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Into the Impossible With Brian KeatingA podcast of science stories, ideas, and speculations. Hosted by Professor Brian Keating Author: Big Bang Productions Inc.
Think like a physicist. Wonder like a human. Into the Impossible is where Cosmic Conversations happen uniting Nobel Prize winners, iconoclasts, authors, and technologists to explore realitys deepest questions. From AI to aliens, from biophysics to the brain, from the cosmos to the multiverse, Brian Keating, Chancellors Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego covers it all. If youve ever asked Whats out there? or Whats next?, this is where curiosity meets clarity. Learn to think like this. Full episodes, notes & more: briankeating.com/podcast Language: en Genres: Natural Sciences, Physics, Science Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Wharton AI Researcher: If AI Froze Today, It Would Still Rewrite Work
Tuesday, 20 October, 2026
Forecasters gave AI under 2% odds of helping solve a millennium-level math problem by September 2026. It happened. Ethan Mollick has been measuring what AI actually does to real work with field experiments, not forecasts, and his answer is not what most people expect. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Mollick runs the Generative AI Lab at Wharton. He is the author of Co-Intelligence and Coexistence, his new book on navigating a world where AI tools are already good enough to change almost all intellectual work, even if progress stopped today. The conversation covers the jagged frontier: why AI solved a math olympiad before it could count the Rs in strawberry, what it means that roles blur when everyone on a team starts using AI, and what four human advantages still hold an edge when a model can already write a publishable paper. It also covers what happens when your kids tell you that you sound like Claude. What you’ll hear: What centaur, cyborg, and conjurer work actually look like in a real academic lab Why brainstorming was considered a bad idea shortly after it was invented and what that means for working with AI Why Mollick reduced em dashes in his new book and what that tells you about living alongside these models What co-evolution might look like if the escalator keeps moving “If we just had the models we have right now, that’s enough to change almost all of human work in the next ten years. It’s good enough.” — Ethan Mollick CHAPTERS 00:00 AI writes good papers now. Taste is the weak spot. 03:14 The jagged frontier: math olympiad gold, but not the Rs in strawberry 06:30 Deep knowledge, wide knowledge, taste, and agency 09:44 Escalator or eschaton? 16:02 Does AI simulate wisdom or actually have it? 23:46 The labs keep AI in English. Here is why. 32:28 Roles blur. Everyone does everything now. 36:42 My kids say I sound like Claude. They might be right. 38:12 AI found errors in his sources that his fact-checkers missed 46:34 What to do before giving a child access to AI Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt Enter the debate: https://briankeating.com/ai Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Featured Guest: Ethan Mollick on Twitter/X: https://x.com/emollick?lang=en Coexistence (book and site): https://co-existence.ai/ One Useful Thing (Substack): https://www.oneusefulthing.org/ My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://urlgeni.us/amzn/TLANPW Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #EthanMollick #AI #artificialintelligence #AItools #briankeating #intotheimpossible #AIagents Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
