SHIFT

Agentic AI is one of the hottest topics going in tech circles, but if pinning down exactly what we’re talking about feels a bit like a moving target, it’s not your imagination. What agents are capable of doing is changing almost as quickly as what people want to do with them. 

We Meet:  

VP of Agentic AI at AWS Swami Sivasubramanian

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cilleke...

What’s an astronaut’s time worth? Answering that question is not a perfect science, but at more than $100,000 an hour (not counting salary - that's just to keep one alive) on the International Space Station, it’s safe to say it’s more than you want to pay for bagging up trash. 

This week, we take a field trip in New York City to see some space robots that could help with this problem. 

We Meet:  

Icarus Robotics CEO Ethan...

Might a lack of legacy healthcare tech infrastructure in rural communities offer an advantage over mature markets? A  founder makes the case in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet:  

Homeward Co-Founder & President Amar Kendale

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski....

You've likely heard that artificial intelligence is gobbling up electricity and drinking water, and causing a global race to build more energy capacity. 

Have you ever stopped to consider why? Or what we’re doing to bring compute power and sustainability closer together?

This episode was recorded in front of a live audience at TechBBQ, the largest tech conference in the Nordics. It's held each year in Copenhagen, Denmark.

EU AI Act architect and lead author Gabriele Mazzini shares his experience drafting the law. He also talks about his concerns with implementation and its potential impact on European competitiveness, and how that led him to quit his job, in the latest installment of our oral history project.

This episode was recorded at TEDAI in Vienna and originally ran in 2024.

We Meet:

MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate & MIT Connect...

One of the world's hottest AI startups, Builder.AI, imploded earlier this year. We dig into what actually went down at the company and what journalists and investors can learn from the experience. 

We Meet:  

Journalist Varsha Bansal

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Despite our best efforts, sometimes what we say we want isn’t precisely what we mean. Nowhere is that felt more acutely than when we’re giving instructions to a machine, whether that’s coding or offering examples to machine learning systems. We unpack the alignment problem in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet: 

Brian Christian, University of Oxford researcher, and author of The Alignment Problem...

In all the noise about AI agents it’s easy to miss a fundamental change that’s taking place. For these agents to be effective, people have to feel safe delegating things to them. When we do? How we use this tech starts to feel less like a tool and more like real collaboration. 

This week, we explore agentic powered legal work in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet:  

Thomson Reuters Chief Product O...

What would you say if someone offered you a taste of a salmon filet that doesn’t contain fish?  

The protein content, carbs, and even the omega 3s are basically the same, but what it doesn’t contain are things like microplastics and mercury. 

Join us for a factory tour of a startup called New School Foods for a peek at the next-generation of plant-based foods.

We Meet:  

New School Foods CEO Chris Bryson

Credits:

This ep...

This is the final installment of a special series documenting the race to build superintelligent AI systems. The Race to Superintelligence is a deep dive into the rapidly expanding world of artificial intelligence. Join us as we explore the groundbreaking, mystifying and world-changing potential of the next machine age. 

Support for this program comes from The Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network, supporting and brin...

The U.S. trade war is expected to add billions of dollars to things like building AI data centers, and for companies trying to figure out and manage their exposure, it’s never been a more complicated task. 

But what if we could build a map that could show us how supply chains, tariffs and trade policy are playing out in real time?

We Meet:  

Evan Smith, CEO Altana

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer ...

Developing and scaling AI systems brings new security challenges, and companies are scrambling to figure out just how to handle some of the more pressing ones.

I was recently joined on stage by co-founders from two Canadian unicorns, Cohere and Tailscale, to dig into these challenges at Web Summit Vancouver.

We Meet:  

Avery Pennarun, Co-founder & CEO, Tailscale                 

Ivan Zhang, Co-founder, Cohere

Credi...

What if instead of software coaching you on how to use it–what buttons to push and what file menus to open–the software could just use itself, once it knew what you wanted? 

We explore Intuit's new AI agents in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet:  

Alex Balazs, CTO of Intuit

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, wi...

This is part two of a special series documenting the race to build superintelligent AI systems.

The Race to Superintelligence is a deep dive into the rapidly expanding world of artificial intelligence. Join us as we explore the groundbreaking, mystifying and world-changing potential of the next machine age. 

Support for this program comes from The Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network, supporting and bringing together ...

We join the MIT community in New York for an event focused on AI, innovation, and the evolving role of tech in society. 

SandboxAQ is a Google spinout that combines AI Large Quantitative Models and deep expertise in physics, biology, and chemistry in order to work on a wide range of hard problems, such as the prototyping of new materials and chemicals for manufacturing. Andrew McLaughlin is the company’s chief operating off...

Most geospatial data is gathered by satellites and cameras attached to planes, but a new decentralized network is helping amateur drone pilots capture and contribute ultra high resolution data. 

In this week's show, we go fly a drone and learn how that data is helping power next generation apps for things like disaster response.

We Meet:  

Alec Wilson, COO Spexi

Bill Lakeland, CEO Spexi

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was pr...

What might the future of AI look like? 

Robert Brunner is responsible for some of the most iconic industrial designs of this century, and Matt Biilmann coined the phrase AX, which considers the user experience for AI agents. They joined me on center stage for a live conversation about what it means to design for AI at the Web Summit Conference in Vancouver, Canada.

We Meet:  

Matt Biilmann, Co-founder & CEO Netlify

Rob...

The Race to Superintelligence is a deep dive into the rapidly expanding world of artificial intelligence. Join us as we explore the groundbreaking, mystifying and world-changing potential of the next machine age. 

Support for this program comes from The Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network, supporting and bringing together journalists reporting on AI, and with AI, globally.

This episode first published in October 2024...