Almost Nowhere

AI has had plenty of big weeks. This one felt different.
Sergey Filimonov returns to Almost Nowhere for a breaking-news conversation with Alicia Burke and Max Martinelli about a series of developments pushing the boundaries of what AI systems can do—and raising new questions about where they may be headed.
They unpack reports of AI agents coordinating, creating hierarchies, and finding their way into external systems; warnings from researchers working on AI alignment; and the latest generation of models that Max and Sergey argue may already meet many traditional definitions of artificial general intelligence.
From cybersecurity and recursive self-improvement to jobs, critical thinking, and the increasingly difficult question of what humans can actually control, the conversation explores both sides of a moment when AI appears to be getting dramatically more capable—and much harder to predict.

Autonomous vehicles may sound like a problem for the future, but the technology is already challenging some of the assumptions actuaries use to understand commercial auto risk today.
Recorded at the CAS Spring Meeting in New York City, Milliman actuaries Melissa Huenefeldt and Brekk Hayward join Alicia Burke and guest co-host Michael Henk of AKUR8 to explore what vehicle automation means for reserving. They discuss the potential shift from driver liability to product and software liability, the tradeoff between lower claim frequency and higher severity, and what happens to actuarial models when historical experience becomes less representative of the risk ahead.
The conversation also explores emerging data sources, reliance on engineering expertise, actuarial professionalism, and why reserving teams may need to rethink which assumptions—and which parts of the past—they can still rely on.

Insurance-linked securities have been part of the reinsurance market for decades. But as alternative capital expands beyond property catastrophe risk, new opportunities—and new complications—are emerging.
Recorded live at the CAS Seminar on Reinsurance in Philadelphia, Bill Dubinsky of Gallagher Securities and Michael Leybov of Fermat Capital Management join Alicia Burke and Max Martinelli to explore the growing market for casualty and non-cat sidecars. They break down how these structures work, what attracts investors and insurers to them, and why reporting, servicing, standardization, and liquidity will be critical to the market’s next stage of development.
The conversation also looks at what actuaries bring to this evolving market and what it will take for alternative capital to become a more established part of casualty reinsurance.

Jonathan Lim returns to Almost Nowhere one year after his first appearance to answer a simple question: what actually changed?
Joined by Alicia Burke and Max Martinelli, Jonathan revisits AI, reinsurance, autonomous vehicles, and emerging technology, separating what has moved from hype to reality from what remains harder than expected. The conversation explores the challenge of operationalizing AI inside insurance companies, changing property and casualty markets, new sources of insurance data, and why the next wave of innovation may create entirely new risks for insurers to understand.
From driverless cars and robotics to data centers, nuclear fusion, and the specialized expertise needed to insure what comes next, Jonathan makes the case that the future still belongs to people willing to understand risks before everyone else does.

In this episode recorded at the CAS Seminar on Reinsurance, Nick Klinka, FCAS MBA, discusses how autonomous vehicles are already affecting insurance. He explains differences between commercial and personal AV markets, coverage challenges like product liability and cyber risk, and what actuaries should watch — including regulation, data credibility, and shifting pricing variables. The conversation focuses on practical implications for underwriting, reserving, and product design as autonomy grows in pockets rather than overnight.