Loading video...

Video Failed to Load

There was a problem loading this video. This could be due to a temporary network issue or the video might be unavailable.

Cyber ethnography is decoding the internet's hidden subcultures - and taste is becoming the only moat that matters in the era of AGI. Our full conversation with Ruby Justice Thelot, cyber ethnographer and NYU professor, where he tells us why "trends" are usually just three TikToks in a trench... coat, why the internet has splintered into a pluriculture of untranslatable subcultures, and why taste is actually a 300-year-old moral technology for surviving abundance. 01:08 What is a cyber ethnographer, and how the field has evolved 04:21 Is it real or "three TikToks in a trench coat"? - testing viral trends against the data 07:50 Balkanization and babelification: how the internet split into digital enclaves with their own languages 07:53 The pluriculture era: why everyone feels like they're watching the same show when they're not 11:40 50% of internet traffic is bots - audience capture, algorithmic capture, and "machinic taste" 18:23 A Few Essays on Taste: why taste isn't preference, it's a way to consume virtuously 18:32 The 17th-century origins of taste and why we're repeating that history now 26:08 Why Americans say they hate AI but love "Chat" - the language gap around AI anxiety 28:03 When will techno-optimism rise? Aligning AI's benefits with what Americans actually want 30:14 Charm maxing, the Gen Z stare, and the pushback against phone culture ruby justice thelotshow more

MTS

494,132 subscribers

58,029 views • 1 month ago •via X (Twitter)

Anya Rossi• Live Now

Private livecam show

0 Comments

No comments available

Comments from the original post will appear here

Related Videos

NYU Prof. Ruby Thelot on why everyone suddenly cares about taste: "I wrote a book called A Few Essays on Taste, where I make the case that taste is not just aesthetic preference. Taste is a way for people to consume virtuously. The question of taste emerged in the 17th century, at a time where people needed guidance as to how to consume properly." "In 1688, the Bill of Rights happens in England after the Glorious Revolution, and the nobility's powers are restrained. As they lose political power, they also lose cultural power. At the same time you have the growth of the British colonies, immense amounts of wealth being generated, and suddenly you have this nouvelle bourgeoisie, this new elite. And there's a belief that this emergence of excessive luxury will lead to the decay of society." "It is in the vacuum, in the reduction of the cultural power of the previous nobility, that the question of taste emerges. What's interesting to me is that we're in a similar position now. We're entering a similar industrial revolution. We're in the midst of immense amounts of wealth being created, and we're asking ourselves, how do we consume virtuously? That is why the question of taste is emerging. It mirrors 17 and 18th century England." ruby justice thelot Nancy

NYU Prof. Ruby Thelot on why everyone suddenly cares about taste: "I wrote a book called A Few Essays on Taste, where I make the case that taste is not just aesthetic preference. Taste is a way for people to consume virtuously. The question of taste emerged in the 17th century, at a time where people needed guidance as to how to consume properly." "In 1688, the Bill of Rights happens in England after the Glorious Revolution, and the nobility's powers are restrained. As they lose political power, they also lose cultural power. At the same time you have the growth of the British colonies, immense amounts of wealth being generated, and suddenly you have this nouvelle bourgeoisie, this new elite. And there's a belief that this emergence of excessive luxury will lead to the decay of society." "It is in the vacuum, in the reduction of the cultural power of the previous nobility, that the question of taste emerges. What's interesting to me is that we're in a similar position now. We're entering a similar industrial revolution. We're in the midst of immense amounts of wealth being created, and we're asking ourselves, how do we consume virtuously? That is why the question of taste is emerging. It mirrors 17 and 18th century England." ruby justice thelot Nancy

MTS

415,151 views • 1 month ago

NYU Prof. Ruby Thelot on how to tell a real trend from three TikToks in a trench coat: "This is one of the hardest things to do on the internet. I like to say, is this a real thing, or is this three TikToks and a trench coat? Because oftentimes what feels like a trend, what feels like a novel social behavior, can just be super micro, super small." "What we do at 131 is a lot of quantitative analysis of social media to see how prevalent this thing really is. There's been articles about this thing called heteropessimism, the aversion that certain straight women have about dating men. And I was like, okay, is this a real thing? So we took the top posts about dating on TikTok, anything over a million views, took a look at 2,000 videos, and identified, did heteropessimism grow since 2020?" "We found that dating content is mostly positive. Our beloved journalists, because of their algorithms, are getting hit with a lot of that content, and then they think it's a trend. But when I take a look at the data of the top 2,000 videos across five years, it's actually kind of decreased over time, and most dating content is, for the most part, positive." ruby justice thelot

