Joe Weisenthal opens by noting that whatever the show discusses, trade or AI or anything else, Europe seems to get the short end of the stick. Alloway pushes back with this. If you want a long lunch in France or a long August holiday, she says, you should be very interested in AI.
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Tracy, I think a comment that you've made a few times over the episodes is like, no, no, no, it's not. It's like we have these conversations and then usually or frequently, whether we're talking about trade or AI or anything, there's usually, oh, and it seems like Europe is getting the short end of the stick here. Or it seems like it's all going to end up being kind of bad for Europe.
Well, yes. I would say that. You have said this. I'm sure I have in the past. However, what I would say is if you are bullish on AI and its ability to boost productivity across the board, in my mind, you have to be bullish on Europe because there is no region out there, perhaps, more motivated than Europe to try to eke out every extra ounce of output per work hour. Like if you want a long lunch in France, if you want to, you know, take a long vacation in August, you should be very, very interested in AI. And if you think those gains are going to be like widely spread through businesses in other countries, you know, think about Europe.
Did you purposely just say this? Did you see the red headline that just hit as you were talking?
No.
It's so surreal. So we just got a red headline the moment you were saying that BMW targets shedding a fifth of manager roles with the help of AI. I don't think that could be more perfect because A, this is, it's the two sides of the coin. So it's like you have a lot of like big industrial behemoths in Europe that in theory, like you're like, I remember, we've talked about this for years, actually. You know, if AI is going to diffuse across the economy, suddenly maybe these companies can be more lean, et cetera. But then this also gets to two things. Okay, what does that mean about jobs themselves? And then also it's like, okay, maybe they can modestly trim some of their management layers with the help of AI, but can that actually make these European car companies competitive with the Chinese companies? I don't know. That still seems like a tall order at the trajectory, but it's very funny that you said that the second that that headline crossed the terminal.