Pioneers of AI

Thibault “Tibo” Sottiaux is OpenAI’s head of Product & Platform, making him responsible for the AI tools used by more than a billion users worldwide. Host Rana el Kaliouby spoke with Tibo about why he’s “proud” OpenAI delayed its latest Astra model over safety concerns, the new suite of agentic products released at DevDay, and what it’s like to lead inside a frontier AI company in this extraordinary moment in history. 

Learn more about Pioneers of AI: http://pioneersof.ai/

Follow Pioneers of AI on all channels: https://linktr.ee/pioneersofai

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this week’s episode we’re excited to share an episode from our sister podcast Possible, a podcast that sketches out the brightest vision of the future.

Useful robots won’t be programmed one task at a time; they’ll need to adapt to unfamiliar objects, environments, and robot bodies. Physical Intelligence cofounder Chelsea Finn (named last month to the TIME100 AI list for 2026) joins Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger to explain how general-purpose robot models learn to act in the messy physical world. She explores why lower-quality training data can strengthen a model, what months of failed laundry-folding attempts revealed, and how the same system can work across different robot platforms. A robot mistaking an oven for a drawer becomes a lesson in the strange line between useful generalization and obvious error. They also examine why robot demos can mislead, how hardware reliability can stall progress, and what it will take to move AI off the screen and into the world.

Congratulations to Chelsea, recently named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in AI:

https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/chelsea-finn/

For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For the past four decades Sherry Turkle has studied the social and psychological implications of AI. She’s the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, and author of the upcoming book Artificial Intimacy: Who Do We Become When We Talk to Machines? Sherry sits down with Rana to deliver a warning about the slippery slope we’re all stepping on to with our use of AI.  

Sherry is direct and unfiltered in explaining why artificial intimacy is an oxymoron, what happens when humans become emotionally attached to AI, and why replacing human relationships with AI means we’ve basically given up on each other. But don't you worry, she leaves us with a strong message of agency and hope.

Learn more about Pioneers of AI: http://pioneersof.ai/

Follow Pioneers of AI on all channels: https://linktr.ee/pioneersofai

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rudina Seseri is the Founder and Managing Partner of Glasswing Ventures, recently named one of America’s Top Venture Capital Firms of 2026 by TIME and Statista. With a focus on early-stage AI-powered companies, Rudina has been investing in AI since 2016 and has always been ahead of the curve. Host Rana el Kaliouby talks to Rudina about the shifting AI investing landscape, where she sees the real value in AI, and what she looks for in a founder before she writes her first check. 

Learn more about Pioneers of AI: http://pioneersof.ai/

Follow Pioneers of AI on all channels: https://linktr.ee/pioneersofai

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For decades, e-commerce rewarded the biggest brands that could buy their way to the top of search results. AI is changing that. Shopify COO Jess Hertz joins Rapid Response to share what Shopify's data reveals about the agentic shopping revolution in real time, and how the company is building the infrastructure layer that makes products discoverable and purchasable by AI. Plus, why Shopify's engineers can spend freely on AI tokens while the rest of the business world agonizes over ROI, and what it looks like when a company powering over 14% of online shopping decides to win the future or die trying.

Visit the Rapid Response website here: https://www.rapidresponseshow.com/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Fifteen years ago Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier, co-founded the software company with a simple idea: link thousands of apps that were never designed to talk to each other, so people could work seamlessly between them. Now, he's turning Zapier into the go-to connector for companies and their AI agents. Host Rana El Kaliouby sits down with Wade to talk about the day he paused the entire company to call a "code red," how he's scaling AI from individual employees to the whole organization, and how Zapier has redesigned its product from the ground up as AI has transformed the way people work.

Learn more about Pioneers of AI: http://pioneersof.ai/

Follow Pioneers of AI on all channels: https://linktr.ee/pioneersofai

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the world of AI, data is king. And in reporting on tech for nearly 30 years, Axios’ Chief Technology Correspondent Ina Fried has extensively covered concerns around consumer data, privacy, and Big Tech. In the latest edition of her long-running series “What They Know About You,” Ina dives into the privacy and data sharing policies of AI consumer products from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, and more. She tells host Rana el Kaliouby why data is key to AI companies’ business models, how they’re getting more of it, and how that could impact everyday users.

Learn more about Pioneers of AI: http://pioneersof.ai/

Follow Pioneers of AI on all channels: https://linktr.ee/pioneersofai

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Few leaders have a better real-time read on how AI is actually reshaping the workforce than Hayden Brown. As CEO of Upwork, the platform where 18 million freelancers meet the businesses that need them, she sees what the monthly jobs report can't: which skills are surging, which jobs are quietly disappearing, and why 23% of businesses that moved work to AI are already bringing humans back. Brown joins Rapid Response to share what she's actually seeing on the ground, why she refused to blame AI when she laid off a quarter of Upwork's staff, and what the data says about the gap between AI hype and AI reality.

Visit the Rapid Response website here: https://www.rapidresponseshow.com/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Stories of people standing in line for hours to get their drivers license or being wrongfully denied government food assistance are common in America. Few people think, “I can solve this problem.” But the CEO of Promise, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, sees a solution in AI. Promise is a software company designed to help move money in and out of government benefit programs (like SNAP) to better serve the people who rely on them – and better serve taxpayers, too. Host Rana el Kaliouby speaks with Phaedra about how Promise is making these systems cheaper and faster with AI. 

Learn more about Pioneers of AI: http://pioneersof.ai/

Follow Pioneers of AI on all channels: https://linktr.ee/pioneersofai

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the first half of 2026 alone, investors poured $3 billion into the next frontier of AI: World Models. Google DeepMind, Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs, Yann LeCunn’s AMI labs, and Odyssey are all building in this space. In this episode, host Rana el Kaliouby speaks with the co-founder and CEO of Odyssey Oliver Cameron. They dive into the trillion dollar opportunity behind world models, why they are the next frontier of AI, and how they will be applied to a range of industries, from education to healthcare. 

Learn more about Pioneers of AI: http://pioneersof.ai/

Follow Pioneers of AI on all channels: https://linktr.ee/pioneersofai

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.