Quality in the Age of AI with Eric Markowitz

Eric Markowitz is a partner and director of research at Nightview Capital and a former investigative journalist with bylines in The New Yorker, GQ, and Fast Company. After a near-death experience, Eric became fascinated by a single question: why do a rare few cultures, companies, and products dramatically outlast the rest? He’s now traveling the globe in search of the answer for his forthcoming book, OUTLAST, to be published by Scribner — the Simon & Schuster imprint that’s home to Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

In this conversation, John Candeto, Eric Markowitz, and William Oliver dig into the cultural panic surrounding AI and push back against both the techno-doomers and the hyper-optimists, arguing that the real story isn’t about the tools themselves but about the worldview that treats humans as machines to be optimized away. Drawing on Eric’s recent essay “It Was Never About AI,” they explore why the companies, careers, and lives that endure are built on the things AI can’t touch: relationships, trust, struggle, craftsmanship, and the slow accumulation of quality over time.

What emerges is a hopeful case that we may be entering a bull market in the humanities, where the most radical act isn’t rejecting these tools but refusing to let them flatten what makes us human.

Listeners will also enjoy our Notes From the Field series with Eric, where he shares stories from his travels. Episodes linked here: