Jul 2, 2025 · 53m · big-technology
Is AI Really Taking Our Jobs? — With Noah Smith
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In this episode of the Big Technology Podcast, host Alex Kantrowitz and economics writer Noah Smith analyze whether generative AI is truly transforming productivity and jobs, while exploring broader trends in wage inequality, social media polarization, and U.S.-China geopolitics.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Alex holds 23.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Alex as informed peer 4.2 Guest teaching 5.8 Guest disagreement 2.1 Alex pushing back 2.2
speaking balance: gold is Alex, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 48:32 Noah dismisses complacency over military buildup
Noah bluntly rejects any naive interpretation of military armament, directly telling Alex that armies and nuclear arsenals of this scale are engineered to fight wars rather than sit idle.
Hardest push from Alex ▶ 35:36 Alex defends the economic rationale of progressive voter frustrationAlex steps in to counter Noah's mockery of PMC socialism by articulating the genuine material despair of young graduates facing massive student loans and unattainable homeownership.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:22 Noah dismantles entry-level AI job loss panic with dataNoah references detailed labor figures showing that graduate unemployment trends began over a decade before generative AI and that white-collar support hiring continues to increase steadily.
Alex holds their own ▶ 16:28 Alex illustrates task expansion using sales pipeline dynamicsAlex draws on firsthand sales experience to substantiate Noah's macroeconomic theory, demonstrating how automation allows professionals to double pipeline reach rather than facing head-count cuts.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Alex as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Alex pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Productivity Lag and Factory Electrification Analogy | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Alex prompts the discussion by citing a McKinsey report about the generative AI productivity paradox. Noah responds with an extended historical tutorial on factory electrification, explaining why technological adoption takes decades to reconfigure workflows. | |
| Debunking the AI Entry-Level Job Crisis | 3 | 7 | 2 | 2 | Alex brings up Dario Amodei's prediction about AI wiping out entry-level jobs. Noah pulls up specific labor statistics from The Economist to demonstrate that graduate unemployment trends long predate LLMs and that vulnerable white-collar sectors continue to grow. | |
| Flaws in Automation Forecasts and Task Creation | 5 | 6 | 3 | 1 | Noah forcefully labels consulting job-destruction forecasts as complete hooey, explaining how technology generates new tasks. Alex demonstrates domain expertise by adding a concrete sales workflow example showing how efficiency expands pipeline capacity. | |
| Wage Inequality Trends and Working-Class Growth | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Alex raises the conventional narrative that tech-driven inequality is hollowing out the middle class. Noah counters by citing wage compression since 2013 and lower-tier wage growth, while Alex sharpens the distinction between wages and asset price inflation. | |
| Social Media Role in Amplifying Societal Unrest | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Alex questions why societal unrest is peaking if economic indicators are improving. Noah attributes the polarization to social media forcing friction across disparate groups, and Alex presses further on economic FOMO and cultural messaging. | |
| Analyzing PMC Socialism and the NYC Primary | 6 | 6 | 3 | 5 | Noah examines the NYC primary demographics and critiques socialist proposals like city-run grocery stores. Alex mounts a firm counterargument, defending the candidate's appeal through the lens of student debt, rent burdens, and unattainable homeownership. | |
| Economic and Innovation Impacts of Immigration Policy | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | Noah explains the balanced macroeconomic supply and demand impact of low-skilled immigration. Alex intervenes to frame the specific threat to high-skilled AI research talent, prompting Noah to agree strongly on clustering and innovation risks. | |
| Evaluating Tariffs, Market Sentiment, and Economic Headwinds | 4 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Alex highlights the stock market's rebound despite trade threats, asking how to interpret conflicting signals. Noah outlines market psychology, tariff uncertainty, and the Federal Reserve's rate response. | |
| US-China Geopolitical Tensions and Military Deterrence | 3 | 7 | 4 | 2 | Alex asks about US-China geopolitical competition and deterrence thresholds against rapid militarization. Noah responds with blunt realism regarding China's naval and nuclear buildup and the strategic necessity of alliance networks. |
Statements from this episode (21)
Smith: AI productivity boom requires reorganizing production processes, not replacing workers
“Eventually we may like people will come along and say, you know what?
I could just organize my company entirely different to take more advantage of AI.
