No Mercy / No Malice: War on the Young

Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing, increasingly, is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It to Me, how to mind your manners.

New episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts. Two months ago, I called bullshit on the AI jobs apocalypse narrative. More recently, Sam Altman, Dario Amoti, and other AI leaders pumped the brakes on their claims of a coming white-collar bloodbath. The zombie narrative marches on, however, supporting the incorrect conclusion that AI is to blame for the bleak job market young people face. But according to new research from LSE, Oxford, and the New York Fed, the AI effect nearly disappears when you control for remote work.

Translation: The reason your kid can't find a job isn't AI. It's your couch. See my recent deep dive on this topic. Work from home, like so many other choices our society embraces, is yet another front in our war on the young. That war was the subject of my 2024 TED Talk, which was the number one presentation last year, Weak Flex.

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