Fired alarm: AI hype versus labour-market history
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Perhaps the AI “boomers” are right about a sweeping labour-market revolution. But a careful look at history shows just how unprecedented their bullish scenarios would be. Africa’s bounty of minerals has drawn tremendous recent interest; will the continent see the benefits this time around? And our World Cup profile series continues with a look at Japan’s squad.
Guests and host:
- Callum Williams, senior economics writer
- John McDermott, chief Africa correspondent
- Jon Fasman, senior culture correspondent
- Rosie Blau, co-host of “The Intelligence”
- Jason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”
Topics covered:
- AI, labour market, economics, history
- Africa, critical minerals, investment, development
- World Cup, Japan
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist |
| 0:02.0 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:12.0 | I'm Jason Palmer and I'm Rosie Bloor. |
| 0:15.0 | Today on the show, why the scramble for Africa's minerals might be different this time, |
| 0:24.0 | and the latest in our World Cup contender profiles. |
| 0:31.6 | First up, though. |
| 0:48.6 | Thank you. First up, though, Here's one definite thing that AI is affecting among American workers, the mood. |
| 0:55.1 | The average person believes they've got about a one-in-five chance of losing their job in the next five years. |
| 1:02.4 | Another poll found a similar fraction thinks that AI is very or somewhat likely to replace them in that same time. |
| 1:07.6 | Who can blame these pessimists? That's what the big shots of AI are telling them. |
| 1:14.0 | Dario Amadeh, the boss of Anthropic, says AI could push unemployment as high as that same one in five fraction. |
| 1:15.7 | Yes, people will adapt, but they may not adapt fast enough. |
| 1:19.9 | And so they're, you know, there's Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and general techie |
| 1:24.5 | Bellwether, casually telling a nightly talk show that fraction will be higher still. |
| 1:29.4 | I mean, will we still need humans? |
| 1:31.6 | Not for most things. |
| 1:34.1 | Okay, okay, we need to calm this down. |
| 1:36.8 | Let's talk about what could happen, not will, and let's give it some historical context. |
| 1:43.1 | Advances in AI could totally reshape the global labor market. |
| 1:49.5 | It could theoretically result in millions of people being put out of work. |
| 1:56.1 | No one really knows what's going to happen. |
| 2:00.3 | Callum Williams is our senior economics writer and San Francisco Bureau Chief. |
... |
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