Andrew Yang and the Rise of Artificial Intelligence
This week, I was incredibly fortunate to host Andrew Yang, founder of the Forward Party and former Presidential candidate, for a live Q&A in honor of AAPI Heritage month. Yang has had a wide-ranging career, from being a lawyer and entrepreneur, to founding Venture for America and running for the highest office in the nation. President Barack Obama honored Yang with the “Champion of Change” award and appointed him Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. We first met at the Greenwich Economic Forum and connected over the fact that we grew up in the very same town and both studied at Brown University (albeit a few years apart).
A lot of people in the Tech community supported Yang’s bid for President in 2020, including Jack Dorsey (CEO of Block and Co-Founder of Twitter), Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI and Former President of Y Combinator), Alexis Ohanian (Founder of 776 VC and Co-Founder of Reddit) and Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla and SpaceX). Kara Swisher has referred to him as “the candidate of Silicon Valley”. While he gained a loyal following (often referred to as the “Yang Gang”), made 7 national debate stages, and raised over $40M, he ultimately ended his presidential bid and put his support behind Joe Biden. Some suggest his ideas were simply ahead of their time.
“When I ran for election in 2020, a lot of people joked that I was like this magical Asian man from the future, but here we are in 2023 and a lot of this stuff is already happening”.
These are the top three takeaways from our conversation:
1. Yang stressed the need for thoughtful and cautious development of AI.
There will certainly be benefits from AI, including new drug discovery, improved education and gains in worker productivity, but there will be risks that need to be carefully monitored as well. Back in April, Yang signed a letter alongside Elon Musk, Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak, Max Tegmark from MIT and many others calling for a six-month pause on AI experiments. Similar to how social media has influenced democracy and unleashed negative human tendencies, Yang argued, AI can augment and amplify certain messages to misinform the American public (i.e. deep-fakes, impersonation etc.). According to Yang, “this will be the AI election.”
This is a more timely issue than ever. On Tuesday, Sam Altman appeared before Congress and emphasized the need for AI regulation. Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut had ChaptGPT prepare some of his opening remarks and used voice cloning software that was indistinguishable from reality. According to Blumenthal, “Congress failed to meet the moment with social media, now we have the obligation to do so with AI before the threats and risks become real.”
2. According to Yang, “we are in the midst of a profound economic transformation” and the next stages will be even more dramatic.
Yang has been talking about the rise of artificial intelligence for years now and has even been likened to the Paul Revere of automation, i.e. “the robots are coming! the robots are coming!”. He even argued that even the outcome of the 2016 presidential election was decided in part because we had automated a lot of manufacturing jobs in swing states, leading people to feel a sense of desperation. Technology is quickly displacing a large number of workers and the pace will only increase, he explained. By some estimates, 1/3 of American workers will lose their jobs to automation by 2030.
Yang explained that what has been happening to retail jobs, call center jobs, and trucking jobs will soon happen in other industries. As we speak, there are almost 13,000 writers on strike in Hollywood. The truth is that AI can much more easily produce the raw material for a script, speeding up the process considerably, and simply requires a human editor. The same can be said for producing music lyrics, news articles and even computer code. While there are clear limitations today, AI will only get better over time.
He emphasized the importance of retraining Americans on the jobs of the future, but suggested that the recorded success of government retraining programs is exceedingly low (less than 10%) and will not be sufficient.
A central theme of his presidential campaign, Yang has long proposed Universal Basic Income to help Americans meet their basic needs and partially remedy the impact of job loss due to automation. He cited a study which found that when people are stressed about bills they cannot pay, their IQ drops by 13 points (or one full standard deviation) on average, “which in turn leads to more racism, sexism and xenophobia.” Meanwhile, studies suggest that UBI can help lower stress levels and abuse levels, resulting in a better state of mind and healthier relationships.
3. Yang seeks inspiration from his family and the AAPI community.
“My goal is to feel good about my kid’s future. I’m just trying to solve some of these structural problems, while still being a good husband and father,” said Yang.
Given that it is AAPI heritage month, he also offered some advice for other Asian Americans: “If you actually see what is going on as part of the American consciousness, Asian Americans can be a big part of the solution. We are problem solvers, we are rational thinkers, we can get to the root of these issues.” He finished our conversation with a call to action: “Let’s go fix some of these problems! Asians are going to do it, because who else will?”
