The AI industry is sending mixed signals, with markets turning red while teams report real productivity gains. In this session I explore why we are living in a split reality, where individuals move faster with these tools but the wider economy is ambivalent. We once assumed juniors would get the biggest lift from AI, yet the newer agentic tools seem to reward senior workers who know how to structure problems and judge output.

In this podcast, I look at the evidence behind that shift and explain how these gains collide with the slow grind of organisational processes.

I cover:

(00:00) AI productivity: A split reality

(00:31) Decoding the stock market drop

(02:53) Unpacking three years of AI productivity data

(06:09) Does AI help junior or senior developers more?

(09:54) The surprising group benefitting from AI

(11:45) Why is there a productivity gap?

(13:08) Most companies need a process overhaul

(14:33) Anthropic's alarming discovery

(16:45) So, are we moving quickly enough?

(17:29) The counterintuitive truth about AI productivity

Where to find me:

- Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

- Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/ -

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar

- Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1

Production and research: Chantal Smith, Hannah Petrovic and Marija Gavrilov.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Junior roles in AI-exposed fields are disappearing fast.

The obvious culprit is AI rapidly automating entry-level jobs. And yet, this isn't quite right. What is driving the drop is managers’ expectations about what AI will do, not the work that it's already replacing.

I discussed this with Ben Zweig of Revelio Labs, which builds global workforce data from millions of individual profiles to track hiring, separations and job flows. Their data shows how expectation and uncertainty are reshaping the market.

Together, we explored the future of work and shared practical advice for new grads.

We covered:

(01:15) What's happening in the labor market?

(05:27) The inherent complexity of the labor market

(06:24) How Revelio Labs captures labor market data

(08:39) "The Canary in the Coal Mine"

(11:52) Who does AI exposure harm the most?

(13:01) How AI anticipation is harming the job market

(15:15) Testing the expectation mismatch hypothesis

(17:30) Could AI be creating more jobs?

(20:44) Breaking down jobs into smaller tasks

(27:33) Why large companies struggle to reorganize

(30:35) Focus on creating adaptive, flexible roles

(36:03) Managing AI's increasing capability

(39:11) What entry-level workers need to do

Where to find me:

- Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

- Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar

- Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Where to find Ben:

- https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-zweig/

- Twitter/X: https://x.com/BJZweig

- Revelio Labs: https://www.reveliolabs.com/

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1

Production and research: Chantal Smith, Hannah Petrovic and Marija Gavrilov.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The AI boom isn’t just about chatbots.

In this video, I explain why cloud companies and chipmakers are exploding in value: we’re moving into an economy where computation becomes a fundamental input – like steel, electricity or oil.

If that’s true, our demand for compute could approach infinity.

I also break down new data from Wharton’s 2025 AI Adoption Report, which shows how AI agents and automated workflows are already spreading through major U.S. companies: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/special-report/2025-ai-adoption-report/

Timestamps:

(00:00) The economic shift to computation (00:40) The surprising Cloud business boom (02:52) Is the hardware industry growth a bubble? (03:18) What is computing, really? (04:31) Our insatiable appetite for computing (09:15) Our economic dependence on computation (10:54) The rise of agentic workforces (13:05) What does infinite demand actually mean? (15:23) The future of compute demand

Where to find me:

• Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/
• Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar
• Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1

Production and research: Chantal Smith, Hannah Petrovic and Marija Gavrilov.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.