TechStuff

What does it mean to be at the “foothills of the singularity”? That’s how DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis ended his speech at Google I/O, prompting questions and scratched heads. Oz and Reed Albergotti (Semafor) attempt to dissect the meaning behind Hassabis’s confounding statement. They also discuss why so many commencement speakers are getting booed by college graduates after bringing up AI, and what it means for SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI to all be heading towards an IPO. 

Then, Oz sits down with David Webster, Head of UX at Google Labs, for a deeper look at the products Google unveiled at their annual developer conference of the year.

Additional Reading: 

• DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis on what Google AI products say about ‘singularity’ | Semafor
• A Guide to Commencement | Semafor
• SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI’s Sprint to Go Public Defines the AI Boom’s Big Day - WSJ  
• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed | Strait Times IG 
• Subscriber Q&A: Live @ Google I/O - by Alex Heath - Sources
  
  

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What if Olympic athletes could use steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, legally? They can now, at the Enhanced Games. The Enhanced Games take place on May 24th and it’s anyone’s guess what will happen.

Unless you’re Chris Gayomali, host of the new podcast SuperHuman, which is an inside look at the ‘steroid Olympics.’ Chris Gayomali joins Oz to break down how aging tanks athletes' earning potential, how the Enhanced Games strives to be like Formula One, and what drew big-money backers Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. to the table.

Additional Reading: 

• SuperHuman | iHeart 
• What Would the Olympics Be Like If the Athletes Could Juice? | GQ 

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This week has it all: geopolitical FOMO, major AI deals, more courtroom drama, and a hacker group that just won't quit. Reed Albergotti (Semafor) breaks down why AI tokens are the new oil, and why Anthropic is buying compute straight from SpaceX. Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) takes us inside the Elon Musk-OpenAI trial, where Shivon Zilis, aka the “Elon Whisperer” and the mother of four of Musk's children, finally took the stand. And Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dexter Thomas gives insight into how the hacking of education tech platform Canvas could still affect college students, even after Canvas’s parent company says a deal was reached to delete the stolen data. 

Additional Reading: 

• Nvidia CEO joins Trump in China despite ‘awkward’ politics | Semafor 
• Anthropic-SpaceX compute deal shows how tokens are taking over the economy | Semafor 
• Shivon Zilis was Elon Musk’s ‘bridge’ to OpenAI. Now she’s entangled in his lawsuit. | The Washington Post 
• Instructure Pays Ransom to Canvas Hackers | Inside Higher Education 

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How did nine rejection letters and “boring” data lead to “the biggest transformation in sport”? Americans might know Formula One Racing from the hit Netflix show “Drive to Survive.” But F1 has long been a fan favorite in Britain and Europe. Today’s guest, team principal James Vowles, sits down with Oz to discuss how he’s bringing his team, Atlassian Williams F1 Team, from a recent slump into the Top 5. His process involves being “data-rich”, pushing his team to the brink, and utilizing AI and technology to get that elusive tenth of a second in speed. 

Additional Reading: 

• ‘Get rid of the battery’: F1 under increasing pressure to make more changes to engine rules | Formula One 2026 | The Guardian
• Formula One Went Green—and It’s Driving Everyone Crazy | WSJ  

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This week: AI regulation, dark money and data center backlash. Reed Albergotti (Semafor) helps decipher how the Trump Administration actually feels about AI oversight and it seems like a reversal of the hands-off approach they’ve taken so far. Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) exposes a dark money influencer campaign — one she was personally recruited for — that's paying creators to push pro-American AI, anti-China messaging on behalf of a Big Tech super PAC. And Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) reports on the fast-growing, bipartisan movement fighting data center construction in communities across the country. Plus: Sam Altman's leaked texts, 120,000 tech layoffs, and the GPT-5.5 launch party.

Additional Reading: 

• So Long Jeeves and Ask.com, Relics of Yesterday’s Internet 
• White House Considers Vetting A.I. Models Before They Are Released | The New York Times 
• A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat | WIRED 
• Inside a growing movement warning AI could turn on humanity | The Washington Post 
• ‘The Most Bipartisan Issue Since Beer’: Opposition to Data Centers | The New York Times 

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What would it mean to be a "great ancestor"? Futurist Ari Wallach believes that's the question everyone, including our tech leaders, should be asking right now.

Ari joins Oz to explain why the systems we're building today are laying rails for centuries to come. And he argues that shifting culture through storytelling is the fastest way to change the systems that govern our lives. He also introduces The Protopias Collection, six graphic novels imagining worlds that are messy and human, but unmistakably better. 

Also on the show: Alex Thier, the CEO of Lapis, discusses Lalah, an AI-powered chatbot built to help Afghan students learn beyond the classroom, a place girls can’t access past the sixth grade.

Additional Reading: 

• Ari Wallach: 3 ways to plan for the (very) long term | TED Talk 
• The Protopias Collection: Various: 9781953165787: Amazon.com: Books 

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This week, some courtroom drama. It’s Elon Musk v. OpenAI the next few weeks and billionaires are taking the stand and opening their diaries — and memories of Burning Man — to scrutiny. Reed Albergotti (Semafor) breaks down the legal battle and why Elon Musk believes he’s owed billions since OpenAI went for-profit. Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) reports on the Pentagon agreement Google was ‘proud’ to sign. But it’s déjà vu for many Google employees, who once again demanded company leadership proceed cautiously. Finally, Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) on the ‘girlboss-ification’ of AI: the coordinated push by major AI companies to win over women, from Anthropic's invite-only influencer supper clubs in New York to Reese Witherspoon's suspiciously enthusiastic (and allegedly unpaid) AI pep talk on Instagram.

Additional Reading: 

• Shadowboxing Emperors | Semafor
• Google workers petition CEO to refuse classified AI work with Pentagon | The Washington Post
• Google told staff it is ‘proud’ of Pentagon AI contract after internal backlash | Financial Times 
• The Girlboss-ification of AI w/ Kat Tenbarge | User Mag   

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Live from The Royal Institution of Great Britain, it's TechStuff! Oz sat down with two visionaries at an event hosted by Quilt.AI. First, he spoke with Ali Eslami, a Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, who built the prototype for what is now AI Search. Ali talked about how working on AI can feel like surfing, and what went into connecting Gemini to Google Search to create what he called "neural Google."

After that, Oz chats with Saad Mohseni about his work with MOBY Group. Saad guides Oz through his twenty-year effort to bring top-tier news and entertainment to Afghanistan and beyond — from a reality TV singing competition that changed the country, to using WhatsApp and AI to provide education to girls banned from school.

Additional Reading: 

• Radio Free Afghanistan HarperCollins

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TechStuff presents Two Percent with Michael Easter, a twice-weekly deep dive into the science of living better by doing things the hard way. 

In this episode of the podcast, Taylor Lorenz of the Substack User Mag and host of podcast Power User joins Michael to discuss whether social media should be considered addictive. Together, they look at the real science on dopamine, the recent Meta verdict from Los Angeles, Section 230, KOSA, looksmaxxing, and what's actually driving the teen mental health conversation.

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Many contemporary talking heads take a pessimistic view of the future, but our guest today hopes to change this. Oz interviews Zachary Karabell, host of the podcast What Could Go Right? and founder of the Progress Network, about being an ‘edgy optimist’ and what that means for the future of humanity.

After that, TechStuff presents an episode of What Could Go Right? featuring Ian Bremmer, the founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media. Together, Bremmer and Karabell discuss how the post-WW2 world order has changed over the years, whether social media is a tool for freedom or a mechanism for control, and why the current moment of global chaos may simply be part of a longer geopolitical cycle — one that, like all cycles, eventually turns.

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