Artificial Intelligence: The Dark Side... or the Light?

How to know if your job is safe… [Morning Reckoning] March 30, 2023 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( Artificial Intelligence: The Dark Side… or the Light? - Let’s ease into AI by talking movies first. - What did ChatGPT generate for me? - Any electricians out there? Well, you’ve just hit the jackpot! [America’s #1 Gold Expert Issues Urgent Buy Alert]( [Click here to learn more]( For the first time in a decade, gold is once again red-hot. - Global demand for gold soared 18% in 2022 to its highest level in over a decade. - Central banks bought a record 1,136 tons of gold in 2022, worth around $70 billion. - And M&A has begun to pick up in the gold mining sector at a significant pace. But you must hurry. The price of gold has just climbed past $2,000 an ounce. And America’s #1 gold expert says this is only the beginning of a much larger move. [To see just how high gold could run in the coming years – and how you can prepare today, even if you’ve never bought any gold before – click here now](. [LEARN MORE]( Asti, Northern Italy March 30, 2023 [Sean Ring] SEAN RING Good Morning Reader, In 1968, HAL 9000 did for computers what Jaws would do for sharks seven years later… …Scare the living daylights out of everyone. I wasn’t yet born in ‘68, so I was lucky enough to miss the whole “HAL” thing. But for people who watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, the fear felt justified. Fear of what? We’ll get to that in a bit. Even though I was barely a year old in 1975 when Jaws came out, I remember being terrified of sharks throughout my childhood. It’s a rational fear if you grow up in South Africa (70-80 shark attacks per year) or Australia (about 24 yearly attacks). But in stinky New Jersey? Since 1884, there have been 50 attacks on the Jersey Shore… in total. Steven Spielberg succeeded in frightening moviegoers, to varying degrees, over nothing. But was Stanley Kubrick, the director of 2001, as, shall we say, irresponsible? After all, Kubrick’s prior movie, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is a masterpiece that Roger Ebert called “arguably the best political satire of the century.” To this day, it remains Rotten Tomatoes highest rated movie. And yes, it was a comedy. After Kubrick made the film, he wrote: My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question. So Kubrick gave us a comedy about microwaving ourselves to oblivion. Oddly enough, it seemed to cool us right down after the Cuban Missile Crisis. But for 2001, Kubrick took on a few important subjects. Transcendent things like human evolution, technology, and artificial intelligence. He didn’t just make HAL a logical computer – did I just repeat myself? – Kubrick made HAL a sentient machine. Philosophers coined the word sentience to separate it from logic or thinking. Sentience means HAL can experience feelings and sensations. In short, HAL can be a little bitch. Inevitably, HAL tries to kill his entire crew before the end of the movie. And that’s what too many people worry about today. Our own machines turning around and blasting us to an early grave! Are we – to mix up my movie metaphors – inadvertently developing Skynet? For those of us who were in high school in the early 90s, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is our great exposure to artificial, sentient intelligence on the big screen. Director James Cameron turned Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator into a good guy for one of the greatest sequels of all time. Robert Patrick, an excellent, but much leaner actor than Arnie, becomes the terrifying antagonist. Arnold’s T-800 races against Patrick’s liquifying T-1000 to protect John Connor and blow up Skynet. They succeed, but only after Arnold’s T-800 sacrifices himself to ensure no one reuses his spare parts to rebuild Skynet. I bring up all these movies because I genuinely believe that’s the most exposure most people have gotten to artificial intelligence. Is our fear of AI rational or irrational? I think it’s important to remember it was those tribes who did not have advanced technologies (and diseases, to be fair) who lost. According to Jared Diamond, Europeans had the Guns, Germs, and Steel to beat the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs. And yet Elon Musk wants to slam the brakes on ChatGPT. Why? [[Trade Alert] This Explosive Sector Is Primed To Deliver Huge Gains… Fast!]