This Week in AI

Apple just paid a rival a billion dollars a year because it could not build Siri itself, and that tells you where the AI platform war actually stands: the edge has moved up the stack, from the model to the agent layer sitting on top of it.

This week's roundtable makes the case that whoever controls that layer controls the experience, and we brought in three founders building it from different angles: Hermes Agent, NotebookLM, and LiveKit. Their through-line is that the harness is temporary, the model keeps eating it, and the people building agents right now are designing for capabilities that do not exist yet.

This week's roundtable:
Jeffrey Quesnelle (Co-founder & CEO, Nous Research, the open source AI lab behind Hermes Agent)
Steven B Johnson (Editorial Director of NotebookLM & Google Labs, co-creator of NotebookLM)
Russ d'Sa (Co-founder & CEO, LiveKit, the open source real-time voice/video infrastructure behind ChatGPT voice mode)

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Timestamps:
0:00 Cold open
1:08 Welcome to Episode 17
1:40 Jeffrey Quesnelle on Hermes Agent and the open source agent race
5:03 Steven Johnson on NotebookLM, source-grounding, and going agentic
7:32 Why AI got booed at commencement: the first generation raised on ChatGPT
10:48 Russ d'Sa on LiveKit powering ChatGPT, Tesla, Grok, and Salesforce voice
27:50 Apple's $1B Gemini deal and the Siri UX problem
52:49 "Functional AGI, unevenly distributed": where the models actually are
57:24 The harness is temporary: why agent builders design for the next model

Guests:
Jeffrey Quesnelle, Nous Research: https://nousresearch.com | https://x.com/theemozilla
Steven Johnson, NotebookLM (Google Labs): https://notebooklm.google.com | https://x.com/stevenbjohnson
Russ d'Sa, LiveKit: https://livekit.io | https://x.com/dsa

Referenced in this episode:
Nous Research / Hermes Agent: https://nousresearch.com
NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google.com
LiveKit: https://livekit.io
OpenAI ChatGPT: https://openai.com
Tesla: https://www.tesla.com
Grok (xAI): https://x.ai
Salesforce Agentforce: https://www.salesforce.com/agentforce
SAP Joule: https://www.sap.com/products/artificial-intelligence/ai-assistant.html
Apple Intelligence: https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence
Google Gemini: https://gemini.google.com
Anthropic Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code
OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai

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#ThisWeekInAI #AI #NousResearch #NotebookLM #LiveKit #OpenSourceAI #AIAgents #Siri #Gemini #VoiceAI

The future of AI isn't about whether the model is smart enough. It's about whether we can afford to run it. We dug into the AI cost panic, the energy wall that's coming for compute, and why "developers are disappearing" gets the economics exactly backwards.This week's roundtable: Naveen Rao (CEO of Unconventional AI, building brain-inspired analog chips, formerly sold companies to Intel and Databricks) and Alex Finn (founder of Henry Intelligent Machines and Creator Buddy).Thank you to our exclusive sponsor: PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/Timestamps:0:00 Cold open1:21 Welcome to Episode 162:44 Is the AI cost panic real, or just "token maxing"?5:08 It's not the intelligence, it's how people use AI9:40 Surgeons vs. shotguns: prompt discipline & matching models to tasks13:10 Naveen's path from Intel and Databricks to Unconventional15:08 Why developers aren't disappearing18:37 How energy overtook CapEx in the cost of compute21:34 The energy wall & getting to 3 orders of magnitude more efficient25:52 AI's PR problem & the data center backlash27:55 China's hunger vs. America's AI boogeyman30:38 Data center taxes, equity stakes & the politics of AI upside37:54 The Anthropic IPO & how these founders actually invest🔗 Guests:Naveen Rao, Unconventional AI: https://unconv.ai | https://x.com/AlexFinnAlex Finn, Henry Intelligent Machines: https://meethenry.ai | https://x.com/NaveenGRao🔗 Host:Alex Wilhelm, This Week in Startups: https://x.com/alex🔗 Referenced in this episode:Unconventional AI (analog chips for AI): https://unconv.aiMosaicML (acquired by Databricks): https://www.databricks.com/research/m...Nervana Systems (acquired by Intel)Creator Buddy: https://creatorbuddy.ioQwen (open-weight model Alex runs locally): https://qwenlm.aiNVIDIA DGX Spark: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/products...Anthropic (filed to go public): https://www.anthropic.comHenry Intelligent Machines: https://meethenry.ai/🔗 Subscribe and follow:Newsletter and all platforms: https://thisweekinai.ai#ThisWeekInAI #AI #UnconventionalAI #NaveenRao #AlexFinn #AnalogComputing #AIcompute #AIenergy #TokenMaxing #AIlayoffs #AnthropicIPO

