People vs Algorithms

Troy and Brian dig into what happens when AI stops imitating Odie as the overly eager helper and starts owning the workflow, the coordination and the organizational memory, why a 100-year-old law firm unraveled when its high-leverage people walked, and what Microsoft’s voluntary buyouts say about the managerial class. Then CJ Gustafson of Mostly Metrics breaks down Anthropic’s S-1: the growth, the revenue per employee, and where the costs got tucked away.

Plus: Time and Mobian serving ads to AI agents, Axios selling data feeds to client LLMs, cognitive mercantilism, Semafor and the conflicts baked into every media model, Obama vs. the Cheesecake Factory, Serbia’s student movement shows how a decentralized protest movement can wrest power and Troy’s ode to the Starbucks breakfast wrap.

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Chapters:

* 01:57 Updates From Out and About

* 09:53 AI Podcasts And Law Firm Collapse

* 18:21 PVA Media Lab Update

* 22:28 Claude Duet And Corporate Bloodbath

* 50:54 Cognitive Mercantilism

* 58:28 Media Model Conflicts

* 01:05:54 Cheesecake Factory

* 01:10:17 Serbia Student Uprising

* 01:16:11 Good Product

* 01:19:17 Inside the Anthropic S-1 with CJ Gustafson

* 01:41:10 Credits

We dig into Claude Duet, Meta’s Muse and the rest of the new assistants that suggest before you ask, why Muse’s retention numbers look shaky, and what happens to businesses built on friction, from Chase’s no-yield checking to Amazon’s purchase insurance pop-ups. The conversation turns to what gets lost when you get the answer without asking the question, from the mathematicians reeling after OpenAI’s proof drop to Ethan Mollick’s dark factory vs. twilight factory framing in his new book. Plus: Semafor at four, Boston.com goes paid and the dwindling of free ad-supported news, and the virtues of a distinctive accent in a flattened world.

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Chapters:

* 00:52 Rackets and Reality

* 04:35 Answers Without Questions

* 18:45 Frictionless Future Concerns

* 33:47 Cointelligence and Delegation

* 35:42 Slop vs Skill Building

* 40:09 Paywalls and Platform Wins

* 45:15 Modern Media Models

* 55:51 Good Product

* 01:03:19 Credits

An anonymous developer used Claude to ship open-source clones of Adobe’s big five, then Word, Excel, Keynote, AutoCAD and Figma within days, and the lesson is that software is a business of pure margin with less moat than anyone thought. Packaged software is going the way of packaged media, and the mathematicians are finding out what that feels like.Plus: Alexandr Wang as Zuckerberg’s main character, Silicon Valley’s perennial claim that AI will kill advertising, Netflix cutting HR and legal, friction and the fate of Regina, Apple’s $300 home hub, and deodorant.

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Chapters:

* 00:47 The Car Is Back

* 04:01 Claude vs ChatGPT Personalities

* 06:45 ArtCraft and the SaaS Apocalypse

* 20:01 Headless Software and Moats

* 37:39 Meta Cheeky Pint

* 45:41 Friction Kills Towns

* 52:44 Good Product

* 01:00:58 Credits

This week we dig into how much of the economy is built on friction, and what happens when AI agents start removing it. Also: why students are so gloomy about AI, Vanity Fair’s New Establishment list and who gets to confer legitimacy on tech, a vibe-coded Adobe replacement, the race for the new home page, and Troy comes around on Kia.

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* Alex Schleifer’s Human Computer

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Chapters:

* 01:25 Vanity Fair and Tech Legitimacy

* 07:46 Students Fear the AI Future

* 27:28 Software Moats and Copycat Culture

* 34:28 Friction Economy Disrupted

* 41:37 One Agent New Homepage

* 49:28 Distillation China

* 54:48 Good Product

Brian, Troy and Alex debate who will control the interface to your life, whether convenience will steamroll privacy concerns, and how the winner gets to collect a toll on everything you buy. Plus: Silicon Valley’s makeover of government, what comes next for Condé Nast, and why other industries are about to find out what being a publisher feels like.

* Watch us on YouTube

* Troy Young’s People vs Algorithms newsletter

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* Alex Schleifer’s Human Computer

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Chapters:

* 00:48 Meet Linda the AI

* 04:53 America.gov Launch

* 15:55 Agents Negotiate Calls

* 20:21 Personal Agents Arms Race

* 36:28 Interface Shift and Business Models

* 57:18 Publishers and Condé Shakeup

* 01:07:49 Good Product

* 01:09:53 Field Notes Corner

Brian and Troy dig into Muse, Meta’s push to make AI assistants mainstream, and why the next big platform battle is over the interface itself. They also look at what this shift means for publishers, commerce and media companies that increasingly risk becoming commodity suppliers to someone else’s agent. Later, Breaker's Lachlan Cartwright joins to sell $60 hats and talk CNN, CBS News, Puck, RedBird and what consolidation looks like when the old media business is being forced to adapt to a very different distribution system.

