Could AI cause a market crash by working too well? Let's talk about it with Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC and the New York Times and the author of the bestselling book, 1929, who's here with us in studio today. Andrew, great to see you. Thank you for having me for the show. Thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. So the book comes out about four months ago and I think it's great that we're speaking now because the worry that you had brought up in the beginning, and obviously it's all about the depression and the market crash, and the worry that you had brought up was, look, we have 700 billion in capital expenditures going towards AI companies, and this could all go bust, and that could cause a cascading market crash.

But actually what we're starting to worry about is the opposite, which is that the technology will work.

And right now we've had, we're in a moment where last month software stocks lost a trillion dollars in market cap because there was this fear that AI could just displace them.

And it was moving at a pace that they wouldn't be able to recover from.

Is there a worry that we'll have our own type of market crash, but just a completely different way?

And that is that AI works and everybody is disrupted.

You know, so I'm often asked, you know, is there a way, a modern day way to get to

1929?

And what people are really asking is, is there a modern day way to get to 1932, which is 25% unemployment

in America?

And I always think the answer is actually less of a market crash and more AI.

Meaning, if you ever wanted to think about what would this country look like with 25% unemployment, how would you get there?

And I think the answer is potentially if AI is as successful as I think we all hopefully wanted to be, to the extent you believe these valuations are real, all of the math behind it, the only way that really works to some degree is to create extraordinary productivity.

And what does productivity mean?

Well, it means a lot of growth at a lot less cost.

How do you take out that cost?

Well, we're both looking at each other, and that's pretty much we are the cost. Yeah, I mean, the robot employee is going to be a thing. It'll definitely be a thing. It's going to be a thing. My kids talk about it being a thing. I've got 15-year-old boys, and we talk about what they're going to do.

But then we talk about, like, literally. I've got 15-year-old boys, and we talk about what they're going to do.

But then we talk about, like, literally, are we going to have a robot in our house in five years from now? And what are all the things that the robot's going to do? Physical robot, it might be a little bit longer, but will you, for instance, maybe it's a decade from now? Well, you have a handful of AI assistance working for you in your various capacities and at the times at CNBC.

That, I'm sure will happen.

But here's, I'm a little bit surprised to hear you open to the possibility that it's going

to cause mass unemployment.

...