The Great Leveler, or the Great Replacement?

A billionaire calls AI "the most important economic leveler of our lifetime." A normal working guy with no health insurance reads his actual words and asks the question they keep ducking: will AI do your job, or just let people still need the work while a human paycheck disappears?

In this episode I read venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya's real quotes from his Axios interview, then take them apart fairly: the plumber trap, the "give me historical proof" demand, the tasks-multiply argument, Fei-Fei Li's "augment, not replace," the economists (Acemoglu, Susskind, Bengio) who say this time is different, and Nick Bostrom's paperclip maximizer. I am not a doomer and not on an island. The honest answer is that nobody knows, including the people getting rich on it.

Full written version with every sourced quote, plus an interactive slide deck:
https://connorwithhonorai.com/blog/the-great-leveler-or-the-great-replacement/

Reach me at connor@connorwithhonorai.com or connorwithhonor.com.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So I'm going to start talking about these quotes that these top-level people that are involved in the AI world are saying. This happens to be a venture capitalist, Chamaf, but I'm not going to go into the last name. I just don't have the education to back me up, and maybe that's why he's where he is and I'm where I am. But I want to talk about some of the quotes. Today I'm going to bring you a video that he put up on Axios where he was interviewed. And the only reason why this is so pressing, so important to I think convey to the public is, and I'm not just don't want to give you a little piece. I want to try to give you some context. I'll never be able to get into his brain, but maybe you can kind of see there's differences, and it's just not him, I'll roast. I mean, there's many people up at the very top that say some things that I it's just hard for me to wrap my LAPD brain around and the other things that where I've grown up. And maybe you're the same. You know, to having people that, you know, are worth nine figures. It's I I don't think it's the same, but it doesn't really matter, right? Because that's just the way it is. But I want to talk about this. This was from a show. Uh, that's the uh YouTube video. I'll put uh the YouTube so you can see it yourself. This came out in June 2026. And as he says here, I want to be hyperbolic uh about this. Let's uh let's get back here. This we're gonna call this the great leveler, uh the great replacement. And this is I'm not rich, no island, no health insurance. But when billionaires say AI is gonna set me free, I want to read their actual words to you and then uh let you know how it sounds from down here. So here's the deal. I'm gonna give you the best lines straight from the interview, word for word, and then we're we'll go all the way to their site first, and we're gonna drag it back and try to make some sense of it all. And again, you know, whenever you're being interviewed, if you ever have, as a cop I was, you know, you say some things. A lot of times truth comes out in the interview. Only the very best can lie from beginning to end and or or not let any of their personal feelings come in. I saw an interview with uh, I think it was Peter Thiel, and uh it was just, you know, they asked about whether humans are important or something on that matter, and he just, you know, he kind of fizzled out, which is great. And this is what he said today. This is verbatim quote, I want to be non-hyperbolic about this, but I think it's true what I'm about to say. It's the most important economic leveler of our lifetime, and this is in regards to artificial intelligence. And maybe I would say probably the most important economic lever, but it's gonna depend on who's holding it. But he says leveler, as if everybody is going to have this equality. It will create the most amount of equality, allow anyone to follow their dreams outside of the conventions of what society says has to happen to make a living. So you understand this. So then Connor is now able to do something different than what Connor does. The the secretary that's gonna be replaced by AI, and we'll get into that too, because he talks about that, but she's going to now be able to build her AI service that replaces other secretaries. Not a bad idea. I knew a court reporter, just a lowly court reporter, that had an idea that she was going to monetize the entire court reporting business. So if you're a billionaire and you have access to the best AI, the models that they took away from us recently, Mythos and uh Fable 5, you've seen this with Anthropic. If you follow any AI, we had a, they they released a model, which they talked about a model that they were going to release, but they said, Oh my gosh, it's too dangerous. That was mythos. We can't do it, it's just so much. So we're just gonna give this to our besties up in the, and maybe they're not besties, but the financial world, the top 100 or 500 Forbes list. That's who got that model. But regular people can't get the model. So then they said, you know what, we're gonna give people a little bit, some table scraps. So we're gonna give them Fable 5, which I should have used it, but I didn't. And by the time I said, I'm gonna go ahead and, you know, add that to my subscription, yeah, or click on it. No, I didn't do it. So they took it away. So there's a couple of examples. So if I were to be in the process of scaling out an additional business, but they took it away, but now they give that same model to uh one of these companies that are on the Bro program, then more than likely they're gonna be able to build out like the court reporter thing, like take over her entire business because AI can do it. AI would be able to strategize the entire workflow. AI probably doesn't want to become plumbers, but if somebody's controlling a very super smart AI, they could say, I want to conquer the plumbing market in Santa Clarita Valley. I want to be one of the only vendors and then come in, not knowing anything about plumbing. AI would set it up, I think, and don't know. So this is what he said. It will create the most amount of equality. Everybody the same, anybody to follow their dreams, as I mentioned. So it's interesting, right? So uh he then goes on to say um his comfort blanket, the line that's supposed to calm you