Carl Frey talks to

Economic historian Professor Carl Frey warns that societies need to get the balance right when adjusting to new technologies or progress can stall.

Frey says some societies flourish technologically because their institutions and culture adjust to change while others falter. Any advance, such as the Internet, arrival of MRNA vaccines or AI, requires a fragile balance between decentralised exploration to make discoveries and centralised institutions to scale them.  Frey argues that America’s technological leadership comes from institutional flexibility. And he warns that technologies that strengthen bureaucratic control often stifle innovation.

Frey is the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and founder of the Future of Work programme at the Oxford Martin School. A previous book, The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation, won Princeton University’s prestigious Richard A. Lester Prize. Here he talks to Oxford University economics fellow and former BBC chief business correspondent Professor Linda Yueh, author of The Great Crashes: Lessons from Global Meltdowns and How to Prevent Them.