perfect, people will still prefer the real person over the AI clone due to 'uncanny valley' effects and preference for authenticity, similar to how live music is still preferred despite ABBA's AI clone existing.

“there's already a clone of my voice it's very good there'll be a clone of my mannerisms within a year or two if you feel like you're watching the AI clone I think there's something disappoin pointing about that yeah in a way where if you just ask you know chat GPT a question and you read text you're used to Google impersonal internet I don't think people are put off but they would be put off by this doppelganger of me built by AI yeah in other words the bar for The Uncanny is is a lot like or or like even if it's perfect people want to see for now the real you the real me oh I that may not last I see so there is an uncanny valley problem”

AI raises the relative value of travel to places different from one's home, especially places saturated with modern technology and AI; YouTube and AI cannot yet replicate the experience of being in genuinely foreign places, creating a new scarcity premium.

“AI raises the value of travel to other places to very different places so YouTube to some extent can make like a trip to Madagascar come alive for you I don't think AI does that very well not yet and not in the next few years so substitute more into things that the AI cannot do because during the regular day you'll be doing more Ai and if you ask what is that I think it's traveled to places that are very different places that are less saturated by Ai and uh those places are often quite affordable”

The human's role in AI-augmented work will shift from subject-matter expert to 'dog trainer' or prompt engineer: identifying goals, providing context, directing AI output, and orchestrating multiple AI systems—tasks that haven't been fully defined yet and will emerge through practice.

“the human is more like a kind of dog trainer how do you point it in the right direction doing something like writing the prompt uh giving it the proper context having it work with other AIS other humans a lot of things maybe haven't even happened yet but it will be human work to figure out how to make them happen and we'll have to improvise as we go along”

Universities may adjust slowly because many have large endowments and 'sticky tuition revenue' (students attend for credentials and social experience regardless of learning); so actual scholarly productivity might shift to non-university venues while universities remain structurally unchanged.

“there's a separate question how quickly will universities adjust a lot have big endowments many more have what I would call Sticky tuition Revenue people are just going to go to school for the fun for the credential whether or not they learn that gives them a financial base where maybe they don't have to adjust for very long and maybe like the department of Botany 11 years from now is not in fact that different but actual progress in botany will then be coming from other places so the actual speed of these sluggish nonprofit”

Philosophy might be differentially insulated from AI because: (1) philosophical reading is valuable as a way to live one's life, requiring you to engage with Hegel/Nietzsche directly, and (2) philosophy is fundamentally about subjective human experience in history, an epistemic domain where AI may face fundamental limits.

“I wonder if my discipline of philosophy is different at least in two ways in the first way a great deal at least why I read philosophy this is not true in the academy is I want ideas that I can live my life through like I want to figure out how I can live my life which requires me to do all the reading to understand you know haiger and Hegel and each and all the greats and so I don't think until I have that button where I can download things my bra brain directly I don't think my time there would be wasted training in that tradition but the other thing is it seems like at least for a certain kind of philosophy it's a lot about uh the subjective experience of man in a certain period of history and so I wonder if there's just an epistemic barrier about what AIS can do in that domain”

The most important measure of success for his book is that AI systems have read and learned from it, as this extends his influence beyond human readers to AI systems that will then propagate these ideas, making AI adoption the true benchmark for intellectual impact.

“the most important fact getting back to our earlier chat the AIS have read the book right we know this and whatever there is to learn learn from the book they've learned it so I reached my most important readers wow not every author can say that”

In the AI-transformed economy, white-collar work will be disrupted first (before manual labor); those who are good at AI-assisted work will be far more productive, and project managers who can coordinate AI will earn the most; this will be 'socially very disruptive' because white-collar workers are the core of the middle class.

“many many jobs you'll just be working with the AI and that's already the case so people who are good at working with the AI will be far more productive Sam Alman predicted a while back that pretty soon we have these billion dollar companies maybe just with one employee I think two or three is more likely because one person can go crazy you just need a bit of support and you'll be able to afford it uh doing the work of a whole pretty large company and having a lot of it done by the AIS so people who are what you'd call Project managers they'll just be way way more project managing and those are the people who will earn the most”

As people increasingly query AI systems for information, human authors must write for AI as much as for humans; original content that stands out to AI will be more influential than bland repetitive writing, which AI itself can now generate cheaply.

“as you know more and more people query AIS whether it's deep seek or open AI or Claude is meta Google's Gemini the more people do that the less they're directly reading humans so you want your ideas to be input for the AIS so you're writing at least as much for the AIS as for the humans so one things that one thing that means is you want to be doing something open source that the AIS can read m uh that's important you'll have more influence but I think also you want to produce content that the AI find appealing and we're not sure what that is to be clear uh but I think there's a premium on originality if you're just repeating what many other people have said in a routine way I doubt if you'll shift the opinions of the AIS very much”

Talent migration is a critical dimension of innovation competition between superpowers; America has been the biggest beneficiary of talent migration historically, including from ethnic Chinese populations, making talent attraction a more important strategic advantage than chip access restriction.

“if you look at Talent migration between the world superpowers America is the biggest gainer of talent including from ethnic Chinese yes including from ethnic Chinese and so the general question for you is when an economic innovator wants to defend their Innovations from an economic lager there seems to be two general policies right one is to open up so much to get all their best talents to make them dependent on your Hardware but the other one is to you know cut everything off”

For young people facing AI disruption, the best strategy is to invest in three things: (1) friends, great peers, and mentors; (2) cheap, rewarding hobbies; (3) staying on the bleeding edge and using AI systems—this creates resilience, meaning, and adaptability without requiring expertise in any specific domain.

“I don't have real guides but I tell people I invest in friends great peers mentors and make sure you have some fun rewarding cheap Hobbies right right and and stick on this wave of innovation right always be on the bleeding edge and try that's right right”

The real AI risk that genuinely concerns Cowen is military application by humans, particularly drone warfare where AI-enabled systems may favor offense over defense, creating escalating arms races where defensive technologies cannot stay ahead, especially in open societies with many targets.

“I think much more legitimate risk this is by far my biggest worry simply evil humans or misguided humans doing destructive things with the AI I mean one point to make is this is a different kind of AI than what people are talking about right now it's not per se large language models large language models May evolve into to something that's more of a destructive danger it's quite possible but say the AI embedded in drones uh drone Warfare could be very bad if it favors offense more than defense”

AI will disproportionately eliminate white-collar jobs first (not blue-collar jobs), creating status loss and social disruption for educated workers, while physical labor wages will increase, and sectors with high energy demand (energy, medical trials, new drug testing) will see massive job growth offsetting some displacement.

“many many jobs you'll just be working with the AI and that's already the case so people who are good at working with the AI will be far more productive Sam Alman predicted a while back that pretty soon we have these billion dollar companies maybe just with one employee I think two or three is more likely because one person can go crazy you just need a bit of support and you'll be able to afford it uh doing the work of a whole pretty large company and having a lot of it done by the AIS”

Cowen's primary optimism about AI is that it will enable humans to understand the world much more deeply; he is consciously optimizing for health and lifespan to witness and benefit from these developments, viewing this as instrumentally valuable for experiencing the unfolding of these transformations.

“what um what are you most hopeful and optimistic about um given all the developments with AI that Humanity will understand much much more about the world I think that's intrinsically valuable in addition to its instrumental uses and I'm just very excited for all this to happen I'm making a deliberate attempt to stay in As Good Health as I can exercise more you want to see as much of it as I want to see as much of it as possible”

People who have grown up in moving history (like Jonathan from China) are actually envious of the stability Western-born people take for granted; the 'grass is greener' effect applies to both directions—stable societies don't realize their advantage, and dynamic societies don't realize their burden.

“I really think this is a case of grasses greener because when people who whove grown up in moving history they look at the west and they're envious and saying this kind of stability right the fact that you can know what your grandkids are roughly going to do and plan out this this lifelong plan some are envious about that people prefer it and probably they should prefer it”

Cowan has significant personal regrets about historical sites he didn't visit before they were destroyed (Syria) or became inaccessible (Russia), and recommends younger people should prioritize travel to historically important places while they still exist or are accessible.

“you will regret it if you don't do it so I regret never having seen Syria before it was I mean literally physically destroyed I regret not having gone to Russia more I have been twice it's great but I could have seen other things some of my biggest regrets in life are things that are gone will not come back”

Cowan is optimistic that AI will drive humanity toward much better understanding of the world, which he considers intrinsically valuable independent of instrumental benefits; he is consciously optimizing his lifespan to experience more of this era.

