Nathan Labenz: belief

Transcript context

…I don't know if podcast editor is going to be a job. Will people be employed to tell stories? Yes. What kind of stories using what media and who will they be employed by? That's all subject to change. But like if the thing that you're really good at is telling stories for brands or is interviewing other people and finding out what's interesting about that and like getting that out, like doing a media job, like those, that will still exist. That will still be a job. And especially if you kind of like embrace new media and embrace new distribution channels, like you may still have that, like you may still be, have to have that job of the future. Does that make sense? Yeah, I do wonder, I think there's a huge question around, will people make these transitions? I think that's a, Because a lot of times when I have this conversation, I'm like, jeez, it seems like this work is going to be pretty highly automated. And then people point to a different, like sort of adjacent kind of work. But a lot of times I'm like, yeah, but are the people doing the first thing going to switch to the other thing in any effective way? I think that is where I see disruption being pretty meaningful. Like I feel like the winners and losers are not, in many cases, they're different people. And that there will be winners doesn't mean necessarily at least that like the losers will be able to kind of pivot into a winning position. It might just be like a major redistribution of like of who's winning and losing. And that could be a huge challenge for society, even, you know, even if while there may be like, you know, all kinds of new things pop up that do create new kinds of winners and new kinds of opportunities. To some extent, like that's just always true, right? Economies are always changing, sectors are always growing and shrinking, and there's labor displacement. This may happen in a sped up way, in which case we'll need, whenever there's like tremendous labor displacement in a short period of time, which there may be in the circumstance, then you need to make sure that systems are in place to take care of people through those moments of extreme disruption. I think like where I, have a lot of faith that the, that long term, there will be big shifts in labor, but there won't, I am not like a subscriber to there being permanent losers and irrevocable losers, unless that is the society that we choose to build. I think like there may be a very difficult moment where there's an accelerated kind of labor displacement, in which case we need to be ready to meet that moment as a society. But I think it's a moment that we've met before and that changing labor landscapes is not like a new human problem.…

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