The Next Billion Seconds with Mark Pesce

While the US put its car in reverse (at speed!) and European automakers chased their own tails about whether or not to abandon ICEs, the Chinese put the pedal to the metal in their high-tourque EVs, leaving everyone one else in the dust. A once-in-a-lifetime platform transition - without any international competitors! Co-host Sally Dominguez, Special Correspondent Drew Smith and host Mark Pesce discuss a world that already looks ra...

What a difference a year makes. A transition to EVs that once seemed utterly inevitable has been thoroughly disrupted by a change of regime in the United States. Using every tool in its arsenal to bribe, cajole and even threaten its allies into dropping any support or incentives for electrification, the USA seems intent upon reviving a past where the internal combustion engine ruled unchallenged. Will it work? Co-host Sally Domingu...

Can a big business transform its processes and workflows using AI? With very few successful examples to follow, how does the Big End of Town even get started? L'Oreal Groupe - the biggest beauty products firm on Earth - got started three years ago. We sit down with L'Oreal Groupe ANZ CEO Alex Davison to explore how they did it, why they did it - and how it's changed their business. L'Oreal is rated by FORTUNE Magazine to be the #1 ...

There's an elephant in the room along with artificial intelligence - its impact on the climate. Demand for electricity has skyrocketed as Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft build vast new data centres to handle the anticipated global demand for AI products and services. Is that wise? In conversation with legendary entrepreneur and ClimateSalad CEO Mick Liubinskas, we explore whether we're approaching the age of AI with e...

Massive increases in productivity lure businesses into adopting artificial intelligence. But what if pursuit of that elusive 'superprodctivity' produces exactly the opposite? A rebroadcast of Radio New Zealand's Nine To Noon from16 October 2025, host Kathryn Ryan and I ask whether any business advantage can be gained by the 'promiscuous' use of AI.

The Next Billion Seconds with Mark Pesce is produced by Ampel and Myrtle and Pi...

What would you do if you lost your job to an AI? Would you even know? It happened to me - and I didn't learn the truth for six months. In the aftermath I recognised how my work needed to change. That became the core of 'Building Resistance', a set of practices that help us focus on the most human elements of our work. Leaning into those - in this episode, you'll learn how - makes it harder to get automated into oblivion.

For more i...

While the US focuses on putting the brakes on 'woke AI' (whatever that is) the rest of the world's nations confront thorny questions about how to regulate a technology that's both moving very quickly and lacks any clear definitions. Could regulators strangle AI in the process of regulating it? Or will innovators it outpace all efforts to contain it?  At the intersection of commerce and geopolitics, we speak with researcher Kat...

ALWAYS IMPERFECT Episode 3: A BETTER WAY
Used well, artificial intelligence can automate labor-intensive and rote processes, freeing people for the work they want to do. That's the theory, anyway - but what about the practice? SUPAHMAN founder and CEO Dave Howden shares his experiences helping businesses adopt AI within their workflows - and admits, in order for that to work, he needs to be the 'dumbest person in the room'. Humi...

Can a computer program a computer as well as a human being can? Artificial intelligence enabled a quantum leap in the quality of the tools programmer use to write code - but they're delicate. Push them too hard and they break. Even when they work they can write reams of code that no human can make heads or tails of. John Allsopp joins us to investigate whether programmers will soon become obsolete - or whether they'll kept around t...

Always Imperfect - Episode 1 - NO MAGIC WANDS

Artificial intelligence may be amazing but it’s always imperfect. Anyone trying to use AI professionally lands on the horns of a dilemma: will a productivity increase gained through automation represent any savings, after factoring in the extra supervision needed to use these amazing (but unreliable) new tools? In this mini series, we chat with Drew Smith, co-founder of Wisel...

Whenever fellow futurist and longtime friend Rob Tercek and I (Mark Pesce) get together, we go crazy deep on the future: What happens when lazy humans outsource their thought process to machines? You get a society that vibes its way into a blurry, sub-optimal future. The surge of slop means that AI is creating more work for humans instead of stealing our jobs. I join Rob on his podcast The Futurists to cut through the hype and the ...

Mark joins RNZ Nine to Noon host Kathryn Ryan to delve into the sudden phenomenon of 'viral' AI videos - getting better at capturing your eyeballs. Did you see those cute bunnies bouncing on a trampoline? Never happened - but made you look. The fusion of TikTok and AI video looks to be potent - and addictive. Next up, shocking and sad story of Adam Raine, a 16 year old who confided his suicidal thoughts to ChatGPT. ChatGPT aided hi...

On a recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, Mark rented an EV, drove to a rural town on the Mendocino coast, then drove back again. That trip taught Mark a lot about what it means to drive an EV - and how it changes both thinking and behaviour behind the wheel. Unless we fundamentally revise how we power personal transportation in the US (and Australia) along lines similar to those in China, the EV revolution will fade away in ...

A recent study from MIT shows students tasked with writing essays showed significantly lower levels of brain activity when allowed to use ChatGPT. Mark Pesce reviews the implications of this finding with RNZ NineToNoon host Kathryn Ryan, going on to reveal how an internet filled with AI-generated content becomes increasingly 'toxic' for those same AIs. Plus, would you agree to be 're-animated' as an 'AI ghost'? 

In conversatio...

RNZ NINE TO NOON: CAN CHATGPT MAKE YOU CRAZY?

In conversation with host Kathryn Ryan, Mark highlights a number of reports indicating potentially very serious mental health issues associated with the use of chatbots like ChatGPT. These chatbots tend to be very agreeable - a quality known as 'sycophancy'. But being agreeable with someone's delusions only tends to reinforce them, potentially amplifying any underlying mental health iss...

From Radio New Zealand's Nine To Noon: Meta - the parent of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and much more besides - finds itself fighting for its life against a suit from the US Federal Trade Commission, charging abuse of monopoly power - because they acquired Instagram and WhatsApp in order to neutralise up-and-coming competitors. Even in Trump's America, that could result in the break-up of the trillion-dollar social media giant. ...

Originally broadcast on 20th March, 2025 on Radio New Zealand's Nine To Noon with host Kathryn Ryan. 

Christie's held its first auction of AI-generated art, earning a million dollars. Those AI artworks had been 'trained' from countless images, owned by other people. Is that legal? OpenAI and Google claim that unless they have free right to use - well, basically everything everywhere ever created by humanity - to train the...

Originally broadcast on Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon on 13 February 2025 

Last week Google amended its ethical AI policies to allow their AI tools to be used in weapons - to preserve 'national security'. They're among the last to embrace a new market for their products - defense and weapons. Is this a new thing? Or is tech simply returning to its roots as a service industry for the military-industrial complex? Is this...

"How did you go bankrupt?" begins the oft-quoted line from Hemingway. "Two ways. Gradually - then suddenly." That's how the automotive sector feels at the end of 2024, with Nissan maybe preparing for bankruptcy and Stellantis firing its CEO and VW struggling with strikes and low sales and GM shuttering Cruise and on and on and on. Sally Dominguez and Drew Smith join Mark Pesce in studio to explore what's really happening - and what...