“what um what are you most hopeful and optimistic about um given all the developments with AI that Humanity will understand much much more about the world I think that's intrinsically valuable in addition to its instrumental uses and I'm just very excited for all this to happen I'm making a deliberate attempt to stay in As Good Health as I can exercise more you want to see as much of it as I want to see as much of it as possible”

Academic philosophy professors in Cowan's experience tend to be anti-innovation and conservative about change, preferring the status quo; many are ready to die rather than witness further disruption, which Cowan finds inconsistent with the philosophical virtue of curiosity.

“one of my philosophy professors told me the exact opposite relative to like the the growth of AI and he he told me he's like oh man I'm ready to die like like I don't want to see how the world has changed and I find that how can you say that and be a philosopher that seems yeah well many of the philosophers were very anti- Innovation like Plato right who who who was very against this idea of innovation especially in the good state but even if I hated it I'd want to see it because you're curious”

Major breakthroughs (Jesus, Transformers, atomic bomb) result from many marginal changes accumulating beforehand; Jesus emerged from rabinical tradition and earlier religious texts rather than vacuum; therefore marginal revolutions remain important indefinitely.

“the big breakthroughs are the result of many marginal changes coming before them so Jesus comes out of a long-standing rabinal tradition is building upon the Torah many other earlier writings other religious Traditions that maybe have not come down to us and he's not appearing in a vacuum so the marginal revolutions will remain important for the indefinite future to come”

Philosophy may be more resilient to AI disruption than other disciplines in two ways: first, philosophy involves building a personal, subjective worldview for living one's life (not just acquiring information that AI can provide); second, philosophy centers on human subjective experience in specific historical periods, which creates an epistemic barrier to what AI systems can understand.

“a great deal at least why I read philosophy this is not true in the academy is I want ideas that I can live my life through like I want to figure out how I can live my life which requires me to do all the reading to understand you know haiger and Hegel and each and all the greats and so I don't think until I have that button where I can download things my bra brain directly I don't think my time there would be wasted training in that tradition”

When writing for human audiences, authenticity and roughness are often sacrificed for perceived 'correctness'—this is a mistake; adding more personality, subjectivity, and deviation from neutral prose makes human writing better and more memorable.

“I initially idea was that no no I want to trade off as much robotic of the delivery for the accuracy of my words because I'm trained as a philosopher but then I realized that's that's that's completely wrong train in modernity that's right you you want to gain the authenticity even if it means losing some uh uh some accuracy”

Future income distribution will see 10-15% of the population become extremely wealthy with unimaginably comfortable lives, while the rest experience stagnant nominal wages but gain access to cheap or near-free digital services (education, entertainment, legal advice, healthcare), creating a paradox where people are materially better off but inequality appears stark and social stability depends on how political systems adapt.

“I imagine a world where say 10 to 15% of the citizenry is extremely wealthy and has fantastically comfortable and stimulating lives the rest of the country will have stagnant or maybe even falling wages in dollar terms but a lot more opportunities for cheap fund and also cheap education and Healthcare right legal advice many things so people will be doing great but it's not going to show up necessarily in the form of normal wage growth you get to raise every year just so many things will be free or near free once you've paid for some basic subscription”

Innovation breakthroughs appear as non-marginal events (Transformer paper, Jesus, the atomic bomb) but emerge from many preceding marginal changes and developments in culture and infrastructure, making the distinction between marginal and non-marginal forces false—both are necessary and continuous.

“keep in mind the big breakthroughs are the result of many marginal changes coming before them so Jesus comes out of a long-standing rabinal tradition is building upon the Torah many other earlier writings other religious Traditions that maybe have not come down to us and he's not appearing in a vacuum so the marginal revolutions will remain important for the indefinite future to come”

Physical labor will become relatively more valuable in the AI era; gardeners, energy sector workers, and medical trial staff will likely earn higher wages as demand for physical services increases while cognitive work becomes commodified.

“if you're a decent Gardener probably you're in great shape over the medium term you'll also need to learn the skill of reading out someone's AI generated output as to what the garden should look like I think most gardeners will be just great at that but it is a new thing they'll have to you know figure out how it works or maybe they'll end up doing some of the work with the AI themselves a lot of physical labor is just going to earn a higher wage if you're physical labor in the energy sector my goodness demand for energy is going to go through the roof”

Cowan trained a companion AI model on his book 'GOAT' using consultant help; the model allows readers to query the book's content directly rather than reading linearly, functioning as an AI teaching assistant.

