Why AI Taking Your Job Isn't the Real Problem, with Fmr. OpenAI Exec Zack Kass

Will you still have a job in five years? That's the question that keeps a lot of knowledge workers, white collar workers, up at night as AI gets smarter every day. What if it's the wrong question? We're gonna discuss that today with Zach Cass, one of the world's foremost authorities on applied AI. He is a former executive at OpenAI, one of the first 100 employees at OpenAI, and he served as OpenAI's head of go to market, meaning he built out the sales solutions and partnership teams. While there, he played a key role in commercializing AI and large language models and serving as an adviser to many executives who are deploying AI across their companies. He is an advisor to many Fortune 1,000 boardrooms, including Coca Cola, Morgan Stanley, and Samsung. He's an executive in residence at the University of Virginia's McIntyre School of Commerce. And he is the author of a new book called The Next Renaissance, which is all about AI in the context of the expansion of human potential. And in our upcoming conversation, Zach makes the argument that the real threat from AI isn't economic, but rather it's emotional. So the question isn't will I lose my job, but rather who am I without my work? We discuss financial literacy, screen addiction, and why housing, health care, and education in particular stay so expensive while many other things get cheaper. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything. The show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship. The acronym is fire with two i's, double I, fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia, and I very much wanted this conversation to be about that first letter I increasing your income. I wanted it to be about jobs, careers, especially for knowledge workers in an AI world. And Zach very much challenges the premise of that question. It's a very welcome conversation. I think you'll really enjoy it. You'll learn a lot. I learned a lot. Here he is, Zach Cass. Hi, Zach. Welcome. Hi, Paula. How are you? I'm great. How are you doing? Very good. Tell me about your background with AI. My background with AI is actually my career background. So I've worked in AI for now sixteen years. I got a job at a company called CrowdFlower. Actually, what I don't tell people is I I tried to play professional volleyball first. That was the first job I tried to get. I was not good enough, so I couldn't make money. Then I came back to The Bay Area and got a job at a company called CrowdFlower, which was a very early data labeling company. People have heard of Scale AI, the company that Meta just bought for, you know, half of it for 15,000,000,000. Before Scale AI, there was a company called CrowdFlower. And Crowdflower was building machines …