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Ethan Mollick

Professor of Management; Author of One Useful Thing, The Wharton School

Search every verified Ethan Mollick interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Ethan Mollick, professor at the Wharton School and author of the new book Coexistence: The Next Phase of AI, has been promoting the book through a series of podcast and conference appearances in October 2026. In these appearances, he discussed several themes related to AI's impact on work and education. He argued that AI is disrupting traditional internships and apprenticeship models, as junior workers increasingly delegate tasks to AI and managers turn to AI instead of mentoring, with Mollick suggesting universities will play a more important role in teaching and assessment. He also described a concept he calls the "jagged frontier," where AI is unexpectedly capable in some areas and deficient in others, and cautioned against drawing "bright lines" about what AI can or cannot do, saying it performs creativity and judgment. He stated his view that companies will not see large gains from AI until they redesign their organizations, and he urged executives to use frontier AI models themselves on real work. Mollick also spoke about the changing role of human skills in an AI-augmented world, suggesting that education and certification of broad and deep knowledge will become more valuable. He said that individuals using AI improve their performance according to research, but noted a gap between individual gains and company-level performance. He discussed AI agents as a significant new capability, and commented on the rise in AI capabilities, noting that a model like GPT-4, previously the best available, would now rank far lower. In his commentary, he urged people to experiment with AI and share positive use cases publicly, and he emphasized that individuals have agency in shaping how the technology is used, while also stating that the idea that AI will only replace those who do not use it "is just not true anymore."

Recent appearances

  • Can AI Translate to Real Productivity Gains — With Ethan Mollick

    October 25, 2026 · 📺 Alex Kantrowitz

    Ethan Mollick is a professor at the Wharton School and author of Coexistence: The Next Phase of AI. Mollick joins Big Technology to discuss why AI's remarkable advances haven't yet translated into massive productivity gains across the economy. Tune in to hear why companies need to fundamentally rethink how they operate to unlock AI's full potential, where businesses are already seeing returns, and what organizational transformation could look like. We also cover whether AI development will hit a wall, the rise of personal AI agents, the future of jobs, robotics, education, and the risks of giv…

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  • Wharton Professor: AI Is Killing the Internship

    October 22, 2026 · 📺 The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway

    Ethan Mollick, Wharton professor and author of Coexistence: The Next Phase of AI, joins Scott Galloway to discuss how AI is changing work, education, and the skills we need to stay valuable. He explains the four advantages worth developing and how to tell whether AI is helping you learn or doing your thinking for you. They also explore why AI could disrupt internships before universities, how personal agents could change the way we negotiate and spend, and why replacing workers may backfire for companies. Plus, listener questions on young people’s AI backlash and using ChatGPT to navigate rela…

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  • AI Is Smarter Than Ever. So Where’s the Revolution? | Plain English

    October 20, 2026 · 📺 Plain English with Derek Thompson

    AI can analyze anything, write anything, solve almost any puzzle. But struggle strengthens our brains and sharpens our minds ... and removing it entirely may come with a dire cost. Derek Thompson explores the paradoxes of AI with Ethan Mollick, whose new book, 'Co-Existence,' examines how AI is changing the way we learn and work. They discuss how AI makes experts more powerful while automating the junior work that creates them in the first place, why students perform better via AI but learn less, and whether some friction may actually be worth preserving. If you have questions, observations,…

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  • Ethan Mollick: If AI Froze Today, It Would Still Rewrite Work

    October 20, 2026 · 📺 Dr Brian Keating

    Forecasters gave AI under 2% odds of helping solve a millennium-level math problem by September 2026. It happened. Ethan Mollick has been measuring what AI actually does to real work with field experiments, not forecasts, and his answer is not what most people expect. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Mollick runs the Generative AI Lab at Wharton. He is the author of Co-Intelligence and Coexistence, his new book on navigating a world where AI tools are already good enough to change almost all intellectual work, even if progress stopped today. The conversation co…

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  • Radar: Never Normal Heroes – Ethan Mollick on Co-Existence & the End of Apprenticeship

    October 20, 2026 · 📺 nexxworks

    In this Never Normal Heroes episode, Peter Hinssen talks with Ethan Mollick about his new book, Co-Existence: The Next Phase of AI, and why AI’s jagged frontier still matters even as AI conquers maths. They also cover the end of apprenticeship, rogue AI swarms, and why every executive needs to use a frontier model themselves.

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  • Ethan Mollick on Coexisting with AI, at Scale

    October 20, 2026 · 📺 Scaling Theory

    Ethan Mollick, professor at Wharton and author of Co-Intelligence, is back with a new book, Co-Existence: The Next Phase of AI, out on October 20. Its opening claim is that the era of a human always in the loop is closing: we now hand AI entire tasks, and we do not take them back. In this episode, I ask Ethan what survives that shift. We discuss why firms will not see large gains from AI until they change how they are organized, what being an entrepreneur means when a person with a model can generate eight hundred ideas an hour, why the university may matter more in a world where intelligence…

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  • How AI Is Changing Strategy—and 4 Skills Leaders Need Next

