Into AI Safety

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[00:00:00] Intro
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[00:00:56] This episode was recorded on March 7th, 2026, and asides were recorded on May 1st, 2026. Alert, alert, new show incoming. That's right, today's episode isn't just another installment of "Into AI Safety," it's also the announcement of a new show joining the Kairos FM network, "Beyond the Paycheck: Reclaiming the Case for UBI in the Age of AI."

[00:01:20] And the host and creator is my guest for this episode you're not gonna be able to guess how I met him, so I'll just share it because I think it's fun. He applied to and made it to the second round for a research project manager role I was conducting the hiring process for in late 2025, and I saw he had experience as a podcast host for the New Books Network, a literary podcast, and that his journey is one that I thought people would be particularly interested in hearing more about.

[00:01:47] When I sent out notice that we wouldn't be continuing with his application, I also mentioned Kairos FM and that I'd be willing to help out if he was ever interested in driving his own project. Up to recently, when he began his PhD, his experience was as a freelance translator. In 2025, the stream of translation work which he had been relying on began to dry up, and while he has a few clients who still want high-quality long-form translation, the subsistence tasks are no longer as reliable, largely thanks to AI.

[00:02:19] It was this catalyst that pushed him to think even further about the focus of this series, universal basic income, or UBI, and why some individuals in the tech aristocracy are so outspokenly in favor of it. Think of this conversation as a teaser and a chance to get to know the host of the new short-run audio documentary from Kairos FM, "Beyond the Paycheck."

[00:02:45] We cover his background in more detail, whether this time is really different with regards to labor displacement, the limits of discourse analysis as a practical tool, and I even coin a new term which I'm quite happy with, the AI gentry. Now, let's get into it with Kairos FM's newest host, Joe Williams

[00:03:09] Joe: Okay, sure. Yeah. So I'm Joe Williams. I'm a translator, uh, a PhD student from, uh, Manchester, England, living in Portugal, um, who's, um, always had, um, an interest in heterodox economics and with some of the economic transformations that we're experiencing, um, as a result of ai, um, which have affected me directly, uh, and have resulted in a reduction, a serious reduction in the amount of translation work I'm doing. I'm now looking to pivot and transition into new areas of research, taking, uh, re re resuming, let's say my interest in in economics, um, and heterodox economics, and yeah, uh, wanting to examine, explore the field of AI safety, ethics, and res uh, research.

[00:03:59] Jacob Haimes: In one sentence, what do you hope to accomplish with this podcast?

[00:04:05] Joe: So the primary objective for the programs, I suppose, is to, um, to get people engaging with the topic of universal basic income and its relevance in the current context. and for people to feel that they can engage more meaningfully with this debate, and have an understanding of the relevance, um, um, of, of this debate at the moment.

[00:04:33] Joe's Background
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[00:04:33] Jacob Haimes: And so you said just a second ago, you know, you uh, sort of were a translator and the rise of some of these technologies has really impacted you, um, and your previous work. I guess the question is, first just tell us a little bit about your professional experience so we know better, you know, where you're coming from.

[00:04:57] Joe: I've always worked in languages. Um, I've always been a humanist. Uh, I've always had academic interest in humanities fields and have worked professionally in languages since 2012 when I got my first graduate job. And I, and I was working, uh, and I went to work in South Korea as an English teacher. And since then I've been working in languages in one function or another, basically ever since. I decided to transition from teaching into translation in about 2017. Uh, and I was working as, uh, in an NGO called Translators Without Borders for a while as a project manager before I went freelance in, in early 2018 up my freelance business. and then I finished my master's. I did my master's degree in, um, translation studies and, and delivered my thesis in 2020. That was after doing a BA in history. And then in, uh, 2020, I, I moved here to Portugal, um, to, partly to, because I wanted to learn another language. My, my only language prior to learning Portuguese was Spanish. I wanted to learn another language so that I could work with that and offer that, uh, as a professional translator. So it obviously made sense to learn a language which was mostly related to, to Spanish. Um, so that's what brought me to Portugal, apart from the fact that I've been to Portugal before and really liked it. and yeah, so up until, um, kind of. Summer last year, um, translation was going well, and, you know, I'd started doing my PhD in history in 2022. Portugal's a great area to study the kind of field that I'm interested in, which is kind of the relationship between culture and politics in 1930s, Europe. Um, Portugal's, you know, um, one place which is particularly, uh, useful illustrative, uh, in that field. yeah, so the translation work was going well. Um, 20 21, 20 20 20, 20 21, 20 22, 20 23, 20, 24. Great years for, for, for my translation work. And 2025 was good. And then in. About August, September last year, 2025, um, things really started falling off a cliff. And, um, clients who'd been sending me, you know, steady a few hundred euros of work, uh, a month just disappeared into thin air. you know, I saw people on LinkedIn, everybody sharing these experiences. So many people have just seen that kind of, um, their, their, their income just, you know, really, really suffer since a lot of, uh, clients, a lot of the people who you usually have, you know, contracted a human translator, depending more and more on AI to translate documents and were, you know, automating the translation process to a much higher degree and severely reducing the need for human translators. um, at the end of last year, you know, feeling kind of desperate, you know, I was still ticking along just okay work, but things weren't looking particularly optimistic for me and a lot of other people. So I'm thinking about. New, new alternative, new ideas, um, you know, areas I can pivot into. And this field of AI ethics and research just felt, you know, personally relevant because of how it had impacted my, um, my, me directly, personally had a personal significance, but it also kinda encapsulated, um, from academic and intellectual interests that I'd had for quite a long time.

[00:08:29] Joe: You know, as, as a humanist, I was always interested in the relationship between, you know, society and technology. Uh, human sense of kind of connection with, with the processes, which sustainers, which were dependent on, and so on and so on. That's something that I've been interested in for a long time, ever since I read Zen and the Arts of Motorcycle Maintenance when I was about 22. So yeah, that this, uh, field then of, of AI research and so on, uh, it kind of, uh, brought together, kind of encapsulate these different STRs. So that's what I've been working on, um, a lot, uh, over the past of 2, 3, 4 months or so.

[00:09:03] Jacob Haimes: And then, okay, a couple, couple follow up questions. I know you also have previous podcast experience. Um, so how did, how did that tie into, um, your work? Um, I guess just briefly, uh, because then I think the thing to really dig into here is about, um, the translation work.

[00:09:21] Joe: Sure. Yeah. I left that bit out actually. So after I graduated from my, uh, master's in 2020, um, one field of translation, which I, which I was really interested in, was literary translation, literary publishing, and so on, is not the most lucrative area. I've never been the most practical person actually. um, yeah, so I was looking for projects to collaborate with, which would kind of, you know, bring me closer to, to literature. And I started working with an online literature platform called Traffic Europe, which was run by a guy based in New York called Andrew Inger, sadly passed away in 2023 and he, alongside the Traffic Europe Literary Journal, launched in 2020 a Traffic Europe radio. So I started working on podcasting back then. Um, mainly focused on, on contemporary European literature and translation.

[00:10:13] Jacob Haimes: Gotcha. Okay, cool. And then, yeah, I guess getting back towards the, the translation and, and how that played out, um, I think just to, to get a better understanding, you know, around August, you know, of 2025 you are experiencing this fall off. Did you follow up with, um, any of those like previous clients, um, and confirm that this was, um, sort of AI driven, I guess would be the first question

[00:10:46] Joe: So I didn't start asking some of my old clients specifically, you know, has AI replaced me, because that would've felt perhaps a little bit gripey and a bit

[00:10:55] Jacob Haimes: I suppose.

