Will AI destroy humanity? Amid doom-laden debates on the trajectory of the technology, our guest has a refreshingly optimistic perspective. Andrew Ng is the co-founder of Google Brain and one of the architects of modern AI. Unlike many of the other AI heavyweights, however, he doesn’t think the technology poses the existential threat to humans that everyone else is warning about. What makes him so positive?

Guests and hosts:

• Alex Hern, AI writer at The Economist
• Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Brain, Coursera and LearnVector
• Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Watch Alex’s full interview with Andrew Ng on The Economist’s “Inside Tech”.

Topics covered:

• AI existential risk
• AI jobs apocalypse
• Artificial general intelligence

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to The Economist.

Six more scientists have joined the esteemed ranks of Nobel laureates this week. Their work spanned optogenetics, neutrino detection and mirror-image molecules. How will their discoveries change the world?

Guests and hosts:

• Geoff Carr, senior editor for science and technology at The Economist
• Sam Wikeley, The Economist’s science correspondent
• Nikita Ostrovsky, science and tech writer at The Economist
• Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• Optogenetics
• Neutrino astronomy
• Life’s asymmetry

For more, listen to our September 2025 episode, “JUNO: the hunt for the universe’s most elusive particles”.

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to The Economist.

Can something be moving and stationary at the same time? If you’re sitting still, you’re stationary with respect to the Earth, but moving relative to the Sun and galaxy. That insight led the physicist Carlo Rovelli to argue that no quantity—speed, position or energy—is absolute; all quantities are fundamentally relational. Dr Rovelli’s ideas not only challenge the hunt for a “theory of everything” in physics, but he has also extended them to the most pressing issues in global diplomacy and even human survival.

Guests and hosts:

• Carlo Rovelli of the Centre de Physique Théorique in Marseille and author of “On the Equality of All Things” and “85 Seconds to Midnight”
• Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• Relational physics
• Philosophy of science
• Nuclear weapons

For more on the physics and physicists behind nuclear weapons, listen to Babbage’s four-part series “The Bomb”, released in August 2025.

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to The Economist.