Decoder with Nilay Patel

Today, I’m talking to Jim Rowan, the CEO of Volvo Cars. Now, Jim’s only been at Volvo for a short time. He took over in 2022 after a decades-long career in the consumer electronics industry. Before Volvo, his two longest stints were at BlackBerry, whose QNX software is used in tons of cars, and then at Dyson, which once tried and failed to make an electric car. Jim and I talked a lot about how that unique experience has influenced how he thinks about the transformational changes happening in the world of cars.

For Volvo, the stakes are high. The company has pledged to be all-electric by the end of the decade, and Jim is also making some very different bets on software and revenue than the rest of the car industry. Jim’s view is that automakers are undergoing three major shifts all at once: electrification, autonomy, and direct-to-consumer sales. With Volvo, Jim is trying to steer the ship through these changes and come out an EV-only carmaker on the other end.

Links:

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23722862

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’ve got a good one today. I’m talking to former President Barack Obama about AI, social networks, and how to think about democracy as both of those things collide. 

I sat down with Obama last week at his offices in Washington, DC, just hours after President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order about AI. You’ll hear Obama say he’s been talking to the Biden administration and leaders across the tech industry about AI and how best to regulate it. My idea here was to talk to Obama the constitutional law professor more than Obama the politician. So this one got wonky fast. 

You’ll also hear him say that he joined our show because he wanted to reach you, the Decoder audience, and get you all thinking about these problems. One of Obama’s worries is that the government needs insight and expertise to properly regulate AI, and you’ll hear him make a pitch for why people with that expertise should take a tour of duty in the government to make sure we get these things right.

Links: 

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23712912

Credits: 

Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today I'm talking with Golnar Khosrowshahi, the founder and CEO of Reservoir Media, a newer record label that I think looks a lot like the future of the music industry. As Golnar explains, Reservoir thinks of individual songs as assets, and after acquiring them, the company sets about monetizing those assets in various ways. This is a copyright-based business in an age where copyright is under a lot of pressure — from TikTok, generative AI, and all of the now-familiar threats to the music business.

If you're a Decoder listener, you know that I love thinking about the music industry. Whatever technology does to music, it does to everything else five years later. So paying attention to music is the best way I know to get ahead of the curve. I also just love music. Golnar is herself a musician. She obviously cares about music a lot, and she's clearly given a lot of thought to what happens next. So this was a great conversation. 

Links:

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23702539

Credits: 

Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking to internet policy legend Lawrence Lessig. He's been teaching law for more than 30 years, and is a defining expert on free speech and the internet — and something of a hero of mine, whose works I've been reading since college.

You’ll hear us agree that the internet at this moment in time is absolutely flooded with disinformation, misinformation, and other really toxic stuff that’s harmful to us as individuals and, frankly, to our future as a functioning democracy. But you’ll also hear us disagree a fair amount about what to do about it. The First Amendment, AI, copyright law — there's a lot to unpack here.

Links: 

https://asml.cyber.harvard.edu/

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/17/1081194/how-to-fix-the-internet-online-discourse/

https://www.protocol.com/facebook-papers

https://www.tiktok.com/@aocinthehouse/video/7214318917135830318?lang=en

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/sensitive-claims-bias-facebook-relaxed-misinformation-rules-conservative-pages-n1236182

https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/repetition-lie-truth-propaganda/

https://www.theverge.com/23883027/alvarez-stolen-valor-first-amendment-kosseff-liar-crowded-theater

https://fortune.com/2023/05/30/sam-altman-ai-risk-of-extinction-pandemics-nuclear-warfare/

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/publications/landslide/2019-20/september-october/into-fandomverse/

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23693274

Credits: 

Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking to Kashmir Hill, a New York Times reporter whose new book, Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It, chronicles the story of Clearview AI, a company that’s built some of the most sophisticated facial recognition and search technology that’s ever existed. As Kashmir reports, you simply plug a photo of someone into Clearview’s app, and it will find every photo of that person that’s ever been posted on the internet. It’s breathtaking and scary.

Kashmir was the journalist who broke the first story about Clearview’s existence, starting with a bombshell investigation report that blew the doors open on the company’s clandestine operations. Over the past few years, she’s been relentlessly reporting on Clearview’s growth, the privacy implications of facial recognition technology, and all of the cautionary tales that inevitably popped up, from wrongful arrests to billionaires using the technology for personal vendettas. The book is fantastic. If you’re a Decoder listener, you’re going to love it, and I highly recommend it. 