[00:10:56] Joe: Um, but, yeah, I, I did follow up with some of those clients, some of the, what we call commercial translation agencies that send you, you know. Instruction manuals and corporate communications and not very interesting text, but you're just kind of bread and butter as a kind of commercial translator. they would say, yeah, you know, we are just getting fewer and fewer work. We're just getting less and less working. We're getting fewer, fewer requests coming in. Nothing to do with the quality of your work. I still work for a lot of those CL clients and agencies. They just send me, you know, a, a, a much, um, a much more, more, more reduced amount of work than they used to. And I've also seen some of the managers, um, CEOs of some of those translation agencies on LinkedIn posting about the benefits of introducing AI into your workflows and automating the translation processes and so on. So I did sort of put two and two together.

[00:11:47] Jacob Haimes: And then do you feel at least, you know, based on your, the people that you're, you're working with, um, or, or new in, in this space, uh, or other spaces, uh, is that, is what you're doing a pattern or what, what you've done a pattern? Um, is it sort of drying up the work and then therefore people are sort of leaving the space?

[00:12:07] Joe: Well, yeah, there's been a whole kind of discourse on online platforms, you know, 'cause translators, were all very people. You know, we, we, we connect mainly online and stuff. Um, yeah. Uh, a whole kind of, you know, slew of people talking about leaving the sector and so on and so on. It just becoming, you know, unviable as a kind of primary source of income and it becoming kind of, you know. Treated like a side hustle by, you know, people in the, in the sector, you know, uh, gatekeepers, you know, powerful people in the sector, kind of, you know, treating translators as kind of, you know, people who do kind of menial work to su supplement another income stream and so on. So yeah, it's definitely a pattern.

[00:12:47] Joe: It's definitely a trend. And it's been, you know, even before ai, you know, are longer term patterns, these are

[00:12:54] Jacob Haimes: Yeah.

[00:12:54] Joe: trends, you know, because, you know, at one point it was, you know, Google translate deep L and all this kind of stuff, which was pretty when it first came out. But improved and improved and improved 'cause, you know. The models changed. You know, it went from kind of you're translating from word to word to being like cloud-based, you know? So the translation's improved. So very basic, menial kinds of translation, like an instruction manual or something very straightforward. That lends itself very well to automation because it doesn't really shift on context.

[00:13:27] Joe: It doesn't require a kind of human understanding of cultural context. There's no kind of implicit meanings encoded. They're operating at the level of subtext. It's just describing you. It's just referring to very specific, very stable semantic relationships between words and objects. So that's the kind of translation to, um. A computer can do very well. So, yeah, it's a longer term pattern. AI has kind of, you know, accelerated this, you know, to the point where, you know, translation is, you know, not, not considered by most people to be, you know, a viable, um, primary source of income. Unless you're doing very specific kinds of translation.

[00:14:03] Joe: You've got a very specific, um, specialization. You are, or you're very well established and you've got very good relationships, very good long-term, established relationships with specific clients who are just, who prefer to use humans. But that's kind of, you know, uh, a, a minority of people.

[00:14:19] Jacob Haimes: Yeah,

[00:14:20] Joe: the vast majority of people have seen their work impacted

[00:14:22] Jacob Haimes: so. Also just to, to contextualize it. Uh, for me, I feel like at least what I see in, in work that I've, um, conducted or, or work that I've, I've looked at, you know, when it's the, the purely AI generated, um, content, it's not as good, uh, in general. And obviously, it's, it's not as good, right. But it's good enough I guess.

[00:14:45] Jacob Haimes: Um, and so that seemed to me to be sort of what you were hinting at there. Like, if, if you do want to, you know, go through the process of having a human translator do this, it will be superior, but it will take significantly longer. It will cost significantly more, uh, because you're actually paying for someone's time as opposed to, uh, buying, you know, a, a model that was trained off of stolen data and that.

[00:15:11] Jacob Haimes: Difference is not enough for most people to warrant the, the increase in cost and time.

[00:15:18] Joe: Well, sure. I mean, um, all of these decisions have gotta be made, you know, according to specific preferences, objectives, criteria, and so on. Some people, not every translation needs to be a work of art. If it's a translation of an instruction manual, which is quite a good example, that doesn't need to,

[00:15:36] Jacob Haimes: Yeah.

[00:15:36] Joe: that doesn't need to be poetic, that just needs to tell the person, put this

[00:15:40] Jacob Haimes: Yeah.

[00:15:40] Joe: hole. So that there's certain forms of translation in which, you know, metrics of quality are kind of, you know, configured in one way and some certain other kinds of translation in which quality is defined in other ways. In certain kinds of forms, certain forms of, uh, translation, a lot of the kind of metrics to, to determine quality by, you know, um, very bottom line focused translation.

[00:16:06] Joe: Commercial translation agencies are about optimi or optimization efficiency and so on. They don't care whether or not, you know, there's a delicate world, world, uh, word play or a kind of singing kind of poetic kind of, you know, meet other, they don't care. They just look at kind of how much of this costs and, you know, where's my profit margin, so to speak.

[00:16:25] Joe: So different stake stakeholders, different actors in the field. They've got their own values, their own agendas, and so on and so on. As you say, you know, certain people don't care about the text. You know, not everybody loves language. Some people are business people and you know, they care about their profit and their bottom line and, you know, that's valid.

[00:16:46] Joe: You know, of course up to a point. You know, um, I, I don't expect anyone to care too much about, you know, uh, the intricacies of translation and kind of your delicate, you know, playful, artistic use of language if that's not what you are interested in, if that's not what your values are. of course, the people making those decisions according to those logics are then, you know, those decisions are having effects on, on working conditions, on how certain kinds of works work are val, uh, is valued. there's, there's all those kind of implications which arise from that. Uh, and yeah, like you say, um, AI translation can be downright. Uh, you know, fantastic. I mean, when I say fantastic, I mean as in terms of fantasy, just totally disconnected from reality. Just made stuff up and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, people are playing, you know, a high stakes game.

[00:17:35] Joe: If you're entrusting all of your important translations to ai, that could vary very, and almost certainly will backfire point and come bite you. Um, because, you know, AI can perhaps do certain forms of not very interesting, not very difficult translation perfectly well, or at least good enough if you're not really that bothered about, about language and about translation. in certain other kinds of translations, certain other situations where, you know, the stakes might be different, where the success criteria might be different. Ai, you know. He's not, um, know, he's not, uh, on his own. He's not, you know, capable of handling that to the same level of, you know, um,

[00:18:16] Jacob Haimes: Yeah.

[00:18:16] Joe: quality that a human translator, skilled human translator with the kind of, you know, working on it and give, being given, you know, being paid well enough to, to give, you know, um, sufficient amount of time and energy and research to the

[00:18:29] Jacob Haimes: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think that's just not, not just translation as well, like you can even see this with writing, uh, you know, copywriting basically. Um, so I, I think that across the board we're seeing, and again, like you mentioned, this isn't specific to ai, um, necessarily, but, uh, a sort of disenfranchising of more beginner, uh, type jobs.

[00:18:59] Jacob Haimes: And, and I think that that is concerning. Um, but that's actually a great, uh, shift into. The topic of UBI or, or universal basic income.

[00:19:13] What is UBI & Why Does It Matter Now?
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[00:19:13] Jacob Haimes: I have two questions. The first is if you could just describe UBI as like straightforwardly as possible. I know that's like a very broad thing, but just to make sure we're all on the same page.

[00:19:24] Jacob Haimes: Uh, and then following up on that, um, how your experiences informed your interest in that, uh, concept.

