Andrew Yang: AI's "Job-Killing Tsunami" + Why He'll Pay You Not to Use Your Phone

Andrew Yang says AI is coming for clerical work first

Andrew Yang thinks artificial intelligence is a job-killing tsunami aimed at the largest categories of American work, and his answer runs on two tracks. One is Noble Mobile, a carrier that refunds customers for using less data, on the theory that phone addiction and financial strain are what make Americans unhappy. The other comes from his presidential run. He now argues that fixing the rules keeping politicians captive to their party bases is higher leverage than holding office.

Takeaways

• AI will hit clerical work and trucking first. Clerical and administrative work is the largest job category in the country, ahead of retail, food service, trucking and manufacturing. Yang cites 40m jobs at risk, including 2m call center workers and 2.8m truck drivers. Agarwal warns that losing 15m jobs in three years would mean revolution.
• Noble Mobile pays customers to use less data. Noble licenses T-Mobile data, charges $50 a month for unlimited service and refunds $20 when a customer stays under 20 gigabytes. The US average bill is $83 a month against Europe's $35, with users using 17 percent less screen time by month two.
• Each startup's 50 jobs are offset by automation. Running Venture for America showed Yang that for every startup creating 50 or 100 jobs, an innovation decimates ten times as many. That insight pushed him toward the presidency, because nothing smaller could work at the scale of the problem.
• The first tech bust made him a pessimist. Yang started companies in 1999 and 2000 and watched them die when the NASDAQ fell from 5,000 to 2,000. Failure and rejection from companies, investors and voters toughened him, leaving him pessimistic by outlook but optimistic by action.
• Yang calls universal basic income an oversimplification. Yang says cash alone was never the answer. He wants to build arts, wellness, caring and education economies, where work like physical therapy and personal training can support a fine life. His book 'Hey, Yang. Where's My Thousand Bucks?' comes out in February.
• Phone time and thin savings make Americans sad. Yang says Americans are sad because they cannot save enough each month and spend too much time on their phones. Jacobstein adds that nothing in human evolutionary history prepared people for carrying all the information all the time.

Where Yang thinks the leverage is

• Yang says fixing the system is higher leverage than holding office, and he does not think everyone should run for president, though he thinks more people should.
• Politicians answer to the 11 percent of voters in each party's base who turn out in primaries, which is why he backs nonpartisan primaries.