Welcome to the Quillette Podcast, which is usually hosted on alternate weeks by me, Jonathan Kay, and by Iona Italia. Quillette is where free thought lives. We are an independent, grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

And this week, I’ve got my second interview from the TED Conference in Vancouver, which I covered last month for Quillette. Two weeks ago, some of you may recall, we ran my interview with Lenore Skenazy, who went straight from her well-received TED speech on free-range parenting to the on-location Quillette podcast studio at the Vancouver Convention Centre. This week, it’s Washington Post columnist Meghan McCardle, whose April 9 TED speech dealt with her anxieties and her hopes for Artificial Intelligence.

As McCardle sees it, AI presents humanity with the same kind of cataclysm that spawned England’s 19th-century Luddite movement, which opposed the use of automated processes to manufacture textiles, since this would result in mass unemployment among textile workers. Today, of course, those textile jobs are long gone in most countries. And now, in a similar development, AI is going to inflict the same obsolescence on millions of white-collar workers who produce spreadsheets, workplace memoranda, and even journalism.

McCardle’s message is optimistic, however. While the automation of the textile industry produced short-term pain in the labour market, industrialisation produced massive benefits for mankind in the long run; and she’s confident that AI will have the same effect. Moreover, she envisions a future in which other, perhaps currently unforeseen, benefits will arise from the forced dismantling of many white collar professional cultures. People will be able to spend more time with their families, and find employment in areas that AI can’t master—such as providing real human connection. Please enjoy my April 9 interview with Washington Post columnist and TED talker Meghan McCardle.

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