My ChinaTalk podcast with Jordan Schneider

Here is the transcript, here is the podcast.  Excerpt:

Jordan Schneider: You mentioned growing up reading classic novels and scholarship. What do you think will be relevant and not relevant about that sort of stuff in our new AI world?

Tyler Cowen: I suspect the classic texts will re-emerge in value. Reading Plato, Kant, or Adam Smith gives you a sense of a vision and big-picture thinking that the ais won’t be able to give us for some while — maybe never. [If] simply scanning the internet for facts, the AI might give you a very good digest — which you’ll consume in less time — and you’ll then seek out the thing the AI can’t give you at all.

That will, again, be radically original big-picture thinking.

Recommended, interesting throughout.  We also talk about education, therapy, China, the person I envy most, the demand for pets, working for the Aztec empire, my own secret book project, and much more.