IBM (IBM) Vice Chair Gary Cohn sits down with Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi to talk about job-loss fears due to AI and why economic growth and increased productivity will lead to more job creation than elimination, especially with the build-out of data centers and AI infrastructure.
You using muse yet?
No, not at all.
Not a fan?
Uh, look, at this point, I’m not comfortable giving up my personal data, my personal information.
What could go wrong?
Is it are you really look, you’ve been at the markets for for eons, Gary. Are you surprised on how bullish the market is. Nasdaq record highs because of an AI agent?
Yeah, I look, I I am a little bit surprised.
You know, we all knew this was coming.
At the at the beginning of the discussion about AI, everyone talked about it being a productivity tool. You know, whether it’s productivity in the HR department of a large corporation, or it’s productivity for you and I.
So, the fact that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re now seeing productivity tools, I don’t think anyone should be surprised. The question will be is how well do they work and what’s the risk for putting all of your personal data in one place?
What is the risk?
Like right now, I don’t know. I’m not bold enough to say there is no risk, and I’m surely not bold enough to put my data in.
You and me both. I’m not using this. like, it’s not going to happen at all. Um,
what does it mean to the human workforce, though? If we have agents like this running amok on our phones?
You know, look, at the end of the day, I believe that AI will be a productivity boom for this country. And if you want to grow the size of your economy, you want to grow the population, you want to grow wealth, you need to grow GDP.
If we can grow our economy and we can become more productive, it’s good for all of us. There’s no real losers in productivity gains.
I had uh, you know, Apollo, uh chief economist uh Torsten on the on the on the show yesterday. And he brought up a really good point that more AI will mean more labor displacement.
So people are going to lose their gigs.
Well, I I I think everyone assumes that in the beginning. If the economy grows and GDP grows, which is what happens in productivity, you actually create more jobs or you don’t lose jobs because you need more jobs for for for what’s going on in the economy.
If you think of all these um data centers and infrastructure that needs to be built, if we continue down this path and they can get built, there’s just going to be enormous demand for more and more workers in the system.
