By Greg La Blanc
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The podcast currently has 465 episodes available.
Ellen J. Langer is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. She is also the author of several books, including The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, Mindfulness, Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility, and The Power of Mindful Learning.
Ellen and Greg discuss the profound influence of mindfulness on decision-making and work-life balance, while challenging the illusions of control, certainty, and predictability. Ellen also breaks down the extraordinary world of placebos, illustrating how mindfulness can have a placebo-like effect on health, and how our beliefs and thoughts can significantly impact our physical health. They also talk about mindfulness in education and healthcare, underscoring its invaluable benefits for patients, doctors, and individuals in general.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:On the importance of showing-up
07:34: If you're going to do something, you should show up for it. And when you do show up for it, everything is better. So as you're actively noticing, you look alive. People find you more attractive. When you're being mindful, people see you as charismatic, authentic, and certainly attractive. Not only that, it makes you healthier, it's fun, and people are going to find you more appealing, but it actually leaves its imprint in the things that we do. They're just better. So if you're painting, playing a musical instrument, writing a report, no matter what you're doing, if you show up for the activity, you're going to produce something better. To my mind, there's no reason, once people truly understand what this work is about, that you would not try to change your ways in some sense and be mindful virtually all the time.
Mindfulness is a way of being
03:24: People need to understand that mindfulness has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is not about mindfulness. Meditation is a practice you engage in to result in post-meditative mindfulness. Mindfulness, as we study it, is immediate. And it's not a practice. It's a way of being.
Why is going from being mindless to mindful is hard?
24:31: Going from being mindless to mindful is hard because when you're not there, you're not there to know you're not there. So that's why the instruction is, "Stop and smell the roses and be in the present." It's sweet but empty because when you're not there, you don't know that you're not there. So you can't fix it, but if you were to throw yourself into some new activity without worrying about being evaluated, and you feel how good it feels to be totally engaged, then just don't accept anything less than that.
On being mindful of shifting point of view
11:48: When people are mindless, they're more or less acting like automatons. And when you're mindful, you have a general sense of what you want to do. You can have goals and routines, but they're guiding what you're doing. They're not overly determining what you're doing. So I say to my students, "Okay, let's say, on your way to class today, you run into Michelle Obama. And she takes such a liking to you for who knows what reason. And she says, 'Do you want to go have a cup of coffee?'" It would be crazy for you to say, "No, I have to go to class." All right, but I think mindlessly, especially the A students, that's just what they would do, rather than say, "Well, circumstances now are so unusual, I should take advantage of it." And so when you're mindful because you're there, you get to take advantage of opportunities to which you'd otherwise be blind, and you avoid the danger that has not yet arisen.
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There’s a significant mismatch between our ancient brain's capabilities and the rapid advancements in technology. Simply put, our brains just can’t keep up in the digital age. But what does that impact look like from the brain’s point of view? What’s really going on with the neurotransmitters when we take in all that information?
Richard Cytowic is a professor of neurology at George Washington University. His books like Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload and The Man Who Tasted Shapes examine the effects of technology on the brain and explore the rare but very real phenomenon of synesthesia.
Richard and Greg chat about the energy economics of brain function, the inherent limitations of multitasking, and the benefits of a digital detox. They also explore synesthesia, how human neurology is uniquely wired for metaphor, and how babies might all have some form of synesthesia early on.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Why multitasking is exhausting your brain
04:05: Our brains today are no different from those of our distant ancestors. I mean, they have not evolved one iota, whereas technology has been advancing ten thousand, a million times more than that. So I do think we've reached the point where we're asking it to do what it simply can't do anymore. The brain has a fixed level of energy that it can use, and no amount of diet, exercise, supplements, or Sudoku puzzles can possibly increase that. So when you're asking it to multitask or to keep switching attention from one thing to another, you're asking it to do things that it was never designed to do, that it can't do very well, if at all. And so that's why people are burned out and fatigued.
Why are people so concerned about what they put in their bodies, but not about what their mind consumes?
35:13: People are so concerned about what they put in their bodies—non-GMO, vegan, no sugar, no artificial colorings. But why aren't they as picky about what they ingest through their senses? I mean, the mental garbage that we take in is certainly less harmful than the occasional cheeseburger and Twinkie. So people just don't think in terms of, "What is my sensory diet?" And again, I'm so unusual because I'm thinking neurologically and neuropsychologically, and most people never have the opportunity or the inclination to think about the way that they think—this metacognition kind of thing.
