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Diary of a CEO · 2025-05-12 · 2h 32m

AI AGENTS DEBATE: These Jobs Won't Exist In 24 Months!

Three thinkers debate whether AI agents will create infinite abundance or trigger mass unemployment and human catastrophe within 24 months.

AI AGENTS DEBATE: These Jobs Won't Exist In 24 Months!
The guest

Amjad Masad, Bret Weinstein, and Daniel Priestley — Amjad Masad is the founder and CEO of Replit, a tool that lets anyone build software with natural language. Bret Weinstein is an evolutionary biologist, complex-systems theorist, and co-author of A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century. Daniel Priestley is a serial entrepreneur and author who advises thousands of founders.

The gist

Steven Bartlett convenes a three-way debate on AI agents, kicked off by ordering water via an autonomous agent live on set. Amjad Masad argues AI radically democratizes wealth creation and gives small teams infinite leverage, while Bret Weinstein warns that AI is a truly complex, evolving 'new species' whose potential for harm dwarfs its benefits. The group debates mass job displacement (anesthesiologists, accountants, customer-service roles), the crisis of meaning and falling birth rates in a world of abundance, education reform toward high-agency generalists, and the threat of deepfakes, surveillance states, and autonomous weapons. They wrestle with whether AI can be contained, whether self-correcting markets will save us, and what humans are for once intelligence itself is automated.

Big reveals

  • Bartlett says he launched a SaaS company with no coding skills using Replit and a friend actually paid for it.
  • Masad cites a paper showing the length of tasks AI agents can run is doubling every seven months.
  • Bartlett reveals AI-generated podcasts now match The Diary Of A CEO's viewer retention.
  • Masad and Bartlett discuss COVID 'quite probably' came from a Wuhan lab.
  • Klarna replaced 700 customer-service staff with AI handling 2.3 million chats a month.
  • Both Replit and DOAC say they have already replaced large parts of their own support functions with AI.
  • Masad's parenting rule: 'stay away from porn at all costs. I'd rather you have a drug problem than a porn problem.'
  • Weinstein warns undetectable deepfakes mean video evidence of a crime will no longer prove the crime happened.

Things worth remembering

  • AI at median human intelligence is like adding a billion PhD-level remote workers available 24/7 at 25 cents an hour.
  • Masad predicts top operators will become not 10x but a thousand times more productive than those who don't adopt AI.
  • Around 50% of college-educated Americans use AI, far more than those without a degree, widening a skills splinter.
  • Harvard Business Review: ~80% of working women are in at-risk jobs vs just over 50% of men; high-school-only jobs face 80% automation risk vs 20% for bachelor's-degree jobs.
  • Fertility fell from ~5 children per woman in the 1950s to ~2 by 2021; South Korea's rate hit 0.72, the lowest ever recorded.
  • One-on-one tutoring is the only proven education intervention producing two-standard-deviation gains, and AI could give every child a tutor.
  • Since launch in September, ~3 million apps were built on Replit in pure natural language, with 300,000-400,000 actually deployed.
  • Masad built an app to track his kids' chores and pocket money in 15 minutes for about $1 of usage.
  • Iran uses facial-recognition cameras and a citizen-reporting 'Nazar' app to enforce mandatory hijab laws; London and Wales are rolling out similar facial recognition.
  • Weinstein frames a Fermi Paradox solution: civilizations may invent infinite-pleasure simulation tech that kills the drive to explore space.

Recommended in this episode

Books, products and media the guest or host genuinely endorsed here — with the buy link.

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Guest’s ownProduct

Replit

Replit (Amjad Masad)

“For anyone that doesn't know, Replit is a piece of software that allows you to create software. And pretty much any software you want.” — Amjad Masad 00:02:37
Find it on Amazon
Guest’s ownBook

A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century

Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

“a process that Heather and I in our book, A Hunter Gather's Guide to the 21st Century, call hyper novelty.” — Bret Weinstein 01:16:30
Find it on Amazon
RecommendedProduct

Synthesis

Synthesis (inferred)

“Is that synthesis? Yeah. I'm an investor in this company. it's great to watch that simulated one-on-one tutoring” — Amjad Masad 01:23:16
Find it on Amazon