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Home » Transcript: Emad Mostaque Interview on Peter McCormack Show

Transcript: Emad Mostaque Interview on Peter McCormack Show

EDITOR’S NOTE: In this episode of The Peter McCormack Show, host Peter McCormack sits down with mathematician Emad Mostaque to discuss the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics. The conversation explores the profound economic disruptions ahead, including the automation of digital and physical labor, and how society might adapt to a future dominated by intelligent machines. Read the full transcript of this interview below:

Introduction

PETER MCCORMACK: (00:01:08 – 00:01:24) Anyway, man, listen. Nice to meet you. Thank you for coming and doing this. So I’m very intrigued by this idea of our economic life expectancy because there’s a lot of people worried about their jobs and what’s going to happen to the economy. And then we’ve got Elon Musk telling us we’re going to have universal high income.

EMAD MOSTAQUE: (00:01:24 – 00:01:25) Yeah.

PETER MCCORMACK: (00:01:25 – 00:01:28) Can you explain this concept of economic life expectancy?

EMAD MOSTAQUE: (00:01:29 – 00:02:30) Yeah. So, we— first, thanks for having me on the show.

We have this thing of we’re trained to do a certain task and we’re kind of turned a little bit into robots by our system, do the task, have it verified, etc. COVID really showed up what that was when we ended up doing a lot of this stuff remotely.

But we’re reaching a point now where AI is becoming actually competent intelligence. Next year it becomes really usable, and then the year after you can push a button, replicate your entire workforce, their entire mannerisms, all their knowledge, and you won’t be able to tell it’s a human or an AI on the other side of the screen, except for the fact you pay a hundredth of the value.

And a human will make that team worse because they go to sleep, they make errors, they wake up a bit grumpy when they don’t have a coffee. So your cognitive value goes negative. So your economic life expectancy ends effectively in 2 years. In 2 years for any job that can be done remotely. A few years after that for the jobs that can be done in person, because we’ve got to build the robots a little bit better.

Which Jobs Go First

PETER MCCORMACK: (00:02:31 – 00:02:37) Right. Okay. And has anyone done any mapping of what kind of percentage of the workforce that is?

EMAD MOSTAQUE: (00:02:37 – 00:03:00) Yeah. So we’ve had some from McKinsey and OpenAI. They estimate about 50% of all tasks.

I think that it will take— it’s not like everyone’s going to be fired overnight. It’s not nice to fire people, but it’s going to be very difficult for companies with humans to compete with companies with fewer humans and fully AI companies. Again, particularly in the digital space, if your job can be done remotely.

PETER MCCORMACK: (00:03:01 – 00:03:03) So lawyers, accountants, a lot of that work.

EMAD MOSTAQUE: (00:03:03 – 00:03:28) Oh, we’re already seeing it. Junior hiring in law firms is decreasing because they’re like, let’s push a button on AI. What is the job of a partner? It’s a relationship job. And it’s a liability job.

And so it’s going to be the entry level that gets hollowed out first because those that own the assets, the knowledge base, the relationships and others can use compute to leverage themselves up more and they don’t have to deal with annoying grads.

PETER MCCORMACK: (00:03:28 – 00:03:35) So it’s like a ladder. We’ve taken off the first rung. We’re going to come for the second rung until we take the whole workforce.

EMAD MOSTAQUE: (00:03:35 – 00:03:57) Until we take the whole workforce. Until, again, we get to a point like next year. On the current pace of robotics, a Tesla Optimus or equivalent robot, $1.50 an hour, can get into a truck in America and just drive it off. And that’s a million American truck driver jobs gone, plus 3 million people that service them.

PETER MCCORMACK: (00:03:57 – 00:03:59) Hold on, do you even need the robot to drive it?

EMAD MOSTAQUE: (00:04:00 – 00:04:12) Well, this is the whole thing. You could install a whole system, but what I’m saying is, the first humanoid robots are arriving in a couple of months, the 1X and others. The way they deliver themselves is they take a taxi to your house and they ring your doorbell.

PETER MCCORMACK: (00:04:12 – 00:04:13) No, they don’t.

EMAD MOSTAQUE: (00:04:13 – 00:04:47) Yeah, it’s the best way, right? I mean, why would you need a box? The Optimus robots will get their Tesla cars. But the fundamental thing is this: having that truck retrofit, that’s a whole hassle. Humanoid robots, again, $1.50 an hour, can fit in human-shaped holes. So there’s no retrofitting to be done. Everything— literally, open the door, get in. That’s a truck driver job gone.

A lot more physical jobs will go as well because robotics has had the breakthrough. But the digital jobs right now, those are in trouble.

PETER MCCORMACK: (00:04:47 – 00:04:54) But 50% of the jobs in 2 years, it kind of— it is kind of overnight really when you think about it.

EMAD MOSTAQUE: (00:04:54 – 00:05:13) Yeah, it’s like a sandpile collapsing, right? The pressure’s building. We’re not seeing the first little glimmers, but again, no one really likes firing people. But now you go to the Philippines and places like that. Do you know what’s happened to the call centers? Why would you need a call center? You use Grok, you use OpenAI Voice, right? Those jobs are never coming back.

PETER MCCORMACK: (00:05:14 – 00:05:16) So do we know how many of those jobs have gone?

EMAD MOSTAQUE: (00:05:16 – 00:05:23) So we’re starting to see the crack. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but we’re just starting to see a crack again because they have service contracts, right?

PETER MCCORMACK: (00:05:23 – 00:05:23) Okay.

EMAD MOSTAQUE: (00:05:23 – 00:05:35) Again, this isn’t an overnight thing.