We’re living through a rapid acceleration in AI capability, a development that feels as scary as it is stunning. At the end of 2020, James Butler was joined by writer and researcher Aaron Benanev, author of Automation and the Future of Work, to talk about the current wave of automation in the context of a long history of technological advances, which have reshaped the workplace over and over again.

In this episode, James and Aaron discuss the strange gap between labour-saving technology and increased productivity, visions of utopia beyond work, and why overwork and underemployment can coexist so easily.