Work, Wealth, Human Purpose In The Age of AI

Welcome to Tech Empower. I'm your host, Chris, and tonight we're diving into the future of work and wealth in the age of AI. Joining me is Dr. Jason Ma, who's been at the front line of technology and innovation. Jason, thank you for being here. Chris, thank you for this opportunity. Just weeks earlier, NVIDIA unveiled Jason Thor, a chip small enough to fit your hand, yet powerful enough to be the brain of a robot that walks, talks, and thinks. If that's where technology is headed, here's the question that matters tonight. If robots can do everything we once called work, what happens to us? And then one of the biggest topics right now is about security. There's one thought in my mind, because last time we talked about VPN, and then the guest was mentioning that VPN itself, the tool, is a tool, so itself is not bad or good. It's more about the people, the company who is hosting the VPN. And I think there's the same logic for AI. So for some people, if they want to save some information, then that would be a horrible situation for entire human beings, because they can use the data to do a lot of bad things. But if they can really keep the privacy, all the things do it very well, I think that's a good way. So back to the question, for the security part, do you have any thought about that? Yeah, I mean, yes, I guess a lot of company hold back from kind of using this kind of generative AI tool. Security or privacy is one of their major concerns. But meanwhile, I have to say like, yes, for when you talk with chatDBT, you put a lot of your information on it. It's much more than you do Google search. For Google search, you just put some keyword, you didn't really have your whole story kind of telling. But when you talk with chatDBT, you do put your whole story and then ask for answer. So yes, it's true, like at this moment, those major AI company, they may have a more knowledge about a particular user than Google had. But I have to say in this way, like, yes, I mean, Google indeed know a lot about you. It's know more than you probably thought. I mean, every morning when I sit in my car, my kind of a Google map always showing, oh, now you take 30 minutes to get to your workplace because they know at this moment, I always go to my workplace. So which means they really know me. Google already get to the point where they really know me. Apple also know a lot of me. Yes. I mean, because a lot of things in my iPhone and all these things. Of course, now you've got an open AI, some other AI company, they know a lot about me. Yes. So, I mean, first of all, there is no black and white difference between you sharing information with Google, with Apple, versus you sharing information with open AI or some other kind of AI kind of tools. So there is no black and white difference between kind of those two categories of sharing. But meanwhile, definitely you are sharing more complete story with AI. So this is the moment where my understanding, first of all, I trust more kind of a company which is controlled by a better kind of lawful kind of place. For example, I know the ESIC or the law requirement in, for example, U.S. is probably more reliable in some other place. So I choose to use a company, a lot of company kind of in U.S. But meanwhile, of course, at the end of day, it's still the company itself, whether they want to do any evil or not. So the trust became a critical, important thing. Meanwhile, I know all those companies, they might not have a market cap of over 1,000 kind of 100 billion or several hundred billion. They do have a lot of stake. If they behave anything unethical in this case. So that is a way to somewhat kind of let me feel like a little better about trusting them because they do have a lot of the laws. But again, I have to say like AI is not changing the way people life in tech with technology. We anyway share a lot of things, like our whole financial situation is shared with our bank, a lot of things. So in the modern world, it's fortunately or unfortunately we are living this way. We have to build some trust with our service, no matter that's Google, Apple, or something like a bank. So this is something kind of we hope the trust system is still there, getting stronger and stronger with AI. Other than trust, do you think the government should set up more regulations to protect users' privacy and all the data information? I guess they are trying to do it. I mean, but you have to balance the regulation at the initial stage of the technology and the protection of individual users' privacy. I mean, I think at this moment, US is probably in the right balance. European is go a little bit more at the regulation part. So that's the reason European Union, there is almost no meaningful kind of AI company over there. So I guess this is something you have to balance. I agree, I mean, at a certain moment, if there is some real issue happening, there should be a reaction from the regulation aspect. But preactively kind of react out of a fear like may not be the best solution for a particular technology. Yes, good point. So back to the question that I am a programmer, right? And then we talk about a lot of benefits that AI bring to us. But from the other side, because of the growth on the productivity two times, three times than before, right now there's a rat race for the employees right now. And there's some news, people start to be stressful about their work, hugely off right now. So what do you think about that? Is there any way that can sort of avoid that sort of negative impact for the society? Right, right. I mean, of course, all those people who promote those new technologies, they will say, oh, whenever there are new technology, you just change your type of work from one type to another. But of course, during the process, some people will lose their job. Of course, some other people will work on new job which was never happening before. But overall, I feel AI is different this time. The reason is it's really getting to some area where we in the past think it's very intelligent, very, very