[00:19:38] Joe: So UBI, universal basic income is an economic policy whereby everyone is allocated unconditionally, amount of money. You get paid a set amount of money with no conditionality attached every month. Um, just not for working, for doing nothing. Um, and it's, um, yeah, it's, it's. Been an interesting, he's got a broad history, he's got a long history, that idea. and so what's informing my kind of, um, interest in that? So again, this is kind of, um, related to some quite interesting, um, uh, topics, um, I've always been interested in kind of, you know, values and kind of the relationship between society and economics and kind of why do we have economic growth at what is the kind of high order objective to which we are kind of subordinating economic growth.

[00:20:35] Joe: 'cause I, you know, I don't think this is. I'm alone in this by any means. It's not an original contribution, but I don't think growth is of end in and of itself. I think and prosperity is, should be created to serve specific values, specific functions. I don't think, you know, creating wealth, you know, in and of itself is just going to lead to, to, to better human social outcomes and so on. That wealth has to be created with, you know, directed towards specific objectives and so on. That's the classic economic found, the foundation of classic Sian economics. so. Yes. So, like I said, I've always been interested in, in, in this topic, and now the, it's becoming for a lot of people to meet their basic material needs via work. Now, the, the kind of employment that's being created, under the impact of certain technological developments on, on wages and so on and so on, making it harder for people to support themselves and meet their basic material needs via paid work. So I think this kind of discussion around UBI and kind of, um, the, the values to which economic growth is, is directed, starts to acquire sort of new urgency, or at least a kind of renewed, necessity. It becomes, um, far more kind of relevant topical conversation to be having in a current economic context.

[00:22:12] Jacob Haimes: I think that makes sense. I also think I, I do just wanna, I guess, log a little bit of pushback on, on my end for, um, the technology aspect. Like, I, I do think that the technology plays a part, but also I think that it's a lot about the, the system, um, that it, that it operates in, you know, um, I don't, I don't think that

[00:22:42] Jacob Haimes: in and of itself, technology mandates that people are not able to pay for their own household and, uh, monthly, uh. Like living with a, a minimum wage job. Right. Um, and so in a way it's, it's actually, yeah, technology is an amplifier, but the problem is

[00:23:10] Jacob Haimes: the people and the incentives. Yeah.

[00:23:12] Joe: I suppose. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, and it is, is is part of the, the, the, the thinking on my part around this is, you know, technology can be used for. Positive outcomes, it could be used for less positive outcomes. The technology, a bit like the economic growth itself isn't, you know, necessarily good or bad.

[00:23:33] Joe: It's the kind of outcomes that it produces. The, the, the, the ends to which it's directed, I think, yes, it's not the technology in and of itself, it's the decisions that are being made by the people who own that technology decide what impact is going to be, what is social impact of that technology, which is informed values. So the conversation that you know around this can't, you know, forget, you can't lose sight of kind of the need for values and you've, you can't view economics as a value free operation. You can't view technological innovation as value neutral. got to be having conversations and you've gotta have a polarity perspectives represented in those conversations about what do we use these things for? What, you know, that technology can produce a lot of prosperity and wealth, but then. do we do? How is that wealth distributed? How is that prosperity shared in the society? And these are the conversations which need to be had. And the whole kind of impetus around this is to kind of challenge critique that that is, you know, the economic, um, economic economists sometimes, um, perpetuate technology sometimes perpetuate that they're kind of just doing objective value neutral, purely technocratic operations, and they just need to be left on, on interfered to do what they need to do and so on.

[00:24:57] Joe: Um, it's, it's like you say, um, the impacts of those developments, of those innovations are going to, uh, could, could be, you know, potentially infinite. They're going to reflect the values, the decisions, uh, and so on, and the interests of people in power. So that's exactly right. I think you're right. The technology, I isn't. Going to do anything on its own. It's, you know, it's how is that technology being wielded and to whose agenda

[00:25:26] Jacob Haimes: Yeah, well, I guess theoretically infinite power, but also like in practice, not, uh, it, it, it can be large, but, um, I guess that's other, another aspect that I want to sort of bring up as a talking point and maybe way to, um, try to. Pushback and, and just see where that gets us is, you know, people have been saying, uh, as things become automated, um, that this new automation, uh, will make things, uh, as we used to do them, uh, human labor obsolete.

[00:26:04] Jacob Haimes: Um, and I mean, that is explicitly what the AI companies are targeting. Um, uh, you know, it's in their, you know, charters and whatever. Um, but also, you know, people have been making these kinds of predictions, uh, for a long time and that's it, it hasn't happened before, uh, to the extent that it's been predicted.

[00:26:26] Jacob Haimes: So, uh, do you think this time is different? If so, why?

[00:26:31] Joe: Sure. Yeah. Um, valid, um, thing to bring in at this point that, you know, there's nothing new about the claims that, you know, technology's gonna render us all unemployable. know, uh, these conversations have been going on centuries. You know, there was a Roman General the first or second century that quit his job.

[00:26:55] Joe: He was a military engineer or something. '

[00:26:57] ASIDE: The Corporation Who Cried " My Technology Will End Work"
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[00:26:58] Jacob Haimes: All right, I'm gonna try to do the correct intonation here, but, um, Joe's referring to Sextus Julius Frontinus, a Roman civil engineer, author, soldier, and senator in the second half of the first century of the Common Era. He wrote Strat-Stratageme- Stratagemata, I guess. I don't... Whatever. Okay. Which includes his statement, quote, "I will ignore all ideas for new works and engines of war, the invention of which has reached its limit, and for improvement I see no future hope."

[00:27:32] Jacob Haimes: End quote. Well, really, he didn't say that. He said it in Roman, but you get the point. While this statement was not about a technology undermining work, there have been many times such a claim has been made since. Gutenberg's printing press had many concerned for the jobs of scribes, which seems to have legitimacy, seeing as I don't know any scribes today, although it did happen over a relatively long timeframe and didn't completely usurp the profession.

[00:28:03] Jacob Haimes: Perhaps the most well-known historical example of these concerns is that of the Luddites, skilled craftspeople who were being forced out of their livelihoods by new technologies such as the steam-powered loom, gig mills, and stocking frames. Actually, that isn't quite accurate. The Luddites were accepting of the innovation but opposed the systematic degradation of working conditions, reductions in wages, and regression in product quality that the predatory behavior of industrialists resulted in.

[00:28:32] Jacob Haimes: While their protests often involved the breaking of these machines, their goal was to defend their own autonomy, not prevent progress. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes popularized the term technological unemployment and argued that in 100 years, which as of recording these asides is a mere three and a half years away, we would be eight times more wealthy and our workweek would be reduced to 15 hours.

[00:28:57] Jacob Haimes: While the GDP of industrialized countries has increased by four to eight times, we are nowhere near being able to sustain oneself by working three hours a day, five days a week, even in the best of circumstances. In the 1960s, the Triple Revolution Memo ignited discussion that resulted in the proposal of a government-funded income guarantee.

[00:29:19] Jacob Haimes: And in 2013, a paper on the future of employment by Frey and Osborne predicted that 47% of US employment was at risk within the next decade or two, specifically because of AI. I suppose they still have a couple more years before they were unequivocally wrong. So indeed, these worries are not new.

[00:29:41] Joe: cause he thought that everything that was possible to invent had been invented. was, you know,

[00:29:46] Jacob Haimes: He was right. We're done. We were done. Then.