NYU Prof. Ruby Thelot on how to tell a real trend from three TikToks in a trench coat: "This is one of the hardest things to do on the internet. I like to say, is this a real thing, or is this three TikToks and a trench coat? Because oftentimes what feels like a trend, what feels like a novel social behavior, can just be super micro, super small." "What we do at 131 is a lot of quantitative analysis of social media to see how prevalent this thing really is. There's been articles about this thing called heteropessimism, the aversion that certain straight women have about dating men. And I was like, okay, is this a real thing? So we took the top posts about dating on TikTok, anything over a million views, took a look at 2,000 videos, and identified, did heteropessimism grow since 2020?" "We found that dating content is mostly positive. Our beloved journalists, because of their algorithms, are getting hit with a lot of that content, and then they think it's a trend. But when I take a look at the data of the top 2,000 videos across five years, it's actually kind of decreased over time, and most dating content is, for the most part, positive." ruby justice thelot

MTS

205,578 views • 1 month ago

"You should really treat having your own agent as having your own child. It's not one-click automation, you're raising it." Demi Guo (Demi Guo ), CEO of Pika on why agents need taste, not just prompts. Lin Qiao (Lin Qiao), CEO of Fireworks AI on why 95% of the world's data is still locked inside enterprises and why open-source models are converging with frontier. They join @jason on This Week in AI Episode 9: 00:00 Intro to Lin Qiao and Demi Guo 08:43 95% of private data locked in enterprises 16:03 The interface for creation is a human-like agent 22:07 The death of middle management 28:03 Taste, judgment, and why "slop" is the real risk 33:40 Agents aren't tools, they're children you raise 39:36 How close is open-source to frontier? 53:04 Agents as self-expression 63:17 Meta's Muse model goes closed-source

"You should really treat having your own agent as having your own child. It's not one-click automation, you're raising it." Demi Guo (Demi Guo ), CEO of Pika on why agents need taste, not just prompts. Lin Qiao (Lin Qiao), CEO of Fireworks AI on why 95% of the world's data is still locked inside enterprises and why open-source models are converging with frontier. They join @jason on This Week in AI Episode 9: 00:00 Intro to Lin Qiao and Demi Guo 08:43 95% of private data locked in enterprises 16:03 The interface for creation is a human-like agent 22:07 The death of middle management 28:03 Taste, judgment, and why "slop" is the real risk 33:40 Agents aren't tools, they're children you raise 39:36 How close is open-source to frontier? 53:04 Agents as self-expression 63:17 Meta's Muse model goes closed-source

This Week in AI

48,202 views • 5 months ago

FULL INTERVIEW: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky joins TBPN to discuss recent earnings, founder mode, the future of consumer AI, marketing, and more. 01:04 How Airbnb got its startup energy back 03:40 Founder mode and fixing one corner of the business at a time 06:14 How Chesky would disrupt Airbnb today 07:18 Why chatbots are wrong for travel 09:37 The SaaSpocalypse and AI interfaces 12:25 Why everyone is building enterprise AI 17:05 Why consumer AI hasn’t broken out yet 18:15 Why Silicon Valley keeps chasing trends 23:08 Advice for designers in the AI era 31:43 Why different marketing works best

FULL INTERVIEW: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky joins TBPN to discuss recent earnings, founder mode, the future of consumer AI, marketing, and more. 01:04 How Airbnb got its startup energy back 03:40 Founder mode and fixing one corner of the business at a time 06:14 How Chesky would disrupt Airbnb today 07:18 Why chatbots are wrong for travel 09:37 The SaaSpocalypse and AI interfaces 12:25 Why everyone is building enterprise AI 17:05 Why consumer AI hasn’t broken out yet 18:15 Why Silicon Valley keeps chasing trends 23:08 Advice for designers in the AI era 31:43 Why different marketing works best

TBPN

15,497 views • 4 months ago

FULL INTERVIEW: Brendan Carr calls AI the 3rd great technological leap, after the internet and the mobile internet. He says the people calling it the end of the world are running the exact same playbook they ran on net neutrality. Brendan Carr is Chairman of the FCC. He joined Theo Jaffee and sof 𓋹 in DC on the Build America Agenda, spectrum for space, and what the FCC is doing about AI and cyber: 01:08 what the Build America Agenda actually is 02:27 the new rules on humanoid and quadruped robots 03:12 what happened after the drone and router bans 03:43 the weird space stuff that needs spectrum, including drugs made in zero gravity 05:00 turning the FCC's space bureau into a processing plant 05:36 if you built towers and connected nobody, maybe someone else should have that spectrum 06:07 why the old approach to robocalls didn't work 07:14 they've kicked thousands of voice providers off the US phone network 07:30 what you can do about bot farms outside the country 08:25 getting telecom carriers early access to new models before release 08:36 what he can and can't say about AI and cyber 09:21 the same people running the same playbook they ran on net neutrality 11:37 how the FCC thinks about neutrality heading into the midterms 11:50 the deal broadcasters made with the American public, and who wants out of it

FULL INTERVIEW: Brendan Carr calls AI the 3rd great technological leap, after the internet and the mobile internet. He says the people calling it the end of the world are running the exact same playbook they ran on net neutrality. Brendan Carr is Chairman of the FCC. He joined Theo Jaffee and sof 𓋹 in DC on the Build America Agenda, spectrum for space, and what the FCC is doing about AI and cyber: 01:08 what the Build America Agenda actually is 02:27 the new rules on humanoid and quadruped robots 03:12 what happened after the drone and router bans 03:43 the weird space stuff that needs spectrum, including drugs made in zero gravity 05:00 turning the FCC's space bureau into a processing plant 05:36 if you built towers and connected nobody, maybe someone else should have that spectrum 06:07 why the old approach to robocalls didn't work 07:14 they've kicked thousands of voice providers off the US phone network 07:30 what you can do about bot farms outside the country 08:25 getting telecom carriers early access to new models before release 08:36 what he can and can't say about AI and cyber 09:21 the same people running the same playbook they ran on net neutrality 11:37 how the FCC thinks about neutrality heading into the midterms 11:50 the deal broadcasters made with the American public, and who wants out of it

MTS

69,710 views • 4 days ago

Join my conversation with Elon Musk on AGI timelines, energy, robots, and why abundance is the most likely outcome for humanity's future, alongside my Moonshot Mate NOTDAVID! (00:00) - Navigating the Future of AI and Robotics (04:54) - The Promise of Abundance and Optimism (10:02) - Energy: The Key to a Sustainable Future (15:00) - The Role of Education in a Changing World (41:07) - Health, Longevity, and the Future of Humanity (50:51) - AI's Impact on Labor and Employment (55:05) - Universal High Income: A New Economic Paradigm (57:58) - Navigating the Singularity and AI's Acceleration (01:02:30) - The Role of AI in Healthcare and Surgery (01:08:22) - Ethics and AI: Programming Values into Machines (01:14:18) - The Future of Space Exploration and AI's Role (01:33:30) - The Chip Shortage Crisis (01:42:46) - Simulation Theory and Consciousness (01:48:18) - The Search for Extraterrestrial Life (01:58:28) - The Future of Robotics and AI Integration

Join my conversation with Elon Musk on AGI timelines, energy, robots, and why abundance is the most likely outcome for humanity's future, alongside my Moonshot Mate NOTDAVID! (00:00) - Navigating the Future of AI and Robotics (04:54) - The Promise of Abundance and Optimism (10:02) - Energy: The Key to a Sustainable Future (15:00) - The Role of Education in a Changing World (41:07) - Health, Longevity, and the Future of Humanity (50:51) - AI's Impact on Labor and Employment (55:05) - Universal High Income: A New Economic Paradigm (57:58) - Navigating the Singularity and AI's Acceleration (01:02:30) - The Role of AI in Healthcare and Surgery (01:08:22) - Ethics and AI: Programming Values into Machines (01:14:18) - The Future of Space Exploration and AI's Role (01:33:30) - The Chip Shortage Crisis (01:42:46) - Simulation Theory and Consciousness (01:48:18) - The Search for Extraterrestrial Life (01:58:28) - The Future of Robotics and AI Integration

Peter H. Diamandis, MD

6,237,059 views • 8 months ago

LIVE NOW - Tempo Mainnet: The Race to Agentic Commerce Tempo is live, and the big bet is clear: AI agents need a native payment layer. Georgios Konstantopoulos and Brendan Ryan join Bankless to explore: - why Tempo launched with agentic payments front and center, - how MPP turns payments into auth, - why “give the agent the wallet” could unlock a new internet economy, - where MPP fits against x402, - what Tempo’s L1 design makes possible for builders. Enjoy the episode. --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Tempo Mainnet goes live 1:18 Why the launch is focused on agents 3:58 What MPP actually is 6:30 MPP vs x402 15:28 Why agentic commerce matters 20:08 The “original sin” of the internet 26:04 MCP, NLWeb, and the emerging agent stack 34:07 The onboarding flow: wallets for agents 37:11 How Tempo’s wallet security works 40:11 Tempo chain design and specs 51:13 Why build an L1 instead of an Ethereum L2? 56:10 The Ethereum tension 1:05:01 Agent identity, reputation, and ERC-8004 1:06:53 TIP20, stablecoins, and what can be built on Tempo 1:12:36 Builder opportunity in the agentic web