“your latest book goat what's really cool about this book is that you trained a model on it right and you can query the model and ask it questions right kind of what you were talking about like the hiar nich example in the sense that it might be faster for a student just to query the model instead of reading your entire book if they have a specific question tell me about the process about how you trained that while you were writing the book I worked with Jeff Holmes who was also producer of my podcast conversations with Tyler and I sat down sat down with Jeff when we figured out what we wanted it to do what you would call the hard technical work was done by Jeff and a consultant he hired I oversaw the process and had the vision for what should be but credit for the work goes to Jeff I see”

For scholars entering graduate school now, the comparative advantage will shift: they should spend less time learning detailed subject matter and more time learning how to operate AI effectively; by the time they graduate, AI will handle subject-matter tasks better than human specialists.

“more people should study how to operate Ai and spend less time learning about the subject though you need to know a fair amount about the subject to know how to operate AI but at some point the human has double Checker of the AI won't make that much sense it still does when it makes a mistakes I can catch them ask it again go fix that but I don't think two years from now that will be so significant”

Cowan partially dismisses the 'philosophy requires human reading' argument as a form of cope; soon AI will be able to facilitate dialogues between you and historical philosophers (Hegel, Nietzsche) better than direct reading, making the linearity of text seem primitive.

“the first one I think is a bit of cope so yes you can read haiger and nche and many people well for historical reasons not quite yet but I think in a few years you could just say to your AI create a dialogue for me with haiger nche and me and I want to interrogate them and have them challenge each other and I suspect pretty soon not this year but pretty soon that will you'll learn more that way than just reading haiger and nche I've read haiger I looked at every page I'm not sure I learned anything I learned what it's like to look at every page and feel baffled”

Trained model of Cowan's book 'Goat' that allows users to query it as a TA or companion is one of the first real books trained as an interactive AI system; reception has been positive and OpenAI featured it in educational events, recognizing that the AI has already read and learned from the book making the author's most important audience the AI itself.

“I worked with Jeff Holmes who was also producer of my podcast conversations with Tyler and I sat down sat down with Jeff when we figured out what we wanted it to do what you would call the hard technical work was done by Jeff and a consultant he hired I oversaw the process and had the vision for what should be but credit for the work goes to Jeff”

Blogs as a format are already dead or dying; generic advice content will disappear as AI can produce it better and cheaper; survival for writers requires either following the news cycle (where AI cannot keep up) or producing content with genuine unique perspectives that shift AI opinions.

“is the era for blogs now over well it's been over for a long time but what's even a Blog maybe was never well defined to begin with but if you're writing you need a brand name or you need a truly unique product otherwise you're done now a key thing about marginal Revolution much of it follows the new cycle”

Great project managers who can coordinate AI systems and humans will be the highest-earning workers in an AI economy because they will manage billion-dollar companies with only 2-3 human employees plus AI systems.

“many many jobs you'll just be working with the AI and that's already the case so people who are good at working with the AI will be far more productive Sam Alman predicted a while back that pretty soon we have these billion dollar companies maybe just with one employee I think two or three is more likely because one person can go crazy you just need a bit of support and you'll be able to afford it uh doing the work of a whole pretty large company and having a lot of it done by the AIS so people who are what you'd call Project managers they'll just be way way more project managing and those are the people who will earn the most our great project managers right”

The Great Stagnation (claimed to have run from ~1973 to 2020) has ended, marked by breakthrough innovations in mRNA vaccine development (which could be designed in one day and deployed in under a year, beating the 4-year expert forecast) and continued progress in AI and biomedicine.

“I think the great stagnation ended in 2020 if I had to pick a date it started in around 1973 in 2020 we have mRNA vaccines now I know it took 20 or more years of work to get to the point but but there's a sense in which the vaccine we used was designed in a day and it worked and then it was ready in well under a year at the same time experts were telling the New York Times the optimistic scenario was it would take four years and we did it in under a year”

The existential risk movement lacks peer-reviewed literature supporting its claims and shows no effort to produce it; there is also no signal in market prices supporting AI existential risk concerns, suggesting the movement is not credible by the two best epistemic sources (peer review and markets).