[00:29:51] Joe: Well, we could, it might been better. How, how have we stopped developing web? Um, yeah. You know, so yeah, that's a, definitely, that's a valid contribution to make. So, like I said, I don't think AI is inventing these, I don't think it's creating exclusively in an unprecedented way as a response to ai. think there is a sort of renewed, um, need to be having this conversation as I think there's always a need to be having this conversation when technological development is threatening people's wellbeing is, is threatening people's livelihood and so on.

[00:30:26] Joe: And I think one angle about this, which again isn't directly related to ai, but is part of the broader context, is that, um, there's an environmental dimension to this, um, in the. Basically is a very sort of basic reductive formula, kind of, you know, environmental impact is something like population times consumption you know, people needing to work and people going off to work and having a kind of, you know, a growth, uh, based, uh, economic model based on consumption is having very negative, uh, environmental impacts.

[00:31:01] Joe: So this is, you know, not relate to AI directly, but as part of the broader picture here at this stage, you know, in human development, we need to be rethinking our economic models in, in, in view of the environment. Environmental impact they have and, uh, you know, enough survival as a species. So at that point, a kind of a a, a consumption based economic growth model starts to look like a very bad idea. which case we're going to need to have mechanisms in place which allow people to their basic needs without necessarily, um, consuming more, without necessarily having to participate in an e an economy which is predicated on, uh, e ev ever increasing growth, uh, driven by consumption. 'cause that's just going to end badly. there's that, that environmental dimension, which I think, um, is, is very urgent at the moment. Not necessarily related to ai, but as part of the broader context. I dunno if that answers your

[00:31:57] Wealth Concetration & the Digital Economy
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[00:31:57] Jacob Haimes: Oh yeah. I, I think it, I think it does. Um. It's not really that this time is different, it's that this time is a good opportunity to call out something that that needs to be discussed.

[00:32:13] Joe: Sure. If I could just add, add a couple of things maybe as well, is I think there's something about the digital economy, which is part of what we're looking at at the moment and the kind of per perhaps the increased capacity there for concentration of wealth, um, power, uh, the, uh, the digital economy as opposed to an old fashioned kind of, you know, physical good economy where you're buying, selling things and storing them in markets.

[00:32:39] Joe: You've got these value chains creating different jobs and stuff like this. economy does perhaps lend itself is perhaps more conducive towards when it takes all kind of creates, know, a few giants. It creates different forms of wealth and this is what we're kind of seeing with tech companies.

[00:32:55] Joe: We're seeing the emergence of this billionaire tech, uh, oligarchy. We haven't quite decided what we're gonna call them, but it leads to this. This, this concentration of wealth and power in an ever smaller group of people. So that's another part of what I think makes the conversation about EBI more necessary, more relevant, um, in, in the context of AI and the, and the economic disruption is this additional, this kind of, you know, greater, um, you know, obscene amounts of wealth and power in, in a small number of, of hands.

[00:33:28] Joe: And the, ability of those people then to set agendas and to naturalize their interests and, and their agendas and

[00:33:35] Jacob Haimes: Yeah.

[00:33:36] Joe: on.

[00:33:37] Jacob Haimes: And then the last sort of thing that I, I wanna bring up, 'cause I, I thought this was interesting, you know, when, when we were initially talking about this, um, show and, and you know. What is it that, that it's, it's focusing on what is it the, the value that's presented, um, now and, and into the future? Um, something that I think about, which is particularly poignant right now because, um, of current events, uh, but like as a recording this, when I talk to a lot of people, most believe AI is currently overvalued relative to, to what it can deliver at this point in time.

[00:34:14] Jacob Haimes: And, uh, like by quite a bit. Uh, and the value is based on, uh, arguably unsubstantial speculation. Uh, and given that, uh, so there's this sort of bubble dynamic, uh, and then stack on top of that, that we have, um, a man with, uh. Severely, uh, progressed to dementia leading, uh, one of the world's, uh, you know, predominant powers, uh, just, uh, attacking Iran with Israel, you know, saying all sorts of inflammatory things.

[00:34:55] Jacob Haimes: Um, there is real risk of shocks, you know, rupturing a bubble causing the outcome, uh, the landscape, you know, when we release this or, or even a couple months after that to be severely different. Why is this still this discussion, these discussions, uh, why are these discussions still relevant? Um, regardless of, of what that looks like?

[00:35:26] Joe: Sure. So, yeah, um, I've definitely heard those claims that, you know, there's a lot of kind of over, over exaggerated, uh, claims about and what it can deliver and the possibility either kind of, uh, a correction or, or bubble bursting, um, and so on and so on. A lot of wild and perhaps, um, not very well thought out, speculation driving this, this bubble and so on. And yes, if current political developments and laws around the world do have a negative impact on ai, um, prices and so on and so on, the worth and value of that technology and some of these kind of more, um, outrageous claims never actually come to fruition then. That's, that's fair. That's, that's a possibility and something that needs to be born in mind. I would still argue that, um, and engaging critically with powerful people and their, their agendas and the way they try and, you know, universalize and naturalize their needs, uh, their, their, their, what you say their interests is in, is on, in and of itself valuable to, you know, to remain engaged critically with politics, with economics, and so on and so on. This is, is vital dependent of irrespective of what certain outcomes transpire around this. people need to be actively participating and listening and thinking and challenging certain, you know, positions. That in itself e is valuable because, you know, a bit like we were talking about before with technology and, and economics and stuff, you know. These, you know, systems, they're not, you know, gods, they're not even if like to talk about them as if they were, they are, you know, they, they, they are the product of human, uh, labor, human creativity, and so on. And they are shaped by human decision makers. So anything that is produced and shaped and brought into existence by human decision makers can also be challenged, contended, argued by other humans with different perspectives and so on. having that debate and having more voices represented in that debate and having more people actively participating and critically contending, uh, those, those positions valuable in and of itself. if the AI bubble does burst and so on and so on, then okay, fair enough. But I don't, I don't think anyone's gonna kind of regret looking back and going, oh, we should have just, you know, not, not not given it any thought and kind of just let it play out because, you know, any kind of, uh. Positive human social progress has been, you know, the product of people people not doing that. People being engaged and people being active and participating and so on. So yeah, just there's, there's a claim here. There's an argument to be made for just always remaining engaged and, and active, you know, in politics and listening to powerful people and the way they talk and the stories they tell to, to rationalize and naturalize their power and not taking it at face value.

[00:38:30] Joe: And, you know, and, and, and looking at where the kind of, um, the biases and, and, and, and the specificity is in those narratives.

[00:38:38] The AI Gentry
---

[00:38:38] Jacob Haimes: And that, that's a really good, uh, again, like transition to, to the next section, which I want to talk about because it's not just UBI that. You're focused on it. It's specifically the discourse, especially the discourse from so-called AI elites, uh, like I think is, is the word that probably the media uses the most.

[00:38:59] Jacob Haimes: I personally don't like that I would propose AI gentry. Uh, I think AI oligarchs is also reasonable. Uh, something that's a little bit demeaning I think is nice though. Um, which is why I kind of like gentry, but re regard I might, I'll use that. Or if you, you know, we'll, we'll figure it out. But, um,

[00:39:19] Jacob Haimes: again, like

[00:39:20] Jacob Haimes: help me understand, uh, why, or, or, or how, uh, we would be doing this, what, um, maybe precedent there is. 'cause I'm sure that, you know, this has been talked about. It's not really my area of expertise. Um, so just understanding like. What you mean by analyzing the discourse and, and also talking a little bit more about why

[00:39:42] Joe: Yeah. Uh, point taken about terminology. We don't need to get bogged down in semantics necessarily, but I, I hear the kind of, the distinction that you're making, gentry sounds potentially u usable. oligarchy reminds me of, um, the idea of tech feudalism, AI gentry, so that could, that could work quite well. yeah. What, what, so the discourse from ai, let's call them the AI gentry for now, uh, the AI Gentry, um, is a specific viewpoint, which is the product of a specific world view, which is conditioned by a specific set of experiences in a way of understanding the world. And it has its validity. It is, you know, I, I'm not trying to say there's absolutely nothing there to be, to, to, to dismiss out

[00:40:31] Jacob Haimes: you aren't.

[00:40:32] Joe: We could maybe discuss that, but, um, the point is to kind of not let people naturalize and universalize what is specific, if I say because of my position in the world. see things in a certain way that doesn't mean that that's an objective truth. And that kind of reflects all human experiences and speaks to all humans as kind of equal and, and so on and so on. That is my specific, um, human subjective position. And it has its own biases. It has its own, um, assumptions. It has its own, it reflects its own interests and values and so on. So the kind of the core principle, the foundation is exactly this to kind of, you know, make sure that we're not kind of letting powerful people naturalize naturalize and centralize these specific to their interests and their values as kind of universal. And this relates to what Gramsci would've called hegemony, which exactly this where you universalize what is specific and you present what is one group's interests as being in the wider interests. And this is what some of the seeking to do Some of the discourse could be. Triumphalism, a certain kind of vision of technology is kind of triumphing and being inherently superior, morally, technically, to all other kind of, uh, disciplines. And it leads to, um, a sort of utopia whereby, um. Tech elites, tech oligarchs, uh, tech gentry, um, their position of power and wealth is not challenged. Things are allowed to develop, uh, as the way that they're going, and UBI, that in that narrative appears as a kind of mechanism for propping up that state as quo without challenging any of the power inequalities and the wealth inequalities, which is a narrative which I think a lot of us might take issue with because it would not challenge equality.

[00:42:33] Joe: There'd still be gross inequalities. There would still be people with very dubious intentions and very limited understandings of the world, making very powerful decisions, which affect all of us. We would be, in a way, kind of feudal, kind of surfs in some ways. We might not be starving to death, but we would be subject to the wills and the caprices and the fancies of some unstable and undesirable people. while that narrative may have a certain superficial appeal to it, if we kind of scratch away and we place it in context and we look at kind of what's kind of implied what is assumed and what is taken to be universal, may not be universal, we can see a certain kind of ideological position being disseminated. And one kind of central idea in something called critical discourse analysis is that I, and not just in critical discourse analysis in a range of kind of, you know, humanic and social science fields, is that ideologies quite often are at the most effective when they're, they're most dangerous when they're presenting themselves not as ideologies, but with reflections of natural facts and so on. Many totalitarian ideologies have done this, have said, we are not an ideology, just presenting the world as it actually is. And our world view is just a, from objective, natural biological facts. Where I live in Portugal, there was, um, a dictatorship from. 26 to 1974, and 1933, a guy took over called Salazar.

[00:44:05] Joe: There was an ideology called Salazar, and that is one of the classic characteristics of Salazar, which is a, a far right authoritarian ideology presenting itself as a reflection of the natural order of things, as I would've put it. this happens a on left wing politics too. Some, you know, forms of classical doctrinaire Marxism like to present themselves as scientific and objective and so on and so on.

[00:44:27] Joe: This is just a problem of right wing ideologies. This happens on extreme left wing ideologies, and so on and so on. So, I realized, I probably drifted slightly away from the question, but, but basically, unpacking, decoding and, you know, engaging critically with what powerful people say with their narratives is, um, something which I think, you know, is, is, is vital that we continue to always, you know.

[00:44:52] Jacob Haimes: And then I guess also just to, again, sort of like set the stage here. Who are we talking about when we say the AI gentry? Because I, I think that there is a little bit of an intuition as to who that is, but I think it's also valid and valuable to explicitly call it out.

[00:45:11] Joe: Sure. So, uh, I think that's very true and I think what you're doing there is very consistent with the spirit of the program, which is kind of trying to avoid any simplistic and reductive kind of, um, you know, narratives and kind of doing some kind of idealized abstraction of evil, of a comic book villain in,

[00:45:28] Jacob Haimes: Oh, it doesn't need to not be that. We can still think of them that way.

[00:45:35] Joe: But we could also nuance that understanding. Or empirical way as well. Um, and yeah, this is one aspect of the research that I'm currently engaged in. And I spoke to somebody, um, week who was very interested in a discourse analysis who also works in tech called Hector Peres. me just double check that that's the right name, so I won't want to get

[00:45:57] Jacob Haimes: That's correct.

[00:45:58] Joe: Um, yeah, Hector, Perez, and he's written a piece of research which was basically, which was, um, a kind of condensation of his master's thesis. Which he's very critical, or at least he engages very critically, uh, with discourse, um, uh, from ai, uh, powerful AI oligarchs. he wants to kind of nuance some of that understanding to a certain extent.

[00:46:26] Joe: And he actually finds that there is a kind of polarity of perspectives within what we can characterize as AI gentry and so on. It's not a homo homogenous monolith. They, there is commonality, and we can think of them as this category for sure, but they're also kind of within that, a certain range of perspectives. Now, somebody like Elon Musk doesn't really need much of an introduction to

[00:46:47] Jacob Haimes: I wish he did.

[00:46:49] Joe: he would be, you know, one of the scariest, uh, of, of these people, one of the most kind of, you know, easy to demonize and, and justifiably, uh, so, uh, of, of these people. But there are also other people within this, um, within this category, uh, who don't necessarily kind of, uh, agree with, they don't agree on everything.

[00:47:07] Joe: They agree on this on certain things. Elon Musk, um. Likes, uh, UPI. He, he's, he supports UBI, he, he's, he's, he's been vocal on this with a mark address

[00:47:18] Jacob Haimes: Andreesen.

[00:47:20] Joe: mess up the Mark Andresen, for instance, he doesn't like UBI. So there, there are, you know, points of contention between these people that you've got someone like Sam, Sam Alman, who was the, um, who, who worked on, uh, uh, open ai.

[00:47:35] Joe: Um, and he is also pro, um, pro universal basic income book. You know, probably with a different perspective working from a different set of assumptions and Elon Musk.

[00:47:45] ASIDE: Sam Altman + OpenResearch + Worldcoin
---

[00:47:46] Jacob Haimes: If you're like me, you hate hearing more about Sam Altman. But for a number of reasons, it is interesting to look at his behavior with regards to UBI in particular. Back in 2016, when he was still involved with Y Combinator, Altman published a blog post where he announced that the nonprofit YC Research would be funding a five-year study on basic income.

[00:48:08] Jacob Haimes: One year after Altman's not entirely amicable exit from Y Combinator, those five years were up, so the group restructured independently and rebranded to Open Research. In 2024, they published their findings. The big ones were that while unconditional cash can alleviate short-term financial difficulties and had some positive impacts on parents in particular, the broader claims that are often made about UBI, for example, that it may resolve healthcare inequality, were soundly rejected.

[00:48:38] Jacob Haimes: Then there's Worldcoin, or I guess it's just World now because of course it is. Founded in 2019 as Altman left Y Combinator, Worldcoin combines crypto, AI, and multi-level marketing tactics to get users to allow the company to scan and store their biometric data, specifically their irises. If that didn't set off enough alarm bells, don't worry.

[00:49:05] Jacob Haimes: Andreessen Horowitz is one of its main backers. So why is this relevant? Well, the founders have explicitly styled Worldcoin as, quote, "A potential path to AI-funded UBI." It's likely unsurprising to you then that essentially since its inception, Worldcoin has been neck-deep in controversy, including allegations of predatory tactics typical of cryptocurrencies, market manipulation, and low-income population exploitation

[00:49:37] Joe: um, so, part of the program is, I, I wanna fill out that picture. I want to have a clearer, more detail, more nuanced understanding of that picture.

[00:49:47] Joe: Yeah. Recognizing where the kind of, you know, the genuinely antisocial kind of evil, impulses are. The kind of destroyer of worlds kind of archetypes that exist, but also kind of recognizing that some of these people, um. Um, perhaps don't conform with exactly that model and just to be perhaps a bit provocative here as well. Does it is an important discussion to have here about. What might be called sort of pragmatists versus true believers. Do I elites believe their narratives or is it a racially self-interested rhetorical move strategy in order to get what they want? And this applies always to people in positions of power.

[00:50:29] Joe: Who's reality may be tenuous of best, you know, without wanting to make apologies for these people of say that there's no accountability. 'cause of course there is some people can believe what they need have a mechanism they can believe what's in their interest to believe and people could convince themselves or some very far out things when they need to.

[00:50:49] Joe: You know, the myth, fanciful and fantastic is will persist as long as people need it. Need it to for some, for some people. So while there was undoubtedly, I'm sure some very shrewd and very rationally self-interested people operating within that category, there may be some people who are, you know. Who are really sucked into their, their worldview and incapable of, you know, recognizing, um, how their worldview is, perhaps, you know, um, very far removed, very divorced from a lot of people's experiences and, and so on and so on. So, these are all parts of the, the equation parts of the, the situation I wanna explore deeper and fill out in the programs.

[00:51:28] Jacob Haimes: Then I guess just to, to like make it concrete as well. I, I guess for me, and then correct me if I'm, if I'm wrong, but when I, when I think of sort of AI gentry, uh, and, and who that is, it's like Sam Altman, mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Dio Amedee, uh, Dennis Hases, Satya Nadella, um, mark and Essen for sure. Um, you know, these.

[00:51:55] Jacob Haimes: Relatively, uh, vocal individuals who, uh, and some, in some cases not as vocal as well, like, uh, Tim Cook, I think, um, for example, um, but relatively, uh, known, uh, vocal people who are leading, uh, some of these, uh, AI companies or the investment going into them. Um, and oh, Peter Thiel is another one, uh, that I would, that I would throw up there.

[00:52:30] Jacob Haimes: Um, but yeah. So just, uh, am I missing anyone that you, you think is like particularly, um, emblematic of this AI gentry?

[00:52:43] Joe: No, I don't think so. Um, at least not at this stage in my, in my research. Currently reading Karen, how, uh, the Empire of ai, empire of ai, which I'm sure will, you know, will, will be very instructive and very informative. So that may develop, that may, um, evolve as the programs evolve. But I think you've, um, yeah, you've, you've offered a, a, a good summary.

[00:53:05] Joe: You've encapsulated the main

[00:53:06] Jacob Haimes: Okay. So another thing that I,

[00:53:10] Powerful UBI Supporters Should Raise Red Flags
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[00:53:10] Jacob Haimes: I'm gonna, I'm gonna put on my, um, let's maybe see, say, um, un charitable slash skeptical slash um, suspicious hat, which is one that I wear often. Um, it is one that I'm usually wearing actually, uh, just by default, but explicitly acknowledging that I am doing so. Um. These people are powerful. Uh, like you said, they have lots of money and that's really essentially all, uh, that means here.

[00:53:40] Jacob Haimes: But then, you know, by proxy of that, they, or by virtue of that, they have, uh, you know, access to people and information and all that sort of stuff. So they are incentivized to promote things that are in their interest. For example, Elon Musk says he likes UBI, that immediately is a red flag to me. Um, maybe we can talk about like why that might be the case.

[00:54:08] Jacob Haimes: What are the concern is there are, and some of the nuances of eng engage, engaging with UBI as one of these individuals and, and why that might not be what it seems at first glance.

[00:54:23] Joe: Yeah. Yeah, that's a question. Of course. So, of course, um, EBI has any other kind of, uh, measures any other kind of, um, proposal. Should not be accepted on critically, and it shouldn't be idealized and it shouldn't be held up as a kind of magic bullet to solve all human social economic ills and so on. So yes, absolutely. Let's question a BI. Let's have a critical debate about UBI. Sorry, about UBI let's not accept anything as a given on critically that's very not in the spirit of this program. So responding to some of this then. Yeah. So again, one of the central premises of the program is that. AI gentry actors have dubious perhaps not very pro-social agendas, motivations in forming that support for UBI because if UBI were implemented today without any kind of restructuring of, uh, economic of the economy or politics and so on, it would basically be like a, an apology.

[00:55:24] Joe: It would be a kind of, uh, scaffold of prop. Open support and maintain is deeply unequal. Um, status quo is political, social, economic, uh, inequality that we're experiencing. And yes, people like elo Musk like it because they want to maintain, uh, this deeply unequal social economic model that we've got. So you're definitely right to to, to really foreground that. So one way of approaching this is to see UBI not as a kind of measure in and of itself that will kind of lead to more positive outcomes, but kind of part of a set of measures towards a more transformative and fairer economic, more progressive economic model. UBI should be kind. and isolated and seen as functioning purely on its own. But it should be seen as kind of part of a, of a, of a, of a repertoire of responses. One, which is a very useful one, but one which in and of itself, if not kind of applied critically and kind of tailored to adapt specific context and realities isn't necessarily automatically going to result in, you know, better outcomes for people and a fairer, uh, more just progressive society and economy and so on. So in light of that, there's perhaps need to, like I say, take a step back from UBI and frame it and contextualize it in a broader, more progressive transformative economic agenda. So this is kind of part of what the program's kind of analysis of UBI is going to work from UBI. From a kind of, uh, in a context is part of a kind of packet of, of, of a set of measures by, you know, philosophical, slightly abstract, philosophical and ethical reflections on what are our values as a society? What kind of e uh, activity do we want to reward? Do we want, encourage? What kind of activity we do, do we wanna discourage? And so on and so on. So it's crucial that we're having this conversation as a kind of, um, UBI seeing as kind of like on a sort of lower level category within a kind of broader constellation of measures and, and a different set of values achieving different kind of society and so on and so on.

[00:57:37] Jacob Haimes: I, I think that the, the, the concern that I have the most, uh, in addition to effectiveness, which I, I know is something that's, uh, less the focus here, uh, because there are a number of other, other people talking about this as well. But, um, more about, you know, the, the discourse. Uh, but I, I think that it, it almost feels like a false flag kind of operation as a, as I was saying earlier, um, because this direct cash, uh, provision to individuals is, like you said, uh, at the beginning when introducing it uniform, uh, across everyone.

[00:58:19] Jacob Haimes: Uh, and we actually have already in place, uh, systems to allocate more funds to the people who need it more. Um, now those are being dismantled, um, actively, at least in the us but we do have them in theory. Um, and. I think they're generally good. Um, and I have experienced, uh, sort of not UBI explicitly, but in Colorado there's this thing called Tabor, um, which effectively gives money back to people, um, to, to the people in Colorado that are taxed if they bring in more than was expected.

[00:58:58] Jacob Haimes: Um, but it goes back uniformly to the people that were taxed. Um, and that means that the state can't spend it on welfare programs that would actually help the people who need it the most. Um, so I, I see this as having like a similar problem. And, and that is also like a key reason why someone like Elon Musk might be, uh, or likely is like interested in it.

