Tyler Cowen Doesn't Think America Should Ban Chinese AI Models

This is our full interview with Tyler Cowen. We discussed why he believes banning Chinese open source AI is impossible, the rise of "AI maniacs," why Europe is quietly becoming an AI powerhouse, the future of jobs in an AI economy, why data centers are good for local communities, AI-generated religions, the gambling boom, economic "vibecession," and much more. TBPN is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Public - https://public.com Cisco - https://www.cisco.com Console - https://www.console.com CrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.com Figma - https://www.figma.com MongoDB - https://www.mongodb.com NYSE - https://www.nyse.com Railway - https://railway.com Shopify - https://www.shopify.com/ Codex - http://openAI.com/codex Sign up for TBPN’s daily newsletter at TBPN.com Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John Coogan?

  And without further ado, our first guest of the show is in the waiting room. We have Tyler Cowen, American Economist, to talk to us about all things. How are you doing, Tyler? Good to see you again.

• 0:09Tyler Cowen?

  Hello, how are you? I don't drink coffee.

• 0:12John Coogan?

  I was about to ask. I have to ask every guest of the show.

• 0:15Jordi Hays?

  Are you gonna start?

• 0:17Tyler Cowen?

  I've only had coffee twice in my life, both times in rural Ethiopia in a coffee ceremony. And it was amazing, but I thought, this is the peak. I can't beat this.

• 0:27John Coogan?

  Is that because you'd become too powerful? Or do you see it as a Faustian bargain?

• 0:31Tyler Cowen?

  I see people getting addicted to it, and if they can't get their morning coffee, they have headaches. I don't want to be there.

• 0:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, it does become a new supply chain.

• 0:39Jordi Hays?

  How often are you somewhere where you can't possibly get a coffee in the morning?

• 0:47Tyler Cowen?

  I don't know, can't, but you have to go out and get it, or go to some effort. Or you're in a hotel room and you make a crummy coffee there, and then you don't really enjoy it. It's just simpler not to have that addiction, I think.

• 0:59John Coogan?

  What's very interesting is that coffee, caffeine pills are incredibly economically efficient. It's like one cent for the equivalent of a cup of coffee if you buy them in bulk. And yet, absolutely zero adoption. People love a cup of coffee, even if it's a couple bucks. It's like a simple pleasure. It's a joy. People just can't stop paying for them.

• 1:19Jordi Hays?

  Do you do anything in the morning, any type of ritual that you feel like you have to do to be yourself?

• 1:25John Coogan?

  He's like Celsius.

• 1:28Tyler Cowen?

  I get high from mineral water, but if I don't have it, I'm fine. I'm not craving it.

• 1:32John Coogan?

  Addicted, okay, okay. Well, let's talk about artificial intelligence. How are you thinking about the latest debate around Kimi K3 open source AI? Where should we begin the discussion? And then I'm sure we can narrow down a bunch of different ways.

• 1:51Tyler Cowen?

  Open source is coming and is here, whether we like it or not. Of course, a lot of it will be from China. We should allow American competitors to proceed on an even footing. But basically, the attempt to outlaw it or ban it or use sanctions against it is going to fail miserably. Like, what about multinationals? What about companies whose affiliates use open source? What about all the major US companies that use open source Chinese products right now? I hope, I plead that the Trump administration gives up on this crusade. It cannot work.

• 2:24John Coogan?

  Okay, so I want to push back on it cannot be banned, because I, at first blush, I agree with you. Like, it is software. It is something that can just be downloaded. You can download the weights and just have it. Anything that's replicable infinitely should just proliferate across the world very quickly. But the fact that you need an NVL 72, you need a whole server rack, you need equipment and infrastructure, that acts as a point of leverage. I'm not saying that we should ban it. I'm just saying, if you put me in charge of banning it, I think I would have an easier time banning open source AI than banning music distribution, for example.

• 3:05Tyler Cowen?

  What will you do when it's on device? How long is that from now, right?

• 3:08John Coogan?

  That's true.

• 3:09Tyler Cowen?

  Why go down the path at all?

• 3:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good point.