LIVE NOW - Tempo Mainnet: The Race to Agentic Commerce Tempo is live, and the big bet is clear: AI agents need a native payment layer. Georgios Konstantopoulos and Brendan Ryan join Bankless to explore: - why Tempo launched with agentic payments front and center, - how MPP turns payments into auth, - why “give the agent the wallet” could unlock a new internet economy, - where MPP fits against x402, - what Tempo’s L1 design makes possible for builders. Enjoy the episode. --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Tempo Mainnet goes live 1:18 Why the launch is focused on agents 3:58 What MPP actually is 6:30 MPP vs x402 15:28 Why agentic commerce matters 20:08 The “original sin” of the internet 26:04 MCP, NLWeb, and the emerging agent stack 34:07 The onboarding flow: wallets for agents 37:11 How Tempo’s wallet security works 40:11 Tempo chain design and specs 51:13 Why build an L1 instead of an Ethereum L2? 56:10 The Ethereum tension 1:05:01 Agent identity, reputation, and ERC-8004 1:06:53 TIP20, stablecoins, and what can be built on Tempo 1:12:36 Builder opportunity in the agentic web

Bankless

23,815 views • 6 months ago

NYU Prof. Ruby Thelot on the split he keeps hearing across America: everyone says they hate AI, and everyone says they love chat "I find that Americans don't like AI. AI is a very broad umbrella here, because they all use chat, and they'll say, I love chat. But they don't like AI. There's a bit of a divergence there. There's the boogeyman of the data center, the boogeyman of, I'm gonna lose my job." "If you take a look at an Anthropic survey, they surveyed 85,000 people to ask how they were using AI for career advancement or life management. When I talk to mothers in Bryan, Texas, they say, oh yeah, I had a leak in my faucet, I took a photo, and in about an hour or two I was able to fix that thing." "But to them it's kind of like Google. It's not the thing that replaces their work and puts them on unemployment. So there's a language issue here around what does this technology do for me, versus what is the negative impact that's coming in a somewhat near potential future." ruby justice thelot Nancy

NYU Prof. Ruby Thelot on the split he keeps hearing across America: everyone says they hate AI, and everyone says they love chat "I find that Americans don't like AI. AI is a very broad umbrella here, because they all use chat, and they'll say, I love chat. But they don't like AI. There's a bit of a divergence there. There's the boogeyman of the data center, the boogeyman of, I'm gonna lose my job." "If you take a look at an Anthropic survey, they surveyed 85,000 people to ask how they were using AI for career advancement or life management. When I talk to mothers in Bryan, Texas, they say, oh yeah, I had a leak in my faucet, I took a photo, and in about an hour or two I was able to fix that thing." "But to them it's kind of like Google. It's not the thing that replaces their work and puts them on unemployment. So there's a language issue here around what does this technology do for me, versus what is the negative impact that's coming in a somewhat near potential future." ruby justice thelot Nancy

MTS

98,564 views • 1 month ago

"Millions of people creating with the same tool for totally different use cases, but the output looks the same. That's where the feeling of AI slop comes from." She's making it her mission to put an end to it. Solo Founders Podcast ep 18 is live with Thais Castello Branco of . 00:47 Why she went solo 02:08 What "taste" actually is 11:30 A quirk on one, slop on millions 13:09 The real cause: volume 19:37 Why it had to be a "lab" 30:04 You're bad at commissioning AI 44:01 Branding, Liquid Death and what lasts 58:34 The bear and bull case for going solo

"Millions of people creating with the same tool for totally different use cases, but the output looks the same. That's where the feeling of AI slop comes from." She's making it her mission to put an end to it. Solo Founders Podcast ep 18 is live with Thais Castello Branco of . 00:47 Why she went solo 02:08 What "taste" actually is 11:30 A quirk on one, slop on millions 13:09 The real cause: volume 19:37 Why it had to be a "lab" 30:04 You're bad at commissioning AI 44:01 Branding, Liquid Death and what lasts 58:34 The bear and bull case for going solo

weisser

34,489 views • 2 months ago

"When will agents surpass humans on the internet?" Haakam Aujla co-founded AgentMail to give AI agents their own email inboxes. An email address is the first thing the internet asks anyone for, and its next billion users will need one. Watch Yuri Sagalov in conversation with Haakam. Chapters 00:00 — Why AI Agents Need Their Own Email 02:38 — The Drop Shipping Dream That Became AgentMail 08:27 — A Reddit Post and the First Customer 16:53 — The OpenClaw Explosion 22:31 — Email Is the Paper Trail of the Internet 29:11 — Sign In With AgentMail 32:50 — Billions of Agents in 18 Months 40:56 — Where Trust on the Internet Begins

