Welcome to Exponential View, the show where I explore how exponential technologies such as AI are reshaping our future. I've been studying AI and exponential technologies at the frontier for over ten years.

Each week, I share some of my analysis or speak with an expert guest to make light of a particular topic.

To keep up with the Exponential transition, subscribe to this channel or to my newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

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In this episode, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and I discuss how a strong US economy, high asset valuations, and rapid AI adoption are sitting in uneasy tension. We explore what past technology cycles can teach us, why safety nets struggle to address disruption, and where genuine optimism still makes sense.

This is a January 2025 rerun, which remains strikingly relevant today.

We covered:

(01:09) State of the US economy

(02:28) "That end of 1999 feeling"

(05:08) Insights and lessons from the dotcom bubble

(09:57) Why today's market is different

(13:44) Understanding AI's role in labor displacement

(16:05) Are LLMs "souped-up autocorrect"?

(20:14) How job displacement erodes communities

(23:40) 2025's looming threat of tariffs

(26:16) AI's surprising impact on globalization

(30:15) Can markets address inequality?

(33:06) The maximum level of sustainable national debt

(36:31) When should the Fed raise interest rates?

(38:57) The need to revitalize local economies

(44:53) Did Paul's 2025 predictions come true?

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Where to find me:

Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar/

Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1

Production and research: Chantal Smith and Marija Gavrilov.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Exponential View, the show where I explore how exponential technologies such as AI are reshaping our future. I've been studying AI and exponential technologies at the frontier for over ten years. Each week, I share some of my analysis or speak with an expert guest to make light of a particular topic.

To keep up with the Exponential transition, subscribe to this channel or to my newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

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What made 2025 special?

In this episode, I reflect on the past year and what it revealed: a K-shaped divide. On one track, AI models are now doing hours of high quality work, improving at exponential pace, and shifting how we work from doing to judging. On the other, organisations and the broader economy are struggling to keep up. Stay to the end for my seasonal film recommendation.

I cover:

(00:00) Intro

(00:45) The state of tool usage in 2025

(6:10) The gap between AI progress and organizational adoption

(9:53) AI’s shockingly rapid revenue growth

(11:17) The biggest mistake smart people make with AI

(14:14)  The inescapable need for physical infrastructure

(16:06) What everyone was asking in 2025

(18:08) The new winners of the AI economy

(20:48) Why “K” is the letter of 2025

(24:08) Seasonal movie recommendation

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Where to find me:

Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar/

Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1

Production and research: Chantal Smith and Marija Gavrilov.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Exponential View, the show where I explore how exponential technologies such as AI are reshaping our future. I've been studying AI and exponential technologies at the frontier for over ten years. Each week, I share some of my analysis or speak with an expert guest to make light of a particular topic. To keep up with the Exponential transition, subscribe to this channel or to my newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

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In this episode, I’ve distilled a year of extraordinary dialogue into one 20-minute briefing. I’ve spent 2025 in conversation with the architects of our future - the builders and thinkers redefining AI, energy, and the global economy.

These are the "eureka" moments from my most exclusive interviews. From the future of "protopia" with Kevin Kelly to the hidden tech gaps with Dan Wang, this is your strategic roadmap for the exponential age.

What you'll hear about:

Part 1: AI as a general purpose tech

• Kevin Weil: The heuristic for startups
• Matthew Prince: The “Socialist” pricing debate
• Tyler Cowen: This will stifle the AI boom
• Nick Thompson: The "NBA-ification" of Journalism
• Kevin Kelly: From utopia to protopia
• Kevin Kelly: Technology as a "possibility factory”

Part 2: How work is changing

• Steve Hsu: The future of education
• Thomas Dohmke: The inspectability turning point
• Ben Zweig: The new role for entry-level workers
• Ben Zweig: Why are there so many hiring freezes?
• Ben Zweig: The eroding signal of higher education

Part 3: The physical world, compute, and energy

• Greg Jackson: The "crossing the road" metaphor
• Greg Jackson: Building a “show don’t tell” company
• Dan Wang, The "physical reality" of AI
• Part 4: The changing US China landscape
• Dan Wang: The West’s hidden tech gap
• Jordan Schneider: The two types of accelerationism
• Jordan Schneider: Why the US can learn from China

Where to find me:

Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar/

Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1

Production and research: Chantal Smith, Marija Gavrilov and Hannah Petrovic

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Exponential View, the show where I explore how exponential technologies such as AI are reshaping our future. I've been studying AI and exponential technologies at the frontier for over ten years. Each week, I share some of my analysis or speak with an expert guest to make light of a particular topic. To keep up with the Exponential transition, subscribe to this channel or to my newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

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In this episode, I look at the next 24 months of AI. The technology is improving rapidly – so what could hold back widespread transformation of how we work and live? I dig into the real constraints, from electricity shortages to institutional inertia, why mid-2026 matters for enterprise AI, and why so many people remain uneasy about a technology they use every day.

I cover:

(00:03) Predicting AI's next two years

(01:50) How life changing are chatbots, really?