( [Click here to learn more]( Have a few hundred dollars and the desire to make huge gains? If so, [this explosive stock market sector]( needs your attention right away. I’m talking about biotech. And as one headline from late July reads, “investors back [biotech]… as sector booms.” Point being, there’s a lot of money up for grabs right now. Best of all, we’ve identified what could be the No. 1 biotech stock pick in the world. It could deliver substantial gains over the coming weeks to those who act fast. And you can still buy shares for less than $3. [Just click here now for the urgent details.]( [LEARN MORE]( Fear of the Machine Perhaps Musk is rightly concerned with ChatGPT’s answers to some simple requests. Check this out, from my own ChatGPT session: Credit: Sean Ring Elon, you got me there. It’s scary. Incidentally, when I asked ChatGPT why it wrote me a poem for Biden and not Trump, this was its answer (my response in bold): As an AI language model, I strive to remain impartial and respectful towards all individuals and groups. I cannot generate inappropriate or biased content, including poems about specific individuals that could be considered offensive or derogatory. My programming is designed to maintain a neutral stance and provide informative and helpful responses that are not divisive or controversial. Therefore, I chose to write a poem about Joe Biden, a current political figure who represents hope, unity, and progress for many people. But ChatGPT, I’m not a f*cking moron. Can’t you tell? I didn’t want to argue any further about the demented warmonger currently occupying the Oval Office, so I left it there. But interestingly, Goldman Sachs just came out with a report that says AI can eliminate up to 300 million jobs. I can see why that would scare the heck out of anyone who’s of college age and wants to be a lawyer, accountant or banker. However, it’s what you do inside those industries that counts… Checking if Your Job Is Safe To wit, if you’re a superstar litigator, you’ll have a job until you’re 80. What those lawyers do takes a special skill. Ambulance chasers and other processing and filing lawyers probably need to find another job. But that’s not been a secret for a while now. Here’s a snippet of an article concerning legal learning machines: At JPMorgan, a learning machine is parsing financial deals that once kept legal teams busy for thousands of hours. The program, called COIN, for Contract Intelligence, does the mind-numbing job of interpreting commercial-loan agreements that, until the project went online in June, consumed 360,000 hours of lawyers’ time annually. The software reviews documents in seconds, is less error-prone and never asks for vacation. When was that written? [2017](. Thanks to Quicken and Xero, bad accountants are out of the industry. Good accountants use those tools to speed up paperwork. Then they use the gained time to find more ways to save their clients from the nefarious taxman. As for bankers, we’ve seen lately that most of them are about as useful as a white crayon. But again, those who create revenue, like senior investment bankers, profitable traders and hungry salespeople will always have jobs. The AI will be used to make their jobs easier. See the pattern? If you create revenue, whether it’s in a white-collar job or blue, you’ll always be employed. Someone, somewhere, is going to pay you. “But Sean, I’m an electrician!” My God, you’ve never been so useful in your whole life. And your purple patch is here to stay for quite a while. The Wall Street Journal just published an article titled, “[U.S. Faces Electrician Shortage as It Tries to Go Green]( From the Journal: The median age of electricians is over 40 years old, in line with the broader workforce. But nearly 30% of union electricians are between ages 50 and 70 and close to retirement, up from 22% in 2005, according to the National Electrical Contractors Association. The average annual electrician salary rose from roughly $50,000 to about $60,000 from 2018 to 2022, an increase roughly in line with the national average, according to the BLS. And it’s not just electricians who are in need. The jobs that don’t require college educations will be in the most need of new workers: Credit: [The Conference Board, Inc.]( Wrap Up I don’t want to be overly optimistic. Big changes are coming. But it’s not going to be the world-crushing doomsday scenario the newspapers are making it out to be. With a little planning, you or your loved ones can take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime move. Let AI rid the world of white-collar worker surplus. There will still be plenty for the rest of us to do. See you next week! Let me know your thoughts on the AI wave (or any other topics you want covered) by emailing me [here](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com). All the best, [Sean Ring] Sean Ring Contributing Editor, The Morning Reckoning feedback@dailyreckoning.com [The Daily FWD] URGENT! FREE Report: 6 Ways to Beat a Financial Disaster Another financial crisis could be just DAYS away! That’s why world-renowned macroeconomist Jim Rickards released this brand-new FREE report revealing the 6 most important things you NEED to do right now to protect yourself. Simply click below to sign up for the elite new research letter The Daily FWD – which will give you honest, unfiltered news on EVERY important issue impacting your wealth and security… The moment you do, we’ll rush you this exclusive new report straight to your inbox. [Click here to sign up to The Daily FWD – 100% FREE.]