The AI jobs panic is here. Meta cut 8,000. Intuit cut 3,000. CapEx went up. Nobody can agree if anyone has actually lost a job to AI, or just to the promise of it. We dug into the GPU squeeze, the new craft of "reward engineering," Pope Leo's call to disarm AI, and why Chinese open-source models just blew past American ones in token usage.
This week's roundtable: Erik Bernhardsson (CEO of Modal Labs, the serverless GPU cloud), Tanay Kothari (CEO of Wispr Flow, the voice dictation app every VC in the valley uses), and Richard Socher (CEO of Recursive Superintelligence and You.com).

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Timestamps:
0:00 Cold open
0:53 Welcome to Episode 15
5:53 Recursive's plan to build a self-improving "Eureka machine"
8:10 Token spend now exceeds headcount at the frontier
9:56 GPU crunch, Hopper prices, and the Anthropic-Colossus shockwave
12:23 Wispr Flow's 90% gross margin playbook
14:30 Running $100M in marketing with two humans and a swarm of agents
18:29 Reward hacking, paperclips, and the rise of the "reward engineer"
24:39 Why CEOs put one person in charge: multi-objective AI
28:17 Meta's 8,000 layoffs, $145B CapEx, Goldman vs. Stanford
33:23 "Nobody lost their job to AI, just the promise of AI"
37:57 Jevons paradox: software demand is infinite, illustrations aren't
39:48 Meta's keystroke monitoring and the back-channel reaction
42:55 Equity, Trump accounts, and rooting for your old employer
44:06 The Bloomberg/Indeed dev jobs chart
47:34 Jason's pitch: hiring a 22-year-old AI-native "software valet"
50:29 Pope Leo: "AI needs to be disarmed"
57:41 Chris Olah on AI displacement and the global poor
1:00:46 Chinese models hit 9 trillion tokens, DeepSeek V4 Flash goes #1
1:03:04 Strange biases, Tiananmen Square, and the US open-source vacuum
1:05:07 Who they're hiring

🔗 Guests:
Erik Bernhardsson, Modal Labs: https://modal.com | https://x.com/bernhardsson
Tanay Kothari, Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai | https://x.com/tankots
Richard Socher, Recursive Superintelligence / You.com: https://recursive.com | https://x.com/RichardSocher

🔗 Referenced in this episode:
Modal Labs: https://modal.com
Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai
Recursive Superintelligence launch: https://recursive.com
You.com: https://you.com
Anthropic / SpaceX Colossus 1 compute deal: https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-spacex
TechCrunch on the $1.25B/month Anthropic-xAI compute deal: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/anthropic-will-pay-xai-1-25-billion-per-month-for-compute/
Meta's 8,000 layoffs and 2026 AI CapEx of $145B: https://www.reuters.com
Intuit cuts 3,000 jobs to fund AI integration: https://www.reuters.com
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon NYT op-ed on AI job loss: https://www.nytimes.com
Stanford study on entry-level AI-exposed jobs (-16%): https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu
Pope Leo XIV: "AI needs to be disarmed": https://www.vatican.va
Chris Olah (Anthropic) on AI and the global poor: https://www.anthropic.com
OpenRouter token usage leaderboard: https://openrouter.ai/rankings
DeepSeek V4 Flash: https://www.deepseek.com
Qwen 3 Max (Alibaba): https://qwenlm.ai

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#ThisWeekInAI #AI #ModalLabs #WisprFlow #Recursive #YouCom #DeepSeek #Qwen #MetaLayoffs #Anthropic #Colossus #PopeLeo #RewardHacking #AIJobs #OpenSource

The frontier labs are coming for the application layer, and they're going to steal your idea. We dug into Andrej Karpathy's move to Anthropic, the new rules of AI etiquette, and why graduates are booing AI at commencement speeches.

This week's roundtable: Kanjun Qiu (CEO of Imbue, building open source agents), Jeremy Fraenkel (CEO of Fundamental, large tabular models for enterprise data), and Karri Saarinen (CEO of Linear, the product development system used by OpenAI, Coinbase, Cursor, Ramp, and Cash App).

Thank you to our exclusive sponsor:
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Timestamps:
0:00 Cold open
1:02 Welcome to Episode 14 of This Week in AI
1:45 Kanjun Qiu on Imbue's GPU cluster bet that funds the company
5:38 Jeremy Fraenkel on why LLMs choke on structured enterprise data
9:36 Karri Saarinen on Linear and product work for AI agents
12:50 Design in the age of AI: why early-stage product design is getting worse
21:18 Jason coins "AI etiquette": your output is your responsibility
33:30 Andre Karpathy joins Anthropic
40:00 The cult of each AI lab: SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI
47:00 Anthropic's pricing misstep and the "punk software" movement
50:00 The verticalization war coming for the application layer
55:00 "Claude knows more about me than my partner": power concentration in AI
58:30 Mac M5 clusters and confidential compute on AWS
1:07:30 Graduates boo AI at commencement: Schmidt, Borchetta, Cawfield
1:22:00 Four founders deliver their own commencement speeches
1:28:30 Reese Witherspoon vs the New York Times
1:33:00 Plugs and where to find the guests

🔗 Guests on X:
Kanjun Qiu, Imbue: https://imbue.com | https://x.com/kanjun
Jeremy Fraenkel, Fundamental: https://fundamental.tech | https://x.com/fraenkelj
Karri Saarinen, Linear: https://linear.app | https://x.com/karrisaarinen

🔗 Referenced in this episode:
Andre Karpathy joins Anthropic (announcement): https://x.com/karpathy/status/2056753169888334312?s=20
Imbue Blueprint (open source agent skill): https://imbue.com/blueprint
ExoLabs (daisy-chained Mac clusters): https://exolabs.net
Abacus (on-prem language models): https://goabacus.co
Whisper Flow (voice-to-text): https://wisprflow.ai
Perplexity Model Council: https://perplexity.ai
NYT editorial on Reese Witherspoon and AI: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/opinion/reese-witherspoon-mel-robbins-girlboss-ai.html

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#ThisWeekInAI #AI #Imbue #Fundamental #Linear #Anthropic #OpenAI #Karpathy #AIEtiquette #VibeCoding #PunkSoftware #AICommencement #OpenSourceAI

The future of AI isn't a smarter chatbot. It's a model that watches your screen, listens to the room, and acts on what it sees. We dug into Thinking Machines' new interaction model, what it means for compute, and the layoff wave that's already here.This week's roundtable: Anastasios Angelopoulos (CEO of Arena, formerly LMArena), Nick Harris (CEO of Lightmatter, photonic computing chips), and Philip Johnston (CEO of StarCloud, building megawatt data centers in space).

Thank you to our exclusive sponsor:
PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/

Timestamps:
0:00 Cold open
1:21 Welcome to Episode 13
2:51 Is China closing the AI gap? Arena's data
5:16 Lightmatter and the photonic interconnect bottleneck
9:42 StarCloud 2, Nvidia Space Ruben 1, and orbital data centers
17:24 Thinking Machines' interaction model: what's actually new
28:22 Whisper Flow and the 3-pedal desk setup
33:48 Real-time desktop and camera awareness as the real unlock
40:25 Why this 100x's compute demand
42:43 The polarization of compute and $10M personal data centers
49:25 The layoff wave: Cloudflare, PayPal, Coinbase, Upwork
54:48 The 10x gap between AI-first and non-AI-first employees
59:52 Unlimited agency and the abundance future
1:00:46 Anthropic's Project Luna runs a retail store
1:03:45 Decoupling labor from value creation
1:05:03 P(doom) round

🔗 Guests:
Anastasios Angelopoulos, Arena: https://arena.ai | @ML_Angelopolous
Nick Harris, Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.co
Philip Johnston, StarCloud: https://starcloud.com | @philipjohnston

🔗 Referenced in this episode:
Thinking Machines, Introducing Interaction Models: https://thinkingmachines.ai/blog/interaction-models/
LMArena leaderboard: https://lmarena.ai
Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.co
Starcloud: https://www.starcloud.com
TechCrunch, Cloudflare says AI made 1,100 jobs obsolete: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/08/cloudflare-says-ai-made-1100-jobs-obsolete-even-as-revenue-hit-a-record-high/
Fast Company, Tech layoffs this week due to AI (Cloudflare, PayPal, Coinbase, Upwork): https://www.fastcompany.com/91538995/tech-layoffs-due-to-ai-this-week-cloudflare-paypal-coinbase-upwork
Bloomberg, South Korea floats citizen dividend from AI profits: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-05-12/korea-s-massive-ai-boom-triggers-call-for-tech-tax-roiling-market
PYMNTS, Inside a retail store run entirely by AI (Andon Labs / Luna): https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2026/inside-a-retail-store-run-entirely-by-ai/
Wispr Flow (voice-to-text tool Jason uses): https://wisprflow.ai
Fermi Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

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