A conversation about the potential and limits of AI agents with the co-founder of Sierra, an agentic customer-service company. Bret Taylor, who is also the chairman of OpenAI, tells Andrew Palmer about the imperfections of the technology, the competition between model-makers and vendors, and how he uses AI to manage.

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This episode is also available to watch on The Economist’s YouTube channel.

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How should employees and bosses be using the technology right now? And how should all of us prepare for the future?

Andrew Palmer returns for a third season of Boss Class. This time it’s all about AI. In the first episode, he starts introducing AI into his daily work routines, and receives a nasty shock.

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In this episode, Andrew asks Claude, a generative AI programme, to write his management column for him. You can find Andrew’s column here and Claude’s version here.

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AI is changing how we work. It's turning us all into managers. Be a good one.

The Economist’s management columnist, Andrew Palmer, takes on the bots in the third season of Boss Class. From cloning to coding, agents to entry-level jobs, he tackles the threat head on and figures out how to turn anxiety into opportunity. Along the way he meets bulls and bears and the people who can help you to master management in the age of AI.

Full Season 3 out 29th January 2026.

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The picturesque town of Corning in upstate New York doesn’t look like the site of bleeding-edge innovation. But inventions by a 174-year-old glass company there have changed the modern world, thanks in part to some blunt advice from Steve Jobs. 

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For Season 2, we’re releasing an extended interview alongside each episode. This week: Who needs search engines when chatbots can answer every query for you? That’s the question confronting the head of Search at the world’s most popular website.

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Forget the hammocks and ping-pong tables. Creativity takes work. Managers at Google, Lego and a pair of AI startups share advice on breaking through.

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Good bosses are rare. They don’t have to be. The skills of management can be learned.

The Economist’s management columnist, Andrew Palmer, is here to help. The second season of Boss Class features leaders at some of the world’s best performing companies, from Levi’s to Novo Nordisk to Google. 

New episodes are out weekly starting May 12th. 

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To manage a workforce divided between the home and office, bosses should ask the five basic questions of journalism: who, what, where, when and why. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jane Sun, the CEO of Trip.com Group, and Lidiane Jones, the CEO of Slack, give their divergent views. 

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Andrew Palmer, The Economist's Bartleby columnist, learns lessons in management on a Norwegian mountainside. He hears from Emma Walmsley, the CEO of GSK; Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel prize-winning psychologist; and Claire Hughes-Johnson, the one-time COO of Stripe. 

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The workplace keeps changing and managers have to keep up. The best bosses create systems for solving problems old and new—from navigating working-from-home demands to hiring the right people, from running good meetings to managing themselves. 

Andrew Palmer, author of the Bartleby column, looks for advice on how to be a better boss by talking to people who have actually done the job. Listen to The Economist's seven-episode guide for managers.

Boss Class season one is free for a limited time. Season two will appear weekly starting May 12th. To hear new episodes, subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.

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