59: Life after AI, with Kanika Bahl Founding Trustee at Anthropic

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