S3 E1 Fat layer of humans
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How should employees and bosses be using the technology right now? And how should all of us prepare for the future?
Andrew Palmer returns for a third season of Boss Class. This time it’s all about AI. In the first episode, he starts introducing AI into his daily work routines, and receives a nasty shock.
Guests
Tom Blomfield, Partner at Y Combinator
Ethan Mollick, Professor at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Ludwig Siegele, AI Editorial Lead, The Economist
Ruth Berry, AI engineer, The Economist
Topics
Generative AI at work
To listen to the full series, subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.
If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.
In this episode, Andrew asks Claude, a generative AI programme, to write his management column for him. You can find Andrew’s column here and Claude’s version here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Economist. |
| 0:07.0 | Hi, who is this? Who am I talking to? |
| 0:09.5 | Hello, I'm Andrew Palmer, a senior writer at The Economist and the host of the Boss |
| 0:13.5 | class podcast. Hello, Andrew. This is totally weird. This is totally weird. I'm Andrew Palmer, senior writer at The Economist and host of the |
| 0:24.8 | boss class podcast. That is my digital clone. It's been trained on my writing and my voice |
| 0:31.7 | to answer questions about management and the world of work. According to my Bartleby column, |
| 0:40.9 | the workplace day by day is a theatre of mild agitation. |
| 0:46.0 | I wrote that suspense can come from the smallest things like entering and exiting meetings or presenting when the clicker doesn't work. |
| 0:48.1 | It's a bit of an Andrew-only Google search. |
| 0:50.2 | Yes. |
| 0:50.6 | It only has a knowledge base of what you've written or spoken. |
| 0:53.8 | Ruth Berry created this monster. |
| 0:56.8 | She's a colleague here at The Economist |
| 0:58.5 | and is part of an internal team experimenting with artificial intelligence. |
| 1:04.0 | How long has it taken you to do this? |
| 1:05.6 | This was an afternoon. |
| 1:07.2 | Right, okay. Very fast. |
| 1:08.9 | Yes. |
| 1:09.4 | Okay. |
| 1:10.4 | To make the clone, Ruth uploaded dozens of my columns into chat GPT and then hooked it up to an AI-powered voice generator, which have been trained on recordings of me. |
| 1:22.5 | Thanks to this podcast, there are quite a few of those. |
| 1:25.3 | This is what makes you a very good subject. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Economist, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Economist and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.