• 3:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, what lessons are there from the automotive industry for this moment? Just given, you know, the use of tariffs and how those have worked and haven't worked. And we were talking, you know, earlier about how Europe's approached the problem. You see BYDs all over Europe now, but at the same time, many of the manufacturers have been hurt most by just losing the Chinese market, right? Or not losing it, but having declining sales there because of local alternatives.

• 3:50Tyler Cowen?

  I think if Europe starts a major trade war with China, Europe will lose. This is a sad reflection on Europe, and it's a sad reflection on Europe that they can't just say, "Oh, we'll make fewer cars. We'll do five or six other great things that we're readily positioned to shift into." They're not really there. But simply putting up big tariffs isn't going to help them get there. It actually will postpone it. And those tariffs, over time, end up applying to the inputs for your other sectors, and it makes them less competitive. So Europe's really in a pickle. There's no good way out, but I don't favor the tariffs either.

• 4:25John Coogan?

  How do you think about the open source models in terms of like the broader AI stack? Like, is it important that America have some position in energy, data centers, chip manufacturing, networking? There's this whole stack, and I've been surprised that we've been building as many data centers as we have in the United States, given all the pushback. That feels like something that could have gone to at least other Western nations, energy-rich countries, but that's been fairly centralized. But there's clearly, it feels like there's a potential slippery slope for,

• 5:07John Coogan?

  "Oh, well, if China's handling the open source models, then maybe they should have the data centers. Maybe they should also do the power generation over there. It's dirty. We don't like having data centers here. Put them over there." And then at some point, it feels like you could lose leverage, but I don't know how risky that actually is.

• 5:22Tyler Cowen?

  I live right next to all the data centers in Northern Virginia. It's great. They pay for half of the taxes of their county. The energy, the MBI, all that, I'm completely for it. The chips, bring it on. But at the end of the day, people are afraid that the American models can be yanked from them.

• 5:38John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 5:38Tyler Cowen?

  That's partly our fault.

• 5:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:40Tyler Cowen?

  And if there's open source as something in the background, people are more willing to lock into our systems to a partial extent. So the two are complements, in fact. And again, there's all these major American companies. I don't typically advertise it, but they use a lot of Chinese open source right now. You're just gonna pull that out of their guts?

• 6:00John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, both enterprises actually deploying these models for cost savings. And also, I mean, we saw with Thinking Machines, they use the Chinese open source model to bootstrap a step in the process of building their latest product. And so, it's a whole supply chain. Where do you think the data center pushback comes from? If you are there and have a positive experience, it's polling very poorly. Is it all fear around job displacement? Is it anything particularly on the ground? Like, where did this come from?

• 6:32Tyler Cowen?

  I think right now, people are just negative about many, many things. They're negative about their country. They're negative about social institutions, except the military. There are very low levels of trust. They were told during COVID times, during the great financial crisis, everything's okay, when it was not. So you can't completely blame them. But look, as you know, this country has 50 states. And if Mark Zuckerberg needs to pick up the phone and call the governor of Louisiana, thank goodness, that can work here. And I think we're gonna do it.

• 7:05John Coogan?

  What is it about this, we're in this like counterintuitive vibe session moment. Kyla Scanlon sort of written about it, coined the phrase, this idea that when you poll people on, "How are your neighbors doing economically or financially?", people say, "They're doing fine, but I'm doing terribly." Or, "The economy will grow. The job market will be stable." But people report the consumer confidence is very low. I'm wondering if you've reflected on that more generally, and then I do have a follow-up question. But what is the state of the vibe session? Is it just continual? Is it permanent? Is it getting worse?

• 7:40Tyler Cowen?

  I call it negative emotional contagion, and you see it in many other eras of world history. It feeds on itself. I'm not sure we know what starts it. Maybe it is some negative events. But once it gets going, it's hard to reverse. Sometimes you need actually a war or some kind of catastrophe. I hope we do not. But if you look at wealth accumulation, the job market, stock prices, real wages, many other indices, they're doing like okay to fine. They're just not doing terribly.

• 8:09John Coogan?

  Yeah, no, no, I completely agree. And so, I had this idea, I don't know if you'll agree, but maybe the fact that we're in this vibe session, and the vibes are so bad, and there's so much negative emotion around the economy, that if we actually were to go through a brief recession or a market correction, we might be a more resilient country, sort of ironically because of that. Because everyone would look around and be like, "Well, I already thought it was bad. It got a little worse, but I'm ready to reinvest. Maybe this is what I've been waiting for. Finally, I'm justified in thinking things are bad, and so I can get out of this and do whatever's necessary,

• 8:53John Coogan?

  because I am, there's no longer a cognitive dissonance between what the market is doing and how I feel."

