How progress ends

This week, Mark Leonard welcomes Carl Benedikt Frey, associate professor of AI and work at the Oxford Internet Institute and author of How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation and the Fate of Nations, to discuss whether AI enthusiasm is obscuring a more fundamental problem: the global slowdown in productivity and innovation.

Carl argues that technological progress is neither inevitable nor guaranteed. Despite rapid advances in computing, the internet and AI, productivity growth is stagnating. He suggests that innovation depends on the institutions, incentives and political conditions—as well as technological breakthroughs—that allow societies to adapt and scale new ideas.

Mark and Carl explore what the rise of AI reveals about the changing balance between innovation and concentration, why China’s embrace of open-weight AI models could challenge American technological leadership, and why Europe continues to struggle in digital industries despite its strengths in manufacturing.

Is AI about to unleash a new era of prosperity? Why has productivity growth remained weak despite decades of technological advances? What does the AI race mean for competition between the US, China and Europe? And is the greatest risk facing advanced economies the end of progress itself?

This episode was recorded on April 30th 2026.

Bookshelf

Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative by Jennifer Burns

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