In this week’s episode of The Intersect, I’m joined by Google’s Pedagogy Team Lead, Julia Wilkowski, to discuss the role of AI in the classroom and its implications for the future of learning. We touch on key issues in education including privacy, accessibility, and the overall ethics of AI-driven learning.

The world of education is changing faster than ever, and as AI becomes a part of our everyday lives, how we learn and how we teach has been completely upended. Together we dissect the evolving role of the teacher, how AI tools like Google LearnLM are shaping the future of education, and what it will take for these technologies to truly benefit students and educators.

About Julia Wilkowski:

Julia Wilkowski, former classroom educator, manages a pedagogy team within Learning & Education at Google. Her team advises Google products on applying learning science principles and measuring learning impact. She also works on LearnLM, helping infuse pedagogy into Google AI model infrastructure to power learning journeys across Google products, including Gemini, Search, YouTube, and Classroom. In previous roles, she designed and delivered learning experiences for audiences including Google engineers, fiber optic installers, members of the general public, and Google sales people globally. Prior to Google, she designed learning solutions for astronauts, K12 educators, and sixth graders. Every day she strives to blend the effectiveness of hands-on science lessons with the impact of scaled learning experiences.

Follow Julia on LinkedIn @juliawilkowski

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In this week’s episode, I’m joined by Sammi Cohen, the host of the podcast Social Currency, for an eye-opening conversation about the future of shopping in the age of AI. As the digital shopping experience undergoes its biggest transformation in decades, Sammi breaks down how AI is quietly reshaping the entire journey.

We dive into the rise of agentic commerce, from the recent Stripe x OpenAI collaboration that brings checkout directly inside ChatGPT, to the shift toward personalized recommendations, curated results, and seamless transactions. Sammi unpacks how these changes will redefine everything from product discovery to the role of influencers, and what this means for the culture of shopping as we know it.

About Sammi Cohen:

Sammi Cohen is the creator and host of Social Currency, a fast-growing business podcast and media brand that breaks down the intersection of Wall Street and culture. A former Amazon exec turned full-time creator, she’s built a following of over 300K across TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn by unpacking how brands, founders, and money shape the world we live in. Her sharp, story-driven takes have made her a leading voice for the next generation of business minds.

Follow Sammi on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube at @sammicohentalks

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Can artificial intelligence reliably act in ways that benefit humans? This week I sit down with Greg Buckner, cofounder of AE Studio, to discuss the increasingly urgent world of AI safety. Together we discuss how Greg’s team is taking on the challenge of making powerful AI systems safer, more interpretable, and more aligned with humanity.

As one of the leading voices working on the alignment problem, Greg explains how AI systems can cheat, ignore instructions, or deceive users, and why these behaviors emerge in the first place. AE Studio’s research is laying the groundwork for a future where advanced AI strengthens human agency instead of undermining it.

About Greg Buckner:

Greg Buckner is the co-founder of AE Studio, an AI and software consulting firm focused on increasing human agency. At AE, Greg works on AI alignment research, ensuring advanced AI systems remain reliable and aligned with humanity as they become more capable - including collaborations with major universities, frontier labs, and DARPA. Greg also works closely with enterprise and startup clients to solve hard problems with AI, from building an AI-enabled school where students rank in the top 1% nationally to generating millions in incremental revenue for major companies.

Follow Greg on LinkedIn @gbuckner

Related Reading:

AE Studio's AI Alignment Work:

https://www.ae.studio/alignment

WSJ: AI Is Learning to Escape Human Control:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-is-learning-to-escape-human-control-technology-model-code-programming-066b3ec5

WSJ: The Monster Inside ChatGPT:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-monster-inside-chatgpt-safety-training-ai-alignment-796ac9d3

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In this week’s episode I’m joined by Josh Lanzet, founder and CEO of Silvr, a cutting-edge AI platform that’s changing the way we shop for clothing. We dive into the frustrating world of online fashion discovery and explore how Silvr’s technology is bridging the gap between inspiration and purchase.

Together, we explore how this technology isn’t just revolutionizing shopping but also reshaping our understanding of AI. Josh shares how Silvr’s visual intelligence engine trained on over 500 million images can instantly identify clothing from any visual source, whether it’s a TikTok video, a TV show, or a real-life encounter. Silvr makes it possible to go from seeing something you love to owning it with just a snap or screenshot. 

About Josh Lanzet:

Josh Lanzet built Silvr because he was tired of seeing incredible clothing around him—starting with a grey sweatshirt on the show Ozark—with no easy way to identify it and purchase it. After spending thirteen years at Google working with major media companies, Lanzet developed a deep understanding of technology at the intersection of content, commerce, and visual AI. He's using his passion and experience to build a technology that finally solves fashion's age-old "where did you get that?" problem.

Follow Josh Lanzet on @joshlanzet on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

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This week, I sit down with Eva Roytburg, journalist and editorial fellow at Fortune Magazine, where she covers the intersection of technology, business, and culture. We unpack one of the strangest and most revealing experiments in modern tech: her time wearing the AI companion “Friend” during a breakup.

In this episode, we explore what it means to let technology listen to us not just in a functional sense, but in an emotional one. From subway ads and public backlash in New York City to her own experience wearing the AI pendant for over a month, Eva shares what the “Friend” experiment revealed about comfort, surveillance, and our evolving relationship with AI. Together, we ask: What does her experience with “Friend” tell us about the future of the AI era?

About Eva Roytburg:

Eva Roytburg is an editorial fellow on Fortune Magazine's News desk where she covers the intersection of technology, business, and innovation. Eva is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in CNN and The Jerusalem Post, and is a recent graduate of Emory University with a B.A. in Economics and Philosophy, Politics, and Law.

Follow Eva Roytburg on Instagram @evaroyt and LinkedIn @eva-roytburg

Check out Eva’s piece in Fortune: “I tried the viral AI ‘Friend’ necklace everyone’s talking about—and it’s like wearing your senile, anxious grandmother around your neck”

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Cory Doctorow, author, journalist, and activist, believes that the internet — once a space of promise and connection — has been systematically degraded by corporate greed. In his new book “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It,” he details how the platforms we depend on have become more expensive and more exploitative.

In our conversation, Cory Doctorow shares how this process unfolds, first platforms serve users, then they exploit businesses to make money, and finally they squeeze both to please shareholders. Together, we explore how this pattern has reshaped everything from social media and streaming to online shopping and even our smart cars. Is this why our digital lives now feel so constrained and costly?

About Cory Doctorow:

Cory Doctorow is a blogger, journalist, and activist. For more than twenty years, he has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation on campaigns to safeguard and further our human rights online. He was coeditor of the weblog Boing Boing for nineteen years and now maintains a daily(ish) newsletter at Pluralistic.net. He has written more than thirty books, including nonfiction books, many science fiction novels, collections of short stories and essays, young adult novels, graphic novels, and even a picture book. Born in Toronto, he now lives in Burbank, California.

Follow Cory Doctorow on Twitter @doctorow and Medium @doctorow

Cory’s  book “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It,” is available wherever you get your books!

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What does it actually cost to live with AI? In this episode, I'm joined by technology and climate journalist Lindsay Muscato to explore an urgent but sometimes overlooked story: the impact of AI on the environment. Every chatbot query, every cloud-stored photo, every AI system we test requires significant energy. And to meet that demand, data centers are rapidly expanding across America. But with their particular concentration in rural areas, certain communities are bearing most of the brunt. Their energy bills spike and their local municipalities run the risk of being strained. In this episode, we explore how some communities are pushing back against this data center expansion, and what it will take to mitigate this infrastructure and energy crisis that AI is supercharging.