• 9:01Tyler Cowen?

  One hopes, yes. It could be a bullish signal. But then again, if something terrible does happen, everyone says, "I told you so," and maybe we get stuck in the mire.

• 9:10John Coogan?

  Yeah. Jordan?

• 9:11Jordi Hays?

  About a year ago, you had a blog post, if I remember correctly, one of many, of course, that was something to the effect of like, "AI is real and it's amazing, but the economy is still going to just sort of generally continue growing as it's grown, maybe a little bit faster, hopefully." Are you seeing anything that could update your worldview on that? Because so far, I feel like you've been pretty vindicated.

• 9:37John Coogan?

  Deserve a victory lap.

• 9:39Tyler Cowen?

  Well, I'm seeing a lot of confirmation. There's so many people, they will say to me, or say in chat groups or on Twitter, "My goodness, if we had Fable 5, I would have thought the world would be totally different, and it's not."

• 9:50John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:51Tyler Cowen?

  And that's my view. But look, you go back to 1995 through 1998, we got half a percentage point of extra growth out of those advances. They, to me, seem less impressive than AI. So I think over time, with some slowness, we'll get that and maybe a bit more, which is great.

• 10:09John Coogan?

  Interesting. Have you seen The Odyssey?

• 10:13Tyler Cowen?

  I have seen The Odyssey.

• 10:14John Coogan?

  Can you give us your review?

• 10:17Tyler Cowen?

  Well, look, compared to other movies, it's fantastic, and it's dreamy, and it's impressive. But mostly, I was disappointed. I thought the dialogue was lame. The casting, I don't mind the cross-ethnic casting at all. I just didn't think they were the right people. Matt Damon is not Odysseus. He's just not impressive enough physically. The woman who played Calypso just seemed like a suburban housewife. I love Zendaya, but she didn't have any real role. So they screwed up many things. It didn't quite cohere. I'm very glad I saw it. Everyone should see it. It's worth the three hours. But relative to expectations, I suppose a disappointment.

• 10:57John Coogan?

  Do you think it's, do you think classes are satisfied with it? Do you think it's good for the field?

• 11:04Tyler Cowen?

  They're delighted to have any attention at all, and the different translations of The Odyssey are now on the bestseller lists. So what's their alternative, right? They shouldn't complain too loudly.

• 11:17Jordi Hays?

  Do you think technology is making soccer worse?

• 11:23Tyler Cowen?

  I don't watch soccer, but I think technology in some ways has made basketball worse. And I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true of soccer, that it homogenizes things and everyone chases after the same targets, the same players, teams have less individual style. But to soccer, I cannot speak.

• 11:42Jordi Hays?

  Fair.

• 11:44John Coogan?

  What about AI maniacs? Take me through what defines an AI maniac, why it's important. And I have some, some pushback and follow up questions.

• 11:54Tyler Cowen?

  I spoke to two teenagers this morning. One was 13, one is 17. Abu Dhabi, Finland, they're AI maniacs. They spend their spare time mastering AI. They know way more than their so-called teachers. Their starting companies are building models. They realize this is the future. You're going to have a large number of companies with quite a very small number of employees, but pretty high revenue. And I think AI maniacs will compete in medicine, law, business consulting, banking, wherever it is we let them compete. So this to me is the future. Like if you're asking, will the UK recover? I would rephrase it. Is the UK going to encourage its AI maniacs?

• 12:38John Coogan?

  How can they encourage these AI maniacs? It feels like AI naturally lowers the barrier to entrepreneurship. And so there's not much encouragement that's necessary. I mean, as long as the models are available and affordable for young people, they will do things with them.

• 12:55Tyler Cowen?

  Young people should be allowed to rise to positions of authority. They should be respected. They shouldn't be looked down upon. They should have the chance to buy computer, get grants. It's not automatic. So you look at the United States, we do great on all these metrics. Estonia is a country that does pretty well on these metrics. A lot of parts of the world are too small C conservative. And we'll see where different countries are going to fall on this spectrum. But they're not all going to do it automatically, just like not all countries have made great rock and roll. Though, the technology is pretty straightforward.

