How Fast Will A.I. Agents Rip Through the Economy? | The Ezra Klein Show

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A.I. agents are here. Have they changed your life yet? The release of agents like Claude Code marked a new pivot point in the history of A.I. We are leaving the chatbot era and entering the agentic era — where A.I. is capable of completing all kinds of tasks on its own, and even collaborating and communicating with other A.I. It isn’t clear yet whether these models actually make their users meaningfully more productive. But the technology is continuing to improve; there are few signs that it is close to plateauing. So what might this new era mean for our economy, our labor market and our kids? Clark is a co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind Claude and Claude Code. His newsletter, Import AI, has been one of my go-to reads to track the capabilities of different models over the years. In this conversation, I ask him to share how he sees this moment — how the technology is changing, whether it is leading to meaningful changes in how we work and think, and how policy needs to or can change in response to any job displacement on the horizon. 00:00 Introduction 02:36 The agentic future is here 11:54 Emergent qualities and digital personalities 24:55 The future of work? 39:48 Recursive self-improvement and global safety monitoring 42:21 Can you balance competition with caution? 46:25 A.I. and entry level jobs 56:41 A.I. policy 1:08:48 How A.I. could “supercharge bureaucracy” 1:10:37 How can A.I. be better used for public interest? 1:20:08 Anthropic’s dispute with the Department of War 1:25:04 What’s on the horizon? 1:27:07 How A.I. is shaping our self-perception 1:35:08 Jack’s approach to parenting in the age of A.I. 1:36:28 Book recommendations Codex Feb 2026: https://openai.com/index/introducing-the-codex-app/; https://www.interconnects.ai/p/claude-code-hits-different Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jack-clark.html Watch more on @EzraKleinShow Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html