Topic
42 facts from 5 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
1800s
Ethan Mollick says an American plant adding steam power in the 1800s raised productivity by about 25%, which he uses as a comparison for the 30 to 50% gains seen with ChatGPT.
“the, uh, change that happened in productivity when a American plant added steam power in the eighteen hundreds was about 25% in productivity”
1970s
Ethan Mollick compared education's adjustment to AI with how schools adapted to calculators in the 1970s.
“Just like we did the nineteen seventies with, like, you know, like calculators.”
2022
Ethan Mollick says GPT-3, the base generation of the technology behind ChatGPT, had existed for over a year before ChatGPT and produced only okay work.
“GPT three, which is, uh, the sort of base generation of this technology has been around for over a year, and it was okay, right?”
2023
Ethan Mollick says ChatGPT achieves top scores on every creativity test available, though he says it is not sentient.
“It maxes out every creativity test we have, even though it's not really sentient, right?”
2023
Ethan Mollick raises as one hiring scenario the idea of a prompt engineering role, where people skilled at getting AI to work are far more productive.
“this idea that there's some prompt engineering role in the future, that some people are just good AI whisperers”
2023
Ethan Mollick says he used AI to create a credible deepfake video of himself giving a speech he never gave, in about four minutes.
“I was able to, using AI, create a comp- a a very credible, uh, deep fake video of me giving a speech I never gave in my voice, and it took about four minutes to do, right?”
2024
Ethan Mollick says OpenAI's explicit goal for 2024 was to release fully working autonomous AI agents.
“that's the explicit goal of OpenAI this year is to release fully working autonomous agents.”
2024
Ethan Mollick predicted that GPT-5-class models would appear in summer 2024 and significantly improve on GPT-4.
“I would suspect that this summer of 2024, we will see GPT five class models that will represent a significant improvement over GPT four.”
2025
Ethan Mollick predicted digital AI agents would arrive well before physical embodied AI, saying robotics is harder than people think.
“I think robotics is harder than people think, and I think we'll see agents in the digital world long before we see physical agents.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick cites a survey finding that over 60% of people use AI secretly at work at least some of the time.
“I think the best survey we have is over 60% of people use AI secretly at least some of the time.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
“Today we're talking to Ethan Molick, a professor of innovation at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania”
Undated
Ethan Mollick said the term 'jagged frontier' came from his research paper involving Boston Consulting Group.
“That was term we came up with for our paper on Boston Consulting Group.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick cited a Walton survey reporting that about 70% of undergraduates and 70% of K-12 students use AI to do their work.
“70% of undergrads, 70% of K twelve students in, uh, the latest Walton survey using AI to do their work.”
Undated
A randomized controlled trial in Turkey, as described by Ethan Mollick, found students using AI for homework help did better on homework but worse on the test.
“My colleagues have more done this great study in Turkey where they did a randomized controlled trial and they found that students who were using AI to get homework help did much better on homework but did much worse on the test.”
Undated
In the MIT materials science study, Ethan Mollick said the best scientists gained the most because they could use AI to screen many ideas quickly.
“But the scientists who gained the most were the best scientists because they could more easily use the AI to screen lots of ideas quickly.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick said research at Boston Consulting Group found younger consultants were worse at figuring out how to use AI in organizations.
“our research at BCG actually found that the younger consultants were actually much worse at figuring out how to use AI in organizations”
Undated
Ethan Mollick said over 50% of teachers have adopted AI, while districts and governments remain confused about policy.
“Over 50% of teachers have adopted, and massive confusion at the district and government level.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick said he and his wife are co-directors of an AI lab.
“I work with my wife on a lot of this stuff. We're co-directors of the AI lab together.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick defined a 'centaur' as a person who divides work with AI, assigning some tasks to the machine and keeping others.
“So a centaur is half person, half machine. It's the most basic way we say people using AI.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick defined a 'cyborg' as someone who blends their work so closely with AI that it becomes an extension of their thinking.
“Cyborg is you spend enough hours doing this, and it starts to become sort of a Swiss Army knife of the mind, an extension to what you do.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick said the 'self-automator' mode corresponds to what is now called an AI agent, which is assigned a task and does the work itself.
“Self automator, I think, is now just the world what we call agent, right? Basically assign the AI to do a task and it just go does the work for you.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick said about ten hours of use is his threshold for getting a feel for what AI can and cannot do.
