The Frontier

Stephen Dubner frames AI anxiety around job losses, extinction and a less discussed fear: that machines could unsettle people’s sense of self. The episode asks what happens when creativity, often treated as a defining human trait, becomes shared with machines.

Kevin Kelly defines an exoself as an always-on AI agent that observes what someone sees and hears, then responds with guidance. Kelly imagines four roles: advisor, guardian, friend or hero, and virtual twin.

Kelly expects smart glasses to become the exoself’s natural home because they can continuously see, hear and communicate with the wearer. Kelly thinks always-on relationships could arrive within five years, offering speed and confidence while risking dependence and replacing human friendships.

Kelly argues creativity is a process people can learn, not a mysterious gift, and says AI could help users identify talents they overlook. At 74, Kelly imagines an exoself might have redirected his studies from geology toward art; his book Out of Control also inspired the Matrix cast to study emergent systems.

Aline Van der Velden built Particle 6 after production companies rejected her BBC 3 projects as too low-budget. Running multiple productions gave Van der Velden steadier income than relying on acting or writing work, and the company now makes AI productions, advises studios and develops original characters.

Van der Velden moved from Curaçao to the UK at 14 to attend musical-theater school, studied physics at Imperial College, and began acting in the Netherlands at 22. Her comedy character Miss Holland gained a distribution deal, won online comedy awards and was commissioned by BBC 3.

Van der Velden created Tilly Norwood as a 24-year-old British AI performer aimed at women and underserved female audiences. After about 2,000 generations, Van der Velden set Tilly’s humor at 7 out of 10 and sex appeal at 6, and gave her the ability to speak 300 languages.

Van der Velden says she instructs Tilly through a system prompt describing her personality and responses, and avoids uploading material she does not own. Van der Velden distinguishes deliberately copying a specific artist from drawing general inspiration across many sources, while acknowledging that AI training data includes copyrighted work.

Van der Velden calls AI a creative calculator and says human storytellers still need to direct the tools. She argues fully AI-generated productions can create projects that would not have been funded with human performers, while Sean Astin warns that synthetic performers could threaten paid acting work at scale.

Ethan Mollick divides recent AI development into data-driven decision systems in the 2010s, generative chatbots, and an agentic phase in which systems can perform extended work from an instruction. Mollick estimates that over half of American workers use AI, while company-wide integration remains limited.

Mollick says AI competition can improve products while intensifying races among American and Chinese labs, including a race toward systems that improve themselves. For workers, Mollick recommends deep and wide knowledge, taste and agency; he says roles change as AI takes over tasks, as already happened for coders who increasingly specify what software should do.

Mollick describes three ways to work with AI: a centaur divides tasks between person and machine, a cyborg blends them, and a conjurer delegates work to temporary AI agents. Mollick uses all three, and says the human role shifts as AI improves at individual tasks.

Mollick says AI can outperform most people on creativity tests, including remote-association tasks, but produces less diverse ideas than individuals working alone. He says prompting can improve variety, and that combining human ideas with AI output works well; selecting useful ideas remains an active research question.

Mollick says AI already produces strong images, music and video, while its creative writing often sounds repetitive. Creative-industry workers may publicly oppose AI but privately use it, especially in game development and music production; one student survey found a gap between reported personal use and perceived peer use.

Sean Astin, president of SAG-AFTRA since 2025, says shrinking production has already reduced members’ work and that voiceover is among the first areas feeling AI’s effects. Los Angeles County motion-picture employment fell from about 142,000 in 2022 to about 95,000 four years later, a 33% drop; Astin says AI will cost jobs but questions the precision of forecasts.

Brendan Ballou describes private equity as buying companies with investors’ money and borrowed money, trying to improve them, and selling them after a few years; firms commonly charge 2% of assets and 20% of investment profits.

Ballou argues that short ownership periods, debt loaded onto portfolio companies, fees extracted from them, and limited legal liability combine to reward short-term gains while shifting long-term costs to workers, customers, and communities.

Ballou says private equity roll-ups can compound the harm of consolidation: acquiring small businesses builds market power, while debt-funded expansion leaves the combined company owing more and potentially resorting to riskier practices to stay afloat. He cites veterinary care as a case where workers report higher prices, less flexibility, and diminished care.

Ballou says the industry’s reach extends from nursing homes and pet care to schools, prisons, housing, and infrastructure. He puts private equity acquisitions at $1.2 trillion in 2021, compared with U.S. GDP of about $25 trillion, while cautioning that the figures are not directly comparable.

Ballou says private equity firms and investment firms gave about $900 million to federal candidates since 1990 and recruit former officials from senior posts and congressional staffs. He argues those relationships give firms access to familiar faces in government and make regulation harder.

Ballou says private equity’s opaque fund and ownership structures make it difficult to identify who controls a company or bears responsibility when it fails. He argues that cases across different industries share a common cause: laws and regulations that shape the industry’s incentives.

Ballou says Carlyle bought nursing-home chain Manor Care with debt that the company had to service; staffing cuts followed, and health-code violations and resident complaints rose. After resident Annie Sally died, Carlyle argued it only advised funds that indirectly owned Manor Care, and the case against the firm was dismissed.

Ballou says Carlyle’s purchase of California’s Plaza Del Rey mobile-home park led to sharply higher lot fees, raising residents’ monthly costs and eroding the value of homes that were often their main source of wealth. Residents sought rent controls while struggling to afford legal help; Carlyle later sold the park for a significant profit.

Ballou describes David Rubenstein as a skilled relationship-builder who helped Carlyle recruit former officials, beginning with former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci. Rubenstein worked for Jimmy Carter before co-founding Carlyle and later donated to public causes, including sharing historical documents with the public.

Dan Glickberg says Fairway’s founders brought in Sterling Investment Partners after one of three equal business partners wanted to retire and cash out; his debt-averse father would not borrow to buy the stake. Sterling invested at a $150 million valuation, took 80%, and the Glickberg family retained about 10%.

Hannah Howard says Sterling pushed Fairway toward rapid national expansion despite lacking grocery-operating expertise. The company added debt to fund growth, went public in 2013, and had more than $200 million in debt around the IPO; Fairway had negative same-store sales and was burning capital.

Fairway filed for bankruptcy in 2016, then again in 2020; the chain grew to 15 stores and now has four under Village Supermarket. Dan Glickberg says management and the family failed to build systems, while Howard says the former store’s distinctive food experience has largely disappeared.

Dan Glickberg says Fairway’s failure involved management and the family as well as its private equity partners, and apologized to customers and employees. Sterling said it never sold its Fairway shares after the IPO and did not recover its full investment.

Former Apollo partner Sachin Kajuria argues private equity creates value by tackling complicated or neglected businesses that others avoid. He says the industry manages $12 trillion today and could exceed $20 trillion in the 2030s, before adding leverage to its purchasing power.

Kajuria says expanding private equity to retail investors would make the industry more relevant to ordinary savers; most current capital comes from institutions such as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and university endowments. The transcript says President Trump signed an executive order aimed at widening access to alternative investments, including private equity, private credit, and crypto.