Quiet is an essential nutrient
15:03: Quiet is the antidote to everything. I call it an essential nutrient. We need it to give ourselves space to think. And part of it has to do, I think, with people feeling that they don't like solitude. They think being alone is an odious, difficult state. But I say that solitude has. Loneliness wants. And so if you can distinguish between the two—that here, sitting in a park with a tree and a green space, and I'm quite happy, eating my lunch here in solitude—then this is a positive experience for me. I'm giving myself a nourishing experience. But if I'm thinking, Oh my God, I'm all alone. There's nobody to talk to. I don't know what to do; you're doing a number on yourself and freaking yourself out.
The iPad as babysitter
29:52: The iPad is the worst babysitter in the world. Look at a baby when they get to be on the move and start crawling. They put everything in their mouths. They're touching, feeling, and having a visual apprenticeship with the world. And when you put this screen full of mediated images in front of them, those characters, if they're Disneyfied or not, don't engage with the child in the same way that a real human being does. They talk at a child. They don't talk with a child. Whereas an adult who's playing peek-a-boo, and "so big," and other kinds of things like that, they're speaking to the child in normal adult language. And these kids are picking things up like sponges, believe me, and that's what they need to have. They need to have that one-on-one interaction.
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When does predicting the future become a science and not a fantasy? What can be learned from forecasts throughout the ages and across different industries? What does the future of energy look like, given certain unchangeable limitations of physics themselves?
Mark P. Mills is the founder and executive director of the National Center for Energy Analytics and the author of the books The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s, Digital Cathedrals, and Work in the Age of Robots.
Greg and Mark discuss the complexities and pitfalls of forecasting, why we often get it wrong, and the various types of forecasters. Mark explains the interconnectedness of energy, computing, and infrastructure, arguing against a simplistic view of an energy transition and highlighting the intricate dance of innovation and efficiency across centuries. He also touches on the future impact of AI, the importance of complementary investments for technological growth, and the profound phase changes society is currently undergoing.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:On forecasting and the future of technology
06:04: In the book [The Cloud Revolution], what I chose to do was a framing of a forecast with technology that was very specific, and which I think can be highly predictive and accurate. And this is not about how much money people will make or what company will succeed, but if you want to forecast the next decade on technology, not about human nature, not about wars, not about who gets elected, those things all matter because the world is dynamic, and these things interact. Economies matter; they affect our ability to build things, fund things. So, an economy that's shrinking can delay the forecast of a new product or service because if the new product or service requires new capital, new infrastructure, and capital's expensive, then the actual emergence of that system might take longer than you thought, but it'll still happen. It'll just happen later.
Efficiency fuels demand, not reduces it
44:15: The idea, which we can find better and implement better through compute communications and AI, means that we have not tapped all the efficiencies, systems, and supply chains. There's enormous efficiency to be had. But efficiency creates demand; it doesn't kill demand…This complete misunderstanding of efficiency is a failure to understand how humans operate, how we live our lives, and what we like to do.
Why big airplanes won't fly on lithium batteries
40:39: When the technologies are new, there are two things about them: we haven't figured out how to make them at physics limits yet. Our knowledge is weak. We haven't refined the engineering because it's a new technology. So, as you do that, you approach physics limits. And this is what's going on now with batteries. You can't store more energy in a lithium battery than exists in the lithiated chemicals. You can't. I mean, it's the lithium atom. It's one of the most energetic atoms on the periodic table. But lithiated chemicals have one-fifth the energy per pound that hydrocarbons do. So, hydrocarbons start with a 50-fold. That's a pretty big advantage in energy per pound. So, what you would do then is make machines to extract the energy per pound, which is why big airplanes are not going to have lithium batteries. They'll carry them, but they're not going to fly with them. Little ones can because the advantage that the hydrocarbons have in the physics of the universe we live in is so much greater. So, it doesn't matter how cheap the lithium is. If it were free, it wouldn't change the fact that the fuel for the airplane would weigh more than the airplane because it's not dense enough.
Systems have inertia
33:48: Systems have inertia, economic systems, and financial systems. Physical systems all have inertia. It's a physics term, but it's anchored in how the universe really operates. You can't change big things quickly, except by explosions, right? In social economic terms and physical terms. You can change things quickly and explosively, but explosions are destructive, whether it's a financial, economic, or physical system. So, the velocity of change first begins with the size of the system you're trying to change.