human dependent area. So this is the point where I have to think in the way of, I see there can be some new type of job. I begin to see that, which is like in the past, developed software is very, very expensive. So that's reason a software company can only cover some application error with enough user base. But right now, software development can be much cheaper. And then, so it's possible for you to develop a very specialized software to address a very small area, very, very special area. So the number of software needed, and in this case, people who really drive AI to develop that, may be increased in the future. But still, the efficiency increase, for example, the AI efficiency increase is 10 times. And then meanwhile, the number of software people begin to develop is five times. So still, you have this extra, like 50% of people, you may not be needed in the future workforce. This can happen not only in the software area. It can happen in customer service. It can happen, already translation is almost became something obsolete. And many, many other things, even for art, like the picture, the audio, image generation. So almost every field is facing this kind of situation. We are, because the whole thing became cheaper, then you have more things to do, you can do that. But still, the efficiency increase may just overwhelm the number of work people need. And then lead to some loss of job, number of jobs. It's happening. It's, right now, a number of research showed, AI is not causing huge layoff, but AI is reducing the entry level of job. That's absolutely true. So this is kind of the case where I, I mean, this is the only kind of, we are only having this kind of AI in two to three years. What about the five to 10 years? So, I mean, the society will be impacted. I mean, especially younger people, if they have problem to find a job. Yes. So the society need to find a solution for that. So what can be the solution? I don't know. I mean, at this moment, a lot of people are talking about it. Yes. All kinds of ideas are thrown into this kind of problem. But because before it happened, we only can guess what will happen. So I just kind of have the position, like, I will closely monitor how this thing impact our society. At a certain moment, if a particular trend begin to show, I want to play an active role to maintain a harmonic kind of society. Like, to find some kind of solution to make sure everyone have a role in this society. Okay. That's a rather good answer, I think. Yeah, for a lot of young people, yes. That's absolutely true, that. Because before, I was thinking, like, the society, there was a theory, like 20% people are holding the 80% of the wealth in their society. But right now, once the AI is developed, it feels like 5%, or 2% of people is holding the 98% of the wealth. So there must be some way that young people need to think about and find a solution for themselves. Yeah, indeed, this is the moment where, once I told kind of the young people in my group, probably you have to look at the society right now you are. I mean, if you're in a society which have a channel for open discussion, have a chance to change the society in some way, to adapt to this new situation, stay in that society. Instead of staying in another society where everything is so rigid, it's top-down, and then everything is decided by one or two powerful people, in that society, you may need a pretty violent process to adapt to this new situation. So that's the reason I feel like, at this moment, a lot of younger people don't really worry about the political things. But at a certain moment, you need to worry about that, because that will decide whether you will have a sensible future, a central role in your society. Because AI is a driving force, but how different countries respond to this dramatic change is indeed decided by the current structure, or the mechanism of how the society is operating. I do feel like, just to put that very frankly, I do feel like the US has a better chance to find a more harmonic solution to this situation than a country like China. Yes, I don't want to bring a lot of competition between China and the US, but from your perspective, which country has the most advanced technology related to AI right now? Of course, nobody can deny US is number one in AI, but China is kind of a close second, in the second place. And China also developed some unique capability, for example, smaller kind of a model. DeepSeek is one of that smaller model, open source model. And then, especially in a particular area, like AI kind of video generation, or some kind of automatic agent type of thing, they come up with some pretty impressive products. So, at this moment, it's clear competition between US and China. But US do have all the talent from the world, and also have the current, the best hardware, which is kind of the NVIDIA, and kind of most advanced NVIDIA chips. So, all these things give US some competitive advantage. That's the reason kind of the US is working very hard to maintain its number one place in AI. As I said, it's no longer a kind of a technical issue. It's a national interest kind of thing, or it will probably decide which country can really be the leader of the world. Because there is kind of, they call that changing point, or kind of turning point. When your AI technology, including robots, advance to the certain moment, the AI technology robot will dramatically change a country's industry, manufacturing industry, or other things. Then, the speed of acceleration will be much faster than human to catch up. So, I guess everyone is trying to reach that point. That's kind of a turning point, or refraction point. From there, the number one country in AI will be accelerating much faster speed than many other countries. I got your point. Yeah, thank you. So, another thing I thought about is, if you pay some attention on some AI conference, all the things, we are seeing, at least from my perspective, I start to see more and more Chinese face. I'm also Chinese face. I love Chinese people, but there's one concern, because I'm pretty sure some are ABC, but maybe some are holding H1B or something. So, is there any concern from a country's perspective, or a government's perspective, is there any concern for the intellectual stealing or spy for that? Yeah, of course, this is kind of a major concern. Yeah, let's say for your company, some Chinese guy just come here, very intelligent on AI, but do you have that sort of concern about the background of that person or other things? Right, I mean, of course, work ethic is a universal thing. It's not only about kind of China or people from UK or whenever. It's a universal, we kind of, everyone should have a work ethic to behave professionally. But of course, China do carry this special concern, which is national kind of security kind of concern. Mine is something is like, at this moment, Chinese people, I mean, people with Chinese background, China background, it's pretty dominating in AI field for many reasons, as kind of you observe in all the AI kind of conference, either people, Chinese people work in outside of China or inside of China. There are the big proportion of people with Chinese background doing research and generating result. Even you look at XAI company picture, you see a lot of Asian face, maybe not be China, but kind of pretty kind of fussy Asian kind of face. So I guess this is a universal thing. I mean, mine is something is like, you can only hope people behave ethically. But meanwhile, of course, we definitely know Chinese environment is trying their best to bring the AI talent to China. But people begin to realize that inside of China, it's really hard to develop the most cutting edge technology. For example, DeepSea, it was such an important company, but once it became famous, China forced kind of DeepSea to really censor ship. Some key words. Yeah, some key word. I mean, DeepSea just came down because of all the censorship. Oh, really? And also they forced DeepSea to use the Huawei chip to do their training. And end up the Huawei chip was not ready for the show and it delayed DeepSea's development. So indeed, Chinese government's involvement delayed DeepSea's progress. So I mean, everyone saw that. So people know China is not the best place to develop the most cutting edge AI. I mean, one example is like, there is kind of a company generate a very good agent called Manus. It was a Chinese company. And then once they get famous, they just kind of dissolved their company in China and then took the core technical team to Singapore to build a company in Singapore. Because they see all the limitations inside China. So what I can say is, I mean, I hope people are smart enough. They are not really doing things which is unethical and unprofessional and getting them into troubles. Like recently, XAI suing kind of people probably with Chinese background. When he moved to OpenAI, he brought all source code, which is very, very bad. But he right now ruined his career because the judge prevented him from working in this field forever. So what I can say is I hope this kind of story can adequate to kind of all the people with this kind of advanced AI background to behave ethically. And also for your career, for the society, for the humanity, try to kind of work in the right place on the right topic, behave properly. I would say like the biggest weakness point for Chinese people to develop a good AI is more like the political or the marketing environment. Because there are a lot of restrictions and the powers to compete. What about the US? What is our biggest weakness on developing AI right now? I think at this moment, US is the best place in the world that for developing AI. If you have to, like ask me to, like I have to kind of list some kind of limitation. Or bottleneck. I think like one can be the energy behind it. Like, you know, AI is about energy. Like every AI data center require a huge amount of energy and electricity. Sometimes it's comparable with a small city. So US at this moment do need to kind of good a solution to this. Elon Musk is trying to promote a kind of like a solar kind of energy or wind energy. But meanwhile, Trump is kind of in a different kind of view. But they all recognize this is a major issue. And then right now Trump is deregulating some small scale, like a nuclear power or any kind of electricity generation. I mean, it is a limitation. And it's kind of the cost of electricity directly kind of related to the cost of the general AI usage. So I mean, hopefully this can be resolved during this process by deregulation, by new technology. And gradually, US can get rid of this kind of bottleneck. Because the bottleneck is both in the amount of energy and the cost of energy can be a kind of bottleneck. And then hopefully US can resolve this. In a sense of money, invest money, in a sense of talent, in a sense of technology, I don't really see any kind of weak point for this. Another thing I thought about is right now we talk about a lot of giant, Silicon Valley giants get together and they are planning to invest trillions of dollars to the United States. But at the same time, I think the next day there's a unemployment rate. Actually, there was a 4.3% I think. Yeah, that is the highest point back to 2021. So it's kind of ironic because the more we invest in AI, the more, of course in the short term we have more job opportunities, but at the same time for the long term see, the more and more human resource are replaced by the machine resource. So yeah, what do you think about that? At this moment, I don't really see this as a major issue. Although, as I said, a lot of researcher, especially kind of some recent research indicator, AI didn't cause major layoff, but AI really reduced the number of opening, number of entry, especially entry level. So it's begin to have impact on employment, especially for young, white collar kind of people. But it's not getting to the point where the society became a crisis, so that you had to kind of address. I mean, I'm still observing, as I said, a lot of people are observing this. I hope at a certain moment where people don't need to work five days a