One of the world's hottest AI startups, Builder.AI, imploded earlier this year. We dig into what actually went down at the company and what journalists and investors can learn from the experience. 

We Meet:  

Journalist Varsha Bansal

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Despite our best efforts, sometimes what we say we want isn’t precisely what we mean. Nowhere is that felt more acutely than when we’re giving instructions to a machine, whether that’s coding or offering examples to machine learning systems. We unpack the alignment problem in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet: 

Brian Christian, University of Oxford researcher, and author of The Alignment Problem 

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

In all the noise about AI agents it’s easy to miss a fundamental change that’s taking place. For these agents to be effective, people have to feel safe delegating things to them. When we do? How we use this tech starts to feel less like a tool and more like real collaboration. 

This week, we explore agentic powered legal work in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet:  

Thomson Reuters Chief Product Officer David Wong

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

What would you say if someone offered you a taste of a salmon filet that doesn’t contain fish?  

The protein content, carbs, and even the omega 3s are basically the same, but what it doesn’t contain are things like microplastics and mercury. 

Join us for a factory tour of a startup called New School Foods for a peek at the next-generation of plant-based foods.

We Meet:  

New School Foods CEO Chris Bryson

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

We explore how generative AI is revolutionizing game development at Roblox, in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet:  

Kiran Bhat, Senior Director of Engineering at Roblox

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

This is the final installment of a special series documenting the race to build superintelligent AI systems. The Race to Superintelligence is a deep dive into the rapidly expanding world of artificial intelligence. Join us as we explore the groundbreaking, mystifying and world-changing potential of the next machine age. 

Support for this program comes from The Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network, supporting and bringing together journalists reporting on AI, and with AI, globally.

Credits:

The Race to Superintelligence is created and produced by Jennifer Strong, with Emma Cillekens, Daniela Hernandez, and Meg Marco. We had additional research and production assistance from Sonya Gurwitt, Niamh McAuliffe, Anthony Green and Luke Robert Mason. The show is mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski.

The U.S. trade war is expected to add billions of dollars to things like building AI data centers, and for companies trying to figure out and manage their exposure, it’s never been a more complicated task. 

But what if we could build a map that could show us how supply chains, tariffs and trade policy are playing out in real time?

We Meet:  

Evan Smith, CEO Altana

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Developing and scaling AI systems brings new security challenges, and companies are scrambling to figure out just how to handle some of the more pressing ones.

I was recently joined on stage by co-founders from two Canadian unicorns, Cohere and Tailscale, to dig into these challenges at Web Summit Vancouver.

We Meet:  

Avery Pennarun, Co-founder & CEO, Tailscale                 

Ivan Zhang, Co-founder, Cohere

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

What if instead of software coaching you on how to use it–what buttons to push and what file menus to open–the software could just use itself, once it knew what you wanted? 

We explore Intuit's new AI agents in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet:  

Alex Balazs, CTO of Intuit

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

This is part two of a special series documenting the race to build superintelligent AI systems.

The Race to Superintelligence is a deep dive into the rapidly expanding world of artificial intelligence. Join us as we explore the groundbreaking, mystifying and world-changing potential of the next machine age. 

Support for this program comes from The Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network, supporting and bringing together journalists reporting on AI, and with AI, globally.

Credits:

The Race to Superintelligence is created and produced by Jennifer Strong, with Emma Cillekens, Daniela Hernandez, and Meg Marco. We had additional research and production assistance from Sonya Gurwitt, Niamh McAuliffe, Anthony Green and Luke Robert Mason. The show is mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski.