Episodes

  • No God Required: The First Religious Exemption from AI at Work

    No God Required: The First Religious Exemption from AI at Work
    30 Oct 2026
    A university administrator who believes in no god just became the first humanist to win a workplace religious exemption from using AI. Daniel and Emily unpack what the law actually protected, whether leaning on machines really erodes moral judgment, and what happens to that exemption when the job itself gets rewritten around AI. ## Hosts ### Daniel Altman Daniel Altman is a computer scientist and AI strategist with a background in engineering, quantitative research, and emerging technologies. He studies how technological breakthroughs reshape industries, markets, work, and human capabilities. ### Emily Carter Emily Carter is a business strategist and former technology product leader with experience building digital products and studying how innovation reaches millions of users. She focuses on AI adoption, business transformation, work, education, entrepreneurship, and leadership. ## Sources - https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/you-dont-need-to-believe-in-a-god-to-get-a-religious-exemption-from-using-ai-at-work/ ## Episode Information Language: en Published: 2026-10-30T22:06:50.125205+00:00
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    15 min
  • AGI Gets a Ticker Symbol

    AGI Gets a Ticker Symbol
    29 Oct 2026
    Anthropic has filed to go public at up to two trillion dollars, with the AGI story priced into the prospectus itself. Daniel and Emily trace what those assumptions imply for ordinary work, pensions, and who ends up owning the future. ## Hosts ### Daniel Altman Daniel Altman is a computer scientist and AI strategist with a background in engineering, quantitative research, and emerging technologies. He studies how technological breakthroughs reshape industries, markets, work, and human capabilities. ### Emily Carter Emily Carter is a business strategist and former technology product leader with experience building digital products and studying how innovation reaches millions of users. She focuses on AI adoption, business transformation, work, education, entrepreneurship, and leadership. ## Sources - https://www.theverge.com/podcast/1021322/anthropic-ipo-filing-s-1-claude-semianalysis-joey-brookhart-interview - https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-october-2026 - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n8u3BfqFoGh4jnzpo/plan-r-ai-safety-by-asics - https://stratechery.com/2026/an-interview-with-palantir-cto-shyam-sankar-about-the-ai-religious-war/ ## Episode Information Language: en Published: 2026-10-29T22:00:58.945673+00:00
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    15 min
  • Doughnuts for a Chatbot: The Short Life of NOA at Macmillan

    Doughnuts for a Chatbot: The Short Life of NOA at Macmillan
    28 Oct 2026
    A publisher threw an onboarding party—balloons, marquee lights, doughnuts spelling 'NOA IS HERE'—for a workplace AI assistant that workers quietly refused to use and that was later killed in a single email. Daniel and Emily follow NOA from welcome party to shutdown, and ask what enterprise AI rollouts are really changing: the work itself, or the trust between the people who decide and the people who type. ## Hosts ### Daniel Altman Daniel Altman is a computer scientist and AI strategist with a background in engineering, quantitative research, and emerging technologies. He studies how technological breakthroughs reshape industries, markets, work, and human capabilities. ### Emily Carter Emily Carter is a business strategist and former technology product leader with experience building digital products and studying how innovation reaches millions of users. She focuses on AI adoption, business transformation, work, education, entrepreneurship, and leadership. ## Sources - https://www.wired.com/story/macmillan-staff-say-the-publisher-threw-a-party-for-a-workplace-ai-assistant-that-was-later-killed/ ## Episode Information Language: en Published: 2026-10-28T21:46:16.563171+00:00
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    14 min
  • The Fake Paper Test: What AI Just Did to Peer Review

    The Fake Paper Test: What AI Just Did to Peer Review
    27 Oct 2026
    A science journalist smuggled two AI-made papers into an IEEE journal's defenses — one a pure forgery, one with research actually run by machines — and both got caught, for reasons that should worry us more than the forgeries. Daniel and Emily trace what the experiment revealed about peer review, authorship, and what's left to trust in published knowledge. ## Hosts ### Daniel Altman Daniel Altman is a computer scientist and AI strategist with a background in engineering, quantitative research, and emerging technologies. He studies how technological breakthroughs reshape industries, markets, work, and human capabilities. ### Emily Carter Emily Carter is a business strategist and former technology product leader with experience building digital products and studying how innovation reaches millions of users. She focuses on AI adoption, business transformation, work, education, entrepreneurship, and leadership. ## Sources - https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-generated-scientific-papers ## Episode Information Language: en Published: 2026-10-27T21:57:40.496462+00:00
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    15 min
  • Brakes Before Horsepower: Moving AI Agents From Demo to Real Work

    Brakes Before Horsepower: Moving AI Agents From Demo to Real Work
    26 Oct 2026
    At QCon Shanghai 2026, 140 speakers from 70 companies argued that AI agents' jump into production depends less on model intelligence than on context engineering, brake capability, and redesigned accountability. Daniel and Emily dig into what that shift means for jobs, processes, and who answers when an agent acts. ## Hosts ### Daniel Altman Daniel Altman is a computer scientist and AI strategist with a background in engineering, quantitative research, and emerging technologies. He studies how technological breakthroughs reshape industries, markets, work, and human capabilities. ### Emily Carter Emily Carter is a business strategist and former technology product leader with experience building digital products and studying how innovation reaches millions of users. She focuses on AI adoption, business transformation, work, education, entrepreneurship, and leadership. ## Sources - https://www.infoq.cn/article/0C1Wgt7N9NzM6KjHSFeA?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=article ## Episode Information Language: en Published: 2026-10-26T21:37:16.401335+00:00
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    15 min
  • Glue and Dreams: The Week the Internet Broke in Public

    Glue and Dreams: The Week the Internet Broke in Public
    25 Oct 2026
    In October 2026, a wave of AI-accelerated intrusions collided with two decades-old PHP vulnerabilities that put up to 70% of the world's websites on a patch-or-shutdown deadline. Daniel and Emily trace who actually found the bugs, who has been quietly holding the internet's floorboards together, and what trust costs now that the glue is visible. ## Hosts ### Daniel Altman Daniel Altman is a computer scientist and AI strategist with a background in engineering, quantitative research, and emerging technologies. He studies how technological breakthroughs reshape industries, markets, work, and human capabilities. ### Emily Carter Emily Carter is a business strategist and former technology product leader with experience building digital products and studying how innovation reaches millions of users. She focuses on AI adoption, business transformation, work, education, entrepreneurship, and leadership. ## Sources - https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-internet-breaks - https://piratewires.substack.com/p/inside-peter-thiels-nashville-antichrist - https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/24/will-ai-expose-the-rickety-infrastructure-of-the-internet/ ## Episode Information Language: en Published: 2026-10-25T21:43:40.683635+00:00
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    14 min
  • Text 'Start': The AI Agents Moving Into Your Messages

    Text 'Start': The AI Agents Moving Into Your Messages
    24 Oct 2026
    A new wave of AI agents skips the app store entirely: you save them as a contact, text them like a friend, and they text back — sometimes before you even ask. Daniel and Emily dig into what happens when the most personal channel on your phone becomes a place where machines schedule, shop, and nudge on your behalf. ## Hosts ### Daniel Altman Daniel Altman is a computer scientist and AI strategist with a background in engineering, quantitative research, and emerging technologies. He studies how technological breakthroughs reshape industries, markets, work, and human capabilities. ### Emily Carter Emily Carter is a business strategist and former technology product leader with experience building digital products and studying how innovation reaches millions of users. She focuses on AI adoption, business transformation, work, education, entrepreneurship, and leadership. ## Sources - https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/24/all-the-ai-agents-that-can-live-in-your-text-messages/ ## Episode Information Language: en Published: 2026-10-24T21:40:56.322077+00:00
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    14 min
  • The Counterexample Machine: Why AI's Math Doesn't Look Like Ours

    The Counterexample Machine: Why AI's Math Doesn't Look Like Ours
    23 Oct 2026
    This spring, an internal OpenAI model killed a math conjecture that had been open since 1946—with a counterexample, not the proof everyone was chasing. Daniel and Emily unpack the 'hint sequence' theory of why AI is suddenly good at math, how its route differs from human mathematicians, and who gets to decide which problems the machines attack next. ## Hosts ### Daniel Altman Daniel Altman is a computer scientist and AI strategist with a background in engineering, quantitative research, and emerging technologies. He studies how technological breakthroughs reshape industries, markets, work, and human capabilities. ### Emily Carter Emily Carter is a business strategist and former technology product leader with experience building digital products and studying how innovation reaches millions of users. She focuses on AI adoption, business transformation, work, education, entrepreneurship, and leadership. ## Sources - https://latent.space/p/ai-is-getting-good-at-math/ - https://www.a16z.news/p/charts-of-the-week-attention-is-all ## Episode Information Language: en Published: 2026-10-23T21:51:54.343597+00:00
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    13 min