This is Macro Voices, the free weekly financial podcast targeting professional finance,

high net worth individuals, family offices, and other sophisticated investors.

Macro Voices is all about the brightest minds in the world of finance and macroeconomics

telling it like it is, bullish or bearish, no holds barred.

Now, here's your host, Eric Townsend.

Macro Voices episode 390 was pre-produced earlier this month to air on August 24th, 2023.

I'm Eric Townsend.

This is our pre-produced summer special episode, which features an extended length interview,

but no chart deck or market commentary, so that we can give our production team a summer vacation.

We'll be back to our regular show format next week when Patrick Sirresna,

who's rumored to be yachting off the coast of Croatia this week, will return to resume his

co-host duties. Generative AI or artificial intelligence is all the rage these days.

Is this the next big thing on the scale of the internet that's going to streamline the economy

and dramatically improve productivity? Or have we already invented SkyNet without realizing it,

meaning that our days are already numbered? I'm convinced this is one of the most important

issues society has ever confronted in all of history, yet very few people even realize it's

happening, or how quickly it's happening right now. The only time I've ever seen society so

completely out of touch with the risk of what might be about to happen next was back in late

January of 2020 when it became clear to me that a global pandemic was imminent, yet the entire

world was carrying on, ignoring the news out of China and crude oil prices continued to rally

into mid-February as if nothing was wrong. Today we have notable figures like Elon Musk joining

in chorus with dozens of lesser-known researchers who spent their entire careers working to advance AI

...