Former Google exec says AI's going to lead to a 'short-term dystopia' because the idea it will create new jobs for the ones it's replacing is '100% crap'

Something funny happened as I was watching Google X's former chief business officer Mo Gawdat, on the Google-owned platform YouTube, outline his exact take on the AI dystopia he thinks is coming. The host began to ask Gawdat about the idea AI will create new jobs, then the video halted while Google ads served me a 15-second clip showing someone using Microsoft CoPilot to do their job.

When Gawdat returns, he begins his answer by talking about the idea of the West transitioning into service or knowledge economies: people, as he puts it, who "type on a keyboard and use a mouse." Oh dear. Gawdat's economics lesson concludes that "all we produce in the West is words [...] and designs. All of these things can be produced by AI."

One thing is impossible to deny: the business world is very inte