The Times Tech Podcast

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Loyal founder Celine Halioua, to talk about extending the life of dogs (3:00), pushing to get first product on market in 2025 (6:10), the regulatory path (10:40), growing up in Texas (15:40), how health anxiety seeded her passion for longevity science (21:00), leaving Oxford after being sexually harassed (25:10), coming to San Francisco to work with Laura Deming on longevity (28:50), choosing to work on dogs (31:30), raising money (39:35), convincing top people to join Loyal (42:30), the development timeline (47:00), and the future of longevity science (50:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Vijay Pande, head of Andreessen Horowitz’s $1.5bn bio fund, to talk about how artificial intelligence is impacting healthcare (3:30), tools that “understand” biology (8:50), trying to eliminate cancer (12:50), trying to get techie founders to get into healthcare (14:25), America’s plunging life expectancy (18:00), the (potential) end of radiology (21:10), AI’s “hallucination" problem in healthcare (25:55), the future of therapy (29:00), putting healthcare on the Moore’s Law curve (33:10), using automation to slash the industry’s costs and inefficiencies (37:30), the next trillion dollar company (40:00), if capitalism is the best way to crack healthcare (45:40), and solving the billing problem(48:35). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Stephen Hsu, founder of SuperFocus.ai, to talk about genetic testing of children (5:15), his new startup SuperFocus (9:15), the hallucination problem for artificial intelligence (11:40), how the Ai revolution could go very badly (17:55), creating an army of AI workers (24:00), how companies are reacting (27:30), starting a company amid the Cambrian explosion of AI companies (32:35), creating AI study buddies (37:00), the “who owns the data” question (43:15), and how education is the tip of the spear in the age of AI (48:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Ben Rapoport to talk about his plan it implant his first brain-computer interface in a human this year (5:00), his background in neurosurgery and electrical engineering (10:30), why BCI’s are ready now (13:30), Precision’s approach (16:45), preventing the device being rejected by the body (23:15), what this device will allow (24:45), restoring sense of touch to paralyzed people (32:55), exoskeletons (32:45), his time at Elon Musk’s Neuralink (41:00), and the dawning age of brain computer interfaces (44:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Matt Welsh, founder of Fixie.ai, to talk about how artificial intelligence will replace human programmers (3:25), its growing capabilities (8:20), the power of natural language prompts (13:20), running the numbers (16:15), historical precedents (21:30), on whether there is a development “brick wall” coming (25:00), why this AI moment has arrived (27:50), whether OpenAI will have a defensible business model (32:30), Fixie’s plan (35:40), a world of bespoke AIs for different industries (41:20), Welsh’s history at Google, Apple and startups (43:50), starting Fixie (46:30), and the societal shift to come (50:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny in the Valley will back next week. Jury duty forced me to cancel all meetings and pods this week! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Parker Conrad, founder and chief executive of Rippling, to talk about getting caught in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (3:30), receiving a call at 5:30 am (8:30), how wide the SVB blast radius was (11:00), moving $130m to JP Morgan in three hours (13:45), raising $500m in a day (17:00), why some people still didn’t get paid (23:40), the growing vulnerabilities of regional banks (30:20), the importance of SVB to tech (32:30), Conrad's experience at Zenefits (37:15), why automating things with software is harder than it seems (42:30), and operating in a slowing economy and tighter funding environment (44:40). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson things on Sean Gourley, founder of Primer AI, to talk about how he got into the industry (3:45), and then getting into counterintelligence (6:40), the image recognition revolution (9:00), raising money from the CIA (11:00), AI in war (16:30), how machines beat human Top Gun pilots (20:00), AI as the “third offset” (22:00), how the US is still living with a Cold War mentality (27:30), the AI arms race with China (30:00), the long ties between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley (34:15), how it has become easier to recruit (37:30), the Chat GPT effect (40:40), the next weapon of mass destruction (45:00), and Tiktok and the information war (48:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Tom Harries to talk about his previous cremation startup (3:20), how he got into human composting (5:00), the problems with burial and cremation (8:20), society’s changing attitude toward funerals (13:50), perfecting the microbial breakdown process (14:50), controlling temperature (21:10), using human remains to reforest land (24:20), raising $10m (27:15), why it takes 45 days to compost a body (33:05), building a household death brand (34:40), and how he got into the death business (36:50). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Stuart Russell, professor at UC Berkeley and one of the world’s leading experts on artificial intelligence (AI), to talk about working in the field for decades (4:00), AI’s Sputnik moment (7:45), why these programmes aren’t very good at learning (13:00), trying to inoculating ourselves against the idea that software is sentient (15:00), why super intelligence will require more breakthroughs (17:20), autonomous weapons (26:15), getting politicians to regulate AI in warfare (30:30), building systems to control intelligent machines (36:20), the self-driving car example (39:45), how he figured out how to beat AlphaGo (43:45), the paper clip example (49:50), and the first AI programme he wrote as a 13-year-old. (55:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.