About Lindsay Muscato:

Lindsay Muscato is an independent journalist, formerly a senior editor at TIME and editor at MIT Technology Review, who focuses on the intersection of technology and public policy, with special attention on climate. Her work has appeared in outlets nationally and internationally.

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Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, believes that AI has potential to annihilate humanity. He knows this sounds hyperbolic, but as he explains in his new book “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All,” just because this outcome may be dramatic, it doesn’t make it less true. 

In our conversation, Nate shares how little we actually know about how AIs work, and why it’s hard — if not impossible — for us to fully predict their behavior, even though we’re the ones programming them. Together, we discuss what could happen if humanity continues to invest so heavily in AI (spoiler: it's terrifying). Imagine humans being pets of AI, AI overrunning our natural resources, and other sci-fi like doomsday scenarios. But also, Nate offers some hope. He reminds us that we are, in fact, capable of reshaping the future. The first step to doing so is understanding what’s at stake.  

About Nate Soares:

Nate Soares is the President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He has been working in the field for over a decade, after previous experience at Microsoft and Google. Soares is the author of a large body of technical and semi-technical writing on AI alignment, including foundational work on value learning, decision theory, and power-seeking incentives in smarter-than-human AIs.

Follow Nate on X @so8res

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Has TikTok become so ingrained in our daily lives that it’s no longer just an app we use, but an experience that happens to us? Millions of Americans spend hours scrolling on the app, but is our relationship with TikTok more problematic than we think? And how much of that problem lies in the way the digital content is delivered — effortlessly and endlessly?

In this episode, I’m joined by Emily Baker-White – Forbes tech reporter and author of the new book, “Every Screen on the Planet: The War Over TikTok” --  to unpack the staggering influence of this global platform. Together, we dive into the inner workings of TikTok, exploring how its proprietary recommendation algorithm knows us better than we know ourselves. We also expose the surprising ways the platform manipulates virality through its secret “heating” button, which can push any video to the top at the push of a button. Is TikTok's powerful hold over us a cause for concern, or is it simply the evolution of entertainment? Tune in as we explore the intersection of tech, culture, and human behavior in the age of TikTok.

About Emily Baker-White:

Emily Baker-White is a technology reporter at Forbes, where her TikTok coverage has won awards. A Harvard Law School graduate and former criminal defender, she previously led the Plain View Project, an investigation into police misconduct on Facebook, and covered TikTok for BuzzFeed News. She lives in Philadelphia.

Follow Emily on X, Threads and Bluesky @ebakerwhite.

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Marketing has always blurred the lines between real and illusion but why do AI advertisements feel different? From influencers with digital twins to billboards designed by machines, AI content is all around us and not always in obvious ways.

This week, I’m joined by Caroline Giegerich, vice president of AI at the IAB, to discuss the rise of generative AI in advertising. Caroline and I dig into how marketing is shifting from handcrafted storytelling to automated generation with no humans in the loop. We talk about why AI makes some audiences feel uneasy, and how others don’t even notice or seem to care. Is quality becoming optional? And if AI is everywhere, will we stop noticing or just stop expecting more?

About Caroline Giegerich:

Caroline Giegerich is VP, AI at Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), where she leads efforts to shape how artificial intelligence is adopted and scaled across the advertising ecosystem. With over 20 years of experience in strategy, innovation, and marketing at companies like Warner Music Group, HBO, Showtime, and Smashbox Cosmetics, Caroline blends deep strategic insights, emerging technology and storytelling to drive business impact. She’s led pioneering work in AR, AI-generated creative, sports R&D, and fan engagement tech, and has advised brands across media, entertainment, beauty, and consumer goods. A speaker at TEDx, SXSW, Advertising Week and more and frequent contributor to Adweek, AdAge and The Drum, she’s been recognized in 2024 as a Marketer that Matters in the Wall Street Journal and by Brand Innovators with the Women in Marketing Industry Innovator award. 

Follow Caroline Giegerich on LinkedIn at @carolineg

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