AI Business Podcast

This week, we welcome our new reporter Ben Wodecki – and make him defend his favorite news stories of the week in a public forum. Because we’re nice like that. We also discuss Microsoft, after the company’s early bet on augmented reality finally paid off in a military hardware contract with the US Army worth up to $22 billion. A lot to unpack here. We start with the epic story of super-helmets for American super-soldiers. The US Army is going to have 120,000 of these, courtesy of Microsoft and its HoloLens project – long considered by many industry observers, including yours truly, to be nothing but an expensive gimmick. We were wrong. Defense is the quintessential early adopter – and any technology developed for the army will later filter down to the rest of the market. This was true for digital photography (originally for spy satellites), GPS (originally for nukes) and microwave ovens (originally for air defense), and it will be true for AR. If you listen carefully, you can hear thousands of venture capitalists invested in AR startups cry out in ecstasy. Next, it’s time for What’s The News With Wodecki (WTNWW), a segment in which we make our new reporter Ben run a journalistic gauntlet: he talks us through his favorite stories of the week, and we (me) pronounce our editorial judgment on whether a story will develop further and is worth following. And there’s a five-minute timer on any debate, so we don’t get sidetracked. We also mention: Butterflies on Amazon! Yu-Gi-Oh! Exoskeletons! Ben’s cooking! Traffic in Vietnam! As always, you can find the people responsible for the circus podcast online: Max Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Sebastian Moss (@SebMoss) Tien Fu (@tienchifu) Ben Wodecki (@benwodecki)

This week, we look at Boston Dynamics as it faces the dreary task of commercializing its incredible robot tech, and the amazing career of Eric Emerson Schmidt – who has just donated $150 million to fund a center dedicated to AI for biological research. We begin by the latest from Boston Dynamics: having recently charged ownership, the robotics wunderkinder have launched what could be considered their first true commercial product – Stretch the warehouse robot. Next we talk about a brand new research center that will study the intersection of machine learning and biology. Set up by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center was funded with a $150m endowment from its namesakes, as well as a matching $150m from The Broad Foundation. Who is Eric Schmidt? How did he make his money, and what is he doing at the moment? All these questions (and many more) are answered by our dedicated billionaire-watcher Sebastian Moss.

This week, we talk massive shifts at at Intel, poke gentle fun at Peloton, and explore the not-so-wonderful world of robot poetry. Peloton has purchased three AI-powered startups, namely voice assistant developer Aiqudo, smartwatch company Atlas Wearables, and interactive workout mat startup Otari. But will it be enough to keep the company competitive? Can Peloton hang on to the market niche it created? Dramatic stuff.

Welcome to yet another episode of the AI Business podcast in which we discuss the chip shortage and new AI hardware with special  guest Rodrigo Liang, co-founder and CEO of silicon design startup  SambaNova. We start by talking about the ongoing chip supply crisis  which has sent server component prices skyrocketing, and saw American  auto-makers having to idle plants as tech-heavy cars have been stuck on production lines. Scaling chip production is an extremely  capital-intensive process and the trade war between the US and China is  certainly not making silicon vendors any favors. SambaNova itself recently emerged from stealth with a  new chip designed specifically for AI, called Cardinal, and a brand new  server architecture called DataFlow. The company was lucky enough to  purchase its materials in advance, so its wares are available for  testing.

We return after a short break, to talk about empathy, advertising, and Palantir, an AI company that built a business worth $15 billion with 30 salespeople – now featuring in its very own drinking game! We begin by talking about Moods, a service from Vevo, the company that owns and manages most music videos on the Internet. Moods now uses AI to identify the tone and emotion of music in order to help advertisers more effectively target their campaigns – initial options include ‘fun,’ ‘heartfelt,’ ‘impassioned,’ and ‘empowering.’ Now, the obvious problem with this service is it ignores the less positive emotions that are integral to art, like sadness, despair, and perhaps even hatred. How can we teach computers to understand human emotion? And if the advertisers, in their infinite wisdom, choose to focus exclusively on positive emotions, who’s going to bankroll the next Nine Inch Nails? In the second part of the podcast, we continue talking about one of our favorite subjects – AI, analytics, and surveillance wunder-venture Palantir. But there’s a plot twist: every time we mention the name of its founder, libertarian saint Peter Thiel, Max drinks. You can hear the podcast descending into chaos and almost feel the anguish of our publisher. What happened with Palantir? Well, the company is actually going from the strength to strength, and has secured a major distribution deal leveraging IBM’s considerable sales muscle. This means a lot more Palantir software, used by many more government agencies and corporations – joining the ranks of the CIA, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, LAPD and the Space Force. We also cover: Gym music! Shoes! Doomscrolling! Things wrong with IBM! As always, you can find the people responsible for the circus podcast online: Max Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Sebastian Moss (@SebMoss) Tien Fu (@tienchifu)

This week, we ask whether automated moderation tools can help recover the toxic wastelands of the Internet, and debut a new segment called ‘Fast & Autonomous.’ We look into the origins of Google’s Jigsaw, analyze some of the social implications of moderation tech, and remember how an AI-based system once tried its best to prevent Sebastian from joining ISIS. We also cover: The Iraq war! Virtual driving! Jared Cohen! Corporate culture! As always, you can find more stories about AI and business on AI Business.

We talk Jeff Bezos and the Breakfast Octopus philosophy We talk about Jeffrey Preston Bezos – the man who has reshaped the world to an extent preciously reserved for empires and great military leaders. Bezos is leaving the CEO post at Amazon, the company he founded, and will instead become executive chairman. What better time to look back at his career, the importance of Amazon Web Services, and the potential impact of the new CEO, Andy Jassy, formerly in charge of AWS? We start with the origin story, and the role of AWS in keeping Amazon the store online (and solvent). This is where meet Jassy: the man tasked with keeping the servers running, who managed to transform spare IT capacity into the world’s largest cloud company. Next, we look at machine learning in the cloud, and the services AWS provides; just like Google, the company decided to design its own chips for AI workloads, called Trainium, which it now rents out alongside more traditional CPUs and GPUs. And finally, we look at all the things Amazon does, or is alleged to be doing, with data. The company dominates the retail market through the power of information, rather than any manufacturing capacity, and we can look forward to even more aggressive efforts to harvest customer information. Sounds great. We also cover: Rockets for billionaires! Bezos Earth! McKenzie Scott! Lab monkeys! As always, you can find the people responsible for the circus podcast on AI Business: Max Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Sebastian Moss (@SebMoss) Tien Fu (@tienchifu)

This week, we talk about Google: one of the world’s largest IT companies is frequently in the news, and not always for the right reasons. We find out what happens behind the scenes from our guest Roland Szabo, a software engineer who started his career by developing machine learning services at Google, before striking out on his own as an ML consultant. Also in this episode: Reasons to like Google+! Unexpected benefits of GitHub! The horrors of Terms of Service!

Machine learning has its sinners, and its saints... This week, we look at surprising crimes of machine learning experts, investigate the role of AI in manufacturing, and ask whether Pat Gelsinger can save Intel (from itself). We also mention: Inauguration! The new administration! Taiwan! Regulation!

A failed coup is a godsend to journalists: this week we discuss civil liberties, digital dissent, online publishing, and the surprising artificial intelligence legacy of Donald Trump. We also mention all the good stuff: Gab! Hate Mail! Deplatforming! Censorship! Alex Jones! Vint Cerf! (Even job openings at AI Business).