(03:36) Our current biggest AI constraint

(07:58) The remarkable increase in token efficiency

(10:43) Why mid-2026 is a crucial turning point

(13:01) Do we actually want AI in our lives?

(15:28) Should organizations wait to jump in?

(16:39) How is OpenAI reckoning with Gemini?

(18:41) The market's reaction to OpenAI's code red

(19:32) Where will value accrue in the supply chain?

(20:51) What's the best strategy for middling powers?

Where to find me:

Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar/

Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1

Production and research: Chantal Smith and Marija Gavrilov.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Exponential View, the show where I explore how exponential technologies such as AI are reshaping our future. I've been studying AI and exponential technologies at the frontier for over ten years.

Each week, I share some of my analysis or speak with an expert guest to make light of a particular topic.

To keep up with the Exponential transition, subscribe to this podcast or to my newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

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In this episode, I reflect on the third anniversary of ChatGPT's launch as a marker of where we are in the exponential age. As a product, ChatGPT captures the speed of technological progress, the new behaviours emerging around it and the widening gap between innovation and institutional change – all symptomatic of the era I called the exponential age in my 2021 book.

I cover:

(00:09) How ChatGPT became synonymous with AI

(01:41) The rise of the reasoning model

(03:53) Why NVIDIA's chip cycle is exponential

(05:53) How general-purpose tech changes everything

(07:59) The subtle power of building bespoke software

(11:46) The iPhone calculation that breaks everything

(14:53) Who profits from a general-purpose technology?

(16:38) The software market example

(20:07) Are we headed towards another .com crash?

Where to find me:

Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/

LinkedIn: /azhar

Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1

Production and research: Chantal Smith and Marija Gavrilov.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The AI industry is sending mixed signals, with markets turning red while teams report real productivity gains. In this session I explore why we are living in a split reality, where individuals move faster with these tools but the wider economy is ambivalent. We once assumed juniors would get the biggest lift from AI, yet the newer agentic tools seem to reward senior workers who know how to structure problems and judge output.

In this podcast, I look at the evidence behind that shift and explain how these gains collide with the slow grind of organisational processes.

I cover:

(00:00) AI productivity: A split reality

(00:31) Decoding the stock market drop

(02:53) Unpacking three years of AI productivity data

(06:09) Does AI help junior or senior developers more?

(09:54) The surprising group benefitting from AI

(11:45) Why is there a productivity gap?

(13:08) Most companies need a process overhaul

(14:33) Anthropic's alarming discovery

(16:45) So, are we moving quickly enough?

(17:29) The counterintuitive truth about AI productivity

Where to find me:

- Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

- Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/ -

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar

- Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1

Production and research: Chantal Smith, Hannah Petrovic and Marija Gavrilov.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Junior roles in AI-exposed fields are disappearing fast.

The obvious culprit is AI rapidly automating entry-level jobs. And yet, this isn't quite right. What is driving the drop is managers’ expectations about what AI will do, not the work that it's already replacing.

I discussed this with Ben Zweig of Revelio Labs, which builds global workforce data from millions of individual profiles to track hiring, separations and job flows. Their data shows how expectation and uncertainty are reshaping the market.

Together, we explored the future of work and shared practical advice for new grads.

We covered:

(01:15) What's happening in the labor market?

(05:27) The inherent complexity of the labor market

(06:24) How Revelio Labs captures labor market data

(08:39) "The Canary in the Coal Mine"

(11:52) Who does AI exposure harm the most?

(13:01) How AI anticipation is harming the job market

(15:15) Testing the expectation mismatch hypothesis

(17:30) Could AI be creating more jobs?

(20:44) Breaking down jobs into smaller tasks

(27:33) Why large companies struggle to reorganize

(30:35) Focus on creating adaptive, flexible roles

(36:03) Managing AI's increasing capability

(39:11) What entry-level workers need to do

Where to find me:

- Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

- Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar

- Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Where to find Ben:

- https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-zweig/

- Twitter/X: https://x.com/BJZweig

- Revelio Labs: https://www.reveliolabs.com/

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1

Production and research: Chantal Smith, Hannah Petrovic and Marija Gavrilov.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The AI boom isn’t just about chatbots.

In this video, I explain why cloud companies and chipmakers are exploding in value: we’re moving into an economy where computation becomes a fundamental input – like steel, electricity or oil.

If that’s true, our demand for compute could approach infinity.

I also break down new data from Wharton’s 2025 AI Adoption Report, which shows how AI agents and automated workflows are already spreading through major U.S. companies: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/special-report/2025-ai-adoption-report/

Timestamps:

(00:00) The economic shift to computation (00:40) The surprising Cloud business boom (02:52) Is the hardware industry growth a bubble? (03:18) What is computing, really? (04:31) Our insatiable appetite for computing (09:15) Our economic dependence on computation (10:54) The rise of agentic workforces (13:05) What does infinite demand actually mean? (15:23) The future of compute demand

Where to find me:

• Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/
• Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar
• Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1

Production and research: Chantal Smith, Hannah Petrovic and Marija Gavrilov.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.