About this episode
A.I. agents are here. Have they changed your life yet? The release of agents like Claude Code marked a new pivot point in the history of A.I. We are leaving the chatbot era and entering the agentic era — where A.I. is capable of completing all kinds of tasks on its own, and even collaborating and communicating with other A.I.
It isn’t clear yet whether these models actually make their users meaningfully more productive. But the technology is continuing to improve; there are few signs that it is close to plateauing. So what might this new era mean for our economy, our labor market and our kids?
Clark is a co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind Claude and Claude Code. His newsletter, Import AI, has been one of my go-to reads to track the capabilities of different models over the years. In this conversation, I ask him to share how he sees this moment — how the technology is changing, whether it is leading to meaningful changes in how we work and think, and how policy needs to or can change in response to any job displacement on the horizon.
Mentioned:
“Import AI” by Jack Clark
“2026: This is AGI” by Pat Grady and Sonya Huang
“Why and How Governments Should Monitor AI Development” by Jess Whittlestone and Jack Clark
“Anthropic’s Chief on A.I.: ‘We Don’t Know if the Models Are Conscious’", Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Book Recommendations:
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
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