And I don't just have to replace my humans with AI.
I just have the humans do different things and the AI do…”
Smith: Rising relative unemployment for college grads began in 2009
“Young graduates, relative unemployment started to rise in 2009 long before generative AI came along. So this trend long, long, long predates AI. It's been going on the relative unemployment of you know, college graduates relative to other people has been risin…”
Smith: AI-vulnerable occupations continue rising as share of US jobs
“Returning to a measure reintroduced in two, 20, 23, we examine American data on employment by occupation, singling out workers that are believed to be vulnerable to AI. These are white collar employees, including people in back office support, financial operat…”
Smith: Under 10% of US companies use AI in production
“Unofficial measure suggests that less than 10% of American companies employ AI to produce goods and services, so AI is probably not big enough to have, like, a major impact yet there.”
Smith: Predictions that AI will replace 40-60% of jobs are 'hooey'
“This is complete hooey, and they all come up with really huge percentage, like, 40%, 60% of your jobs are gonna be replaced by AI, so, you know, every, there's a million groups doing this, and they'll come up with different things, and it's hooey for a number …”
Smith: IBM fired workers for AI automation and had to rehire
“So we saw this thing where IBM fired all these people because it thought they could replace their jobs with AI and then had to hire them all back, had to hire like a ton of people back. Maybe not the exact same people, not doing the exact same things, but for,…”
Smith: Automating human tasks does not imply mass labor displacement
“Conceptually the idea of like, well, we made this thing to do all these tasks that humans do is not a, is not by itself a reason to think human labor is going to be masterplaced.”
Noah Smith: US Wage Inequality Has Decreased for Over Ten Years
“Right around the time that this thesis started becoming very well accepted and popular, wage inequality started to go down and wages started rising more at the bottom of the distribution than at the middle or top. And so we've seen that for now over 10 years. …”
Noah Smith: Social media drove polarization by eliminating geographic and ideological segregation
“I think it's primarily social media. I think that social media so, so I think that Americans, America was this very big, diverse country. You had ideological diversity. We had geographic diversity, not just like racial diversity, which is what we typically thi…”
Smith: PMC socialism is America's most important political tendency today
“Barbara Ehrenreich called this PMC socialism. She called it professional, professional managerial class socialism. And a lot of people like infinite people have remarked on this tendency. I think it's the most important political tendency in America today”
Smith: US provides cheaper food than most other countries
“America gets cheaper food than other countries do, and actually we do a pretty good job getting Food cheaply to poor people compared to like most countries”
Smith: Government-run grocery stores will drain public funds and crush bodegas
“So if you make government run grocery stores, it'll do two things. Number one It will outcompete all the little indie grocery stores and bodegas, thus like a meager source of capital and wealth accumulation for like poor people in poor neighborhoods... And the…”
Noah Smith: Trump immigration crackdown will have negative but modest economic impact
“I think the net impact of the Trump immigration crackdown will be fairly economically will be negative, but not huge.”
Noah Smith: Mass deportations will not significantly raise native workers' wages
“The reason why a flood of immigration does not really actually reduce wages is that immigrants are also buying things and the demand from buying things creates labor demand for native born people. And so, so immigrants really don't do much to wages. And what t…”
Noah Smith: High-skilled immigration has strongly positive economic impact, unlike low-skilled
“When you look at the economic impact of low skilled immigration, it's not a lot. Either way. But when you look at the economic impact of high skilled immigration, it's strongly positive. So we're really playing with fire if we start kicking out the smart peopl…”
Noah Smith: Tariff-driven inflation threat will keep Fed interest rates higher
“The threat of tariff-driven inflation will lead the Fed to keep interest rates higher a little longer, as we just saw with Powell.”
Noah Smith: Tariffs and policy uncertainty will gradually erode US economic strength
“I think that, that those will erode our economic strength in ways that don't look like an abrupt crash, but they'll look like data getting, like, a little bit worse and a little bit worse. That's my prediction, but again, hard to say.”
Smith: China is manufacturing 100 nuclear weapons per year
“China's building a hundred nuclear weapons a year.”
Smith: China is conducting the largest military buildup in world history
“And in absolute terms, the most impressive military buildup the world has ever seen ever is happening in China right now.”