Hi, I'm Monica Nicholsberg, co-host of KUOW's economy podcast, Booming.

Microsoft President Brad Smith's favorite catchphrase of the moment is,

AI is the electricity of our age.

The next great general purpose technology.

So what does that mean for all of us?

On the latest episode, I spoke with a tech historian to find out what lessons we can learn from the last time a truly revolutionary technology took over the world.

Listen to booming on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, good morning. I'm Patricia Murphy. It's Wednesday. This is Seattle now.

Mercifully, the Pacific Northwest has escaped the heat dome, blanketing a large portion of the eastern U.S.

The temperature may remind you of Western Washington in June 2021. The oppressive heat set

records across the region. A new lawsuit claims the world's largest oil companies are

to blame for the blistering temperatures and the death of at least one woman. We'll learn more in a

minute, but first, let's get you caught up. If you're in the Capitol Hill neighborhood today,

you might see a picket outside Seattle Central College.

Workers are protesting the college's plan to lay off two dozen employees and furlough others.

The affected workers are represented by the Washington Federation of State Employees, which is organizing the picket.

It begins at noon on the corner of Broadway and

Pine. We've been talking a lot about AI on the show this week, and here's something new. Seattle

area businesses are relatively upbeat about the future of artificial intelligence, according to a

new survey from UMQA Bank. More than half of small and mid-sized local businesses

think AI will cause them to add jobs over the next year. The Fugetown Business Journal reports

that just 7% of survey respondents expected to lose jobs because of AI. For the survey, the bank

...