Links: 

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23683175

Credits: 

Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today we’re bringing you the last of our live-on-stage interviews from the 2023 Code Conference. Verge deputy editor Alex Heath sat down to chat with Roblox CEO David Baszucki. 

Roblox definitely started out as a kid thing, but the company has big plans to change all that, and Alex got to find out a bit about how that’s going. Roblox is determined to be a platform, even more than a product — something users can develop games and experiences on. And of course, David and Alex spoke about AI. David sees a lot of opportunity for generative AI to help content creators on the Roblox platform in the not-so-distant future. 

Links: 

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23677085

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Amanda Rose Smith.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’ve got another interview from the Code Conference today. My friend and co-host, CNBC’s Julia Boorstin, and I had a chance to talk with Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe. Rivian is a newer company — RJ started it in 2009, and it took more than 10 years to start shipping cars to consumers. But its first vehicle, the R1T pickup, made a big splash when it arrived in 2021, and the company has more back orders for both the R1T and its second vehicle, the R1S SUV, than it can handle. For now.

We asked RJ about that production ramp and whether Rivian can meet demand, and whether it’s just early adopters buying EVs or if they’ve finally gone mainstream. The conversation also touched on Rivian’s deal with Amazon and the auto industry’s push toward subscription features. And, of course, I had to ask Scaringe about the Cybertruck. How could I resist?!

Links: 

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23672708

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last week, when I was co-hosting the Code Conference, I got to talk with Getty Images CEO Craig Peters. The generative AI boom is a direct threat to Getty in many ways. For example, the company is suing Stability AI for training the Stable Diffusion model on Getty content — sometimes clearly including AI-generated copies of the Getty watermark — without permission.

Getty's answer? Its own proprietary, in-house AI tool, trained — with permission — on its own content, using a model where the original creators can get paid. Getty's put some pretty strict guardrails around it for now, but, as even Craig told us, there's still a lot of work to do.

Links: 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/21/23364696/getty-images-ai-ban-generated-artwork-illustration-copyright

https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/6/23587393/ai-art-copyright-lawsuit-getty-images-stable-diffusion

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/25/23884679/getty-ai-generative-image-platform-launch

https://www.theverge.com/23900198/microsoft-kevin-scott-ai-art-bing-google-nvidia-decoder-interview

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-internet-law-politicians-love-to-hate-explained/

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/18/1176881182/supreme-court-sides-against-andy-warhol-foundation-in-copyright-infringement-cas

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/26/23808184/big-ai-really-wants-to-convince-us-that-theyre-cautious

https://journal.everypixel.com/ai-image-statistics

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/22/1177590231/fake-viral-images-of-an-explosion-at-the-pentagon-were-probably-created-by-ai

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23667741

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Amanda Rose Smith.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I co-hosted the Code Conference last week, and today’s episode is one of my favorite conversations from the show: Microsoft CTO and EVP of AI Kevin Scott. If you caught Kevin on Decoder a few months ago, you know that he and I love talking about technology together. I really appreciate that he thinks about the relationship between technology and culture as much as we do at The Verge, and it was great to add the energy from the live Code audience to that dynamic.

Kevin and I talked about how things are going with Bing and Microsoft’s AI efforts, as well the company’s relationship with Nvidia and whether it's planning to develop its own AI chips. I also asked Kevin some pretty philosophical questions about AI: Why would you write a song or a book when AI is out there making custom content for other people? Well, it’s because Kevin thinks the AI is still “terrible” at it for now, as Kevin found out firsthand. But he also thinks that creating is just what people do, and AI will help more people become more creative.

Links: 

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23664239

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We spent a lot of time here on Decoder talking about electric vehicles and the future of cars and we’re usually talking about passenger vehicles or maybe cargo vans. But there’s another huge industry that can also reap the benefits of electrified transportation: agriculture. 

I co-hosted the Code Conference this week where I had the opportunity to hangout onstage with Monarch Tractor CEO Praveen Penmetsa. Honestly, this was one of my favorite conversations of the entire event. 

We are utterly reliant on farming as a species, and farming is utterly reliant on tractors. If we don’t have tractors, we don’t have food. But electrifying farms is hard, and Praveen explained how he and Monarch are trying to tackle that challenge. The ambition is to compete in an open way with closed platforms like John Deere, and Praveen said his goal for the Monarch platform is to be the Android of agriculture. 

Links: 

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23659941

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices