No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

This week on No Priors, Sarah and Elad talk with GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke about the rise of AI-powered software development and the success of Copilot. They discuss how Copilot is reshaping the developer workflow, GitHub’s new Agent Mode, and competition in the developer tooling market. They also explore how AI-driven coding impacts software pricing, the future of open source vs. proprietary APIs, and what Copilot’s success means for Microsoft. Plus, Thomas shares insights from his journey growing up in East Berlin and navigating rapidly changing worlds.

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Show Notes:

0:00 Introduction

0:37 GitHub Copilot’s capabilities

4:12 Will agents replace developers?

6:04 Copilot’s development cycle

8:34 Winning the developer market

10:40 Agent mode

13:25 Where GitHub is headed

16:45 Building for the new challenges of AI

21:50 Dev tools market formation

29:56 Copilot’s broader impact

32:17 How AI changes software pricing

39:16 Open source vs. proprietary APIs

48:01 Growing up in East Berlin

This week on No Priors, Sarah is joined by Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center of AI Safety. Dan serves as an advisor to xAI and Scale AI. He is a longtime AI researcher, publisher of interesting AI evals such as "Humanity's Last Exam," and co-author of a new paper on National Security "Superintelligence Strategy" along with Scale founder-CEO Alex Wang and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. They explore AI safety, geopolitical implications, the potential weaponization of AI, along with policy recommendations.

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Show Notes:

0:00 Introduction

0:36 Dan’s path to focusing on AI Safety

1:25 Safety efforts in large labs

3:12 Distinguishing alignment and safety

4:48 AI’s impact on national security

9:59 How might AI be weaponized?

14:43 Immigration policies for AI talent

17:50 Mutually assured AI malfunction

22:54 Policy suggestions for current administration

25:34 Compute security

30:37 Current state of evals

This week on No Priors, Sarah sits down with Noubar Afeyan, Co-founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, the biotech firm behind groundbreaking companies like Moderna. They explore how Flagship creates the conditions for scientific breakthroughs, tackles regulatory uncertainty, and pushes the boundaries of discovery. Noubar shares insights on AI’s role in healthcare, the challenges of bringing new therapies to market, and lessons learned from past pandemics. He also discusses Flagship’s platform approach to biotech innovation and introduces the idea of polyintelligence.

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Show Notes: 

0:00 Introduction

0:48 Founding Flagship 

5:51 Fostering environments for emergence

11:17 Expanding into new frontiers

14:26 Developing technology amid regulatory uncertainty and risk

19:12 How Flagship has evolved

22:47 AI applications in healthcare

27:30 Bottlenecks in bringing new therapies to market

32:20 Lessons for the next pandemic

34:11 Building a platform

38:10 Polyintelligence 

On this week’s episode of No Priors, Sarah Guo is joined by leading members of the teams at Vevo Therapeutics and the Arc Institute – Nima Alidoust, CEO/Co-Founder at Vevo Therapeutics; Johnny Yu, CSO/Co-Founder at Vevo Therapeutics; Patrick Hsu, CEO/Co-Founder at Arc Institute; Dave Burke, CTO at Arc Institute; and Hani Goodarzi, Core Investigator at Arc Institute. Predicting protein structure (AlphaFold 3, Chai-1, Evo 2) was a big AI/biology breakthrough. The next big leap is modeling entire human cells—how they behave in disease, or how they respond to new therapeutics. The same way LLMs needed enormous text corpora to become truly powerful, Virtual Cell Models need massive, high-quality cellular datasets to train on. In this episode, the teams discuss the groundbreaking release of the Tahoe-100M single cell dataset, Arc Atlas, and how these advancements could transform drug discovery.

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Download the Tahoe Dataset

Show Notes:

0:00 Introduction

1:40 Significance of Tahoe-100M dataset

4:22 Where we are with virtual cell models and protein language models

10:26 Significance of perturbational data

17:39 Challenges and innovations in data collection

24:42 Open sourcing and community collaboration

33:51 Predictive ability and importance of virtual cell models

35:27 Drug discovery and virtual cell models

44:27 Platform vs. single hypothesis companies

46:05 Rise of Chinese biotechs

51:36 AI in drug discovery

Kyle Vogt joins Sarah and Elad on this week’s episode of No Priors. A serial entrepreneur, Kyle co-founded Twitch, transforming live streaming, and later Cruise, the autonomous vehicle company acquired by GM for $1 billion. Now he’s taking on AI-powered home robotics with The Bot Company. In this episode, Kyle shares his journey building transformative tech companies, the challenges of scaling autonomous systems, and why he believes home robots are the next frontier. They also discuss the parallels between AVs and robotics, overcoming consumer skepticism, US vs. China manufacturing, and the policies needed to foster a competitive robotics industry.

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Show Notes: 

0:00 Introduction

0:29 Founding Cruise 

3:12 Tesla vs. Waymo approach

4:44 Scaling autonomous vehicles

10:03 The Bot Company 

16:35 Deploying  robots in the home

17:56 Parallels between robots and AV markets

20:51 Personifying robots and overcoming consumer skepticism

25:00 Timeline on consumer robots

26:47 Chinese vs. US manufacturing 

29:15 Fostering a competitive domestic robotics industry

34:00 Lessons from Cruise & personal philosophies

This week on No Priors, Sarah sits down with Harvey cofounder and CEO Winston Weinberg. Harvey is one of the leading application layer AI companies, building domain-specific AI for law firms, professional service providers, and the Fortune 500. They are already working with companies like Bridgewater, KKR, PWC, and O’Melveny with over $500M in funding from OpenAI, Sequoia, Kleiner, GV and Elad and Sarah. In this episode, Sarah and Winston cover AI product strategy, the future of professional services, company values, keeping up with research, and the law industry of the future. 

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Show Notes: 

0:00 Introduction

2:39 Harvey’s founding story 

3:46 Capability improvement

6:39 Building teams around AI capabilities

9:17 End to end task completion

12:37 Beginning with large industry leaders

17:21 Working with users skeptical of automation

20:40 Being a lawyer today and in the future

26:02 Adapting product for other domains

26:58 Hiring philosophy at Harvey

30:39 Lessons and mistakes as a founder

32:53 Personal drive

40:21 Advice to other founders

44:35 Prediction for next ChatGPT moment

This week on No Priors, Sarah and Elad celebrate the 100th episode! They dive into the biggest AI stories of 2025, breaking down DeepSeek—truth vs. hype, the rapid consumer adoption, and the real cost of training the models. They debate model commoditization and the value of being a frontier model provider vs. building on existing work. Plus, they unpack OpenAI’s new Deep Research release and the latest on Stargate. Finally, they share bold predictions for 2025, covering robots, autonomous vehicles, local AI models, emerging data-generation strategies, and reasoning breakthroughs.

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Show Notes: 

0:00 Introduction

0:19 DeepSeek 

5:38 Are models commoditizing?

8:33 DeepSeek’s consumer adoption

9:16 OpenAI’s Deep Research release

13:30 Stargate

15:04 Elad & Sarah’s Predictions for 2025 

This week on No Priors, Elad sits down with Rick Caruso, LA real estate developer and runner-up in the 2022 mayoral race. With experience serving under three LA mayors, as well as on the police commission and the board of water and power, Rick offers a unique perspective on the systemic failures that contributed to the devastation of the January 2025 wildfires in communities like the Palisades and Altadena. He discusses the steps he took to build more resilient infrastructure in his properties and how California can rebuild smarter to better prepare for future disasters. They also explore the state’s water management, rising crime, and how to leverage California’s vast natural resources and budget to create a better future for all residents.

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Show Notes

0:00 Introduction

0:56 Caruso’s history in business and public service

3:36 Failures in fire prevention and response

5:58 How Caruso’s properties survived 

8:26 Water shortages and infrastructure failures 

9:47 Arson, looting, and crime in LA

15:03 Rebuilding 

20:50 Allocating California’s resources effectively

26:15 Caruso’s future plans

This week on No Priors, Sarah and Elad sit down with Bill Clerico, founder of Convective Capital, an early stage venture fund focused on technology-driven solutions for wildfire mitigation and climate resilience. The wildfires in Los Angeles have caused unprecedented property damage and immense hardship for countless individuals and families. This episode is devoted to diving into understanding what happened and what we can do in the future. Bill shares his insights into the increasing severity of wildfires, the role of policy, and how infrastructure issues, like outdated building codes and underfunded utilities, are contributing to the crisis. They discuss the latest innovations in fire-fighting technology, from advanced detection to drones, and how these tools can help mitigate future damage.

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Show Notes: 

0:00 Introduction

1:02 Why are wildfires getting worse?

5:37 Policies and regulatory decisions

10:47 Housing: building codes and permitting

13:19 Key factors in response

16:20 Improving water supply and city infrastructure 

19:10 Preventing wildfires

21:26 Underinvestment in California’s utilities

26:53  Innovative fire fighting technology

29:35 Accelerating Los Angeles’ recovery

34:29 Actions homeowners, insurance companies, and governments can take

Today on No Priors, co-founder and CEO of Decagon, Jesse Zhang, joins Elad to discuss the future of agentic customer support. Decagon provides AI-powered customer interactions for companies like Rippling, Notion, Duolingo, Classpass, Substack, Vanta, Eventbrite, and more. Jesse shares the thesis behind starting Decagon, why he sees customer support as the ideal entry point for agentic technology, and what areas of AI excite him most. They also discuss voice-based interfaces, issues with latency in current capabilities, and the connection between young math olympiad communities and today’s AI startups.

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Show Notes: 

0:00 Introduction 

0:30 Starting Decagon 

3:15 Business impact of adopting agents for customer support and customer ops

8:00 AI infrastructure and models for customer success agents

12:05 Voice-based capabilities and text-to-speech engines 

15:00 Combatting latency 

16:25 Crossover of math and AI communities

21:12 Exciting areas of AI 

25:29 Strengths and weaknesses of agents