* Watch us on YouTube

* Troy Young’s People vs Algorithms newsletter

* Brian Morrissey’s The Rebooting newsletter

* Alex Schleifer’s Human Computer

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* Join our community - PvA Field Notes

Chapters:

* 01:24 Boston Globe Viral Win

* 05:01 Field Notes Media Lab Build

* 09:28 Muse and Agentic Future

* 29:20 People Become Data Providers

* 45:05 Go Big Media Merger

* 51:42 Redbird Buys Puck

* 01:10:39 Good Product

* 01:19:09 Credits

Brian and Troy map the whole cast: who's the wizard, who's the arms dealer, who's the schoolyard bully, and who gets stuck playing the citizens of King's Landing who never asked for dragons. Plus: whether the frontier is worth being on, what happens the first time someone dies, Macklemore getting bounced off the Ed Sheeran tour, the rip-off economy, and a spirited defense of yogurt.

* Watch us on YouTube

* Troy Young’s People vs Algorithms newsletter

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* Alex Schleifer’s Human Computer

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Chapters:

* 02:45 AI Characters and Shifting Alliances

* 28:48 Public Trust and the China Question

* 33:55 Frontier Labs Go Political

* 39:44 When AI Breaks Things

* 45:42 Field Notes Mixtapes

* 49:46 Quick Hits

* 01:08:33 Good Product

* 01:11:54 Credits

They debate warnings from Anthropic researchers that AI could kill humanity, whether anyone can credibly calibrate those risks and whether a visible catastrophe will be required before governments act. They also examine Meta’s Muse and the shift from chatbots and specialized agents toward personal assistants that could swallow large parts of the app economy. Meanwhile, AI may not be causing mass unemployment, but it is weakening entry-level white-collar work and the apprenticeship system young people need to get started. Underlying it all is the disappearance of cognitive struggle as phones and AI make it easier to avoid concentration, boredom and difficult thinking. Plus: the iPhone Fold, the analog revival, Ivan Lendl’s Mitteleuropa wisdom, podcast mixtapes and Troy’s missing car.

* Watch us on YouTube

* Troy Young’s People vs Algorithms newsletter

* Brian Morrissey’s The Rebooting newsletter

* Alex Schleifer’s Human Computer

* Follow Alex, Brian and Troy on Twitter

* Join our community - PvA Field Notes

Chapters:

* 01:47 9/11 Anniversary Reflections

* 08:13 US Open Late Nights

* 12:06 iPhone Fold and AI Assistants

* 37:56 Safetyism And Risk Culture

* 42:59 China Race And Trust Gap

* 50:00 Practical Risks And Prep

* 01:02:11 Analog Revival And Community

* 01:10:35 Good Product

* 01:14:24 Episode Wrap

We look ahead to the release of GTA 6 while tackling the implications of the doomsday sci-fi AI narrative, the use of social cost to coerce behaviors, and how giant sports events like the US Open are now more brand activation and corporate hospitality platforms.

* Watch us on YouTube

* Troy Young’s People vs Algorithms newsletter

* Brian Morrissey’s The Rebooting newsletter

* Alex Schleifer’s Human Computer

* Follow Alex, Brian and Troy on Twitter

* Join our community - PvA Field Notes

Chapters:

* 12:00 GTA VI

* 20:47 Meta Layoffs

* 33:07 Hugging Face Agent Swarm

* 40:03 AI China Race

* 47:42 Social Costs And AI

* 01:09:04 Good Product

* 01:16:58 Credits

Dolly Parton owned a very American narrative of being born poor but making something out of nothing through talent and hard work. In contrast, tech tried to control its narrative and instead stoked backlash to their grand project of AI. Plus: A celebration of nerding out, from the Stick Guy to Emma Camp to David Senra. And a conversation with the WSJ computational journalist John West about why the successor to the open web is small private groups.

* Buy John West’s new book - The Internet Will Die and So Will You

* Watch us on YouTube

* Troy Young’s People vs Algorithms newsletter

* Brian Morrissey’s The Rebooting newsletter

* Alex Schleifer’s Human Computer

* Follow Alex, Brian and Troy on Twitter

* Join our community - PvA Field Notes

Chapters:

* 00:00 Internet Impermanence

* 02:44 Dolly Parton Legacy

* 10:04 AI Narrative Crisis

* 29:35 Fine Line of Authorship

* 38:13 Celebration of Nerding Out

* 44:17 Carney is an Interesting Character

* 50:23 AI Newsrooms And APIs

* 56:08 Flock Cameras And Privacy Backlash

* 01:03:38 John West On AI And The Dying Web

* 01:17:38 Importance of Forgetting

* 01:27:30 What is a Computational Journalist?