Listen : Watch : Read #25
Originally Posted: June 1, 2025 here
🎙️Listen 🎙️
What happens when AI stops being just infrastructure—and becomes a matter of national identity and global power? This was a fab discussion with Anjney Midha and Guido Appenzeller of Andreessen Horowitz on Sovereign AI. On the back of the launch of HUMAIN.ai in the UAE (more below) - but why nations are building local “AI factories” instead of relying on U.S. cloud providers, whether the world needs a “Marshall Plan for AI” and how Local AI models are covering local nuances and much more!. Really great discussion.
There's sheer Joy in this interview! Like Pravina Ladva, CDTO of Swiss Re - I'm lucky enough to love what I do. Pravina joins Robin Merttens of InsTech for a discussion on all things AI, Operational Resilience in Insurance and much more!
How business cases are great, but sometimes you need to make big bold bets, including rolling out ChatGPT to the entire organization and then using the data to find where to focus - while equally - you don't always need to focus on the big bold ideas - the beauty of technology is often in the small things (especially as you are seeking adoption), and much more!
📺 Watch 📺
I'm an Ian Bremmer fan. I loved this, his advice to 2025 grads! Stay Curious Stay Human Stay Weird, but the good kind of weird. Do whatever you want with your liberal arts degree, except consulting - some of your professors still believe in you! reminds me of my 3 key skills for future generations, curiosity, creativity and storytelling. Full article and post here [13 mins]
Ethics without power doesn't accomplish much. And power without ethics is what got us here
This was a fun discussion with the All-In Podcast crew, Jason Calacanis, David Friedberg and Chamath Palihapitiya with Sergey Brin of Google. Some fascinating and very relaxed insights here - maybe it was just Miami. Two things that stuck in my mind - All models do better if you threaten them with violence and that Gemini was on the No Code list! (it's not anymore!) Even some insights into Google Glasses and how others are doing today (remember that was 11 years ago!) Fun, honest & relaxed discussion [32 mins]
There's a new bromance in town, as I shared last week here - here Jonny Ive and Sam Altman, talk all things IO. Building a family of AI products for everyone. From humility to deep thinking! you make your own mind up. It's nice to hear Jonny's voice and thoughtfulness back after all these year. [9 mins]. (The preview for some reason isn't working on this - YouTube here too just in case)
As a sidebar, Marques Brownlee did a fun YouTube short on what this might look like if they took this to Shark Tank ABC (I'm addicted to this show)- hello Mr Wonderful Kevin O'Leary [30 secs]
📚 Read 📚
August 2024, Klarna hit the headlines when it announced it aims to halve workforce with AI-driven gains. Last week, news outlets were quick to share how they dialled back plans amidst a desire to hire more people, choosing to prioritise human interactions across its customer service arm. The most important thing for me here is they set big bold ambitions and tried!, reminds me of the comment from last week, on Demos not Memos from Aparna Chennapragada. Chamath Palihapitiya had an interesting challenge here, in that startups will now need to pivot to narrower use cases. Feels like we could be back to a roof-shots to moonshots story. (Google x)
That said, Sebastian Siemiatkowski did a quick interview with Alex Kantrowitz of Big Technology below - which is just brilliant, so thoughtful on where they are, addressing Chamath Palihapitiya clearly and where they go next. As an example their agent is dealing with 1.3m errands per month which used to be 800 people! That's pretty impressive. TLDR - They are giving AI more Customer Service Work, not less! [20 mins]
Klarna are not alone, I love Duolingo. From all accounts they are crushing it. I'm almost 250 days into my German streak!. A family challenge that has seen everyone else give up but me! I feel it's working too to some extent (although I did have to laugh when I heard on the radio the DJ say, they have been learning French and they now know how to say Egg and Owl. me too!)
Last month, Duolingo's CEO Luis von Ahn wrote a memo detailing the company's "AI-first" approach. After weeks of pushback, Luis provided clarity internally & externally. His full post here.
To be clear: I do not see AI as replacing what our employees do (we are in fact continuing to hire at the same speed as before). I see it as a tool to accelerate what we do, at the same or better level of quality. And the sooner we learn how to use it, and use it responsibly, the better off we will be in the long run.
And this theme is not for new tech alone, IBM, this with a positive twist - laying off 8,000 people (mostly in HR) in 2023 - automating up to 30% of repetitive tasks - only to re-recruit them in other areas. A success story of how the business is evolving thanks to AI, putting the fear of mass job loss at bay (hello Dario?) Some great insights here and data - The case of AskHR is emblematic: in 2024, the platform handled more than 11.5 million interactions, with a customer satisfaction rate (NPS) that rose from -35 to +74 in just a few years.
Arvind Krishna, IBM’s CEO, explained it to the Wall Street Journal, “While we’ve done a tremendous amount of work to leverage AI, our total employment has actually increased because it’s allowed us to invest more in other areas.”
Now this got a lot of attention this week too, AI system resorts to blackmail if told it will be removed! Bring on the terminator stories! Or as Sergey said in his interview above, they [AI models] work better if you threaten extreme violence! (he said partly in jest!)
But in an accompanying report, it also acknowledged the AI model was capable of "extreme actions" if it thought its "self-preservation" was threatened.
With all this talk of chatbots, fascinating from Benedict Evans as always- Chatbots don't seem to have product market fit, according to the data! whats actually going on? What is the GenAI Adoption problem. My 2c, probably a bit of both - but given how quick things are moving, we will quickly solve!
so far, most of its users only pick it up every week or two, and far fewer have made it part of their lives. Is that a time problem or a product problem?
And to finish on one of my favourite topics, a super interesting move from BYD, slashing its prices by up to 34%. Its cheapest model is now 20% cheaper, making it a full electric car for $8,000. For context, the cheapest Full EV in the USA is a NIssan Leaf S which is $29,280.
👀 Quick bites 👀
And thats It! See you next week!