AI & I

I interviewed the Governor of New Jersey Phil Murphy on AI & I. We spent an hour talking about his vision for AI in government, economic development, and the regulatory challenges ahead. His approach is refreshingly pragmatic: Spark real innovation at scale. Governor Murphy is laying the groundwork through an AI hub that pools the strengths of the government, academia (Princeton University), legacy tech (Microsoft), and next-gen players (CoreWeave). Creating a place for the brightest minds to live and work. He’s making the Garden State irresistible for the best talent through walkable communities, legal recreational cannabis, and an angel investment tax credit.AI that augments teams, instead of replacing them. The Governor sees AI as an “accelerant” that enables teams to do more with the same number of employees. He’s walking the talk by training 61,000 NJ state employees in AI to automate busy work and free them to focus on strategic tasks.An integrated regulatory framework for AI. He believes that a technology as pervasive as AI should be regulated at a national level because the state-by-state approach could stifle innovation. Governor Phil Murphy is the first governor I’ve ever had on the show and I was honored he took the time to come on. I was also especially excited to do this because I grew up in New Jersey! This is a must watch for anyone interested in the intersection of AI and policy.If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Timestamps:Introduction: 00:02:00Why there should be a nation-wide framework to regulate AI: 00:04:31How 61,000 state employees in New Jersey are adopting AI: 00:10:34Why new tech is key to transforming government services: 00:12:20The Governor is bringing startups back to New Jersey: 00:17:30How to stimulate innovation at scale: 00:25:28The Governor is making New Jersey a top choice for the best talent: 00:33:07Balancing technological progress while ensuring the workforce isn’t left behind: 00:36:56We’re moving toward an “allocation economy”: 00:41:39The Governor’s take on international regulation of AI: 00:43:43Links to resources mentioned in the episode:Governor Phil Murphy: @GovMurphyMore about the New Jersey AI Hub: https://njaihub.org/ 

In this engaging conversation, Steve Schlafman, a former VC and founder of @downshift, shares his innovative approach to personal growth using AI. He reveals how he leverages ChatGPT for dream analysis, pulling out archetypes and emotions for deeper self-understanding. Steve emphasizes the importance of integrating feelings and imagination with rational thought. He also discusses the transformative power of voice interfaces and personal narratives in enhancing self-awareness and navigating emotional patterns. Perfect for those curious about AI's role in emotional exploration!

Mike Maples, a veteran venture investor and co-founder of Floodgate, shares insights on AI startups and strategic advantages over giants like OpenAI. He reveals the importance of counter-positioning and adapting to technological inflections that reshape business models. Discussing outcome-based pricing and cultural shifts, Mike emphasizes how smaller teams can innovate faster. He also explores the balance between integrated and modular solutions, and how AI transforms product development and fundraising, giving startups an edge in a competitive landscape.

Michael Taylor, creator of Rally and co-author of a prompt engineering book, shares how he uses AI to replicate customer responses, revolutionizing market research. He discusses simulating audience behavior to A/B test headlines, ensuring valuable insights before launch. The conversation highlights AI's potential in understanding consumer profiles while stressing the importance of precise prompts. Michael's tinkerer mindset illuminates the challenges and future of AI, including balancing automation with human creativity, as he demonstrates the power of his innovative tool live.

Nat Eliason’s career arc is borderline absurd—but it works. In the last five years, he ran an SEO agency, got into crypto, made $600,000 from a course on the note-taking tool Roam Research, flipped real estate in Austin for a 6x return, and published a book with Random House. He’s now writing a book of science fiction and running a viral course about building apps with AI.I’ve known Nat for a long time, and I think he knows where the puck is headed better than anyone. He’ll see a new tool or trend, master it, build a business around it, and move on. Nat’s pulled it off with crypto, Roam, real estate—and now AI. His app-building course has over 800 students and racked up $200,000 in pre-sales in one week.Nat was one of the first guests I had on the podcast and I was delighted to have him on again. We spent an hour talking about how coding with AI is creating new behaviors in programming, Nat’s best practices for using the coding tool Cursor, and his take on the future of writing with AI. This episode is a must-watch for writers, creators, and anyone interested in the future of product building.If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipperTimestamps:Introduction: 00:01:45The origins of Nat’s viral course on building apps with AI: 00:10:15How coding with AI has evolved over the last two years: 00:17:16Nat creates an app using Composer, Cursor’s AI assistant: 00:20:52Tactical tips for coding with Cursor: 00:24:36How coding with AI is creating new behaviors in programming: 00:27:36What excites Nat the most about the future of AI: 00:31:11A demo of Hubbard, the AI editor Nat built for his science fiction writing: 00:37:28When does it make sense to build custom software: 00:43:22Nat’s take on the future of writing with AI: 00:47:48Links to resources mentioned in the episode:  Nat Eliason: @nateliasonNat’s viral course about building apps with AI: Build Your Own Apps with AIThe book Nat published about crypto: Crypto Confidential: Winning and Losing Millions in the New Frontier of Finance  Dan’s piece about how AI empowers creators: AI and the Age of the Individual 

