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🔮 Anthropic’s Head of Econom…

🔮 Anthropic’s Head of Economics on AI adoption, Claude Code, the burden of knowledge & future experts

Azeem Azhar and Chantal Smith

Jan 21

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We understand the coal industry better than the AI economy right now. Anthropic’s Economics team, led by Peter McCrory, is changing that. I invited Peter to break down their latest findings in the Economic Index report.

We discuss:

(00:00) Anthropic’s Economic Index report
(01:20) Claude’s two distinct usage patterns
(06:22) Examining AI’s impact on the labor market
(09:20) Where most businesses think too small
(12:03) Why extracting tacit knowledge is so important
(20:33) How do we create the next generation of experts?
(23:22) Why people need to develop cognitive endurance
(29:55) Long-term vs. short-term productivity
(35:56) The future of human knowledge
(37:46) Could AI’s greatest impact go unmeasured?
(41:55) How task bottlenecks have moved
(46:09) Implementation resembles a staircase - not a curve
(50:47) “Capability doesn't instantly deliver adoption”

A reading list

Here are eleven papers to deepen your understanding and complement the episode.

1. Anthropic Economic Index Report (2026) - The primary subject of discussion. Analyzes millions of Claude conversations to map where AI augments vs automates work.

Papers explicitly mentioned in our conversation

2. Paul Romer, “Endogenous Technological Change” (1990) - Foundational paper on how technological progress arises from within the economic system...

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