[00:59:26] Jacob Haimes: Do, yeah, I guess. I mean, it, it aligns with what you were just talking about, but I guess I'd be interested to have a conversation a little bit more about, about that aspect.

[00:59:36] Joe: Sure. Yeah. Um, definitely very useful. All necessary dimensions to bring in. For sure. So I don't think I can respond directly specifically to that concern at this stage, although I will kind of perhaps just throw a couple of things out there, which might be relevant. Um, is that there is a real danger UBI if it isn't accompanied a kind of a broader transformation, uh, transformative kind of agenda in that it could end up being basically transferring public money to the private sector in the sense you have the government and paying people money, then people need to. Use that money to buy, to pay rent to access services and resources to which are held by private individuals, perhaps a subscription to, um, open AI to church, EPT to Claude or whatever. So in that sense, in that scenario, you've almost got something like, you know, transferring public money, taxpayer money back into AI elites or back into any kind of powerful economic sector, which would be very counterproductive, which would feel like very back like it's backfired.

[01:00:51] Joe: So there, there are these potential backfires and so on and so on. So you're dead right to call that out. You know, all of these measures need to be, you know, placed in specific context and kind of modeled and, uh, uh, carefully and empirically and so on. Uh, one, one aspect of this conversation could be instead of framing it as universal basic income and sending people money, could have universal basic services. You could have, um. Government money being used to provide what people need, uh, energy housing and so on and so on, should that way you are kind of, you're not really funding a kind of, you know, an a capitalist elite or, or oligarch or how we're, how we're, expressing it. you are kind of giving people the things that they need, so they don't necessarily need to buy them, buy things.

[01:01:41] Joe: They, they're not necessarily kind of dependent on paying rent to access the resources which they, which they depend on and so on. So that could be one, you know, one, uh, aspect to incorporate here. But yeah, that the kind of, the, the mechanics, the kind of very, very specific nuts and bolts of it are things I'm still looking into. And hopefully I'll have some clearer answers on,

[01:02:01] Jacob Haimes: Sure. No. Yeah, that's really interesting. I think that. Yeah, I, I think that's an interesting thing to look into. It's also maybe less palatable to some of the people, uh, that it needs to be palatable to in order to get past in the first place. Um, which yeah, no shit, but like also, uh, it might be necessary.

[01:02:28] How to Read AI Gentry Discourse Critically
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[01:02:28] Jacob Haimes: So the last area in terms of like talking about the AI gentry, so to speak, um, is, I mean it's also very much like a Silicon Valley, uh, kind of notion here. And what we've essentially been saying is like, this is ideologically motivated. Um, likely, uh, not likely. It is ideologically motivated, the ideology that is motivating.

[01:02:57] Jacob Haimes: It may be different for some of these different AI gentry, but there are, um. Motivations here. Uh, and, and we can see that in the discourse. So given that, um, how do we, how do we make sense of

[01:03:14] Jacob Haimes: what people are, are talking about and, and what people are bringing to the table?

[01:03:18] Joe: Mm-hmm. So when we say people

[01:03:20] Jacob Haimes: Sorry. Yes. When, when the AI gentry bring these ideas to the table, um, maybe like what's a good way to start engaging with it?

[01:03:31] Joe: Sure. Yeah. Um, I, I asked Hector, uh, Perez Ora this and he has some very interesting things to say, and some of it is kind of without wanting to self dismissive or patronizing is common sense is just about not swallowing everything you are given to swallow. It's about once when you're reading something to kind of as a thought experiment, as a kind of intellectual operation, so to speak, try and disagree with it. Think of things to disagree with it about. Now, you know, if you're engaging with a, with a person or you're speaking to a friend, that's not necessarily always the best thing to do because you might end up coming across as, you know, a quarrel vidia. But when you are kind of, you know, alone and you're reading something kind of put on a kind of stern, I don't agree with this, I'm gonna prove this wrong kind of mentality, when you are reading and you're engaging and so on. So there's that, there's just a kind of a foundation of kind of Yeah. You know, I, this is a story. This is something that somebody has made up. Anything that is constructed discursively, so to speak, a story that is made up a different story could be made up to explain that same thing. Anything that is constructed could be deconstructed.

[01:04:46] Joe: Any idea could be engaged with critically. That's kind of, you know, that's the foundation. You know, anyone who kind of puts things in a certain way has a certain reason, a certain perspective, which is informing their understanding doesn't necessarily render that understanding. Totally invalid, but it does kind of make it specific.

[01:05:05] Joe: So just to remember that, that there's, you know, when we're making up stories as human beings are inevitably sub subjective, they're inevitably, um, uh, specific. Some stories are, are, are more. Robust, a more kind of, you know, seem to correspond to reality in more meaningful ways than others. I'm not making like a radical relative his claim where, you know, there's no such thing as a fact and every opinion is as valid as another because that just leaves some very irreconcilable, uh, paradoxes and some undesirable outcomes.

[01:05:37] Joe: But yeah, you know, um, look for, look for the things that are being, you know, um, claimed as universal. 'cause like I was saying before, this is, you know, uh, uh, something which somebody's age should be pricking up at is when somebody is saying that something is like an objective fact and is saying something is, you know, unquestionable and, and natural and objective. Look at those things. You know, those are the things which are sometimes the most ideological, sometimes the most heavily charged ideological language is, is presented as value free as, as neutral. So look for claims of, of neutrality, of objectivity and so on. Look for things which resemble kind of articles of faith rather than kind of nuanced and balanced, constructed, um, arguments, intellectual positions and so on. Uh, because things which are kind of operate as dogmas, as things which are kind of true, you know, and function like faith and roads of thought, which resemble religious modes of thought. Again, look at those because those might not necessarily be the most kind of convincing and the most, robust kind of arguments that stand a lot of critical scrutiny.

[01:06:47] Joe: So look for things which are unqualified, IE things which are very emphatic and categorical and black and white that are very kind of, um, uh. Very heavy handed and not and not balanced and so on. Things which are kind of, you know, very, very, you know, excessive and so on. Um, from that is to, you know, con, you know, contextualize, um, read, read something that somebody's read, and then learn a bit more about that person. other things that they've written, see if you could see a, a certain, certain patterns developing certain themes, certain, uh, modes of, uh, of, of expression, you know, that are consistent that perhaps might isolated, might not seem that significant, but when understood as a kind of in a pattern, as a kind of, you know, they may have an cumulative sort of effect and so on. Uh, just to, you know, always, always, always just, you know, be remembering that, you know, stories. Um, might be valid. They might correspond to reality in meaningful ways, but, you know, we can always make up all the stories to, to make sense of the world and so on and so on. I suppose, I dunno if that answers your question

[01:07:56] Jacob Haimes: I think it does the, the only thing then is like, oh, that, that sounds like a lot of work.

[01:08:02] Joe: Oh, yeah. Um, it is, and we're all busy. You know, this is kind of what, um, I'm interested in with the UBI thing as well is, you know, how do we find the time to, you know, to do all the things that we need to do to, you know, to pay to, to work our jobs and to pay our bills and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, you know?

[01:08:18] Joe: So it is, it is a lot of work. At the same time, you know, it can also be rewarding. It can also be a fun, intellectual exercise. It also affects us all very directly. So, you know, it's the kind of thing that might be worth working at. and it could, you know, like I say, you know, I've, I've always been a linguist and, and, and someone who's interested in narratives and, you know. How narratives kind of encode, you know, uh, political or ideological positions and so on. So I find it fun, you know, you could look at it as, you know, a, a code cracking exercise, a kind of riddle to be solved. And so it can be, you know, stimulating intellectually. And it's also, you know, it's, um, if you've got, if you've got, you know, time and energy to be, you know, to, invest in engaging in, in, in this kind of thing, reading discourse particularly, and so on and so on, you know, it's, it's, um, probably quite a worthwhile thing to do.