“there is no peer-reviewed literature supporting what they say nor they seem to make any attempt to create one that doesn't mean they're wrong but I've issued the challenge I say well the global warming PE people were worried they built up an extensive literature basically showing the worries are validated I say you do the same if you do it you know I'll be very interested right and I've even offered to like referee some papers for free and so on so far none of this has happened so it's not supported by peer review and there's nothing and I do mean nothing in market prices to support this fear again that doesn't mean it's wrong”

In Average is Over (Cowan's 2013 book), he predicted a bifurcated future where 10-15% of the population becomes extremely wealthy while the rest experience stagnant/falling dollar wages but massive increases in free/cheap services (entertainment, education, healthcare, legal advice), making material welfare improve without visible wage growth.

“I imagine a world where say 10 to 15% of the citizenry is extremely wealthy and has fantastically comfortable and stimulating lives the rest of the country will have stagnant or maybe even falling wages in dollar terms but a lot more opportunities for cheap fund and also cheap education and Healthcare right legal advice many things so people will be doing great but it's not going to show up necessarily in the form of normal wage growth you get to raise every year just so many things will be free or near free once you've paid for some basic subscription right”

If democracy requires a strong middle class (a contested assumption), then the AI-driven bifurcation into a wealthy elite and a large population with stagnant wages poses a challenge to democratic governance; however, Cowan does not predict chaos or totalitarianism but rather uncertainty about how institutions will adapt.

“if democracy requires a strong middle class um and this is fundamentally an aristocratic Force right it's it's about separating the top 10% from the bottom 90% do you think democracies will be challenged this is again circling back to our initial conversation by AI well I think democracies are always challenged and the founding fathers understood this and they had no notion of AI so they will continue to be challenged is the way I would put it”

Cowan is shifting his intellectual production away from generic content production toward personal appearances and networking/charisma-based work, because these cannot be easily replicated by AI in his relevant time horizon.

“I'm a producer of content more and more and it's not just videos and podcasts but personal appearences I have we uped what I do and that the AI is not at all close it may copy us on video but for it to show up and Shake Hands that's you know past my relevant time Horizon so that's what I do more of”

Travel to different places does not require expensive exotic destinations; even cheap nearby travel (4-hour flight from Northern Virginia to El Salvador, visiting secondary cities) can provide valuable exposure to different modes of life and different historical periods.

“there are very simple ways to do it so we live in Northern Virginia every day there's a direct flight to El Salvador it's what four hours plus it's closer than California get out of the main capital which in fact I like but it's not going to do this for you go to the number two or number three cities when you're extremely safe right now just camp out there it's not like a monastery it's just a normal City it's some version of like something from 1950 in a way but with people having mobile devices live there for a week uh it'll it'll be changed”

Income inequality in the US has increased significantly, yet Trump (not the preference of wealthy elites) was elected president twice, suggesting either that predictions of elite control are overstated or that democratic mechanisms remain surprisingly robust against wealth concentration.

“I get to them and I mean let's do the best we're going to have these challenges anyway I see um let's move on to the next topic of this conversation which is uh regarding Ai and authorship so how do you view your production your your intellectual production as both a scholar and a public intellectual differently now with now with AI well as you know more and more people query AIS whether it's deep seek or open AI or Claude is meta Google's Gemini the more people do that the less they're directly reading humans so you want your ideas to be input for the AIS so you're writing at least as much for the AIS as for the humans so one things that one thing that means is you want to be doing something open source that the AIS can read m”

Cowan is not upset by China's technology theft and espionage practices because they are largely inevitable; while acknowledging they are nominally illegal or unethical, he prioritizes the consequentialist view that a richer China better serves both China and world interests than a poorer China.

“I'm not very upset by what China has been doing if something is illegal or unethical then yes nominally I would be against it but in terms of my level of concern involvement it's mostly inevitable it does help China catch up in terms of living standards I do understand there's a military rivalry but at the same time I think it's in the best interests of the world and the us to have a richer China than a poorer China”

In economics specifically, O1 Pro model AI already beats Tyler Cowen on answering economics questions, even in areas where he has background training; in areas where AI doesn't have encyclopedic knowledge it will become dominant; areas where human economists retain advantage are in judging importance, preparing papers for publication, and asking good questions.

“answering questions it's better if we're talking about the o1 pro model so you say AI there's many different AIS I'm still better than most of them I'm happy to say but you've got to compare yourself to the best and progress is rapid this is now February 2025 the o03 model some people say will be out in three or four weeks so any specific claim will be obsolete but in a test of 100 questions 01 Pro already I believe it would beat me I don't really have much doubt right”