• 13:29John Coogan?

  Yeah. Estonia is famous for major government investing in, in high-speed bandwidth. Is that correct? Is that the, is that the rough story of Estonia?

• 13:41Tyler Cowen?

  Yes.

• 13:42John Coogan?

  And, but I'm interested in what that would look like for AI in America or the UK. Like, it feels like many of the models or application layer companies, they have sort of a free tier that gets someone potentially from zero to close to AI maniac. And then at some point, they can go and find a customer to help pay for their compute bills. But is there more the government should be doing?

• 14:08Tyler Cowen?

  But as you know, with venture capital, there's a valley of death.

• 14:12John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 14:13Tyler Cowen?

  I don't know that the government should be making grants to 16-year-olds, but someone should. I'm doing it. Other people should as well. So this is really the province of youth. There's nowhere you can go to learn this stuff, other than say, some of the major AI centers and companies. So you've got to teach yourself. And is there the support in your environment for that? We will see.

• 14:33John Coogan?

  Give, give us an update on how you're thinking about grants. Are you going younger, broader, smaller, different partners? I mean, there's been some folks who have been able to do compute grants and then they sort of cap, they sort of, the dollars go further because of the implicit margin.

• 14:52Tyler Cowen?

  With AI maniacs, I'm going younger and weirder. And I've also noticed Europe is doing pretty well on the AI maniacs metric. We'll see how it develops as the costs rise.

• 15:04John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:05Tyler Cowen?

  But I've been pleasantly surprised, and I'm now more optimistic about Europe than I was six months ago.

• 15:11John Coogan?

  How does that, like, where did that come from? That feels like a come from behind story for Europe. I feel like the, for the longest time, the, the brightest technologists in Europe have gone to America to start their companies. The Colisons, famous example, there's many others, with the exception of like the Swedes and Spotify, I suppose. But in general, it feels like many people have come. Are they staying more frequently? Like, what's happening?

• 15:38Tyler Cowen?

  Well, these kids may yet go to America. They're too young to be going now. Maybe it's that, you know, chatbots didn't interest the Europeans that much. They seem to like compete with culture.

• 15:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:50Tyler Cowen?

  Agents are a chance to do something. Now, American kids have had opportunities to do things for a long time. But for the European kids, this is something new. So I think at the margin, you'll see more extra activity there. And a lot of new companies from quite young people, coming out of all of Europe, including Eastern Europe.

• 16:08John Coogan?

  Do you think young people are better at avoiding the fake work trap that happens with some AI users? You know, the person that just builds an automated workflow to, you know, check, summarize every meeting, and then they never look at the notes, and it's just endless token consumption in service of like, creating the ultimate second brain that they never actually refer to. And it's, it's ultimately a lot of make-work, but it feels very productive, sort of the tool-shaped, shaped objects formulation?

• 16:39Tyler Cowen?

  I think the young people are more playful with it. They take more chances. In the aggregate, they might even do worse. But in terms of coming up with the new things that really matter, I think they're going to win.

• 16:50John Coogan?

  What do you think about the, the risk of, of the one-shotting from AI? People that go so deep in it, they lose, they lose their grip on reality?

• 17:01Tyler Cowen?

  It happens with everything, you know? When I was a kid, people one-shoted on baseball. Can you imagine that? Or like drugs?

• 17:10John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:11Tyler Cowen?

  AI is one of the better things to be one-shoted from, I would say.

• 17:15John Coogan?

  No, I was laughing about, I know some guys who've been basically one-shoted by golf.

• 17:19Tyler Cowen?

  Yeah.

• 17:20John Coogan?

  And all day, every day. Like, reading about golf, studying golf, trying to improve their golf game. And it's the same thing as AI. Yeah.

• 17:27Jordi Hays?

  What, if a billionaire came to you and said, Tyler, it seems that my type is very unpopular right now. What should we do to, to try to shift public opinion? Right now, there's a, I think, an $80 million campaign being spent to block the billionaire tax here in California. But it seems like there are other things more broadly that billionaires could do to shift public perception. But what do you think?

• 18:02Tyler Cowen?

  I would say, don't apologize and keep on going. I hope the billionaire tax fails. It will wreck California. If it passes, it's already harmed California. Even a lot of the Democratic Party politicians don't support it. I think, again, there's just this negative sentiment about many, many things, including billionaires. You might say, some of them deserve it. Fine, like with all humans. But at the end of the day, I'm reminded of the old saying from Jonathan Swift, and he said, "Censor is the tax a man pays to the public for the privilege of being eminent." Unquote. If you succeed, people will hate you.

• 18:43Jordi Hays?

  Okay, but, but.

• 18:45Tyler Cowen?

  Online, you saw this, you know, wasn't Malcolm Gladwell, Steve Levitt, Paul Krugman, whoever did well, God hated.

• 18:50John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. That's right.

• 18:53Jordi Hays?

  At the same time, would building some massive, you know, parks and/or, you know, any, any type of, of public work?

• 19:04John Coogan?

  Yes, I, I.

• 19:05Jordi Hays?

  Be, be worthwhile?

• 19:07John Coogan?

  The interesting question is, is there, is there some sort of like, greater leverage from having like, the library that you walk by versus like, 1% lower levels of malaria? That's like this abstract thing that you don't see? Like, there's something about building like a monument as a wealthy person, as opposed to having an abstract, diffuse impact on humanity, even if the reduction?

• 19:33Jordi Hays?

  Maybe the modern version of a park is just like owning an NFL team?

• 19:37John Coogan?

  It doesn't really feel the same because the NFL team would be.

• 19:40Tyler Cowen?

  President Obama just built a monument. Does anyone love him for it? Now, I'm all for today's billionaires doing more to support art, music, libraries, whatever we all might come up with. But I don't think it's going to make them loved.

• 19:53John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, maybe not. What about religion and AI? There were, Anthony Levandowski was working on an AI religion way before it was cool. I think 2017, he was thinking about this. Where, it feels like we're maybe behind the curve on a true AI-based religion. It feels like, based on the capabilities of the models, you could have something happening. There's little pockets of people that are obsessed with certain models, but I haven't seen anything formally being built out. Where do you think that goes?

• 20:27Tyler Cowen?

  I think it'll be more like sects than new religions. So you could write your own version of Hindu sacred books, or your own version of Shiite Islam with your own, you know, slate of who the true imams are or should be. And we're just going to see proliferation. Like, for a while in history, we had a proliferation of different versions of the LDS church, different kinds of Mormons. Some are still around. And using an agent, you'll be able to whip up your own religion, I don't know, in less than a day, with rituals, sacred books, practices. Most won't catch on, but if you will, they'll have a few hundred, a few thousand adherents. That may sound trivial, but if, you know, half of 1% of the population

• 21:11Tyler Cowen?

  does this, and some of these get some number of adherents, over time, the whole religious landscape looks quite different. I think it will be more diverse, and feel weirder, and be less centralized in religious authorities.

• 21:23John Coogan?

  Where do you think the Amish will be in 200 years? I saw someone try and use one of these AI models to project out, project out the human population in, in 20200. And the prediction came back as like, America will be 34% Amish. And I think it was just extrapolating, you know, linear trends of their birth rates versus everyone else. But it feels like the idea of the Amish lifestyle is actually becoming in vogue in almost popular culture with, don't use screens as much, try and put, limit your Instagram usage,

• 22:05John Coogan?

  you need to log off and touch grass. All of these memes are sort of, you know, the, potential gateway drug to the Amish lifestyle.

• 22:14Tyler Cowen?

  I've visited the Amish many times. I admire what they've done, but it's possible because the surrounding society cross-subsidizes them. So you can't have a third of America being Amish. And I think they keep people in the fold because it is pretty small and tightly knit. And where there are, say, three or four million Amish, which we're very far from, the rate of leaving would be much higher. So I think it's bounded on the upside. But I'm glad they're there. They've done a great job. Their communities are quite interesting and pretty prosperous. They have a lot of kids. Good for them.

• 22:51John Coogan?

  Do you agree with Jeremy Gaffon that people are constantly looking for a priestly class and in recent years it's moved from the billionaire class to the online poster?

• 23:01Tyler Cowen?

  I don't know, maybe online posters peaked five or 10 years ago and now there's a lot more video and just the AI itself competes against the online posters.

