The health care system in the US is a mess. Few will argue this. Can AI make it better?

That's the thesis of Rajeev (Raj) Ronanki, CEO of Lyric, which is working to build AI that will simplify and streamline the health care experience. What can AI make better? How will you, as a patient, have a dramatically different experience in the world of AI-assisted health care? And what are the challenges that need to be overcome to make this a reality?

Raj and I get deep into the current problems with the health care system, how AI can help, and what it will take -- as a society -- to pull this off.

Lyric.AI:
https://www.lyric.ai/

Petra Molnar is a Harvard Faculty Associate, lawyer, human rights activist, and author of the just-released book The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

Publisher’s Weekly gave the book a glowing review and called it a “a grave wake-up call."

To research this book, Petra spent *six years* studying what she called the “sharp edges” of surveillance tech, focusing on how it’s impacting real people. She spent considerable time at the border and in refugee camps. And she emerged from this research with chilling, dystopian tales of how AI-infused surveillance is being used at the border. Things like…“robot dogs,” which are exactly what they sound like.

We get into what her research has uncovered, what she thinks caused the current state of play, the often over-looked role of defense tech, and what she sees as possible solution.

Whatever your take on this issue, it’s an important conversation she’s raising. Hope you enjoy the episode.

The Walls Have Eyes:
https://thenewpress.com/books/walls-have-eyes

Before launching the AI-Curious podcast, I spent a bunch of years writing about bitcoin, blockchain, crypto, and web3, often for CoinDesk, the space’s main publication. I still write about it. So I’m in a relatively unique position to see the intersection of these two techs. Is there a connection? Can crypto really help develop better AI? There’s now an explosion of interest in “Decentralized AI,” which — in theory — could help minimize risks from Big Tech, reduce bias, fight censorship, solve the problem of deepfakes and even make AI more inclusive.

And this episode is sneaky-timely. There are over 15,000 people converging in Austin, Texas, for the annual “Consensus” conference — presented by CoinDesk — which focuses on the wider world of crypto. There’s now an “AI Summit” at this conference… and I’m hosting the AI Summit. So this episode is very much a conversation, in a sense, of the themes discussed at Consensus.

(And if you found this podcast from Consensus itself, welcome! This is an excellent intro episode for you.)

Consensus 2024:
https://consensus2024.coindesk.com

Piece I wrote last year:

“10 Ways Crypto and AI Can Make Each Other Better (or Maybe Worse)”

https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/06/12/10-ways-crypto-and-ai-can-make-each-other-better-or-maybe-worse/