Show Notes
Every week brings a new warning about AI. It will take our jobs, drain our reservoirs, cook the planet. The forecasts come from serious people. They also rhyme with forecasts we've heard before, about every powerful new technology of the last century.
In this episode, MIT economist Andrew McAfee argues that the panic is racing ahead of the reality. In 2013, he famously predicted a jobs crisis from machine learning and watched the unemployment rate hit historic lows instead. Humanity’s global footprint is getting lighter each year; we are doing more with less land, less water, less raw material. He's not dismissing the risks. He's asking us to look at the track record before we panic.
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Mentioned in this Episode:
The Second Machine Age — Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (Book, 2014)
What Will Future Jobs Look Like? — Andrew McAfee (TED Talk, 2013)
More from Less — Andrew McAfee (Book, 2019)
The Return of Nature: How Technology Liberates the Environment — Jesse Ausubel (Essay, 2015)
The Population Bomb — Paul Ehrlich (Book, 1968)
The Limits to Growth — Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William Behrens III (Book, 1972)
Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI — Karen Hao (Book, 2025)
How to Future-Proof Your Career in the Age of AI — Nils Gilman (Noema, 2026)
Where to find Andrew McAfee:
andrewmcafee.org
The Geek Way on Substack
Workhelix
MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy
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Credits
Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch
Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos
Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney
Theme Music: Marcus Bagala
Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson
Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.
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