• 23:14John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 23:15Tyler Cowen?

  I liked his dialogue on that topic, but I don't exactly agree with what he said.

• 23:19John Coogan?

  Sure, sure. I'm interested to know what level of entrepreneurship you think is reachable? Can every young person become an entrepreneur? Or are there some people who are more interested in just finding a stable job and then they need to figure out how to navigate changing jobs in the future?

• 23:44Tyler Cowen?

  Most people cannot become entrepreneurs. They're not ambitious. They should not be ambitious. You could argue the numbers, but it's a small percentage and other people want to work for them. So people like working in large institutions. Large institutions pay better. It's lower risk. I don't think that feature of the world's going to change.

• 24:05John Coogan?

  So advice for someone who's in an organization, they're seeing things change because of artificial intelligence. Maybe they're not set up to be an AI maniac, go out and start a company, but should they be trying to find a role that is messier in their organization?

• 24:25Tyler Cowen?

  Absolutely. Follow AI, learn how to work with the leading models. It's a big time investment because everything changes so quickly, as you know.

• 24:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:35Tyler Cowen?

  But if you don't, you're left behind. And for all this talk of the leisure dividend from AI, right now we're still in a setting where most people have to work some amount harder.

• 24:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:44Tyler Cowen?

  That will change, but it's not about to change. Time to work, get to work. You do. Doesn't it exhaust you? How many new and different things happen in the world of AI and you try to stay on top of them?

• 24:55John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it is a lot.

• 24:56Tyler Cowen?

  Where's your AI leisure dividend?

• 24:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:58Tyler Cowen?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:59John Coogan?

  But at the same time, I don't know, learning about AI I see as different as actually learning AI. Like there are a lot of, there are a lot of facts around, there are six AI tigers in China and like I just need to memorize what those six companies are, their histories if I want to understand.

• 25:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you can follow it like a sport and not learn really anything at all about how, what the models are.

• 25:25John Coogan?

  But that's different than using the models, which the models are so good. It feels like it's, it's less of a learning curve and more of just the volition to just go and do it because even when someone says, oh, well, I haven't tried the latest coding models. And I'm like, oh, well, they can do a lot more. Like at the very basic, like if you wanted to ask ChatGPT for one image, you can now ask Codex for 100 images and it can just go and do it in a for loop and it can write a little code for you and do whatever it needs to, to get you your answer that's more robust and hydrated. But also you can just ask ChatGPT, how do I do that? And it will tell you how to do it. And so the learning curve, this is a Joe Weisenthal opinion, but he, he says that

• 26:09John Coogan?

  like there, there is no learning curve because the AI is good at teaching you how to use it, but there is something there where you talk to people all the time that are like, I haven't tried AI yet. I gotta check that out.

• 26:21Tyler Cowen?

  It can tell you what to do, but if you're always chasing it, waiting for it to tell you what to do, you're not on top of it. It's not really the way to excel in the area. So I think you do have to stay on top of both like the baseball team side of it and the how do you do this side of it. Again, it's hard.

• 26:41Jordi Hays?

  How big can gambling get?

• 26:44Tyler Cowen?

  It's already too big. I don't know how we pull it back in. It's a problem. Now, people must enjoy it, the people who don't wreck their lives with it, or it wouldn't be that addictive, but it is fairly addictive for many people and I don't see how we turn the clock back.

• 27:03Jordi Hays?

  The thing that's telling is even people that lose a lot of money gambling, I've noticed that they don't hate their like bookie or the app that they use to lose money.

• 27:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Jordi Hays?

  They seem to have like, you know, maybe, maybe it's like a toxic relationship, right? Where, where.

• 27:23John Coogan?

  No, no, a lot of times people will hate like the player that missed the field goal and they will be cyber bullying the particular athlete that lost them the money and they won't be mad at the platform.

• 27:34Jordi Hays?

  But not their account manager at DraftKings or whatever.

• 27:36John Coogan?

  Yeah. I mean, isn't.

• 27:38Jordi Hays?

  But how would, what, you know, if you have a big red button that the ban, you know, sports betting or gambling, do you, do you hit the button? Like what, what would be your practical solution for reining it in?

• 27:49Tyler Cowen?