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How do you measure the quality of management at a company? And how much do management practices impact a firm’s overall performance?
Nicholas Bloom is a professor of economics at Stanford University and co-director of the Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research on working from home and management practices has been published in numerous scientific journals, including the Journal of Political Economy and Nature.
Nicholas and Greg discuss the historical trends of productivity growth, why management is often overlooked as a technological advance, and the challenges of measuring and improving management quality. Nicholas also shares some of his key management tips from his years of studying firms across the world.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Is high uncertainty an opportunity for big returns?
43:42: High uncertainty is where the money is. When life's uncertain, that's where the profits have been made. Kind of Warren Buffett/VCs. A good example of that would be the dot-com boom. So, in the dot-com boom, everyone knew in the early 2000s, look, the internet's going to be a big thing. And it turns out it was a big thing. You just don't know which bit and when and how. And so the view is, look, if we invest in the internet, we have a lot of these implicit options on it. And if it takes off, these are valuable. If they’re not, we wasted our money, but no more. And so, there's also kind of what I call exploratory investment when demand or markets are uncertain. You do, on the other hand, want to spend some kind of R&D-ish type money or open subsidiaries or open up a website or whatever. And it's like placing a bet. It's like investment in equity, if you think about it. And if it works out well, great. You've 10x your money. And if it doesn't, you've lost your cash.
The key for hybrid work is coordination
35:53: Hybrid is coordination. So, it sounds obvious, but if you're on a hybrid plan, whereby, say, you've got to be in the office three days a week, you want to make sure it's the same three days as your team because the thing that sends people mad is coming in and then spending all day on Zoom because everyone else is at home.
Why do owners struggle to recognize great management?
23:12: So, part of the problem why management isn't great is that owners don't appreciate it or aren't aware of it. The other hard part of it is that it's intangible, so it's hard to buy it. So, you have ten candidates; they all claim they're great managers. How do you know? It's a tough thing to actually turn. Ten consulting firms—every consulting firm claims that it will make you so much money, but whether they do after the event is much less obvious.
Do government-owned organizations struggle with managing underperformance?
16:34: You find in the data, on average, government-owned organizations tend not to be very well managed, and where they're particularly poor is what I'll call dealing with underperformance. So, if you look at our data, government organizations can be reasonably good at collecting data and having targets, and they can be—they're okay but not great on incentives if you perform well. They're just terrible at dealing with underperformers, and it's partly just politically—it’s painful for politicians; partly they're heavily unionized; partly there's typically also a reason why a government owns a firm.
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Women have been systematically marginalized throughout history. However, new research shows a growing gender gap in the other direction. Today, men may face many disadvantages regarding education and the workforce. So, how should society address the disadvantages of both women and men in a nuanced and inclusive way?
Richard Reeves founded the American Institute for Boys and Men after writing the book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It. His work on class and inequality can also be found in publications like The New York Times and The Atlantic.
Richard and Greg discuss the current disadvantages faced by men, the historical context of gender inequality, and potential solutions like “redshirting” boys in education to better serve their developmental needs.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Zero-sum thinking undermines gender progress for all
03:41: It feels to some people like it is zero-sum, and that, somehow, to acknowledge the problems of boys and men is to dilute the necessary work that still needs to be done for women and girls. You sort of have to choose, pick a side, or certainly this was the experience that I was warned about, which is that it's just really hard to elevate the problems of boys and men without somehow falling into the trap of being seen as anti-women and girls or anti the progress that they need. And so that zero-sum thinking around gender is a big part of the problem too.
Nature matters, but nurture is key in expressing our differences
49:14: The thing I find most frustrating about this whole ridiculous nature-nurture debate is that acknowledging some role for nature doesn't make nurture less important. It makes it more important because that is how we learn how to express these natural differences.
Are women excelling more educationally?
12:26: I think a lot of women have inherited this message: that if you want to get ahead, you're going to have to work even harder. It's almost like an immigrant mindset. It's like, you're going to have to be even better, work even harder. And so that message, I think, has really affected at least one or two generations of women who just seem to have much greater aspiration educationally than boys and men do. And that's playing out in the data.
