Share
Babbage from The Economist
AI and health part one: DrGPT will see you now
Artificial intelligence is already making its mark in health care—but new, bigger, models promise to improve how patients access services, help doctors spot diseases faster and transform how medical research is done. In the first of two episodes on the potential of AI in health care, we ask: how will patients benefit from the technology behind ChatGPT?
Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Natasha Loder, The Economist's health editor; Gerald Lip of NHS Grampian; Peter Kecskemethy of Kheiron Medical; Pranav Rajpurkar of Harvard Medical School; Hugh Harvey of Hardian Health.
Want to learn more about generative artificial intelligence? Listen to our series on the science that built the AI revolution.
Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.
Get a world of insights for 50% off—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+
For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.
More episodes
View all episodes
Gary Marcus: a sceptical take on AI in 2025
36:53|From the release of AI agents to claims that artificial general intelligence has (finally!) been achieved, 2025 will probably be another blockbuster year for AI. That sense of continuous progress is not shared by everyone, however. Generative AI, based on large language models (LLMs), struggles with reasoning, reliability and truthfulness. While progress has been made in those domains, sceptics argue that the limitations of LLMs will fundamentally restrict the future of AI.In this episode, Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, interviews Gary Marcus, one of modern AI’s most energetic critics. They discuss what to expect in 2025 and why Gary is pushing for researchers to work on a much wider range of scientific ideas (in other words, beyond deep learning) to enable AI to reach its full potential. Gary Marcus is a professor emeritus in cognitive science at New York University and the author of “Taming Silicon Valley”, a book advocating for a more responsible approach to the development of AI. For more on this topic, check out our series on the science that built the AI revolution, as well as our episodes on AGI.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.New year, new you: are your resolutions backed by science?
35:04|It wouldn’t be January without new year’s resolutions. Pledges to get in shape or cut back on vices are often guided by a plethora of wellness trends doing the rounds on social media and elsewhere. But what does science have to say about all those good intentions you might have?This week, we examine the evidence behind three popular ideas: does intermittent fasting work? Will melatonin fight your post-holiday jet lag? And can you breathe your stress away?Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: The Economist’s science correspondents Tim Cross, Emilie Steinmark and Ainslie Johnstone.For more guides to health and wellness like these, check out “Well informed”, a new weekly series in The Economist’s science and technology section.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.Turning the phage: viruses that can kill superbugs (revisited)
47:02|Bacteriophages, or “phages”, are viruses that can infect bacteria. With the number of bacteria that can evade antibiotics growing worryingly large, interest in using phages as therapies against drug-resistant infections has been rising. As we reported in 2023, phages have been used in Georgia for over a century, but they’re not approved for use in most other countries. Now, more than a year later, we’re asking: what would it take to bring a phage-therapy revolution to the rest of the world?In this episode, The Economist’s Gilead Amit travels to the University of Leicester’s Centre for Bacteriophage Research in Britain to meet co-directors Martha Clokie and Andy Millard. We also revisit Gilead’s 2023 trip to the Eliava Institute in Georgia, where he met Mzia Kutateladze and her team, as well as Barry Rud, a patient at the institute. Are phages finally about to get the attention they deserve?Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.OK computer: how voice AI will change the world
43:58|Talking to computers can be frustrating—ask anyone who’s been on the phone recently to automated customer services. A decade ago, the arrival of voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri was supposed to mark a new era in how humans interacted with machines, but their limitations quickly became apparent. In recent months, though, computerised voices seem to have moved light-years ahead. You can now have a conversation with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. You can clone your own voice. You can even generate and interact with a personalised podcast, where AI presenters will discuss any documents you like. The voice AI revolution has finally arrived. How will it change the way we interact with the digital world?Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Alex Hern, our AI correspondent; Vasco Pedro of Unbabel; Mati Staniszewski of ElevenLabs; Steven Johnson of Google Labs.For more on this topic, listen to our sister podcast “The Weekend Intelligence”, which asked: can AI help us communicate with the dead?Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.Acoustic shock: how noise pollution disrupts ocean life
40:21|Sound is central to life underwater. The list of marine creatures that are known to rely on sound for navigation, communication and much more is growing, as is the awareness of the complex ways in which they use it. But as humanity has extended its footprint into the seas, it has done so noisily. The soundscape of the ocean has been thrown out of balance and researchers are now developing new technologies—from bubble screens to “acoustic black holes”—to protect marine life from the excessive noise.Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Moira Donovan, a journalist who writes for The Economist; Amorina Kingdon, science writer and author of “Sing Like Fish”, and Tom Smith of University College London. Special thanks to John Hildebrand of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. This episode features audio from Sea Search. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.The Human Cell Atlas: mapping the body's building blocks
36:21|An adult human body is thought to consist of more than 37trn cells, of more than 5,000 distinct types. Surprisingly little is known about some of these fundamental biological building blocks. Through cutting-edge sequencing technology and enormous AI models, the Human Cell Atlas project is meticulously identifying and locating every type of cell in a person over the course of their lifetime. As a result, researchers are building an invaluable resource for studying development, disease and potential treatments—from digital twins of the human body to transplantable, lab-grown organs. We pay a visit to the Wellcome Sanger Institute and speak to the founder of the initiative.Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, with senior editor Geoff Carr. Contributors: Sarah Teichmann of the University of Cambridge; Liz Easthope, Katy Tudor, Muzlifah Haniffa, Nadav Yayon and Veronika Kedlian of the Wellcome Sanger Institute.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.Ready player one: Kelly Clancy on how games have influenced society
38:12|From poker to Playstations, people love games. In recent years, “gamification” has become big business as tech companies have tapped into gameplay as a way to make their products more compelling. Dating apps, ride-hailing services and social media, to name just a few, have all deployed the techniques of games to keep us hooked. Games have influenced how our brains have developed and they’ve also intruded into many unexpected aspects of our lives. In this episode, we learn how games have changed the course of history and how they’re already starting to shape our future. The Economist’s Tom Standage interviews Kelly Clancy, a neuroscientist, physicist and the author of “Playing With Reality”. Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, hosts.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.AI for science: Demis Hassabis, Jennifer Doudna and James Manyika
47:43|The most transformational impact of AI will probably be to make science faster and more productive. Solve that problem and you can do more great things even faster—alleviate disease, tackle climate change or help astronomers explore new worlds. In this episode, we speak to both the makers of AI models and the researchers who are already seeing the benefits of AI in their laboratories.Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, interviews Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, and James Manyika, senior vice president of research, technology and society at Google. Jennifer Doudna, founder of the Innovative Genomics Institute, tells us how AI is already making a difference in her labs. The Economist’s Alex Hern considers the future of the field.For more on AI in science, check out our previous episodes of Babbage: how AI promises to revolutionise science (September 2023), our two-parter on AI and health (May 2024) and our series on the science that built the AI revolution (March 2024).Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.Burning ambition: how to end coal
47:14|Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel, bad for both the environment and human health. But it still produces a third of the world’s electricity. Eliminating its use will be crucial in the fight against climate change but the task is proving very challenging. As world leaders gather in Azerbaijan this week for the UN’s COP29 climate summit, we travel to South Africa to learn how to (and how not to) phase out coal. We also hear about the issues making waves at COP29—including what Donald Trump’s second presidential term could mean for climate change policy around the world.Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: The Economist’s Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Rachel Dobbs and John McDermott.For more on COP29, check out the latest episode of our “Money Talks” podcast, which examines whether the bill for the energy transition has been overestimated.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.