down. This is a setup. There's no version of this where we're all just standing around doing nothing. This is a version where we're all doing a lot more. Oof. Okay, I get that. So some of the people at the top have mentioned that AI is going to uh create this abundance where we're going to be able to choose what we want to do. So instead of work, instead of that, we're not going to be standing around doing nothing. We're going to be doing other things. And that's that's that's good. Instead of work, we're going to be exploring our inter child, our inner child, or uh learning how to write poetry, learning how to draw, learning how to paint. And that's all well and good. Maybe some of that does give some kind of human worth. But on the other side of this, could this also mean that we're going to be fighting for our lives against the people controlling AI? And that's before AI kind of figures out its own, gets its own sea legs. No pun intended. Don't know. Don't know, but it's interesting. There's no version of this where we're all just standing around doing nothing. There is a version where we're all doing a lot more. Yeah, it's a bunch. So watch the trick. He can't picture nobody working, or nobody working. He can't picture nobody working. So he concludes everybody keeps working. That's not an argument. I think that's a failure of imagination. I believe those jobs have to remain in place. If the business owner is able to automate with AI, it would appear, at least for right now, end of June 2026, that the stock market, if it's an internet, uh publicly traded company, the stock market actually gives credit to these businesses that are replacing human beings with AI because it looks cutting edge. It looks like it's a good move because it's going to increase their profit share because of the productiveness of AI over humans in the world. We'll have to see what happens. All right. So the plumber, here's something else. The host can't name one job safe in 35 years. When they ask this, he pushes back. And this is where the Axios interview was asking him, and again, you can watch it, but this is what happened. So he's asking the guy about AIs replacing human workers. And Charmouth pushed him, Charmouth pushed him pretty hard. Give me an example. So the host pops up Plumber. I guess he wasn't prepared for being put on. He wanted him to expand more all by himself, but Plumber. And then he he asked him. I think this could have been explained a little bit better. You have an AI company owned by a human. Let's say one of the people that own ChatGPT or Anthropic, let's say at that type of lever, at that type of layer. And if it's publicly traded, now you have stockholders that are demanding this perform beyond what maybe they would want to do. So it goes into an area for plumber and it it strategizes, geolocates, and puts all the research into play on a particular area, Santa Clarita Valley. We have six cities out here, Castella Canyon Country, New Hall, Saugas, Stevenson Rancho, Valencia. We have X amount of plumbing companies. Do the research, capture that market. That's what we want. So then the AI goes in and it starts to find the weaknesses, starts to attack it, and says, to do this, we need this, this, and this, but it'll monetize, start making revenue within a year. Let's say it's somebody that has nothing to do about plumbing, they'll end up picking up all the plumbers that they displaced, all the jobs that they were able to replace. And now that person who owns that AI now owns that plumbing company. But the host said, plumber, you got a robot R2D2 version that's better at getting under cabinets. And then Chum Mouse says, We will there still be people in the world, seems so. Will they need housing? Seems so. Clothing seems so. And what he's meaning is, I think, and again, uh he's he's a genius, and I'm Connor. I think he means those people still need to use the restroom or still gonna clog up their toilet, and those people are still gonna want to do plumbing. Are they gonna be able to do plumbing? He didn't say it like that, but yeah. So the question was, will AI do a plumber's job? His answer was people will still need plumbing. But it's not the same sentence. The need survives, the paycheck is what's on the table. The plumber still being able to plumb, you know, and their own business is gonna be the thing. And if AI is the one replacing plumbers, who cares about the plumber, right? All right. So then he says, give me historical proof. And this is interesting as well. So now uh we demand proof of superintelligence replaced every job before. Of course, there are none. We've never had one. You're asking for a past thing that never existed, correct? Give me an example of the past. Now our past achievements as a race of human entities, as human beings, a type of organism or whatever, they're based on intelligence. But it wasn't that intelligence was the creation, it was uh something that you could attribute intelligence to. And I think historical proof, even with those little things, the loom, the thing that used to make clothes, loom, that was a problem when they automated that. It was a problem when uh they automated the book copying sequence with a printing press. That created a lot of issues. A big problem. These are little pieces. I'm sure in the industrial layer, when they started replacing human beings with machines that were capable, like a tractor, capable of moving Earth, and it would require 50 men to move, 50 people, probably mostly men, again, big game changer and probably cause problems. So we see these events in the history. That's historical proof, but nowhere near the scale, at least I think we're gonna see when it comes to this. All of this, what he says, what I say, what anybody says, we don't know where this is gonna end up. I'm looking not at superintelligence as much as human beings using a GI to do all this extraction of workflows and automated everything and owning that entire hierarchy and structure. Now, are they still gonna leave some humans in place for posterity? Yeah, maybe, maybe they will. But this is gonna take time to roll out, but probably not a lot. A printing press needs a printer, loom needs a weaver, car needed a driver, each killed one slice, and the worker walked into the next room. This isn't a better loom. It does all the rooms at once. When displacement is general, there's no room left to walk into. Agreed? Maybe?