"When will agents surpass humans on the internet?" Haakam Aujla co-founded AgentMail to give AI agents their own email inboxes. An email address is the first thing the internet asks anyone for, and its next billion users will need one. Watch Yuri Sagalov in conversation with Haakam. Chapters 00:00 — Why AI Agents Need Their Own Email 02:38 — The Drop Shipping Dream That Became AgentMail 08:27 — A Reddit Post and the First Customer 16:53 — The OpenClaw Explosion 22:31 — Email Is the Paper Trail of the Internet 29:11 — Sign In With AgentMail 32:50 — Billions of Agents in 18 Months 40:56 — Where Trust on the Internet Begins

General Catalyst

29,164 views • 1 month ago

NEW: Dylan Field (Dylan Field), CEO of Figma (NYSE: FIG) How to Escape the "Permanent Underclass of Zero Taste" › Why AI prompts only get you the average › Why the market has design backwards Plus, Founders Fund's Mafia & Thiel Fellowship class behind Figma + Anthropic Recorded at Day 0 of Config 2026, San Francisco We Cover: › Vibe Mathing › Elon: Products vs Logos › AI's trust issue › Agents vs Employees › Engineers coding design › American Enterprise > › IQ ≠ Judgment or taste › What actually is a jailbreak? This was SO much fun!!! Can confirm Config-pilled. 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Dylan Field, Co-Founder & CEO at Figma (00:57) Day Zero begins: backstage at Config (01:44) The "Coachella for Design" is real (02:35) Why Dylan started Config back in 2020 (03:47) Why "design is dead" is completely wrong (06:11) How Figma turned engineers into designers (06:54) Inside Config before the crowd arrives (07:55) The Config speakers Dylan can't wait to watch (11:34) Inside the exclusive Pantone Lounge (12:00) The one question every designer gets asked (13:16) Getting killed in every single game of Mafia (15:33) How to escape the permanent underclass of zero taste (19:51) Why execution is cheap but taste is everything (22:25) What actually builds a trusted brand (25:51) How AI agents are rewiring company structure (28:54) The AI safety debate happening right now (31:57) Why deep curiosity is Dylan's secret weapon (34:53) The real lesson from being a Thiel fellow (36:52) Rapid fire: Elad Gil's wildest question (38:04) What people are missing about AI & enterprise software (40:16) Where Figma goes next (41:21) Why Dylan is bullish on SpaceX (42:43) Elon Musk's logo theory (43:26) The mentors who shaped Dylan Field (45:20) Alan Kay, VR, and the future of human-computer interaction

Molly O’Shea

430,052 views • 2 months ago

"What's drawn people together for thousands of years is stories." My full conversation with Phil & Dom, co-founders of EasyA - the Duolingo for blockchain, with over a million users learning crypto. We covered what it's really like building a company with your brother, why they left promising careers in finance and law, their partnerships with Ripple, Solana and Sui, why crypto matters in a post-quantum AI world, and why every brand will need a face to survive. 00:00 Intro 01:03 How This Pod Happened 03:20 Printing the Bitcoin Whitepaper at 16 05:11 Mining Bitcoin From the Basement 06:12 Wharton, Blackstone and Sullivan & Cromwell 07:55 What It's Like Building With Your Brother 28:47 The UK vs US Talent Drain 29:04 Their Friend Who Ran AI Safety at Anthropic 36:29 EasyA Is the Duolingo for Blockchain 38:06 Why They Teach Stories, Not Code 46:34 The Business Model and EasyA Labs 50:31 Why Crypto Solves the AI Trust Problem 54:04 Why Every Brand Needs a Face

JackGK

26,719 views • 3 months ago

“The Chinese are skeptical of our calls for international cooperation on AI. They think they're in a race with us. And if they think they're in a race with us, it's kind of hard for us not to be in a race with them. And that's just the way it is.” “And at the end of the day, the Chinese government is a dictatorship that's nationalist and socialist and doesn't really want to cooperate with us much. They want to beat us. They want to compete with us. So, we can try. It's worth trying.” “But the record shows, according to 100% of the evidence, that when you sign an AI or a nuclear or a cyber-hacking document with the Chinese government, it turns out not to be held up. It turns out that they're not actually trustworthy.”

“The Chinese are skeptical of our calls for international cooperation on AI. They think they're in a race with us. And if they think they're in a race with us, it's kind of hard for us not to be in a race with them. And that's just the way it is.” “And at the end of the day, the Chinese government is a dictatorship that's nationalist and socialist and doesn't really want to cooperate with us much. They want to beat us. They want to compete with us. So, we can try. It's worth trying.” “But the record shows, according to 100% of the evidence, that when you sign an AI or a nuclear or a cyber-hacking document with the Chinese government, it turns out not to be held up. It turns out that they're not actually trustworthy.”

