? (Anchor) 00:00.040
Our next guest warns that an AI-fueled job apocalypse is on the horizon. Let's bring in Saul Khan. He's the CEO of the Khan Academy. In his latest piece for the New York Times, Saul makes the pitch that every company benefiting from automation should dedicate 1% of profits to
? (Anchor) 00:17.720
help retrain workers who will be displaced by AI. Saul, first of all, thanks for being here. Second of all, this is a pretty radical proposal, but let's lay out what you think is happening. Why we think this job apocalypse is coming?
Sal Khan (CEO & Founder) 00:33.760
Yeah, you know, as soon as generative AI became a big thing, obviously this has been a big debate, will we have net loss jobs, net gain jobs? Um and living out here in Silicon Valley, most people have been on, "Hey, this is going to be like the industrial revolution." We'll
Sal Khan (CEO & Founder) 00:46.800
just, you know, there there'll be jobs, we can't name them, but they'll they'll happen. But what we're seeing now, you know, in that op-ed I talk about seeing the Waymo's in my neighborhood and that's cool, but then I go and meet with a friend who who is thinking about uh
Sal Khan (CEO & Founder) 00:59.000
contributing 1% of his firm's profits for re-skilling and and his motivation was he's uh taken over our call center in the Philippines and he's going to be laying off 80% of of the workforce and replacing them with an AI. Uh that's that's 7 to 10% of the Filipino GDP directly.
Sal Khan (CEO & Founder) 01:16.800
Um driving some form of a vehicle is 4 to 5 million workers just the United States. It's the biggest one of the biggest sources of employment for men globally, including in the United States. Um and even if you look at white-collar jobs, We A lot of people are talking about and
Sal Khan (CEO & Founder) 01:31.720
seeing what's happening in software engineering right now. It seems kind of frozen. Uh there things like product management, design, we're seeing that those jobs are at least changing. Uh you're not seeing a lot of net hiring. If if anything, there's a lot of things going the
Sal Khan (CEO & Founder) 01:46.760
other way. And And the only way to to think about how to navigate this, I think if folks wait too long, uh the political wins are going to switch. We've already seen that populism can can can get a lot of momentum off of things things like globalization and immigration. I think
Sal Khan (CEO & Founder) 02:03.480
automation is going to hit a lot harder. And 1% isn't without precedent, as I mentioned my one of my friends, he hasn't announced it yet. That's why I'm not naming their firm, but it's a major firm. There's Ares Capital, another major asset manager. They have a class of funds,
Sal Khan (CEO & Founder) 02:18.440
several billion dollars under management where they're giving 5% of their promote to a a philanthropy for They're doing healthcare and education, but that's related to reskilling. So the The pitch here is it's in it's in company's best interest. This isn't going to be just, you
Sal Khan (CEO & Founder) 02:33.840
know, hope isn't a strategy here. We have to get ahead of the curve. The the benefits of doing something significantly weigh out the alternative. And I think if if we don't do something, politics are going to take over and that's going to be worse for everyone.