  I wouldn't hit the button. Banning it would not rein it in. We know that already. You hope norms change. It's a bad thing to be one shotted by. That said, I'd like to see a cost benefit analysis, all the people who enjoy it and add them up and see how that compares to the cost. No one wants to do that for obvious reasons. Just say no.

• 28:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but it's, but it, but, but right now.

• 28:16Tyler Cowen?

  Amish don't do it.

• 28:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I guess, I guess, I was watching the latest UFC event and almost every single ad is a gambling ad. Certainly reining in advertising for gambling would probably.

• 28:35John Coogan?

  We have a playbook from the tobacco.

• 28:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and I think it's in like Australia.

• 28:39John Coogan?

  Restricting advertising, you can restrict, you can add taxes on a state and local level as well as federal taxes and you can sort of try and internalize the negative externality.

• 28:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, there was that law that said you could only write off like 90% of your losses, which, which for, you know, which is really bad.

• 28:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 28:57Jordi Hays?

  If you're, you know, a sports book or.

• 28:58John Coogan?

  The problem is, is that I don't think the, the impact of gambling, the negative impact has been fully quantified in sort of a soundbite yet. Like with cigarettes, it's like cigarettes kill millions of people every year. 50% of smokers who smoke a pack a day will die from cigarettes or a cigarette related illness. There isn't that for the gambling industry. It's just like a lot of people lose money, but you technically lose money when you go see The Odyssey. You just get the enjoyment of a three hour film. You lost money and people get the entertainment of gambling and so that, like that's the same trade. It doesn't hit as hard as like you will die if you smoke cigarettes.

• 29:35Tyler Cowen?

  I think the campaign against smoking worked because people like me hated it when someone next to them would light up or on a plane or in a movie theater.

• 29:44Jordi Hays?

  Wait, you used to be able to smoke cigarettes on planes?

• 29:47Tyler Cowen?

  On their phone.

• 29:48Jordi Hays?

  Wait, really?

• 29:49Tyler Cowen?

  On the airplane. I don't care.

• 29:51John Coogan?

  No, you used to, yeah.

• 29:53Jordi Hays?

  On a commercial plane.

• 29:54John Coogan?

  If you're on old commercial planes, they would have a cigarette, an ashtray in the armrest.

• 29:59Tyler Cowen?

  I suffered under that for years.

• 30:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:04Tyler Cowen?

  You'd try to not sit next to the smoking section.

• 30:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:07Tyler Cowen?

  But again, if there's like a no gambling section on the airplane, it's ridiculous.

• 30:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Tyler Cowen?

  The guy next to me could be gambling on his phone.

• 30:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, you wouldn't even know.

• 30:15Tyler Cowen?

  Yeah, exactly. Let it be.

• 30:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:19Jordi Hays?

  That is shocking to me.

• 30:20John Coogan?

  I like that you just learned that. When did, when did smoking on planes end? Eighties? I feel like it was not fully around.

• 30:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, before I was born, probably.

• 30:27John Coogan?

  Maybe like early nineties at the very, very latest.

• 30:30Tyler Cowen?

  Yeah, I recall celebrating, but I don't know the year.

• 30:34John Coogan?

  You were celebrating, yeah. Anyway, what, what have you been reading into the jobs numbers that have been coming out? Like the overall unemployment rate seems to be holding steady. It seems like it's buoyed by healthcare hiring.

• 30:50Jordi Hays?

  So real quick.

• 30:51John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 30:52Jordi Hays?

  Smoking was banned in 1988 on domestic flights lasting two hours or less.

• 30:56John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 30:57Jordi Hays?

  They were saying you can go two hours without a smoke.

• 30:59John Coogan?

  Okay, yeah.

• 31:00Jordi Hays?

  We know you can. And then eventually they expanded it.

• 31:03John Coogan?

  They expanded it.

• 31:04Jordi Hays?

  To all domestic flights in 1990.

• 31:05John Coogan?

  Yeah, 1990. There you go. Jobs data, hiring, it feels like there's sort of stagnation everywhere except healthcare, which is sort of the messy job thesis playing out. But what else is going on in the hiring market that you've noticed from the last couple releases?

• 31:21Tyler Cowen?