( By clicking the link above you agree to receive email updates and special offers from The Daily FWD. We will not share your email address with anyone. And you can opt out at any time. [Privacy Policy](. [Man Who Predicted Bitcoin Warns: “Don’t Buy Bitcoin!”]( [Click here to learn more]( James Altucher first predicted Bitcoin all the way back in 2013… And ever since, he’s been one of the biggest advocates for it. But now, he’s warning Americans that buying Bitcoin could be a big mistake… [Click here now to see why](. [LEARN MORE]( In Case You Missed It… Greg Guenthner, Editor What Happens When the Snapback Breaks? [Greg Guenthner] GREG GUENTHNER Good Morning Reader, The first quarter is almost in the books – and it looks nothing like the Great Tech Reset that shoved the stock market off a cliff in 2022. Bitcoin has exploded higher, posting new 9-month highs after breaking out above $25K. The Nasdaq 100 – the biggest, baddest tech names on the market – just hit new 7-month highs as household names such as Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta Platforms (META) continue to build on recent gains. Semiconductors are also proving the naysayers wrong. The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) has rallied more than 50% off its October lows – and it doesn’t have that much farther to travel before posting new 52-week highs. That’s a remarkable turn of events from one of last year’s worst performing sectors. It’s clear that the tech trade (and yes, I consider anything crypto-related a tech trade) has breathed life into the market during this first-quarter snapback. While the financial sector cratered during this little bank crisis we’ve enjoyed over the past few weeks, tech grabbed the torch and continued higher. Without any bank stocks weighing it down, the Nasdaq Composite has gained more than 3.7% during the month of March. The S&P 500 is up less than 1% on the month, while the Dow remains in the red. Evidence of this bifurcated market is easy to find. Even the market’s year-to-date gains are heavily clustered in tech. Stocks like Tesla (TSLA) and Nvidia (NVDA) are up 57% and 83%, respectively, while more than a handful of banks, energy stocks, and healthcare names are down double digits. We can’t complain too much about the market offering up the tech space as a place to hide from the bank drama that’s dominated the market landscape this month. But even short-term minded traders need to take a step back as the quarter ends this week. It’s time to ask some tough questions… For starters, can this period of tech outperformance continue? Or, will the market’s lagging sectors reel in high-flying tech as bank problems fade from the front page? Let’s dig in and see if we can find any clues… [Urgent Notice From Paradigm CIO Zach Scheidt!]( [Click here to learn more]( Hi, Zach Scheidt here… I’m the Chief Income Officer at Paradigm Press. With inflation raging (and showing no signs of coming to an end any time soon), almost everyone in America is feeling the pain in a big way. Which is why, several months ago, I set out on a big mission… my goal was to create a [complete, step-by-step plan to surviving and beating inflation]( one that anyone could take advantage of. Today, after hundreds of hours of research, I’m revealing all of my findings. [Simply click here now to see how to survive America’s deadly inflation crisis](. [LEARN MORE]( Bizarro Market First, we need to reset our brains to December 2022. Tech stocks were plumbing new lows. Covid Bubble poster child Tesla Inc. (TSLA) saw its stock nearly cut in half over the course of about four weeks. Tech-growth was obliterated and many of these stocks were going out at or near their lows. Fear was palpable as the calendar flipped to 2023. That’s when the market flipped on its head… While industrials, metals, and value names were in focus late last year, tech snapbacks stole the show in January. No one was ready for it. The chase was on! Following a rocky February, semiconductors, the crypto-sphere, and mega-cap tech (consisting of most of the former FANG-plus complex) were once again attracting eager buyers. Against all odds, market leadership remained firmly in the tech sector as regional banks imploded. Except for one little problem… Many of the tech-growth leadership during the frothiest period of the Covid Bubble wasn’t keeping pace. [Has World War III Just Begun?]