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Building Tomorrow
Will Artificial Intelligence Take Your Job?
The last wave of automation in the 1970s-80s was industrial as robots replaced manufacturing line workers. The economic dislocation fell hardest on those least able to afford it, blue collar workers without formal education and comparable alternate career paths.
But today, automation is coming for white collar workers as well. There are jobs, that despite requiring education and advanced training, involve what is essentially pattern recognition and processing speed, things that artificial intelligence can do more quickly and efficiently than human beings. Jobs in law, analytics, and finance are on the cusp of mass automation, leaving those newly entering those fields with massive student debt and limited job prospects.
Today we talk to two startups, one which is bringing that automation to law firms, the other which is trying to mitigate worker dislocation by helping students find alternative career paths requiring irreplaceable-by-AI social skills.
When was the first wave of automization? Is the automation apocalypse upon us? Can AI streamline the legal process, specifically in documentation review? How can AI compliment the legal process? What value do you want to get out of hiring a lawyer?
Further Reading:McCarthyFinch Website
6Figr Website
From Post-it Notes To Algorithms: How Automation Is Changing Legal Work, NPR
Related Content:In the Economy of the Future, You Won’t Own Your Kitchen, written by Pamela Hobart
Does More Technology Create Unemployment?, written by A. D. Sharplin and R. H. Mabry
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48:40|Your home is full of technological miracles, devices that your ancestors would have regarded as near magic because of the life of relative ease they provide us with. However, something is changing. In the past, we got richer by owning more stuff; but in the future, we will have more by owning less. In this final episode of Building Tomorrow, Paul talks with Cory Doctorow, Michael Munger, Ruth Cowan, and Chelsea Follett about the past, present, and future of material possession.
One Landfill's Trash is the Future's Treasure
43:39|If you're the kind of person who carefully sorts out your recyclables from your trash, cleans it, and puts it out in the blue bin for pickup, you probably don't realize that as much as 90% of that material either just ends up in a landfill or, worse, is dumped into the ocean. Indeed, much of the plastic litter in the Pacific Ocean is the result of our well-intentioned but misplaced efforts at recycling since the 1990s.In this episode, we talk to an environmental economist, landfill scientist, and blockchain engineer about the future of our waste. We can efficiently sort and store our plastics in landfills for future mining operations, incentivizing good behavior via cryptocurrency rewards. We can incinerate our waste in hyper-efficient facilities that power cities and reduce our carbon footprint. Building Tomorrow means building more and better landfills.
The Underpopulation Crisis
49:47|People are afraid. Afraid that they are consuming too much, emitting too much, having too many kids, and running the planet into the ground. Eight billion people seems like too many. But a growing number of experts are sounding the alarm that a far worse problem is on the horizon, an underpopulation crisis. People are having fewer kids and countries are aging. For example, by the end of the century Japan will halve its population. Those who remain will be older and poorer. We need more people, not fewer, if we want to find innovative solutions to climate change and resource crunches. For music attributions see: https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/building-tomorrow/underpopulation-crisis
Data is the New Guano
46:21|What happens when a raw material that is valueless suddenly becomes valuable? If it's bird guano in the 19th century, you mine it and save the agricultural economy. If its data in the late 20th century, you collect it and create a new digital economy. Music attributions can be found here: https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/building-tomorrow/guano.
Building Tomorrow is Back!
03:52|The Building Tomorrow podcast is back in a new format. This season we will be focusing on wanting more. The desire for more embraces a prosperity mindset, the belief that growth and wealth are not a zero-sum game. We will release one in depth episode per month for 6 months. We would love for you to listen along as we long for more immigrants, more data, more houses, more mammoths, and more. Happy listening!
Building Tomorrow: Under Construction
02:00|We have a special announcement about the future of Building Tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Can We Fix U.S. Politics? (with Lee Drutman & Dan Bowen)
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