“And so about ten hours has been my threshold for use.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick said his research shows AI grades better than humans, and than teaching assistants in most cases, but he still grades his students' papers himself.
“I know from our research that AI is a better grader than humans, definitely than TAs in most cases.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick said GPT-4 had become better than any intern a manager could hire.
“Well, what just happened over the last summer now is GPT four is better than any intern you're going to hire, right?”
Undated
Ethan Mollick said controlled experiments find productivity gains from AI, but organizations don't see them because employees hide their AI use.
“every controlled experiment finds productivity boosts. Then the organization doesn't find it. Why not? Because people are hiding their AI use.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick said he has seen companies offer $10,000 weekly cash rewards for the best idea for using AI.
“I've seen companies slide briefcases full of cash across the table to someone and be like, 10,000 for whoever comes with the best idea every week, right?”
Undated
Ethan Mollick gave the example of asking an AI to remove the word 'squid' from All Quiet on the Western Front, which contains none, as one of his strange prompt experiments.
“what happens if you remove the word squid from all Quiet on the Western Front, a book that has no squid in it”
Undated
Mollick cited a study of a representative sample of American workers showing AI use at work rising from 30% in February to over 40% in April.
“the usage went from 30% in February to 40% of people are using AI at work, uh, a little over 40% as of April.”
Undated
Mollick estimated that the share of executives who grasp AI's urgency has risen from a few percent to about 20% in many firms.
“it's gone from like two or three of people, you know, getting it to we're at 20 of executives in a lot of the firms that should feel urgency, feeling it.”
Undated
Mollick said generative AI had existed for about three years, so no one has deep experience transforming organizations with it.
“generative AI has been around three years. There everybody who's on their very first project.”
Undated
Mollick said he has seen companies offer weekly 10,000 bonuses to the employee who best uses AI to automate their own job.
“I've seen companies that offer 10,000 bonuses at the end of every week to every employee that uses the employee who best uses AI to automate their job”
Undated
Ethan Mollick says early studies with colleagues at Harvard and Warwick found that less experienced BCG consultants were worse at using AI.
“we found that, like, BCG consultants less experience were worse at using AI.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick says leaders of large financial institutions are moving more than half of their security staff onto responding to AI-driven threats.
“I have talked to leaders of large financial institutions who are pulling 50% plus of their CIS- their staff”
Undated
Ethan Mollick says the biggest thing he got wrong in the past year was expecting agents to be hard to organize, when swarms of 100,000 agents now self-organize.
“There are 100,000 agent swarms that are self-organizing. I didn't expect that to happen”
Undated
Ethan Mollick says he runs projects in which a swarm of a hundred AI agents works on a problem and reports back to him like a manager.
“I literally have projects where I have a swarm of a hundred agents solving a problem for me.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick says that in his first startup he spent about eight hours a week doing payroll taxes by hand in Excel before learning a payroll company could do it.
“I would do taxes by hand in Excel for every person at the company. It took, like, eight hours every week before I realized better way.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick defines a 'dark factory' as a factory where robots do all the work, so no humans or lights are needed.
“So dark factory is factory where all the work is done by robots.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick says the coding profession moved from writing elegant code to systems engineering as AI took over code writing, and AI is now doing some systems engineering too.
“You're hiring coders to be the best at writing elegant lines of code. Then AI could write the code. So then it became about sort of systems engineering.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick says the AI labs explicitly aim to replace all human labor, a goal he thinks they may be wrong about and that society shouldn't let happen.
“the AI labs, to be clear, are aiming for the job apocalypse. They want AI to replace all human labor.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick says one of the first effects of AI that executives see, which also appeared in his research, is that job boundaries blur.
“jobs start to blur. Coders do design work, designers do coding, product managers do everything.”
Undated
Ethan Mollick says he has spoken to C-level leaders who used AI to query company information and diagnose problems at plants that no one had raised with them.
“who've actually diagnosed problems at plants that no one brought up to them because they could just literally query all of the information at their company's disposal”
Undated
Ethan Mollick says there is ample evidence that AI can regularly do work that would take a human two to eighteen weeks, at reasonable cost and with high success rates.
“AI can regularly do the kind of work that would take a human two to eighteen weeks in a reasonable amount of time, a reasonable amount of money with high success rates.”
Episodes