Tyler Cowen? Dwarkesh Patel? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: Several newspapers including “The New York Times”, “The Chicago Tribune”, and “The Orlando Sentinel” have sued OpenAI and Microsoft. The newspapers have claimed that the companies trained their artificial intelligence (AI) systems on millions of copyrighted articles without permission.1
This protectiveness is understandable, but the influential economist Tyler Cowen has expressed a provocative counterpoint. Apparently, Cowen said the following:
You’re an idiot if you’re not writing for the AIs.
Would you please help me to find a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: Podcaster Dwarkesh Patel interviewed Professor of Economics Tyler Cowen of George Mason University in October 2024. The video was uploaded to YouTube in January 2025. Patel mentioned that he had used the Claude AI system to help him prepare for the interview. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:2
Dwarkesh Patel: When I was preparing to interview you, I asked Claude to take your persona, and compared to other people I tried this with, it actually works really well with you.
Tyler Cowen: Because I’ve written a lot on the internet.
Dwarkesh Patel: Yeah. That’s why.
Tyler Cowen: This is my immortality, right?
Dwarkesh Patel: That’s right.
Thus, Cowen suggested that the processing of written words by an AI system provides a type of enduring cybernetic life. Later in the interview he said the following:3
Tyler Cowen: No one is writing or recording for the AIs very much. But if you believe even a modest version of this progress. Like I’m modest in what I believe relative to you and many of you. You should be doing this. You’re an idiot if you’re not writing for the AIs. They’re a big part of your audience, and their purchasing power, we’ll see but, over time it will accumulate.
In conclusion, Tyler Cowen deserves credit for this quotation which he spoke during an interview with Dwarkesh Patel in October 2024.
Image Notes: Public domain fanciful picture of two robots reading.
- 2024 April 30, The New York Times (Online), 8 Daily Newspapers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. by Katie Robertson, New York, New York. (ProQuest) link ↩︎
- YouTube video, Title: Tyler Cowen – The #1 Bottleneck to AI Progress is Humans, Uploaded on January 9, 2025, Uploaded by: Dwarkesh Patel, (Quotation starts at 34 minutes 45 seconds of 60 minutes 33 seconds) (Accessed on youtube.com on January 22, 2025) link ↩︎
- YouTube video, Title: Tyler Cowen – The #1 Bottleneck to AI Progress is Humans, Uploaded on January 9, 2025, Uploaded by: Dwarkesh Patel, (Quotation starts at 35 minutes 50 seconds of 60 minutes 33 seconds) (Accessed on youtube.com on January 22, 2025) link ↩︎