Episode 2315: Andrew McAfee finds reasons to be cheerful about the next 20 years of our tech century

This is the last and amongst the liveliest of my interviews at Munich’s DLD Conference this year. An old friend who has appeared on KEEN ON several times before, Andrew McAfee is a MIT professor who co-wrote the 2014 classic The Second Machine Age. In our conversation, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the DLD Conference, McAfee reflects on the technological changes of the past 20 years,. He acknowledges that while he accurately predicted the broad trajectory of technological advancement, he underestimated AI's capabilities in areas like language processing and creative tasks. McAfee discusses the emergence of deep learning around 2012 and its evolution into today's generative AI. While maintaining overall optimism about technology's impact, he expresses concern about increasing social polarization and anxiety, particularly related to social media use, though he notes these trends actually preceded current technology. On economic matters, McAfee challenges the notion that tech innovation is stagnating, pointing to newcomers like Nvidia and OpenAI as evidence of continued inventive dynamism. He discusses Europe's technological lag behind the United States, citing regulatory challenges like GDPR as potential factors. Regarding climate change, McAfee believes technological solutions, particularly nuclear fusion, could address environmental challenges, though he acknowledges the severity of the crisis. He concludes by warning how traditional companies must adapt to survive in an era of rapid technological change, particularly facing competition from more agile, tech-savvy competitors.

Andrew McAfee (@amcafee) is a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-founder and co-director of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, and the inaugural Visiting Fellow at the Technology and Society organization at Google. He studies how technological progress changes the world. His next book, The Geek Way, will be published by Little, Brown in 2023. His previous books include More from Less and, with Erik Brynjolfsson, The Second Machine Age. McAfee has written for publications including Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. He's talked about his work on CNN and 60 Minutes, at the World Economic Forum, TED, and the Aspen Ideas Festival, with Tom Friedman and Fareed Zakaria, and in front of many international and domestic audiences. He’s also advised many of the world’s largest corporations and organizations ranging from the IMF to the Boston Red Sox to the US Intelligence Community. McAfee and his frequent coauthor Erik Brynjolfsson are othe nly people named to both the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top management thinkers and the Politico 50 group of people transforming American politics.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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