#141 – Erik Brynjolfsson: Economics of AI, Social Networks, and Technology
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman
4.7 • 13.6K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2020
⏱️ 105 minutes
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Summary
Erik Brynjolfsson is an economist at Stanford. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
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Machine, Platform, Crowd (book): https://amzn.to/3miJZ76
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OUTLINE:
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(00:00) – Introduction
(08:23) – Exponential growth
(12:51) – Elon Musk exponential thinking
(15:08) – Moore’s law is a series of revolutions
(20:31) – GPT-3
(22:09) – Autonomous vehicles
(29:11) – Electricity
(33:40) – Productivity
(38:47) – Why is Twitter and Facebook free?
(49:03) – Dismantling the nature of truth
(52:24) – Nutpicking and Cancel Culture
(58:39) – How will AI change our world
(1:04:40) – Existential threats
(1:06:33) – AI and the nature of work
(1:12:39) – Thoughts on Andrew Yang and UBI
(1:18:30) – Economics of innovation
(1:24:37) – Effect of COVID on the economy
(1:33:50) – MIT and Stanford
(1:38:23) – Book recommendations
(1:41:28) – Meaning of life
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following is a conversation with Eric Brinjalsson. |
| 0:03.3 | He is an economics professor, Stanford, and the director of Stanford's Digital Economy Lab. |
| 0:09.5 | Previously, he was a long, long time professor at MIT, where he did groundbreaking work on |
| 0:15.4 | the economics of information. |
| 0:17.9 | He's the author of many books, including the second machine age and machine platform |
| 0:23.6 | Crowd, co-authored with Andrew McAfee. |
| 0:27.6 | Quick mention of each sponsor, followed by some thoughts related to the episode. |
| 0:31.7 | Vincera watches, the maker of classy, well performing watches. |
| 0:36.1 | Forsegmatic, the maker of delicious mushroom coffee, |
| 0:39.9 | ExpressVPN, the VPN I've used for many years to protect my privacy on the internet, |
| 0:45.1 | and cash app. |
| 0:46.7 | The app I used has had many different. |
| 0:49.1 | Please check out these sponsors in the description to get discount and to support this podcast. |
| 0:54.6 | As a side note, let me say that the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on |
| 0:59.4 | our economy and our world is something worth thinking deeply about. |
| 1:04.6 | Like with many topics that are linked to predicting the future evolution of technology, it is |
| 1:09.3 | often too easy to fall into one of two camps, the fear of mongering camp or the technologically |
| 1:16.2 | topianism camp. |
| 1:18.4 | As always, the future will land us the worry in between. |
| 1:21.6 | I prefer to wear two hats in these discussions and alternate between them often. |
| 1:26.6 | The hat of a pragmatic engineer and the hat of a futurist. |
| 1:32.0 | This is probably a good time to mention Andrew Yang, the presidential candidate who has |
... |
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