Not a lack of rights, structural shifts leave men unmoored and vulnerable
14:25: There are real problems facing boys and men in different areas, but it's not because of a lack of rights, and it's not because of discrimination; it's a result of a series of quite big structural changes in the economy and society that have left a lot of men kind of feeling unmoored, uncertain, and vulnerable, and that problem is just a different problem.
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Is there a secret recipe for start-up success? Probably not. But if you take a close enough look at some of the massive success stories like Twitter and Lyft, patterns start to emerge.
Venture capitalists Mike Maples, Jr. and Peter Ziebelman pull back the curtain and examine how start-ups go from seedling ideas to billion-dollar companies in their book, Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future.
Mike, Peter, and Greg discuss the roles that insight and implementation play in determining a start-up’s chance at success, how investors distinguish between genius and crazy, and why the best founders are like artists.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Distinguishing idea vs. insight
25:33: [Mike Maples Jr.] A lot of people confuse risk and uncertainty. And so, like, I might have an idea in an existing market that there's a clear need for, but it's a bounded upside idea. But I can connect the dots between the idea, customers wanting it, and a successful business. I might, on the other hand, have an idea that's like Justin TV, right? Which is a reality 24/7 streaming TV show, which is crazy online. But it embodied a lot of inflections and insight. It was a terrible idea, but a great opportunity. And so what we're interested in is not certainty about the future, because if we're going after a non-consensus idea, if we have real insight, we can't know we're certain yet. All we can know is that we're non-consensus. Just because we don't know how the dots will forward connect doesn't mean they won't forward connect. And it doesn't mean that the expected value of the upside isn't higher. So that's what we kind of encourage people to say: just because you don't know how success will happen doesn't mean that it's not way better to pursue that path.
The crucial elements that contribute to startup’s breakthrough
06:10: [Peter Ziebelman] There's still a lot of luck and perhaps intuition and guesswork to determine whether you're going to find a breakthrough or build a breakthrough. But having said that, we do believe there are elements that can tip the balance—inflections. Another element is seeing that the entrepreneur has insight, something they know to be true that others do not yet believe, and we believe insights are one of the things that explain a lot about startups.
Being a founder is like being an artist
52:34: [Mike Maples Jr.] A lot of people think about what type of business person is an entrepreneur. And what I've come to believe is that the right way to think about it is they're more like an artist than they are like an engineer, a salesperson, or anything else. [53:06] And by that, I mean two things. First of all, artists notice something that other people don't notice, right? And then the other thing that artists do is convince people to abandon their logic. And so, like, no rational employee would join a startup. No rational customer would buy from a startup. No rational investor would invest in a startup. [53:45] So the founder has to convince all of us to abandon logic and go on a journey where we're 85 percent likely to not succeed. And so the best founders I've ever met have those. Attributes of the artist, and they have the artistry to notice from their sensitivity, and they have the artistry to persuade and convince people. They have the artistry to notice from their sensitivity, and they have the artistry to persuade and convince people.
How does a founder balance persistence with openness to new data and insights?
21:06: [Mike Maples Jr.] If you have the right insight, when we talk about pivoting, your insight, like in basketball, is like your pivot foot. You hold it planted firm, and you move your body by either modifying your implementation, modifying the audience that you talk to, or some combination. But if you have to leave your pivot foot, you're no longer attached to anything as a startup, right? You might as well start over. You might as well try a new idea or just give up. And so that's where I think you reconcile it. You want to be flexible in your experimentation of navigating your insight to the desperate, but you want to be fixed about what you believe is different about the future.
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How does drawing from experiments and scientists on the fringes of science help all of science and strengthen the core? How does luck actually work? How did the early members of NASA treat scientists who made mistakes in the quest to reach the moon?
Richard Wiseman is a professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, a magician, performer, and the author of several books. Two of his latest titles are Moonshot: What Landing a Man on the Moon Teaches Us About Collaboration, Creativity, and the Mind-set for Success and Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives.
Greg and Richard discuss Richard's unique career path, his popular books, and how psychology can have real-world applications. The conversation delves into various topics such as the public's fascination with luck, the importance of empirical research, and the psychology behind the successful teamwork that achieved the Apollo moon landings.