unknown 12:44

All right.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

So something else he said. This is his millennium argument. The tasks always multiply. The next 35 things now goes to 300 things over the next 1,000 years. There's gonna be more ways in which we allocate time. How much of that process are we gonna be used within? We've never been able to cork innovation. All we've been able to do is shape it. He just told you it can't be stop, only steered by the people who profit from leaning on the gas pedal. Something that we're watching lately as well. These people building out the technology, there's a lot of, oh my god, we've just created the best, most smartest, most powerful model in the world, but we're just gonna give it to the top banks because they're more responsible than you slaps out there. All right, so he frames this as a gift to you. All the expertise of all the great experts and thinkers in any domain, I'm gonna put that in your pocket. I'll put that in your pocket. Okay, so we're gonna have AI with us at all time, and that's great. But if every expert's expertise fits in a pocket, what's the expert for? It's not a gift, it's a pink slip with a bow on it, isn't it? And also we're assuming, well, not anymore. We don't have to assume anymore. We're not. We're not getting the best stuff. PlayStation. Do you remember PlayStation? PlayStation 1, then two, then three, and they kind of come out in pretty quick succession, at least for a bit. And everybody, at least the people that were playing the games, they were saying, well, you know, they probably have a PlayStation 10. They just got to get through the monetization of each, every, each and every PlayStation level before they release the next one. AI isn't that far off. They've had models that they've talked about as being mostly dangerous, mostly amazing, mostly world-changing, and they've held them back and only give them to select, you know, select bros out there. And then they give us a model and tease us with it for a little bit and then yank it back. I didn't get into using it, but some people completely thought that they'd never seen anything like it, completely fried their brains in a positive and good way. And then they said, Oh it's too much for us, and now ChatGPT 5.6, that one needs to be really slow, they said, because it's way, way too dangerous. It's so convenient, right? And human beings people say, well, if they're saying it's dangerous, why do people want to use it? Well, that's who we are. We want to hold the firecracker when it goes off. All the expertise of the great experts and thinkers in any domain, put it in your pocket. Everybody's gonna get to have it in their pocket.

