The Era of AI Innovation

AI’s meteoric rise can feel unprecedented, but it follows a familiar story. Just as the steam engine and electric motor rewired entire economies in the 1800s, today’s AI boom is setting off another society-wide transformation.

In this episode, MIT professor and author Andrew McAfee draws the throughline from those earlier industrial revolutions to the one unfolding now. He explains how past breakthroughs reshaped manufacturing, reorganized work, and unleashed massive gains in productivity — and why those patterns offer a roadmap for navigating what he calls the “Second Machine Age.”

McAfee shows us why the real impact of this AI revolution is still ahead of us, and what history reveals about what comes next.