Wiseman also shares insights from his background in magic and how it has influenced his understanding of human perception and deception. The episode highlights the need for applying psychological research to improve everyday life and the significant role of creativity and open-mindedness in both science and education.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Why conservative thinking limits scientific innovation
34:01: Organizations, I think, have become very conservative in terms of risk-taking, which is sort of sad for the next generation of students within science. I think we want to encourage people to be expansive thinkers, to have crazy ideas. Obviously, you need to find out whether they're true or not. But again, even within science, I think we're quite conservative. We want to encourage students to think in a certain way, to do science in a certain way, and so on. And I'm just rather pro the more maverick approach in some extent; the only students we have are those people that are good at passing exams. And I often think, I wonder what talent is out there that just happened to not be so good at passing exams—that maybe who have had creative, amazing ideas that would have changed the world, and they don't sit in our labs or in our universities because they're not the sort of people who want to sit in a hall and write something on a piece of paper.
Why is creativity important in science?
37:56: I'm so pro-creativity in science and getting people to think differently because that's where your good ideas are going to come from, and sometimes those people are not the ones that perform best in an exam hall. They're the ones who just want to get out there and change the world.
What magic taught Richard about psychology
50:47: Magic is incredibly important, and it shows you, fundamentally, that you can be very, very confident and very, very wrong. You know, when a magician shows you an empty box and makes something appear in it, the audience has to be 100 percent certain that there's nothing in that box. And they are 100 percent wrong because an object is going to appear in that box. So it should teach us a bit of humility as well.
How Quirkology was born from a disappointing psychology experience
21:06: Quirkology came about because psychology broke my heart a bit. People are astonishing—when you think of your friends, partners, and family, they're amazing, complex, and fun to talk about. They experience emotions, behave differently in crowds, do things that surprise you, do things that disappoint you, and so on. That kind of buzzy energy of humanity, which was the reason I got into psychology, I really just loved it. Then I'd open a psychology journal, and I just saw this dusty old paper that reduced that buzzing humanity to a number that wasn't very interesting, and I thought, there must be some interesting psychology out there; there has to be. And that was the path into quirkology, where it was all the quirky psychology that I love, some of which I've carried out myself.
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Are we a more addicted society now than ever before in history? And if that’s the case, is it because there are more things to be addicted to or has the thinking around addiction simply shifted in the last century?
David Courtwright is an emeritus professor of history at the University of North Florida. His books like, The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business and Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World examine the history and proliferation of drugs and addiction in society.
David and Greg discuss the expansion of addiction from substances like alcohol and hard drugs to today's digital vices such as gaming and social media, how “limbic capitalism” is perpetuated by not only the manufacturers of these products but governments as well, and the history of society’s quest for pleasure.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Is the rise in addictive behaviors more of a supply or demand phenomenon?
08:27: I try to tell the story of “The Age of Addiction" in the context of a larger, big history story of the quest for pleasure. Because that's where this really comes from. I mean, human beings have always been looking to expand their repertoire of pleasures. And nothing wrong with that. Life is hard. Life has been hard. Life was even harder for our distant ancestors. And so that people should discover brewing, that they should discover tobacco, that they should discover psychoactive plants, and that they should use those for both pleasure and ritual purposes—none of this is surprising. And, in fact, the first chapters of the book show how there was a kind of expansion, throughout time, in the pleasure resources that were available.
Addiction begins with exposure
46:57: Nobody becomes addicted to anything unless they're exposed to it. And exposure varies with social and cultural circumstance...[48:35] So, social circumstance is a key variable in determining exposure to potentially addictive products.
Are we living in the age of addiction?
44:22: Addiction is socially constructed. It's something that expands over time, but it turns out there is a biological foundation for this. I was initially skeptical. [02:11] And I started looking into it, and the question was basically, is this just hype, or is this real? And the more I looked into it, and the more I studied the neuroscience behind it and the economics and the sociology of it, I became convinced that, yes, we are living in an age of addiction. Addiction is becoming more conspicuous, more commonplace, and more varied.
Is there a historical parallel in American susceptibility to addiction, particularly with things like the internet?
45:38: Vices are more likely to flourish in what I call bachelor societies. So, if you have a bunch of young, unmarried men congregated in a place—whether it's an army camp, frontier mining town, or cattle ranch—their behavioral patterns are going to be very different from a male of the same age who's, say, living in a residential neighborhood, married, and has a family. I mean, the indulgence in vice—the likelihood of indulging in what contemporaries would have called vice, like consorting with prostitutes, getting drunk in a saloon, et cetera—is much higher for the people in the unsupervised, unparented, competitive masculine group.
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What factors influenced the development of early democracies, the role of technology in governance? Who came up with the concept of fairness in taxation, and the evolution of democratic institutions over time?
David Stasavage is in the department of Politics at New York University, and also the author of several books. His latest book is titled The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today.
Greg and David discuss the historical divergence between Europe and China in both economic and political terms. They explore themes such as the emergence of representative assemblies in Europe, the necessity of rulers to obtain consent and information, and the contrasting ability of Chinese rulers to tax without broad-based consent due to their developed bureaucratic systems.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Is democracy on the rise, or on the decline in today's world?
50:32: We're still in a position today, I think, where there's certainly a lot more people living under democracy than was the case in the early 19th century, right? And that's a very significant thing because, in the early 19th century, of course, we had sort of proto-democracies in some cases, and it then spread in Western Europe, but the rest of the world had been conquered by Europeans. And, pushed into having conqueror Europeans, colonizers weren't particularly eager in early stages to promote democratic institutions in areas that they colonized. In fact, sometimes they did away with indigenous democratic institutions. So that is why the book does say decline and then rise because, yes, there's some backtracking going on; it's serious, it's important, but there's been a pretty big rise all the same.
The more you expand democracy’s meaning, the less meaningful it becomes
26:59: The important thing to recognize about democracy is that the more you load on to the term, the less meaningful it becomes.
The ripple effect of a bond default
43:26: I think with today's economy, everybody recognizes that if you have a default—like, say, something on U.S. Treasuries—that's going to have massive, obviously massive, negative economic consequences. Whereas, if you think of England with those first few loans they issued in 1688, if they had been defaulted on, things wouldn't have been great in London, but it's not like there would have been some massive negative economic shock.
England's balancing act—bureaucracy and democracy
32:36: Chapter 9 of the book (The Decline and Rise of Democracy) is called "Why England Was Different," and different in the sense of having simultaneously pursued this sort of consensual route of governance, while also seeing over time a bureaucracy develop. So that today, when we think of democracy, we don't think in a modern democracy that bureaucracy is, I mean, apart from someone that wants to say, "Oh my God, we have to abolish the IRS because otherwise we'll be in, you know, a dictatorship," that we don't think of these two things as being opposites. We think, of course, we need a bureaucracy to run things because who else is going to do this on a daily basis in such a large republic?
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The fear of AI taking our jobs has been buzzing for years, but it’s not a new conversation. Technology has been shaking up industries and displacing workers since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
In this episode, Greg sits down with Carl Benedikt Frey, the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute, to dive deep into these shifts. As the Director of the Future of Work Programme and author of The Technology Trap, Frey sheds light on the historical and current impacts of automation, the Industrial Revolution, and the role of political power in technological progress.
Together, they explore who wins and loses in the AI era and what history can teach us about the future.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Will AI drive long-term productivity or just short-term automation?
46:21: If all that AI is about is automation, then the future of productivity simply depends on the potential scope of automation, so to speak, and that will then eventually peter off. Whereas if it's about creating new tasks, new products, and new innovations, then it can be more sustained, right? And I think that's a key reason that the second industrial revolution lasted for a very long period of time: it created a host of entirely new types of economic activities. And so I think a key question going forward is: can we design our institutions to help make sure that AI is more being used to create new activities? I think it's likely to have a much more sustained impact on productivity growth going forward.
Starting from the past to predict the future
03:07: If you want to say that the future is likely to be very different from the past, then at the very least, I think we should be able to state why. So I think history should always be our starting point.
On the race between technology and education
39:18: The race between technology and education is a world in which everybody is better off, right? That has not been the case. So we need to somehow modify that model of the world, and what we've seen since the 1980s, in particular across advanced economies, but also in some emerging economies, is labor market polarization and the decline of middle-income jobs, right? And so the race between technology and education and the view of technological change does not explain that part of the story, right? That's sort of the task-based view, and things like replacing versus enabling technologies do have some explanatory power.
Should we be thinking of this new revolution as being more like the first than the second?
44:22: I think it is more like the first industrial revolution. And I still think that I can't think of a single AI application that is not about automation or doing something that people are already doing a bit more productively, whether it's writing, coding, or image generation.
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