Josh Rogin

23,474 views • 2 days ago

Guillermo Rauch (Guillermo Rauch) is one of the most prolific coders of this generation. But he doesn’t think of himself as a coder anymore. Coding, he says, is a specific skill that AI is becoming great at. Instead, he thinks the future of coding is more holistic, full-stack engineers who can ideate, design, and execute all together. Guillermo is the founder and CEO of Vercel (Vercel), the creator of NextJS, and SocketIO. We spent an hour talking about the future of software development in an AI world—and the meta-skills that are essential for the coders of today to master—in order to use tomorrow’s tools to their fullest extent. Here are a few takeaways: - One of the most important keys to his success is taste—and developing taste is all about paying better attention to everything you experience day to day. - He’s great at recognizing bleeding-edge technologies with extremely practical applications but that have bad user experiences. If you can learn to recognize those and build with them, you might build the next NextJs or SocketIO. - Why prototype cultures are becoming common in AI—and the benefits of written cultures like Amazon vs. prototype cultures like Apple for different kinds of companies. - For developers building frameworks, always put the product first; a framework in isolation without a “customer zero” is never going to be a good tool. - The theory of “recursive founder mode”—if you want to build a scalable business, you have to scale yourself by creating an atmosphere that nurtures talent and ambition. - AI tools are shifting software toward consumption-based billing models, making us capital allocators who decide how much compute the AI consumes. - The future of AI is agents with the taste, knowledge, and tools to perform specialized tasks. Watch below! Timestamps: Introduction: 00:01:33 How to spot trends early: 00:03:18 Why you should be your own customer: 00:07:34 How to create an ecosystem of talent and ambition: 00:14:55 Why Guillermo doesn't identify as a coder: 00:17:29 AI is gearing us toward an allocation economy: 00:20:50 How Vercel’s copilot compares with other coding agents: 00:28:34 Guillermo’s advice on having better taste: 00:40:35 The future of AI agents is specialized: 00:42:46 How AI startups can compete with big tech: 00:47:50

Guillermo Rauch (Guillermo Rauch) is one of the most prolific coders of this generation. But he doesn’t think of himself as a coder anymore. Coding, he says, is a specific skill that AI is becoming great at. Instead, he thinks the future of coding is more holistic, full-stack engineers who can ideate, design, and execute all together. Guillermo is the founder and CEO of Vercel (Vercel), the creator of NextJS, and SocketIO. We spent an hour talking about the future of software development in an AI world—and the meta-skills that are essential for the coders of today to master—in order to use tomorrow’s tools to their fullest extent. Here are a few takeaways: - One of the most important keys to his success is taste—and developing taste is all about paying better attention to everything you experience day to day. - He’s great at recognizing bleeding-edge technologies with extremely practical applications but that have bad user experiences. If you can learn to recognize those and build with them, you might build the next NextJs or SocketIO. - Why prototype cultures are becoming common in AI—and the benefits of written cultures like Amazon vs. prototype cultures like Apple for different kinds of companies. - For developers building frameworks, always put the product first; a framework in isolation without a “customer zero” is never going to be a good tool. - The theory of “recursive founder mode”—if you want to build a scalable business, you have to scale yourself by creating an atmosphere that nurtures talent and ambition. - AI tools are shifting software toward consumption-based billing models, making us capital allocators who decide how much compute the AI consumes. - The future of AI is agents with the taste, knowledge, and tools to perform specialized tasks. Watch below! Timestamps: Introduction: 00:01:33 How to spot trends early: 00:03:18 Why you should be your own customer: 00:07:34 How to create an ecosystem of talent and ambition: 00:14:55 Why Guillermo doesn't identify as a coder: 00:17:29 AI is gearing us toward an allocation economy: 00:20:50 How Vercel’s copilot compares with other coding agents: 00:28:34 Guillermo’s advice on having better taste: 00:40:35 The future of AI agents is specialized: 00:42:46 How AI startups can compete with big tech: 00:47:50

Dan Shipper

187,107 views • 1 year ago

Open source AI just became the biggest policy fight in tech. Our full conversation with Ben Horowitz, where he tells Theo and Sofia why banning open source is nearly impossible, why it's historically the safer path, the risk of one company controlling AI and why distillation isn't the threat people claim. 01:21 The Nvidia-backed open letter on open-weight AI 01:49 The OpenAI–Hugging Face hacking incident 02:27 Why you can't actually ban open source 03:05 Historically, open source has been safer (Linux vs. Windows) 05:17 Jensen's Twitter account and the letter's significance 07:25 China, "sleeper agent" models, and national security risk 09:23 Anthropic defying the US government 15:18 The danger of building your business on Anthropic 18:51 BYD, EVs, and rebuilding US manufacturing 21:30 Why would a company ever release an open model? 23:58 The DeepSeek moment: why nothing actually changed 28:25 Paying 100x more for an AI researcher vs. a janitor 29:06 AI art, the "slop" problem, and a coming renaissance benahorowitz.eth Theo Jaffee sof 𓋹