( NATO sends tanks to Ukraine… Russia prepares for a winter offensive… [Is the beginning of World War III?]( [Click here to learn more]( I’ve just released an urgent message with my thoughts. But more importantly, I’m offering to send you an [exact playbook]( on what I see playing out in the world and what you need to do to prepare. [Simply click here now to watch my short message and to see how to claim a copy completely free of charge.]( [LEARN MORE]( Grab Your Life Vest Considering everything that’s happened so far this year, I think it’s safe to ask if Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation Fund (ARKK) has sprung a major leak. Our favorite tech-growth proxy hasn’t played nice since the January snapback rally – despite continued outperformance from the greater tech sector. Yes, ARKK was one of the leaders of the January rally. It even managed to jump nearly 50% off its lows by early February. But it hasn’t been able to recapture that momentum following the February pullback. In fact, ARKK continues to pull back. The EFT failed to hold a brief breakout back above its 200-day moving average last week, retreating to its choppy trading range. [chart] Remember, semiconductors, big-tech, and crypto have all pushed to new year-to-date highs. ARKK has not. It remains dangerously close to slipping back into a bigger downtrend if it fails to push higher out of what has been an incredibly choppy March performance. Why does this matter? For starters, using ARKK as a “hype proxy” for the tech market could tell us if there’s ample risk appetite for the more speculative tech-growth names that have remained out of favor for the better part of the past two years. Since late 2021, none of ARKK’s rallies have produced a major change in trend. This attempt looks no different… not yet. Then, there’s the matter of ARKK’s biggest holdings. TSLA is the fund’s top dog, which hasn’t exactly had an amazing March despite a strong start to the year. But it’s ARKK’s other major holdings: ZM, SQ, U, TDOC, and others that remain stuck in their respective downtrends. Many of these stocks are still lingering near their lows. That’s where we’re finding trouble. Some of these stocks will eventually find a bottom and begin carving out bases. Others might get bought or go to zero. But we’re still early in this process. Despite the positive developments in the tech sector, many of these tech-growth ARKK components remain a complete mess. My concern here is whether a bigger breakdown in these names leads to corrective action that reverberates across the tech space – including the stocks that have contributed to a majority of the market’s gains so far this year. If it is time for yet another tech-growth gut check, investors should pay close attention. The outcome could have major implications for stocks as the second quarter quickly approaches. Let me know what you thought of today’s article… and if you want any more topics covered by emailing me [here](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com). Best, [Greg Guenthner] Greg Guenthner Contributing Editor, Morning Reckoning feedback@dailyreckoning.com Thank you for reading The Morning Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:dr@dailyreckoning.com) [Sean Ring] [Sean Ring, CAIA, FRM and CMT]( is a former banker and financial educator and is the editor of the Rude Awakening. Sean has trained interns and graduates from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Bank of America, Standard Chartered Bank, DBS (Singapore), the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), Bank Indonesia (the central bank), HSBC, Barclays, RBS, and BlackRock. He knows the global economy is being corrupted by forces that most people can't understand and has used his unique and worldly experiences to help people navigate the markets. [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2023 Paradigm Press, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. To end your The Daily Reckoning e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from The Daily Reckoning, feel free to [click here.]( Please note: the mailbox associated with this email address is not monitored, so do not reply to this message. We welcome comments or suggestions at feedback@dailyreckoning.com. This address is for feedback only. For questions about your account or to speak with customer service, [contact us here]( or call (844)-731-0984. 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