Guillermo Rauch is one of the most prolific coders of this generation. But he doesn’t think of himself as a coder anymore. Coding, he says, is a specific skill that AI is becoming great at. Instead, he thinks the future of coding is more holistic, full-stack engineers who can ideate, design, and execute all together. Guillermo is the founder and CEO of Vercel, the creator of NextJS, and SocketIO. We spent an hour talking about the future of software development in an AI world—and the meta-skills that are essential for the coders of today to master—in order to use tomorrow’s tools to their fullest extent.Here are a few takeaways:One of the most important keys to his success is taste—and developing taste is all about paying better attention to everything you experience day to day.He’s great at recognizing bleeding-edge technologies with extremely practical applications but that have bad user experiences. If you can learn to recognize those and build with them, you might build the next NextJs or SocketIO.He’s already seeing enterprises use Vercel’s AI coding copilot v0 to replace all of their programming—they just send v0 demos back and forth to iterate on new prototypes. Why prototype cultures are becoming common in AI—and the benefits of written cultures like Amazon vs. prototype cultures like Apple for different kinds of companies.For developers building frameworks, always put the product first; a framework in isolation without a “customer zero” is never going to be a good tool.The theory of “recursive founder mode”—if you want to build a scalable business, you have to scale yourself by creating an atmosphere that nurtures talent and ambition.AI tools are shifting software toward consumption-based billing models, making us capital allocators who decide how much compute the AI consumes.The future of AI is agents with the taste, knowledge, and tools to perform specialized tasks.If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Links to resources mentioned in the episode:Guillermo Rauch: @rauchgVercel: https://vercel.com/ Last week’s episode with Nabeel Hyatt: 🎧 The Venture Capitalist Who Finds the Best AI Products—Before They Win Dan’s essay about the allocation economy: The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy 

AGI is coming. Reid Hoffman just wrote the book on how to prepare.According to Reid, every major tech breakthrough (the written word, the printing press, the telephone) triggered mass fear. But, contrary to our worries, new technology tends to enhance human agency—even more so, if you know how to use it well.In Superagency, his book that was released yesterday, Reid examines how we’ve historically adopted new technologies and focuses on AI’s potential to increase our agency—the ability to make decisions that affect outcomes. He wrote the book for two audiences: anyone who is curious, or even skeptical, about AI; and technologists who are building in AI, with the hope that they will think about human agency as a design principle for their products. As someone who straddles both worlds, I read the book and really liked it.Beyond being a prolific author, Reid is the cofounder of LinkedIn, Inflection AI, and Manas AI; a partner at venture capital firm Greylock Partners; an early backer and board member of OpenAI; and an award-winning podcaster—and I was pleased to invite him onto AI & I again, this time in person. We recorded an hour-long conversation, going deep on:The notion of human agency, how our sense of agency shapes our response to new technologies, and its interplay with uncertaintyWhy Reid believes that private commons and equitable access to AI will be beneficial for society at largeHow the history of AI mirrors a philosophical shift in how we understand intelligence, from trying to program explicit rules about how thinking works, to building systems that learn patterns from dataReid’s take on how the next decade of AI will involve a play between rule-based systems and pattern-matching ones   It’s a must-watch for anyone who wants to help build a more human future with AI. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipperLinks to resources mentioned in the episode:Reid Hoffman: @reidhoffmanSuperagency, Reid’s newest book: https://www.superagency.ai/ 

Nabeel Hyatt is a general partner at Spark Capital, known for his smart investments in disruptive tech like Discord and Cruise. He discusses his unique investment strategy, focusing on a few select startups each year to foster deep relationships with founders. Nabeel likens successful products to Japanese toilets—delightful innovations that users didn’t know they wanted. He also shares insights on the evolution of AI tools like Granola and the importance of visionary thinking in tech, emphasizing creativity and user experience.

Building an email client used to take many years and millions of dollars.But Every’s Kieran Klaassen built Cora—a totally new way to manage your inbox with AI—in just 3 months. He even shipped the original MVP of the product in a single day—something that just wasn’t possible before the current state of generative AI. Now, there are almost 10,000 people on the waitlist for Cora, and we’re onboarding new users every single day. Every’s head of Studio Brandon Gell and I worked closely with Kieran as he built Cora, and to kick off my podcast, AI and I, in 2025, I invited both of them on the show to talk about it. We go behind the scenes, getting into how Kieran built the product with Cursor, o1, and o1 Pro, what we’re learning as we onboard new users every day, and the future of Cora and of Every as a multi-modal media company.This is a must watch for anyone curious about our approach to building with AI at Every.If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Links to resources mentioned in the episode:Sign up for the Cora waitlist: https://cora.computer/ Learn more about Cora: Introducing Cora: Manage Your Inbox With AIKieran Klaassen: @kieranklaassenBrandon Gell: @bran_don_gell

Alice Albrecht, a cognitive neuroscience Ph.D. from Yale and Senior Director of AI Product at SmartNews, dives into how AI is revolutionizing science. She discusses the importance of large-scale data gathering and the shift towards personalized, contextual predictions in research. The conversation explores the ethical challenges of AI in mental health, particularly in treating OCD, and highlights the transformative power of data in understanding psychological dynamics. Albrecht also anticipates a new era for scientific publishing through greater transparency and open data sharing.