Open source AI just became the biggest policy fight in tech. Our full conversation with Ben Horowitz, where he tells Theo and Sofia why banning open source is nearly impossible, why it's historically the safer path, the risk of one company controlling AI and why distillation isn't the threat people claim. 01:21 The Nvidia-backed open letter on open-weight AI 01:49 The OpenAI–Hugging Face hacking incident 02:27 Why you can't actually ban open source 03:05 Historically, open source has been safer (Linux vs. Windows) 05:17 Jensen's Twitter account and the letter's significance 07:25 China, "sleeper agent" models, and national security risk 09:23 Anthropic defying the US government 15:18 The danger of building your business on Anthropic 18:51 BYD, EVs, and rebuilding US manufacturing 21:30 Why would a company ever release an open model? 23:58 The DeepSeek moment: why nothing actually changed 28:25 Paying 100x more for an AI researcher vs. a janitor 29:06 AI art, the "slop" problem, and a coming renaissance benahorowitz.eth Theo Jaffee sof 𓋹

MTS

11,246 views • 1 month ago

Why AI Can Now Make Discoveries - my conversation with Dan Roberts, Lead of the Foundations of Reinforcement Learning team at OpenAI 00:00 Intro: AI's wild week in mathematics 01:21 What OpenAI's Foundations of RL team does 03:08 Dan's journey: from black holes and quantum gravity to frontier AI 07:04 Are AI systems becoming useful for real science 08:21 The AI math moment: Erdős, OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic 08:52 Why the OpenAI result was an act of exploration 10:25 OpenAI vs. DeepMind: informal reasoning vs. formal proof 12:13 RL 101: learning by doing, not just watching 15:10 Why reinforcement learning works 15:58 How RL breaks: sparse feedback and long-horizon tasks 17:03 RLHF: how human feedback shaped early language models 18:48 Move 37, self-play, and the search for novel strategies 22:16 Explore vs. exploit in scientific discovery 24:49 Why RL may now be "the cake," not the cherry on top 25:46 Why RL started working with large language models 27:29 Is RL "sucking supervision through a straw"? 28:47 Why language may be the grounding layer for intelligence 31:46 A contrarian take on the Bitter Lesson 32:41 What test-time compute actually is 34:50 How RL gives models the ability to think 35:40 Verifiable rewards, math, coding, and the messy real world 38:00 What physics can teach us about AI 42:08 Is there a thermodynamics of AI? 43:08 From Erdős problems to Einstein-level AI 45:16 Is AI already doing original science? 45:51 How far are we from AI automating AI research 47:41 Why Dan is excited about the future of science

Why AI Can Now Make Discoveries - my conversation with Dan Roberts, Lead of the Foundations of Reinforcement Learning team at OpenAI 00:00 Intro: AI's wild week in mathematics 01:21 What OpenAI's Foundations of RL team does 03:08 Dan's journey: from black holes and quantum gravity to frontier AI 07:04 Are AI systems becoming useful for real science 08:21 The AI math moment: Erdős, OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic 08:52 Why the OpenAI result was an act of exploration 10:25 OpenAI vs. DeepMind: informal reasoning vs. formal proof 12:13 RL 101: learning by doing, not just watching 15:10 Why reinforcement learning works 15:58 How RL breaks: sparse feedback and long-horizon tasks 17:03 RLHF: how human feedback shaped early language models 18:48 Move 37, self-play, and the search for novel strategies 22:16 Explore vs. exploit in scientific discovery 24:49 Why RL may now be "the cake," not the cherry on top 25:46 Why RL started working with large language models 27:29 Is RL "sucking supervision through a straw"? 28:47 Why language may be the grounding layer for intelligence 31:46 A contrarian take on the Bitter Lesson 32:41 What test-time compute actually is 34:50 How RL gives models the ability to think 35:40 Verifiable rewards, math, coding, and the messy real world 38:00 What physics can teach us about AI 42:08 Is there a thermodynamics of AI? 43:08 From Erdős problems to Einstein-level AI 45:16 Is AI already doing original science? 45:51 How far are we from AI automating AI research 47:41 Why Dan is excited about the future of science