    October 09, 2026 · 📺 Harvard Business Review

    AI is moving beyond productivity gains—and forcing leaders to rethink how their businesses actually work. In this episode of HBR IdeaCast, Wharton professor and AI expert Ethan Mollick explains why leaders need to move beyond automating existing tasks and start redesigning organizations around what AI makes possible. He discusses how AI agents are changing the role of managers, where humans can create competitive advantage when everyone has access to the same AI models, and why companies need to experiment rather than wait for someone else to figure out the future. He also shares four capabili…

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  • Co-Existence with Professor Ethan Mollick | Change Drives Growth Digital Conference 2026

    October 01, 2026 · 📺 Scottish Mortgage

    AI is beginning to reason, act and work alongside us. Wharton Professor and bestselling AI author Ethan Mollick joins Scottish Mortgage manager Lawrence Burns to explore his new book and what the next phase of AI means for business, long-term value and everyday life. Find out more on our website: https://www.scottishmortgage.com/en/u...

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  • Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI Audiobook by Ethan Mollick

    September 29, 2026 · 📺 Free Audiobook

    Listen to free audiobook on Audible : https://amzn.to/4hopIfn Title: Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI Author: Ethan Mollick Narrator: Ethan Mollick Length: 4:39:10 Release date: 04-11-2024 Publisher: PGRH UK Genres: Science & Technology, Computers, Technology & Engineering Language: English Description: Brought to you by Penguin. Consumer AI has arrived. And with it, inescapable upheaval as we grapple with what it means for our jobs, lives and the future of humanity. Cutting through the noise of AI evangelists and AI doom-mongers, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick has become one…

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  • Ethan Mollick on Staying Human at Work | Dreamforce 2026

    September 18, 2026 · 📺 Salesforce

    AI is now a daily collaborator, but what makes people irreplaceable? Paula Goldman and Ethan Mollick explore the human skills, ...

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  • Ethan Mollick: 4 guiding principles for using AI responsibly

    August 27, 2026 · 📺 Leadership Lessons | Big Think+ and 3 more

    Get the full class from Ethan Mollick for your business: https://bigthink.com/plus/ Become a Big Think member to unlock expert classes, premium print issues, exclusive events and more: https://bigthink.com/membership/?utm_... Lego sets famously come with detailed instructions, including parts lists and visual, step-by-step directions. But generative AI isn’t far enough along for that type of support. (You’re lucky if you get a few tooltips thrown in.) Working with such an open-ended technology is an exciting prospect, but it can also be difficult to feel confident as you do so. Luckily, Wha…

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  • "Use AI for everything" — Ethan Mollick, author of Co-Intelligence [THE PROMPT] EP.3 | YTN

    August 08, 2026 · 📺 YTN

    "Is AI coming for my job?" Ethan Mollick's answer is no. Not a rival, but a partner — his case for coexisting with AI. ■ "AI isn't a bubble" — the real-world value a Wharton scholar points to ■ "A semester's project in just 3 days" — how AI is remaking the classroom ■ "It's not taking your job" — Mollick's case for coexisting with AI, not competing ■ "Who survives the AI era?" — Mollick on becoming a 'T-shaped' person ━━ ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 Highlights & Intro 01:17 Opening 03:14 Chapter 1 — Why Is AI an Alien Intelligence? 07:06 Chapter 2 — The Great Education Shift 12:25 Chapter 3 — Surviving…

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Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“So, I mean, it's kind of looping back to what we said at the very beginning. You were kind of pushing me about token costs and I was like, I'm not that worried about token costs in the long term. This is why, right? We're using more tokens and not just Jevons paradox, but also because that that's sort of just agentic work requires more tokens. But but there's a huge move for token efficiency and we're even leaving as”

“I mean, I I think anyone who's in an organization probably has the right answer to that problem, which is you don't get organizational productivity gains instantaneously from individual productivity gains. Um, you can be a hundred times produce a hundred times more code than you did before, and that's great if you're a solo entrepreneur producing a lot of code. If you're in an organization that's doing two-week-long ”

“I think it helps to think about these companies as like two things. They've gotten their hands on the most powerful technology anyone's come up with in decades maybe centuries. LLMs are unreasonably effective and the researchers are really good at building new ones. They're on a rocket ship where these systems are really good and keep getting better. And then they're also a startup company that has grown incredibly l”

“I actually believe the opposite for a couple of reasons. One reason is what's actually about to implode are internships and all the ways we actually teach people to do work today which is informal education where you are a junior person who wants to impress somebody and a senior person teaches you because they have no choice to give you feedback because there's no one else to do the work. Now every junior person is h”

“So this is kind of where I'll argue like I'm surprised how fast it is, right? I I am a professor at a business school, an economic sociologist, and the lesson you learn and I I say entrepreneurship, but the lesson you learn is like entrepreneurs should never win, right? like then you know just to say you have back they should never win because all of the resources all the money all the customers are all with large co”

“The failure of Europe to produce a frontier model is bad. It's bad to have given up on that, and the collapse of Mistral as a player in the space is not a good thing for Europe or for the world. And sovereign is an illusion. You can't be sovereign with like, you'd be sovereign for certain kinds of sovereignty, but if you're counting on open weights models that may or may not be available publicly... China right now I”

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