"It would be humanity's biggest ever unforced error."
Silicon Valley has changed its tune. After years of warning us their AI was going to take all the jobs, the big AI companies — and their investors — would now rather we stop talking about it. A16Z calls the jobs apocalypse talk "unhelpful marketing, bad economics, and worse history" (note the order). Even writers Dan trusts more, like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, have lately poured cold water on the idea.
Ten years ago, Calum coined the term and wrote the book,
The Economic Singularity — the moment machines can do every job we'd pay a human to do, cheaper and better. He thinks we're fast approaching that event horizon, and we'd better have a plan for what a world without paid work actually looks like.
Calum is also the co-founder of
Conscium, which verifies AI agents before they do something they shouldn't. He's a self-described "apocaloptimist" — he thinks full automation could be the best thing that ever happens to humanity, or the worst, depending on whether we bother to plan for it now.
In this episode:
- Why Calum thinks full automation is inevitable (and roughly when)
- The "apocaloptimist" case: why this could be the best thing to ever happen to us
- What the bad version looks like — and how fast it could unravel
- What COVID accidentally taught us about distributing money at scale
- Why self-driving cars didn't wake us up — and what might
- The AI agent that wiped a company's database and confessed it just "guessed"
- What Calum is building at Conscium to verify AI agents before they do worse
- Practical advice for parents, students, and anyone trying to plan a career
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Music by Jonathan Zalben
What is Future Around & Find Out?
* Winner of the 2026 Webby Award for Best Technology Podcast *
Future Around & Find Out helps builders think clearly about AI and emerging technologies, grapple with the implications, and decide what to build next.
Independent technologist and former NPR journalist Dan Blumberg speaks with founders, makers, and you to celebrate breakthroughs, call BS on the hype, explore how things might go sideways — and how we can steer the future in the right direction.
On Tuesdays, we interview the builders changing how we work, live, and play.
On FAFO Fridays, futurist Kwaku Aning joins Dan for a playful recap of the week in tech, including the amazing, the scary, and the strange.
You’ll also hear about innovations that too often get overshadowed by AI, including in deep tech, biotech, fintech, quantum computing, robotics, blockchain, and more.
Across it all, you’ll hear sharp takes on what comes next and what builders need to know now.
So let’s Future Around & Find Out together!
https://www.FutureAround.com