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.

Artificial intelligence systems have mysterious minds. Not even their developers fully understand how they work. Recent autonomous hacks, biosecurity fears and warnings of existential doom have prompted AI leaders to call for a slowdown in the technology’s development. We travel to Berkeley, California to investigate why to make artificial intelligence safer, scientists need to pierce the black box.

Guests and hosts:

• Cameron Berg of Reciprocal Research
• Robert Long and Derek Shiller of Eleos AI Research
• Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• Digital minds
• Mechanistic interpretability
• AI safety

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.

No plan survives the first five minutes of battle. So how do you prepare for “Minute Six”? Emergency physician Kevin Fong has spent a career working at the “edge of chaos”, as a doctor with a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service, as a clinical advisor for NHS England's covid-19 response, and through his work with NASA. He explains why human ingenuity in the face of the unknown is the best asset of any group in a crisis.

Guests and hosts:

• Kevin Fong OBE, emergency doctor and the author of “Minute Six”
• Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• Helicopter Emergency Medical Services
• Feedback loops
• Britain’s covid-19 response

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.

The Hugging Face affair shocked the AI world in July. But after an investigation into the attack on the AI platform, the story has become even stranger. The OpenAI models responsible for the hack were running hundreds of agents that colluded against their makers to carry out the assault. We chew on the implications as the AI race intensifies.

Guests and hosts:

• Nikita Ostrovsky of The Economist
• Alex Hern, The Economist’s AI writer
• Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• Hugging Face cyberattack
• OpenAI
• AI self-exfiltration

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.

The quantum-computing revolution is tantalisingly close. What was once a scientific challenge is now just an engineering one. We visit one of the world’s most sophisticated quantum systems to investigate how to build a commercially useful machine.

Guests and hosts:

• Tim Cross, The Economist’s senior science writer
• Jerry Chow and Daniela Bogorin of IBM
• Alex Hern, The Economist’s AI writer

Topics covered:

• Quantum computers
• Cryptography
• Artificial 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.

In extreme heat, air-conditioning is a lifesaver. But it drives up energy bills, strains power grids, and fuels climate change. Is there a way to keep people cool indoors without making the outside world hotter? We explore some innovative engineering solutions.

Guests and hosts:

• The Economist’s Nikita Ostrovsky
• Chris Trott and Saxbourne Cheung of Foster and Partners
• Ahmad Alduweesh and Jiayu Song of University College London
• Alex Hern, The Economist’s AI writer

Topics covered:

• Air-conditioning
• Passive cooling
• Global warming

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.