Hi, this is Richard Edelman and you are listening to the Trustmakers.
Hi, I'm Justin Blake, executive director of the Edelman Trust Institute. To close out 2025, we're bringing you a very special edition of the Trustmakers. This episode features a conversation between Edelman CEO Richard Edelman and Andrew Ng, founder of Deep Learning AI. The discussion was recorded live during the launch event for our recent flash poll, trust in artificial intelligence at a crossroads. Andrew offers an extensive background of expertise with a career spanning work in artificial intelligence, machine learning research, and global education. In the discussion, Andrew offers his thoughts on our report findings and provides his unique perspective on where AI is headed, how trust is built, and why hype and fear risk obscuring opportunities ahead. Please enjoy the conversation.
We believe that trust is the key to the castle. It sets the foundation for innovation. We have to make clear what the benefits are, not just the risks of AI. AI acceptance hinges on the workplace. We've got to get people hands-on in the workplace. My employer is the key to this. And last, we've just got to get quality information in people's hands so that they can make their own decisions and feel comfortable about their ability to succeed in a changed workplace. So Andrew, what I'd like to do now is ask you to react to this study and then I'll ask you some questions. But how do you take this?
So I read this, you know, some days a small number of weeks ago and I think it's a very important report. So I'm very grateful that the Edelman team has done such a good job putting this report together. What's happened is in AI, especially in the US, is remarkable. This is a nation that had invented a lot of these technologies. But shortly after the technologies took off with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, a number of American businesses ran a remarkable PR campaign, a very successful one to tell the whole world AI is dangerous. AI is like nuclear weapons. Don't trust the companies themselves. It was a brilliant, very successful PR campaign that I think delivered publicity, maybe fundraising, maybe lobbying influence types of goals to a handful of businesses, but it has damaged the public trust in AI in a very unfortunate way. Many of the businesses running this type of campaign back in 2023 or so has moderated their commentary. So I think the rate of damage is not as high as it used to be in 2023 but some of the businesses are still continuing this type of PR campaign for publicity or for lobbying purposes. I feel like the report talked about the lack of adoption and on the ground one of my teams spoke of a student that said I don't really want to work on AI because I heard it could contribute to human extinction and I don't want to contribute to that. So, we're steering students away from what could be a fantastic step forward in their career. Today, we see resistance to data center buildouts. It turns out that one of the best things we could do for the environment is to put our compute in data centers because they're very efficient. But I think this distrust of AI has led to people thinking, among other factors, not the only factor, resisting building data centers which is actually going to hurt the environment and hurt communities. And I feel like this lack of trust in AI will slow down individuals adopting it and using it to benefit themselves as well as slow down American and a lot of the western world's development of AI. So I'm eager to collectively all of us maybe use some of the solutions you're highlighting in your report to figure out how we can turn this around and win over the trust of people again in AI.
So Andrew, one of the things I cited in my introduction is that fears are eclipsing optimism and that hope is actually in short supply. One of the findings in this report is that employees believe leaders are not being honest about job cuts. And I also understand that you got a letter from an 18-year-old student who said there will be no meaningful jobs left by the time he graduated. You know, how do you quell people's fears and get them to move on to what is the possibility of AI?
So, from where I'm sitting, there have been layoffs in the tech world over the last few years. What I'm seeing is that most of these layoffs or maybe the ones that I'm aware of are not really AI related. A lot of this is more related to overhiring from the pandemic and general business environment, right? Tariffs and changes that are so AI, I wish AI was already working even better but the fact is AI is growing rapidly but it's not yet working well enough that you know businesses are making massive layoffs because AI is replacing people's jobs but this general distrust and fear of AI has made people to link the current set of layoffs more to AI than I think is the reality and then looking into the future because of some of the PR sensationalist goals of some businesses I think job loss has been hyped up much more than the reality. If we look at the task-based analyses of jobs so you know take someone's job break it into tasks figure out how much AI could do, 30-40% of most jobs can be done with AI maybe optimistically this means you still need people to do that remaining 60-70% and that line that we say AI won't replace someone's job but some of the users of AI will replace someone that doesn't, that is actually true about 90% of the time, maybe 95% of the time. And so I'm not super worried about job loss. Now where the rub is is there is maybe 5% of jobs that are in trouble. I think the translators, you know, AI translations getting really good. So there's a very small fraction of jobs where AI could do 100% of what the person does and I think those jobs are in trouble. I worry about voice actors as well, but it's a small set of jobs. I know that it's maybe not the best message to say, you know, well, for a small number of you, you will lose your job. I think unfortunately, we're seeing a little bit of that, but for the vast majority of people, it will be they're embracing AI that we still need people to do 70% of that job and they'll, you know, probably make more money, have more fun, if they embrace AI.
You're a guy who actually democratized education through Coursera. One of the big findings in this study is that being informed about AI is a strong predictor of enthusiasm. What are the biggest gaps in public AI literacy and how can educators fill them?
Yeah, thanks for the question. So I think Coursera, DeepLearning.AI, we're working hard to provide AI training. I think we live in a very polluted information ecosystem as it relates to AI right now because when AI technology was relatively new, few people understood it. And so again, a handful of businesses got away with saying almost anything. And both traditional media and social media were ineffective at fact-checking them. Which is why a lot of narratives about AI maybe has a gem of truth in it. You know, like that unfortunately will be a little bit of job displacement, but it's been dramatically hyped up well beyond the reality or AI is remarkably powerful and useful. That's the gem of truth. But this idea that we'll have AGI, artificial general intelligence, in a couple years and they just do everything that any human could do or whatever AGI means, that's also just not true. So we live in such a polluted information environment that for sensible trusted voices, right, to break through has been more challenging than I've seen in previous eras. I'd be curious, Richard, if you have any thoughts on what all of us collectively can do. I think AI will dramatically benefit people and this distrust will hurt people and hurt America and hurt society. I'm actually curious if you have any thoughts on what all of us collectively should be doing to win over the trust again.
First of all, each company has to take it on as a matter of survival and a matter of looking for ways to thrive. So in Edelman, it's bottom up as well as top down. We are mandating a certain amount of coursework, but we're also highlighting and heroing. For example, we have a very bright young guy in London who's come up with an LLM for crisis management. And we've taken that around the company and said, 'Look, this is best practice. Use it.' So, it's both ways. Let me go back to asking you.
Oh, but just to say that is great. One of my, a couple of my other CEO friends have asked the top 100 or 150 executives to take an online course on AI. So generally after everyone was, one that both the ones I'm thinking of did and it was great kind of like you know two months later did an off-site you know sometimes had me give a talk or whatever but in the following that the whole executive team had that basic non-technical understanding of AI and could then lead their teams to make business decisions with a much more grounded understanding of what AI can and cannot do. One thing I'm seeing is the change management playbook that we learn about read about in you know MBA programs or whatever. So far what I've seen is when business just does that after a year, a year and a half you do see real change but it's remarkably difficult to execute that change management playbook. All the things we're supposed to do in change management you know that all the textbooks tell us to do. If we just do that it actually works. But doing it is remarkably difficult because of the people, the emotions, the relationships, the resistance. But that gives me a bit of hope.
