How progress ends: the fate of nations, with Carl Benedikt Frey

Many people expect improvements in technology over the next few years, but fewer people are optimistic about improvements in the economy. Especially in Europe, there’s a narrative that productivity has stalled, that the welfare state is over-stretched, and that the regions of the world where innovation will be rewarded are the US and China – although there are lots of disagreements about which of these two countries will gain the upper hand.

To discuss these topics, our guest in this episode is Carl Benedikt Frey, the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute. Carl is also a Fellow at Mansfield College, University of Oxford, and is Director of the Future of Work Programme and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School.

Carl’s new book has the ominous title, “How Progress Ends”. The subtitle is “Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations”. A central premise of the book is that our ability to think clearly about the possibilities for progress and stagnation today is enhanced by looking backward at the rise and fall of nations around the globe over the past thousand years. The book contains fascinating analyses of how countries at various times made significant progress, and at other times stagnated. The book also considers what we might deduce about the possible futures of different economies worldwide.

Selected follow-ups:

• Professor Carl-Benedikt Frey - Oxford Martin School
• How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations - Princeton University Press
• Stop Acting Like This Is Normal - Ezra Klein ("Stop Funding Trump’s Takeover")
• OpenAI o3 Breakthrough High Score on ARC-AGI-Pub
• A Human Amateur Beat a Top Go-Playing AI Using a Simple Trick - Vice
• The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? - Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne
• Europe's Choice: Policies for Growth and Resilience - Alfred Kammer, IMF
• MIT Radiation Laboratory ("Rad Lab")

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration