274 - Guest: Carl Benedikt Frey, Professor of AI and Work, part 1

274 - Guest: Carl Benedikt Frey, Professor of AI and Work, part 1

Author: aiandyou September 15, 2025 Duration: 34:59
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .     "The book seems to be more timely than originally anticipated."  I'm talking with Carl Benedikt Frey about his new book, How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations, and its exploration of the political and economic effects of policies like tariffs and university defunding comes at a very critical time. AI is projected to have enormous economic and social impacts that call for the biggest of big picture thinking, and Frey is the co-author of the 2013 study The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerization, which has received over 12,000 citations. He is Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and Director and Founder of the Future of Work Programme at the Oxford Martin School, both at the University of Oxford. His 2019 book, The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation, was selected as a Financial Times Best Book of the Year and awarded Princeton University’s Richard A. Lester Prize.   We talk about whether progress is inevitable, how growth depends on the interplay of technology and institutions, the link between productivity and innovation, the importance of institutional flexibility and decentralized funding, the effects of tariffs, the risks of China’s increasingly centralized model, and why the US and China are both triggering declining dynamism in each other. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.            

The conversation around artificial intelligence is often filled with either breathless hype or dire warnings, leaving little room for grounded, practical understanding. Artificial Intelligence and You cuts through that noise. This isn't a lecture series from a distant ivory tower; it's a guided exploration meant for anyone curious about how these tools are reshaping the everyday. Each episode takes a focused look at a single facet of AI, from the algorithms curating your social media feed to the software that might change how you work. We break down complex concepts into clear, relatable terms, asking the questions that actually matter for your decisions and your future. You'll hear straightforward explanations of how different AI systems function, alongside thoughtful discussions about their real-world implications-the ethical dilemmas, the economic shifts, and the personal impacts that rarely make the headlines. The goal of this podcast is to replace confusion with clarity and anxiety with informed perspective. Whether you're a professional navigating new tools, a student planning a career, or simply a person living in an increasingly digital world, these conversations provide the context you need to form your own opinions. Join us as we move beyond the abstract to examine what AI genuinely means for your life, your community, and the kind of world we're all building together, one line of code at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Artificial Intelligence and You
Podcast Episodes
305 - Guest: Rob May, Intellectual Troublemaker, part 1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:58
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Rapid advances in AI—especially the shift from training to real-world inference—are reshaping work, business strategy, and the roles of humans. They accelerate productivi…
304 - Guest: Virginia Dignum, Responsible AI Expert, part 2 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:29
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . AI abounds with paradoxes. I have been talking about those with Virginia Dignum, professor of responsible artificial intelligence at Umeå (OOMEO) university, about her ne…
303 - Guest: Virginia Dignum, Responsible AI Expert, part 1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:33
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . AI runs not just broadly across human interest, but deeply. And at every level it seems to create paradoxes. How can it be useful without power; how can it be safe with p…
302 - Guest: Ricky Sethi, Artificial Metacognition Researcher, part 2 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:06
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Have you ever thought about your thoughts? About what or how you’re thinking? It gets real meta real fast, doesn’t it? That’s called metacognition, and humans and certain…
301 - Guest: Ricky Sethi, Artificial Metacognition Researcher, part 1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:26
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Have you ever thought about your thoughts? About what or how you’re thinking? It gets real meta real fast, doesn’t it? That’s called metacognition, and humans and certain…
300 - Guest: Mark Peres, Civic Entrepreneur, part 2 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:16
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Because AI touches our lives down to our core where our emotions and subconscious reside, we need to be touched with the important lessons that our fellow humans wish to…
299 - Guest: Mark Peres, Civic Entrepreneur, part 1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 28:38
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . We shouldn’t learn the important lessons of AI through just exposition, through just descriptions, explanations, lessons, and textbooks. But because AI touches our lives…
298 - Guest: Holly Elmore, AI Pause Advocate, part 2 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:25
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . In 2023 a global movement called Pause AI started, advocating for a pause in the development of powerful AI, and on the show we have its co-founder, Holly Elmore. Their w…
297 - Guest: Holly Elmore, AI Pause Advocate, part 1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:22
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . In 2023 a global movement called Pause AI started, advocating for a pause in the development of powerful AI, and on the show we have its co-founder, Holly Elmore. Their w…
296 - Guest: Maya Ackerman, Creative AI Pioneer, part 2 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:39
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . One of the great wounds people are experiencing around AI is in creativity. Look at the writers’ and actors’ strikes, for example. I continue talking about this very sens…