Podcasts

Why are the companies warning us about AI also racing to build more of it? And what is all this intelligence doing to us? This week: → OpenAI paused its latest model over safety concerns, then launched always-on agents ("Dots"), ChatGPT-6.1 Sol with near-frontier intelligence at a fraction of the cost. → Anthropic, the lab most associated with AI safety, filed an IPO prospectus: revenue up 12X to $4.6B, +$500B in planned infra commitments, targeted valuation +$2T. → The Wall

Opus 5.5 is incredible. Kudos to Anthropic. I would call this "competent intelligence." Let me explain. For the last few years we've had useful intelligence: a draft to rework, a snippet to debug, an answer to double-check. Competent intelligence == hand it direction and get back finished work, across multiple tools, ready to ship in real-world circumstances. The data backs this up. OpenAI built GDPval to test AI on real work including tasks from 44 occupations across the 9 i

AI agents are now calling customer service. And increasingly, AI may be on BOTH sides of the call. Business Insider reports that AI agents are already sitting on hold, negotiating bills, canceling subscriptions, and calling insurance companies on behalf of customers. And, Forbes reports people are already using agents to save real $$. That points to a much bigger shift. I have been writing about this for the last five years: Substitution creates capacity. Reinvention determin

AI is forcing us to rethink what education is actually for. We are seeing very different perspectives emerge on the same question -> 1\ Restrict it. New York City is banning student-facing generative AI through 8th grade for the 2026-27 school year. Los Angeles has imposed a moratorium on student use of generative AI on school-issued devices. Many schools have banned AI-use. The logic is that students need to wrestle with hard problems themselves to build judgment, critical t

Meta unveiled a new stack of AI products: 1) Muse, a fast-growing personal AI agent inspired in part by the OpenClaw model, 2) lighter VR glasses that create a private spatial workspace, 3) audio-only AI glasses; and Muse Charm, 4) a tiny keychain device that puts the agent one tap away. The individual products are interesting BUT the direction of travel far more important. OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are all moving toward increasingly capable agents that can use software, a

Anthropic just launched Claude Opus 5.5, another reminder that the AI model race is still moving fast. There’s a growing sense of “model fatigue” with AI. Every few weeks (sometimes days) brings another model, another benchmark, another claim of being the smartest. What matters now is whether these systems actually become more useful in the real world. Opus 5.5 is a meaningful step in that direction: it outperforms Opus 5 and Fable 5.1 on nearly every benchmark, leads in agen

"As AI gets better at execution, humans will still decide what problems are worth solving." We've heard this before and I have said versions of it myself. BUT there may be a more useful way to think about what AI is changing. I see this in four buckets: 1\ Known knowns: we know what we know (== solved, could be improved). 2\ Known unknowns: we know what we don't know (== discovery). 3\ Unknown unknowns: we don't know what we don't know (== invention). 4\ Unknowables: things w

China's start-up scene offers a fascinating glimpse into the future of work. A combination of powerful new technologies, difficult employment conditions and dissatisfaction with traditional corporate work is pushing more people toward building on their own. Few key highlights that caught my eye -> 1\ Solo startups are surging with >7 million one-person companies established in China in 2025. That's 42% more than in 2024. AI is making it much easier for individuals to operate

This is just another reminder that a polished interface is NOT a predictable system. For context, Tilly Norwood is an AI-generated “actress” created by Particle6. She has been doing interviews to promote a new movie, Misaligned. In this recent appearance with Piers Morgan and actor Tom Conti, she was asked whether the other actors in the film were real or AI. After struggling with the question, she paused and suddenly started speaking Cantonese for more than 10 seconds. She l