LFP 134: Ewan McMillan - AI overhang and economics impact

We are continuing our investigation into the implications of the Economic Singularity, the time when we need a new economic system because full automation by AI means that people can no longer obtain the resources they need by doing jobs.

Our guest today is Ewan McMillan, the founder of New Gradient, an Edinburgh-based consultancy that builds AI systems for a variety of industries, from biotech to mining. He took a degree in theoretical physics at the University of Edinburgh, and since then he has spent seven years delivering applied AI R&D. 

We wanted to have Ewan on the show because he also writes about the economics of AI from the perspective of someone who is actually implementing it. This spring he posted a series of thought-provoking articles called “The Economics of AGI”.

Selected follow-ups:

• New Gradient - Company website
• Ewan McMillan - LinkedIn
• "The Economics of AGI" - Part 1  of Ewan's essay
• "The Innovation Paradox" - Part 2 of the essay
• "The Allocation Stack" - Part 3 of the essay
• "Bitter lesson" (general AIs will in due course out-perform specific AIs) - Wikipedia
• "AlphaZero" (covers the chess match vs. Stockfish) - Wikipedia
• "Smartphones and Beyond: Lessons from the remarkable rise and fall of Symbian" - book by David
• "Culture series" (about science fiction series written by Iain M Banks) - Wikipedia
• "Aghion–Howitt model"  - Wikipedia
• 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics (recipients include Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt)
• "The First Solo Unicorns Are Here: Meet the One-Person Companies Racing to $1B in 2026" - Founder Institute
• "Understanding Alpha in Investing" - Investopedia
• "'We Must Act Now': Sixteen Nobel Laureates Join Leading Economists and AI Researchers in Call to Prepare for AI’s Economic Transformation" - Stanford Digital Economy Lab

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Art Is Not a Thing
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