Jim Rickards: AI in the kill chain will kill you in the end

Seven-time bestselling financial author Jim Rickards predicted in July 2023 (when gold was trading in the $1,600 range) that the yellow metal would experience a major rally. He was right.

In his new book Money GPT: AI and the Threat to the Global Economy Rickards argues that AI-caused disasters can occur in everything from finance to nuclear war. Rickards says, “About five stocks make up more than 40% of the entire index. We all know their names. The market is going up because of AI, and nobody wants to say anything bad about AI. I’ve studied this very carefully, and there are these enormous dangers for investors that they need to be aware of. Any crash will be worse because AI will accelerate it.”

In an AI-driven world, events get even worse, especially when it comes to nuclear war. AI can and will accelerate that too. Rickards explains: “You can’t teach a computer common sense. You can teach it rules. You can make it scale up the escalation ladder for war. A stock market crash is pretty bad, but nuclear annihilation is much worse.”

“I offer constructive advice in the book by saying: Here’s the problem. This is how it works. Don’t put the AI in the kill chain, because you’ll end up getting killed.”

Rickards hopes Trump can deescalate the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Even if Trump succeeds in turning down the war drums, the economy is already in deep trouble. Rickards says, “The U.S. economy is definitely going to see slower growth at best and probably a recession in the next 9 months. Trump will be blamed for that because when you’re president, you’re blamed for everything that is going on, even if he had nothing to do with it.

The recession is already underway. The stock market will slow down, and from there, I think it will come back. Trump’s policies are being implemented. They’re getting a tax bill passed. They’re raising tariffs. They’re creating good-paying U.S. jobs. They’re reducing regulation. There are a lot of good aspects in the pipeline, but they take time to get implemented and have an impact. In the meantime, we’re going to have a rocky road ahead.”

Rickards still holds a lot of gold, silver and other tangible assets such as farmland and art. This is a real diversification of assets.

There are some interesting ideas in the 54-minute interview.

yogaesoteric
December 3, 2024