week, four days is enough, so that we will kind of open up a lot of new kind of positions, all these things, and observe some of this efficiency improvement. But anyway, I think this is something I have to say, like a lot of people, including me, are concerned about, and then, but we are closely monitoring the situation. Hopefully, at a certain moment, if we get to the critical moment, the society can have a serious discussion to either solve that by voluntary industry activity, or by some regulation from government. Yeah, that's a good point, because at the very beginning, we talk about NVIDIA. They unveiled a new GPU. Basically, it can support a robot to see, think, and also move, actually. That's more like a signal that AI or robot is ready to step in the human world more and more, and then we talk about the human. We expect it to not need to work five days a week, and all the things, and then all the, let's say Sam Ullman, and also Jensen Huang, they all talk about a concept called universal basic income. I'm not sure if you've heard about that. Right, of course, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's kind of one solution. Yes. Basically means if the society, I mean, of course, there are two things. One is AI, another is a robot. I mean, robot is a different type of AI, because AI is only in your brain. Yes, the thoughts. It does not limited by the physical world law, and then once you get to the robot, you have to follow the physical kind of world, kind of physical law. Exactly. And so that's a reason you are not really seeing as kind of a fast, kind of accelerated growth for the robot aspect. But once the robot really became very capable, very flexible, I mean, that's Elon Musk kind of opus. I mean, he want to develop something like that, like pretty universally useful. Then you begin to see the job is not only that the white-collar job is threatened, all the blue-collar kind of job is also, because that's kind of a physical activity. Then the whole society really ran into a situation where the job may shrink, the number of job may shrink. But meanwhile, the wealth builder with this AI, with this kind of robot, will increase. So they get to the point where how the society share the increased wealth with limited number of jobs. So this kind of, what's the universal kind of? Basic income. Basic kind of income is the idea, kind of people begin throughout. But my understanding is it can be a very good idea, but it can be also cause other problems. Because people work not only for making a living, also it's a drive, make their life purposeful, kind of have some, with some purpose. If people just like, I give you the money enough for you to have a house, have whatever kind of you need, and then you can do whatever you want, that's moment I don't know where, how people behave. So that it became something more kind of like a complicated than just kind of make people survive. Because people can, you know, people make trouble when they have all the time they have, when they don't worry about kind of working or something. People can make all kinds of troubles. So this is the part where I guess that it's definitely have to be elevation of moral standard or in some way. So that to meet this kind of new society situation. I mean, it's very complex. I mean, I'm not saying I sit here and talk with you and have a solution now. But I definitely can see it can have a lot of implications. It's not as simple as everyone gives $3,000 every month and then you don't worry about work and then you do whatever you want. It's definitely more than, more complicated than that. Yeah, it becomes a philosophical perspective. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm talking about that. So let's be some practical. So let's predict right now, we talk about the robot, but it's not that ready. We just have to bring up it, right? The GPU. Let's predict five years later, right? What's gonna happen based on some reality right now we are seeing. Because I mean, the GPT 3.5 was in 2022 or 2023. And then it's just two or three years. Right now the GPT is totally different. We have the agent to do all the work. So let's say five years later, what's gonna happen? I mean, of course, for the AI, I think they are still kind of improving dramatically, but not as fast as in the first one or two years. Okay. I mean, we are seeing GPT 5. We are seeing kind of, for example, Cloud 4.1. We are seeing Gemini 2.5 Pro. All these kind of cutting edge models. But the performance compared with our previous generation is not as dramatic as the previous. So I do see in the general AI kind of case, the model begin to see the plateau kind of capability. But meanwhile, people will begin to use more like agent way to use this model, can do more things automatically. So the extension of the model capability with agent, all these new ideas, which is more in the application field became more and more important. That will transform more of our work. But this is about the general AI part. And then the robot part, which is interfere with our physical work. Yes. That is something I think right now, I haven't really seen any product, which is close to what happened, like the Chatship GPT. So I'm still waiting for that happen. I mean, highly likely it will happen from Elon Musk's Tesla with Opus. It's kind of a lot of people saying that's probably is the first place that happened. Elon Musk hope he can have a few million of that ready working his Tesla in upcoming kind of one or two years. I hope, I mean, that's not happening that fast. But anyway, I think this is a part of where I'm still observing. Good point. So I think that was a good ending for today. And before we end, I want to leave a good question for my audience. So if one day AI can do everything, it's more like a philosophical, then we talk about that. So if one day AI can do everything, and what is the purpose of life for human? So please leave your comments below if you have any ideas. Thank you so much for coming, Dr. Jason Ma. Yeah, thank you. Again, thank you very much for this opportunity. Yeah, thank you.