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Independent AI researcher Mark Pesce returns to the Futurists with an update on the latest advances in open source artificial intelligence. Mark talks to co-hosts Brett King and Rob Tercek about a wide range of topics: small open-source models that run on the desktop and the smartphone; AI agents that work the “night shift”; NVIDIA’s pivot to open source AI; the disruptive threat to the leading US AI labs; the rapid rise of AI-enabled intrusions and the threat to the smartphone; personal AI filtering and assistants; AI agents to manage the smart home; faceless appliances as a precursor to liquid interfaces and the end of apps; fostering cognitive dependency and offloading cognitive work to companion apps; pacing the frontier; super intelligence; geopolitical rivalry.

As a Peace Corps volunteer with an engineering degree from MIT, Doug Ricket, Founder and CEO, PayJoy, a leading financial services provider for underserved consumers across emerging markets, learned first-hand what it means to build trust in underserved communities. The experience in West Africa sparked a long-held interest that eventually put Doug’s engineering and tech background to work to make a true financial impact and build a mission-driven business for underserved consumers, 20 million of them to date across 9 countries (Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Colombia, and the Philippines)

Listen as Doug shares his founder journey with Brett King and explains why he left a comfortable path in tech to help first-time borrowers build credit and access broader financial services and payments.

Smartphones have become essential economic infrastructure. A smartphone can be a customer’s first productive financial asset and first step into formal financial access, creating financial opportunity for consumers otherwise locked out of traditional credit and payments infrastructure.

40% of PayJoy’s customers are new to credit; 37% are first-time smartphone users. How does PayJoy build a credit profile for someone who’s never had access to credit before? What sets their approach apart from traditional lenders? Listen to find out.

In this episode, Paolo Sironi speaks with Ritavan, author of the new book The System Gambit—a rigorous guide to the one strategic move that most investors and operators never make. They say companies get disrupted because they miss the signals. This is technically true, but many are not missing the signals. They are reading them correctly and responding rationally, and the rational response is the trap. Every benchmark they hit is proof that they are excellent at a game whose rules have already changed. Nobody is going to tell them this. Their metrics cannot see it, and their board is scoring the old game. Finding it is your job, and it is worth doing properly. The move is a system crossing rather than a reallocation of resources, because the logic that wins in your current system is the same logic that blocks the position that compounds in the next one, and you cannot run both at once. This book conversation maps the eight system crossings, the sacrifice each one demands, and how to defend that sacrifice to people keeping score the old way.

In this week’s episode hosts Rob Tercek and Brett King do a deep dive into the rapidly aging energy grid in the US and how this may be the biggest flaw in the US’ desire to win the race to AGI and a future smart economy. China today produces daily more solar energy than all the power plants in the US combined, and this year alone China will deploy more solar than the US has built in the last 70 years. How can the US hope to power the data centers required for AI dominance with an administration opposed to renewables and, as yet, no new nuclear plants or transmission lines even approved for construction? With the NIMBY crowd protesting local data centers, is big tech headed for a showdown with conservative politics? 

In this episode, Paolo Sironi speaks with Driss Temsamani, author of the new book The Agentic Bank—a practitioner’s roadmap that shows how finance is shifting from platforms to intelligence. Temsamani, a three-decade banking leader and advisor to central banks and regulators, explains how AI-powered agents are bringing autonomy, reasoning, and collaboration into the heart of modern institutions, creating the AI-native financial institution where humans and intelligent agents work side by side. Through the living example of Lisa, a corporate treasurer, he shows how real-time cash-flow forecasting, liquidity optimization, risk management, and compliance adaptation become possible today. The conversation moves from visionary insight to practical execution, covering the agentic transformation of liquidity, payments, risk, and client engagement, as well as the fusion of AI with blockchain for tokenization and modern market infrastructure. Join this episode to gain the keys to building, deploying, and governing agentic systems so that the institutions that act now will not merely survive the AI era—they will define it.

Mark Ghuneim is an American internet entrepreneur, activist, and art curator who has launched pioneering ventures in many fields including music, digital marketing, television, privacy advocacy, and fine art. Today he is co-founder of Narrative.New, which harnesses the power of AI for creative writers. Key to Mark’s career is curation, the process of making conscious choices among a wide range of alternatives. AI makes cognitive outputs cheap and abundant; that raises the value of human curation to critical importance amid a flood of fresh content. According to Mark, today the highest, rarest value is a distinctive point of view and taste.

In this episode of Breaking Banks Africa, host Matteo sits down with Mikhail Velichko, CEO of AccèsBanque Madagascar (ABM), to explore how innovation is driving financial inclusion in one of the world’s most underserved banking markets. With fewer than 10% of adults using formal banking services and most businesses operating informally, Madagascar presents unique challenges for lenders and entrepreneurs alike.

Mikhail shares how ABM leverages AI, chatbots, alternative data, and automated credit processes to expand access to finance for MSMEs while maintaining sustainable growth. He also discusses the importance of financial education, local talent development, and community-based outreach in building trust and bringing more people into the formal economy.

The conversation also previews Mikhail’s participation in the Global SME Finance Forum, where he will discuss the role of AI in advancing financial inclusion.

Can a not-for-profit, member-owned credit union genuinely out-innovate a bank with a multi-billion-dollar AI budget by being more disciplined and mission-anchored?

In this episode of Breaking Banks, Bev Anderson (President and CEO of BECU) and Nadim Homsany (SVP, Head of AI at BECU) join host Jason Henrichs to unpack the strategy behind the credit union’s AI decisions. They discuss where to focus, the choice between buying and building, and whether traditional ROI even applies.

Discover how BECU is getting serious about AI and whether this marks an opportunity for credit unions to reshape financial services in the U.S.

Interested in hearing more? You can catch Nadim on stage at MoneyLive North America with Samer Saab (SVP of Product and Partnerships at Alloy Labs) in Chicago on September 14–15. Find out more at moneylive-insights.com/breakingbanks

Kristen Castell, Managing Director of the Center for Accelerating Financial Equity (CAFE), joins Social Currency to discuss the intersection of profit and purpose in financial services. From fintech innovation to financial inclusion, Kristen shares how technology, partnerships, and mission-driven solutions are helping expand access and opportunity for low-to-moderate income communities. Listen in as we explore the future of financial equity.

Can a company use AI to be capable of infinite adaptability?  Brian Solis and Dave Wright believe that right approach to deploying AI in large enterprises is a two-model process, first to find efficiency and create savings, and second, to invest those savings into accelerated innovation. In their new book Infinite, Brian and Dave cite successful case studies to show AI can help business leaders accomplish things that were never previously possible.  Rob Tercek interviewed Dave and Brian to extract the key points for listeners of The Futurists podcast.