The Power to Shape AI
The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Nathaniel Whittemore
4.7 • 763 Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
AI capabilities are compounding, disruption is rolling through markets and politics, and a growing chorus wants you to believe the only response is fear. But the narrative of learned helplessness — from scary ad campaigns with no policy ideas to moratoriums that miss the point — is more dangerous than the disruption itself, and the window to shape what AI becomes is still wide open.
Ethan Mollick's Essay: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-shape-of-the-thing
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today on the AI Daily Brief, the power we have to shape AI. |
| 0:05.2 | The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. |
| 0:18.1 | All right, friends, quick announcements before we dive in. |
| 0:20.7 | First of all, thank you to today's sponsors, KPMG, robots and pencils, Blitzy, and AIUC. |
| 0:26.1 | To get an ad-free version of the show, go to patreon.com slash AI Daily Brief, or you can subscribe |
| 0:30.4 | at Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:31.9 | If you are interested in sponsoring the show or really learning anything about the show, you can find |
| 0:36.3 | it all at AIDilybrief.aI. |
| 0:39.2 | While you are there, I suggest you check out the newsletter, which is back. It's pretty simple. |
| 0:44.0 | We talk about a lot of stories and share a lot of links. And as great as a podcast is for in-depth |
| 0:48.1 | exploration, it is not so good for sharing the actual links themselves, and that is what the |
| 0:52.4 | newsletter is for. Again, you can find that at AIDilybrief.aI.com. Now, we are back with a weekend episode, and as you guys know, |
| 1:01.2 | weekend episodes are long reads slash big think episodes. There are a chance for us to zoom out a little bit, |
| 1:07.3 | get away from the grind of daily news announcements, and try to think about things a bit holistically. |
| 1:12.2 | Recently, there have been more Big Think than Long Reads episodes, but today we get to do both |
| 1:16.5 | because Professor Ethan Mollick has dropped his latest essay, The Shape of the Thing. |
| 1:21.1 | So what we're going to do is read some big chunks of that, and actually an earlier essay of |
| 1:24.6 | his as well, and then talk about what I think the big thesis is, |
| 1:28.1 | which is the power to shape AI. Ethan writes, |
| 1:31.5 | In October of 2023, I wrote about the shape of the shadow of the thing, speculating |
| 1:36.7 | on the thing that AI might turn into in the coming years. I think we can see the thing |
| 1:40.9 | much more clearly now and some of the consequences that come with it. |
... |
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