[01:09:13] Joe: You know, the, the, the implications of practical outcomes, you know, from these narratives. So not just insignificant, powerful people telling themselves stories to make sense of their world. These people are some of the richest, most powerful people in the world. So, you know, it might be worthwhile. It might be worth, it might be worth the work, you know.

[01:09:32] Who Is "Beyond the Paycheck" For?
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[01:09:32] Jacob Haimes: Yeah. No, I, I totally agree. So I do have a couple, I, I guess closing questions, um, one that's still somewhat relevant to that, and then a, a couple more that are just about the podcast in general to, to get a better understanding. But, um, so, so you want to, to foster critical engagement with this concept and, and with, um, how we interact with, uh, discourse from the AI gentry.

[01:10:02] Jacob Haimes: Um, but, but then you also do have your own perspective here, uh, and, and an experience which informs that and, um, from, from how I'm seeing it, that that would understandably make it, uh, you know, difficult to. And, and maybe wrong even to engage in a wholly neutral way. Um, how do you plan to balance, uh, the tension between those things in the, in the show

[01:10:36] Joe: Sure. a good question. Um, so the first thing that I'll say, foreground from the very beginning is I have my values. I have beliefs. I believe things I think certain things are, are, more valuable and more

[01:10:50] Jacob Haimes: two.

[01:10:51] Joe: than certain other things. Um, I I, I don't make any secret of that. Um, I will foreground that the, the way that I'm making sense of things and my perspectives and so on and so on, reflects my specific worldview, my specific values and so on. I will try to avoid making claims to value neutrality and, uh, objectivity. I mean, objectivity is perhaps a bit different because there are, there is such a thing as an objective fact, but what we make that fact mean inevitably reflects our own kind of assumptions of worldview and so on. So, yeah, I'm, I'm not going to be trying to kind of, you know, present my narrative as a reflection of natural truths. Um, this is something I think that people are more likely to do. There's a propensity to do this with the more power and prestige you get. you know, power can turn people into, uh, terrible people, obviously. Um, I'm not necessarily the world's most powerful

[01:11:50] Jacob Haimes: Hmm.

[01:11:50] Joe: I'm not in the world's most marginalized person either. But, uh, you know, I, I I will hopefully kind of, you know, foreground and kind of, you know, signal the specificity of my own narrative to my own perspective and show on my aim here is not to present a value neutral, um, uh, discussion. My here is to try, is to articulate as, as well as I can, what I believe to be the case based on the information, um, I have and my capacity to make sense of the world around me. And people could tell me if they think I've, I've, I've, I've overlooked something. Um, so yeah, I suppose there's no, there's no kind of specific measures necessarily just general principles around, you know, critical thinking and, and, um, critical thinking skills and, and openness to, to engage and to question your own thinking and so on.

[01:12:42] Joe: And that's this kind of just a general kind of framework, which will aspire to, as I'm making the

[01:12:48] Jacob Haimes: Nice. Alright, so. We've talked about, you know, this, this whole, uh, idea here. Who do you think it's for? Uh, who is your, your target audience? Um, obviously anyone who's listening is more than welcome. Uh, but who do you have in mind when you've been designing it and, and working on this? Mm-hmm.

[01:13:12] Joe: So my ideal kind of listenership, I suppose, would definitely be people who, who fit into any specific field, you know, um, people who have got a range of backgrounds, professional intellectual interests, and so on. But I'm interested in, in, um. The impact of, you know, technological development and economic growth on all of us as individuals and as society in general. So that hopefully, I feel it has a, a broad appeal, a general appeal. I hope it doesn't exclude people or feel kind of elitist or kind of excessively technical. hope it plenty of people out there kind of, you know, are interested in this topic. 'cause it kind of pertains to, it contains certain themes, which I think, you know, uh, I hesitate to say the word universal based.

[01:14:06] Joe: Universal based on my last answer. But, you know, questions about, you know. Why do we have technology? Why do we have economic growth? What objectives do we direct these things to? You know, there's a degree of, you know, if not universality, of broad appeal here. I feel that, you know, this, these are implications which affect a lot of people. You know, I'm sure a lot of us would have, you know, opinions on whether or not we think it's a good idea for tech to development in such a way that concentrates wealth and power in the way that it does. To give the classic example of, you know, the development of the atomic bomb, which was, you know, technically a, a, an absolute triumph, but which people might have said, you know, from a human perspective was actually boring, you know, I'm sure people have got their own perspectives on that, and I hope that you know, whoever listens to this program, um, will be people who are interested in these very broad about, you know, values about. do we develop, why do we innovate? Why do we create wealth and prosperity? What are our priorities? So hopefully that is, you know, that will appeal to people from a range of perspectives, because it would be great if we could have a range of perspectives and avoid kind of echo chamber sort of dynamics and stuff.

[01:15:23] Jacob Haimes: Awesome. And then how do you plan to ensure that this podcast is accessible across that spectrum of, of people?

[01:15:35] Joe: So, one thing that I'll say is that I wouldn't necessarily call myself an expert on something, uh, like UBI. Yes, I've talked about, you know, I, I, I've had an interest in, in heterodox economics for, for a long time, but I, I put that by the wayside. A few years ago when I started my Master's in translation, for instance, I was working in an NGO. To a large extent in 2017, because I had certain values and, and certain beliefs around, you know, social models and economic models and so on and so on. But, you know, since like, sort of 2018 with, you know, having done a master's in translation studies and having to focus, like I say, you know, having commitments, um, my interest in a lot of these things is, you know, is dormant, has been, you know, um, on the side, um, to say the least over the past few years.

[01:16:24] Joe: So I am not necessarily an expert. I'm kind of exploring and learning as I'm making the programs. So I'll be hopefully, or at least, you know, aspiring to be approaching this with a kind of curious kind of learners mentality and exploratory sort of, you know, um, uh, sensibility, um, in a way which perhaps might, hopefully will be reflected in the programs and which perhaps might contribute to making them accessible to people like me who aren't necessarily experts, you know, I definitely, you know, I'm a, if I'm a bit of a ludite, I'm not a ludite necessarily, but I'm not very tech savvy. You know, conversations around technology kind of go over my head, you know, in a lot of ways. So I'm, I, I need some of the people that I speak to, to these programs, to sim keep things simple for me too. hopefully, perhaps, you know, the fact that I'm not necessarily an, an expert, I'm a little bit of a kind of outsider to some of this myself with, you know, a degree of interest and a degree of prior knowledge that's, but not necessarily an expert perhaps that might, you know, kind of, you know, be conducive to that, to making it accessible to non-experts. And yeah, um, I'll just kind of be very mindful and careful, um, conscious of using excessive amounts of technical terminology and vocabulary and so on. um, hopefully that kind of, um, results in, in content which people can relate to

[01:17:48] Joe: and

[01:17:49] Outro
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[01:17:49] Jacob Haimes: well, thank you so much for joining me today. Um, I think it's gonna be really good and I am excited to hear it.

[01:17:56]

[01:17:58] Jacob Haimes: Oh, you're still here? I figured you would've already headed over to the new Kairos FM show, "Beyond the Paycheck," hosted by this episode's guest, Joe Williams. You haven't already? Your loss, I guess. Well, I guess you're probably just being polite and wanting to wait until I'm done rambling. So... Seriously, though, you should check it out.

[01:18:21] Jacob Haimes: I think you'll like it