  Well, the unemployment rate for 18 to 24 year olds, it's back to where it was before we had good large language models. So AI is not destroying that market. It seems we're not going to have a recession anytime soon. That's good news. Labor market has slowed down quite a bit, but that's to be expected. And some of the reports sound less impressive because we have fewer immigrants. But overall, I've been pretty happy. The economy hasn't crashed. It's kept on going.

• 31:47John Coogan?

  Great. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Then what are you attributing the, like the vibes around like young people entering the workforce? Everyone says it's so bad. Is that just the really cushy tech jobs are sort of a little bit belt tightening there? They're not hiring as much and so there aren't as many of these like really nice laptop jobs or what do you think's going on there?

• 32:10Tyler Cowen?

  I think there are big sectoral shifts going on and the new jobs being created, people who think of themselves as educated and high class may not want or may not even be good at and they complain and they're vocal and they have the ear of the media. It is a problem. I wouldn't deny that. But in the aggregate, a lot of other people are doing better.

• 32:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Tyler Cowen?

  And the AI maniacs are about to take a huge leap upwards.

• 32:34John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 32:35Tyler Cowen?

  And there'll be this massive reallocation of status.

• 32:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Tyler Cowen?

  It'll be very hard for our politics to handle that.

• 32:40John Coogan?

  Yeah, I saw, oh, that's interesting. Oh, wow, wow. Yeah, I saw some stats around like new grad computer scientists from Stanford not getting as many job placements and Tyler on our team was saying like, that's a skill issue. If you're, if you're a Stanford graduate with a computer science degree, like you can get a job or you can start a company, you can do something, but you might need to think a little bit differently because the track might be slightly different. But I don't know if you agree with that or not.

• 33:11Tyler Cowen?

  I agree with that.

• 33:13John Coogan?

  Yeah. And it also just feels like, one of my latest like thesis is that a lot of these CEOs who are doing like AI based layoffs, the optics are just terrible and if they actually have a good business, they should be going on the offensive. We, we, we love that Matthew Prince hired, I think like a thousand interns or something like that. And it feels like young people who understand AI coming into an organization that has some sort of moat, some sort of durability, some business, like the leverage is just going up. So you should be hiring more instead of doing layoffs if you actually understand what's at stake and how big your business can be. But if you just went through a hiring glut, maybe you do need to sort of retool.

• 33:57Tyler Cowen?

  The AI companies themselves are hiring plenty, as you know, right?

• 34:01John Coogan?

  Yeah, totally.

• 34:03Jordi Hays?

  Can you recall a point throughout history where the majority of people, their, let's say their, their sense of like self-worth and identity was not tied to their employment or their job?

• 34:20Tyler Cowen?

  Well, women are a whole separate issue, but obviously that's a major qualifier.

• 34:27John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 34:28Tyler Cowen?

  Medieval.

• 34:29John Coogan?

  Medieval times? I think we lost him.

• 34:34Jordi Hays?

  His internet went back.

• 34:37John Coogan?

  To 1988.

• 34:39Tyler Cowen?

  Growing food, but in a very different way from how things work now.

• 34:43John Coogan?

  Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. It's always a pleasure to go all around the world.

• 34:50Jordi Hays?

  It's an honor.

• 34:51John Coogan?

  Topics. Have a fantastic week and a fantastic summer.

• 34:54Tyler Cowen?

  Catch you all next time.

• 34:55Jordi Hays?

  Let's.

• 34:56Tyler Cowen?

  Like I said, work harder.

• 34:57John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 34:58Jordi Hays?

  When you're, next time you're in California, the three of us, a cup of Joe, we will try to, we will try to create an experience.

• 35:05John Coogan?

  Have his third cup of coffee in history.

• 35:07Jordi Hays?

  That would be.

• 35:08John Coogan?

  Do a four hour show.

• 35:09Jordi Hays?

  Incredible.

• 35:10John Coogan?

  The Wired Tyler Callahan.

• 35:11Tyler Cowen?

  See if you can get me to do it.

• 35:12John Coogan?

  Let's see, we'll peer pressure.

• 35:13Jordi Hays?

  We'll try very hard.

• 35:14John Coogan?

  I hope they get a work. Anyway, thank you so much, Tyler.

• 35:16Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 35:17John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon.

• 35:18Jordi Hays?

  Bye.

• 35:19John Coogan?

  Have a good rest of your day.