The Indicator from Planet Money - Will AI take my job? Ask an economist!

Episode Date: October 18, 2026

Is AI coming for our jobs? Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei believes AI could wipe out many white-collar jobs in the next few years. While Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argues AI will reshape existing roles and create even more jobs than we have now. So which future are we really facing: a job-pocalypse or a jobs transformation?For answers, join The Indicator's Adrian Ma for "Ask An Economist.” This is a virtual event and live Q&A featuring two economists who've studied this issue: Daron Acemoglu, a Nobel Prize-winning professor at MIT, and Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at Stanford and director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. We’ll also invite you to ask questions and share your thoughts!It's Wednesday, October 28th, at 3:00pm ET, noon PT. This is a Zoom event exclusively for NPR+ and other qualifying supporters. For registration and event details, you can listen to this audio message or check out npr.org/askaneconomist.  Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, everyone. It is Adrian Ma dropping in on the weekend to tell you about something I'm pretty excited about. It's a special virtual event that we're calling Ask an Economist. It's a live Q&A over Zoom where you, our audience, get to pose your burning questions to economists about hot topics in the news. For example, a couple of months ago, we did our first one of these that was all about the housing market. And not to toot our own horn or anything, but the audience afterwards told us they loved it. They loved being able to share and ask questions, tell some of their own anecdotes, and learned a ton. They said, you should do this more often. Well, wish granted.

At the end of this month, October 28th, 3 p.m. Eastern, noon Pacific, will be doing another Ask an Economist. And this time, the topic will be AI and the job market. So is AI coming for our jobs? Will it lead to a hollowing out of the workforce? or could the advances it brings actually create more jobs? To help us answer these questions, we've lined up two economists as guests whose work is shaping this conversation right now.

Darren Asamoglu, who's a professor at MIT and a Nobel Prize winner, and Eric Brynjolfson, a professor at Stanford and director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. And because this event is a live Q&A, you'll get a chance to put your questions directly to Darren and Eric. Now, here's the thing. You can only come to this event if you're an NPR Plus supporter.

We will be publishing an excerpt from this event in the indicator feed as an episode. But if you want the full experience to get the whole thing and have a chance to ask a question to our guests, then make sure you're signed up for NPR Plus. If you're already signed up, thank you. For registration and event details, just go to npr.org slash ask an economist. That's all one word. Again, npr.org slash ask an economist. These supporter events are just one perk of NPR Plus. You also get sponsor-free listening,

archive access, and bonus episodes from some of our most popular shows. Also, it's a great way to support journalism and NPR. So, that's my spiel. Hope to see you there.