Life after AI, with Kanika Bahl former board member of Anthropic’s benefit corporation
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What happens if artificial intelligence becomes as capable as—or more capable than—human beings?
Most conversations about AI stop at whether artificial general intelligence will arrive. In this episode of Onward, Ben Miller and Kanika Bahl accept that premise and ask the more difficult question: What happens after?
Kanika is the founder and CEO of the AI Access Initiative and a former founding member of Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust, an independent governance body created to help ensure that Anthropic develops AI for the long-term benefit of humanity. She previously led Evidence Action, where her work helped deliver health and economic interventions to hundreds of millions of people living in poverty.
Drawing on her experience at the intersection of AI, global development, and large-scale systems change, Kanika explains why transformative AI may arrive sooner than many people expect—and why creating powerful technology is only the beginning. The more difficult challenge will be ensuring that its benefits actually reach people.
Ben and Kanika explore how AI could improve healthcare, education, agriculture, and economic opportunity around the world. They also confront the deeper fears underneath the AI debate: What happens when machines can perform much of today’s work? How will people find purpose, status, and identity? Who will own the wealth AI creates? And how can society distribute its gains without relying solely on universal basic income?
The conversation ultimately offers a cautiously optimistic vision. AI could create extraordinary abundance, but only if governments, companies, nonprofits, philanthropists, and individuals begin preparing now for the social changes it may bring.
In this episode
- Why AI’s rapid progress is grounded in scaling laws, investment, and measurable capability gains
- Why Kanika believes transformative AI within the next five to fifteen years is a reasonable possibility
- The risk that billions of people in lower-income countries could be left behind
- How AI could deliver localized weather forecasts to hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers
- The potential for AI-supported diagnosis to address doctor shortages and high misdiagnosis rates
- Evidence that AI tutoring could produce significant learning gains in lower-income countries
- Why technological breakthroughs do not create impact unless effective distribution systems exist
- How society might find purpose and identity in a world with less paid work
- Why caring, service, exploration, building, and learning could become more central to human life
- The limitations of universal basic income as the default response to job displacement
- Ben’s case for “universal basic ownership” and giving people a stake in the wealth AI creates
- Why better labor-market data and iterative policymaking will be essential
- How organizations can prepare for both short and long AI timelines
Why accepting change—and learning through experimentation—may produce better outcomes than resisting it
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For a deeper dive into these insights and more, be sure to listen to the full episode of the Onward podcast.
Have questions or feedback about this episode? Drop us a note at Onward@Fundrise.com.
Onward is hosted by Ben Miller, co-founder and CEO of Fundrise. Podcast production by The Podcast Consultant. Music by Seaplane Armada.
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