How Superintelligent AI Could Upend Work and Politics

Plain English with Derek Thompson

The Ringer

News Commentary, News

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Many AI experts believe that some time in the next few years, we will build something close to artificial general intelligence (AGI), a system that can do nearly all valuable cognitive work as well as or better than humans. What happens to jobs, wages, prices, and politics in that world? To explore that question, Derek is joined by Anton Korinek, an economist at the University of Virginia and one of the leading thinkers on the economics of transformative AI. Before he focused on superintelligence, Anton studied financial crises and speculative booms, so he brings a rare mix of macroeconomic skepticism and technological optimism. They talk about quiet AGI versus loud AGI, Baumol’s cost disease, robots, mass unemployment, and what kinds of policies might prevent an “AGI Great Depression” and keep no American left behind. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Anton Korinek Producers: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's up? It's Todd McShay, host of the McShay Show at the Ringer and Spotify.
0:04.7	We're building this thing up and I couldn't be more excited to be back talking college football
0:09.6	and everything NFL draft with the most informed audience out there. That's you.
0:15.1	My co-host, Steve Mention, I will be with you three times a week throughout the football season
0:19.8	with all the latest news, analysis,
0:22.0	and scouting intel from around the league. For even more insight, subscribe to my newsletter,
0:27.8	the McShea report to access my mock drafts, big boards, tape breakdowns, and other exclusive
0:34.0	scouting content you can't get anywhere else.
0:39.2	It's going to be a great season.
0:43.2	And I hope you'll be with us at the McShay show every step of the way.
0:45.5	Today, AGI.
0:52.3	Last week, I started to watch the new adaptation of Frankenstein on Netflix.
0:57.0	It is beautiful and lush and completely over the top,
1:01.7	which I think is mostly par for the course for director Guillermo del Toro. But this is not a movie review. There's something about the story of Frankenstein that seems to compel every generation
1:07.7	to stage its own version. This is true going back to the beginning.
1:11.7	When the original book came out in 1818 by Mary Shelley,
1:15.7	it was a minor sensation with highly mixed reviews.
1:19.3	It wasn't until five years later in 1823
1:21.9	when a theatrical adaptation at the English Opera House in the West End
1:26.0	was a huge hit, that Mary Shelley became
1:28.8	famous and the book went into its second printing, its second of approximately infinity
1:34.0	printings. To date, Frankenstein has been the subject of more than 400 movies, 200 short
	...

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