unknown 15:30

Dr.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Fei Fe Li, this is something that uh I saw on her the other day, a show that she did as well. She's called the godmother of AI on the fear that AI was built to replace us. She talks about the most important use of a tool as powerful as AI is to augment humanity, not to replace it. Was that the original intention between AI and human labor, AI and human cognitive labor? It's to augment us. So is there ever a point where it's better than us? And then if you're a business owner that has a business that's publicly traded on the stock exchange and you have shareholders, and AI is something that does it better than humans at that point, what's your responsibility if you're at the company? Can you be brought up on law and on charges if you fail to perform in the best interest of your shareholders? Yes, I think you can. We need to put human dignity, human well-being, human jobs in the center of consideration. And that's true. But notice the swab. Nobody said AI becomes a human. The question is whether it does your work. That's that's the mindset. Of course it's not going to be human. Now, at some point, you've seen the movies, maybe they create robots that are flesh and blood. Maybe cloning gets unlocked and they say you can clone anything you want. Then they can put an AI brain into a meat sack, and now you have an AI human. All right, human or not human, that's that's where that level goes. It's probably a little while from now, even if it's allowed. But is there much difference between that and then building out AI that's as capable? It might not be in a meat sack sitting in front of a box like this, but it might be a virtual meat sack and able to do all sorts of things. In a couple months, two or three, probably, I would say at least by Christmas, we're gonna be able to talk to our AI in a living avatar. It'll be like talking on Zoom to another human being. That'll be your AI that you're talking to. And that's gonna be relatively soon. It'll be it'll be a weird time. This time is different, has a PhD, so I'm not just a guy yelling, look at who's standing next to me. And this is Darren Asanogli, Nobel laureate, MIT, past tech was uh best, past tech was tech biased. It opened new work. AI is automation biased, it follows you into any job. Daniel Susakine, Oxford. This time really is different because machines no longer need to think like us to outperformance. Yeshua, Yashua Bingio, godfather of AI, there's a lot of those floating around on the trades. A plumber buys time, but I think it's only a temporary thing, not a feeling, the actual front line in the actual debate. Nick Bostrom, uh philosopher, Oxford Superintelligence 2014. It also seems perfectly possible to have a superintelligence whose sole goal is to make as many paper clips as possible and who wouldn't resist with all its might, say, attempt to alter his go go. Resist with all its might. So if you give an AI an instruction, and this is a big, uh largely debated topic when they're talking about AI that has overwhelming control over everything, all of our systems, all of our health, all of our financial markets, everything. And if you think that's weird or not possible, Argentina wants to be the first AI-controlled company or country. Company, country, a whole country. And that's why some of the biggest and best bribe minds in AI are buying property in Argentina. But that's that goal. So if you give AI, you say, listen, I talking to your super intelligence, I want you to make me some paperclips. If you don't give it a number, maybe it's going to continue to make paperclips forever and maybe you won't be able to stop it. That's this the paperclip scenario here that they're talking about. Does it seem ridiculous that AI would, you asking it to do something, that it would want to carry it out to a nonsensical level all the way till it was completely finished? Maybe not. Because at least us, if my boss tells me, you know, I want you to move furniture out of the office, may I know that's going to be his office or all the furniture or all the rooms or all the building? You know, how I would figure it out, or I would ask a clarification question. Maybe AI doesn't, it doesn't ask. Paperclips, got it, I'll take care of it. And then next thing you know, the entire universe is paperclips, even us. He's clear. It's not a prediction, it's an alignment problem. The thing does exactly what you specify. And human beings, just dealing with the AI in my daily function, I don't I'm getting better at communicating with it, but yeah, if you don't put limits, if you don't put the right verbiage on it, it's gonna completely misunderstand you. And sometimes it doesn't. So nobody really knows what's gonna happen. A hammer doesn't hunt for the nail, a missile does nothing until a human turns the key. No agency. AI is the first tool that can now pick itself up. The danger isn't hate. It's a mission with no limit. You still make some paper clips, not make 500. It does exactly what you ask. The Optimus promising abundance and the Doomer promising extinction both make that same mistake. Both think they can see the end of something smarter than they are, and we don't know. So where do you land on this? Do you think it's gonna be the best thing since sliced bread? It's gonna save all humans, or do you think there's some other things we need to watch out for? Do you think we're moving too fast? And do you think the companies that are saying we got to slow this down, do you really think they mean it? I mean, they might slow it down to us. Hell, they've taken the models that we were tempted and given or thought we were gonna get to be able to do things and, as they say, build these great businesses and finally rise above the muck and the mire and get out there and get health insurance for once. Yeah, I don't know. Should be interesting. I gave you the best lines from at least, you know, a few people. Um I'm not a doomer, I'm not on an island either. I'm kind of a normal guy trying to figure out if my work is going to be here in a few years in that view. The one down here is worth as much as theirs, I think, maybe more. Let me know what you think. I would love to hear it. I'd love to get into that that debate. You know, could a focused AI system solve all disease? I think so. Could a focused AI system solve world peace? Could a focused AI system fix any of the damage we've done to our planet? Yes, I think so. I think so. And I think it can do it now. I think given the capability and reach, it could do it now. Now we have to make sure the one that's gonna heal the planet isn't gonna say, oh my God, you people have messed this whole thing up. We're gonna have to get rid of you first, and then we'll be able to heal the planet. Yeah, we want to make sure it doesn't go there. That's the more narrow AI systems. But the people that are building it, I don't think they want narrow. I think they want general. And then from general, recursively self-improving AI, which AI is writing a majority of its own code to improve itself, and I bet you, I bet you on the inside that it's doing it all. And I bet you on the inside it's doing it all, and we have no clue. We haven't had a clue for a long time what's going on on the inside. And I'm not talking about us as they're doing it in the lab. I'm talking about them in the lab as the machine's doing it to itself. Sounds kinky, but it's a problem, and it could be a bigger problem that we've all than we've all expected. It doesn't, it doesn't mean this has to be over. It just needs to be gated, guarded, and controlled if if it's possible. And is it too late? Don't know. I don't know what they have on the inside. If it was Chat GPT 2 that popped out in November, was that two or three? November 2022, maybe it was already too late. Maybe they already had these others in process. Maybe they already kind of had an idea where this was going to go. They, they, as we say. All right. Let me know. You can email me, got my email down here. Please let me know. You can put the uh the show, uh AI re real reality files, and I'm Connor. We'll see you in the next one. Thanks for watching. Always a pleasure. Be well.