Is AI going to take your job another way to put it is where is everybody like where did all the workers in restaurants go where did all the workers in the airplanes go like I just was reading today jet blue has to cut down on flights because there aren't enough air traffic controllers where did everybody go well I have on the man who has the answer and it's Matt Barry from freelancer.com

Things have changed so much since the last time he came on he came on in 2017 and the world has gone from 3% of people doing freelancing work to upwards of 40% of people doing freelancing work and now AI is not going to just change everything for the better for worse we talk about all these things talk about the economy worst case scenario best case scenarios but most of all it's just fascinating is AI going to take your job or anybody else you know here's Matt and I talking about it.

This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host this is the James Altiger show.

Matt we last spoke six years ago and I feel like the freelancing world has a billion percent changed.

What an incredible time to be alive.

I mean and be a freelancer or be an entrepreneur it's incredible now.

I mean in 2020 I was reading that only 3% of the workforce for freelancers and now it's up to 40% of the workforce does some sort of freelancing work.

What are they all doing what's happened to the world I mean other than the pandemic.

Well I mean every job in the world now can be done with the computer pretty much from anywhere in the world software is you know eaten everything is all moved into the clouds and

human computer interaction has got so good that you know people and other side of the world can work in a team on pretty much any profession in real time.

At the same time you've got whole huge numbers of people have gone online around the world and emerging markets as the internet is kind of grown everywhere and getting skilled up getting trained up and now with artificial intelligence.

Everyone in the world can now perform at the elite level in a whole variety of skills you can now illustrate that the level of an elite illustrator even though you might not have any design skills whatsoever.

You can write copy you can program using chat GPT it's an incredible time and the whole space is moving so quickly with all tooling that's now available for freelancers that is all powered by I.

Yeah like a lot of people go back and forth on the AI component of this and I I'm still interested in like in the economics of like why people are leaving the kind of regular workforce for freelancing.

But a lot of people worry will AI take their jobs let's say I was going to hire someone to make a logo well now I can just go to mid journey or dolly or any of these AI graphic tools and say get me a logo the give me five give me five thousand logos are going to pick from and this is what I want and and do it in the style solver dolly and boom it does it like is there going to be a human need for many the typical freelancing jobs.

I absolutely because you still need someone to drive all the tools my my mother would be completely unable to go to mid journey and figure out how to how to use it.

And also people are very time poor so you always need people to do things for you even if you know how to do the particular work you've got to get people to assist you with that you know these tools basically a super skill everyone lifts lifts the the ability of everyone around the world in a variety of different categories and that's going to increase.

And the world is desperately short in skilled labor or on the world you know every female in the planet needs to have 2.1 children to maintain the population across the western world there are the birth rate is way below the replacement rate even in Bangladesh today the birth rate is well below the replacement rate so we're critically short you know engineers critically short computer scientists and programmers.

You know some countries like Japan is so pronounced in 2011 Unicharm which is the largest manufacturer of diapers in Japan says we now produce more adult diapers than baby diapers right so there's a huge that is unbelievable that's the statistic of the day.

So there's a huge need for skilled talents and you know like all technologies in the past you know technology can be disruptive temporarily but it does create more jobs in the end that it takes although you know I will say the events is happening in AI you know.

What one week in AI seems to be one year in any other field of field of research will kind of see what see where it ends up but you know what I'm seeing right now is that the basically it's giving superpowers to people around the world no matter what your skill set is you can now you know work in all these different areas at the elite level it's incredible.

It reminds me of like in the 90s where people would spend a lot of money hiring others like freelancers to make their websites but then making websites became ridiculously cheap at least at the basic level because you could just use wordpress or something.

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