AI could have significant upsides for productivity, but countries will first have to navigate a complicated and expensive landscape as they create digital infrastructure and support disrupted workforces. For countries that already deal with constrained public finances, AI's capital costs could end up sharpening the policy trade-off between assuming higher near-term fiscal risk and delaying participation in AI-driven growth opportunities.
We're not making this decision because we're in trouble. Our business is strong. Gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. But something has changed. AI is unlocking a new way of working with smaller and flatter teams.
A significantly smaller team using the tools we're building can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every single week. Something happened in December last year where the models just got an order of magnitude more capable and more intelligent.
'There could be a little bit of, almost, quiet time in the labor market,' Hassett told show host Joe Kernen, 'Because firms are finding that AI is making their workers so productive that they don't necessarily have to hire the new kids out of college and so on.' Hasset, however, maintains the position that AI will eventually create more jobs in the long run.
We have now done about a million and a half conversations with our customers (through the agentic layer) and at the same time ... a million and half conversations also happened through our support agents during that same period. The SEASAT scores were about the same, which was stunning and also I was able to rebalance my headcount on my support - I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads.
If firms face a costly adaptation process for automation to replace workers, then the cost of adjustment comes down during recessions when the opportunity cost of not producing is relatively low.