Matt Turck

69,801 views • 3 months ago

A model is only as good as its data, and we’ve long since exhausted the internet. From here on out, model progress is gated by data production. ’s Brendan (can/do) joined us at our Sovereign AI event to talk about how RL environments get built, and why your data might be your real moat: 00:00 Introduction 00:47 A short history of the data market: crowdsourcing to agentic data 02:29 What an RL environment is: worlds, apps, tasks 03:57 Why only humans can measure the frontier 05:35 Building verifiers is the hard part 06:44 Walkthrough: a real legal RL environment 08:18 Leaderboards — and what open weights change 09:45 Post-training results on Apex Agents 11:17 Three ways companies buy data 12:49 Q&A: How do you price data? 14:17 Q&A: What "data quality" actually means 16:42 Q&A: The misunderstanding about synthetic data 18:17 Q&A: Why RL environments now — and what comes after 21:20 Q&A: Can you scale rubric generation with models? 23:00 Q&A: RL environments for cyber defense 25:33 Q&A: Build data in-house or partner?

A model is only as good as its data, and we’ve long since exhausted the internet. From here on out, model progress is gated by data production. ’s Brendan (can/do) joined us at our Sovereign AI event to talk about how RL environments get built, and why your data might be your real moat: 00:00 Introduction 00:47 A short history of the data market: crowdsourcing to agentic data 02:29 What an RL environment is: worlds, apps, tasks 03:57 Why only humans can measure the frontier 05:35 Building verifiers is the hard part 06:44 Walkthrough: a real legal RL environment 08:18 Leaderboards — and what open weights change 09:45 Post-training results on Apex Agents 11:17 Three ways companies buy data 12:49 Q&A: How do you price data? 14:17 Q&A: What "data quality" actually means 16:42 Q&A: The misunderstanding about synthetic data 18:17 Q&A: Why RL environments now — and what comes after 21:20 Q&A: Can you scale rubric generation with models? 23:00 Q&A: RL environments for cyber defense 25:33 Q&A: Build data in-house or partner?

Pat Grady

66,577 views • 1 month ago

I sat down with Jordi Visser to discuss why bitcoin is the purest AI trade available in the market, breakdown of energy infrastructure, how to invest amid the government shutdown, the Fed/interest rates, and why prediction markets and tokenization are two big themes moving forward. Enjoy! YouTube: Spotify: Apple: TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 1:04 - Why bitcoin is the purest AI trade 11:43 - The impact of new energy infrastructure 16:53 - How Base Power is building a decentralized grid and other opportunities for investors 23:49 - Why retail spots themes before institutions 32:33 - Retail orange-pilling each other in public 37:25 - What is the impact of government shutdown on financial markets? 40:25 - The rise of prediction markets and tokenization 49:28 - Where to follow Jordi on the internet

I sat down with Jordi Visser to discuss why bitcoin is the purest AI trade available in the market, breakdown of energy infrastructure, how to invest amid the government shutdown, the Fed/interest rates, and why prediction markets and tokenization are two big themes moving forward. Enjoy! YouTube: Spotify: Apple: TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 1:04 - Why bitcoin is the purest AI trade 11:43 - The impact of new energy infrastructure 16:53 - How Base Power is building a decentralized grid and other opportunities for investors 23:49 - Why retail spots themes before institutions 32:33 - Retail orange-pilling each other in public 37:25 - What is the impact of government shutdown on financial markets? 40:25 - The rise of prediction markets and tokenization 49:28 - Where to follow Jordi on the internet

Anthony Pompliano 🌪

110,012 views • 11 months ago

NYU Prof. Ruby Thelot on why the AI backlash is simple: "Techno-optimism will be on the rise once the claimed benefits of the technology are aligned with the desires and interests of American constituents. What do Americans want? A wife, some food, some clothes to feed their children. In the words of Gil Scott-Heron. It's simple." "Even Dave Chappelle says this in one of his specials, you never get between a man and his bread. So I don't know who thought it was a good idea to go on national television and tell people they're gonna lose their job. If I'm an American, which I'm not, I wouldn't want to lose my job, because that's how I feed my family." "The thing I love with doing all my research is that I get to talk to people who put in very blunt terms what I could have written a five-page report on. But it's quite simple. People wanna be employed." ruby justice thelot Nancy

NYU Prof. Ruby Thelot on why the AI backlash is simple: "Techno-optimism will be on the rise once the claimed benefits of the technology are aligned with the desires and interests of American constituents. What do Americans want? A wife, some food, some clothes to feed their children. In the words of Gil Scott-Heron. It's simple." "Even Dave Chappelle says this in one of his specials, you never get between a man and his bread. So I don't know who thought it was a good idea to go on national television and tell people they're gonna lose their job. If I'm an American, which I'm not, I wouldn't want to lose my job, because that's how I feed my family." "The thing I love with doing all my research is that I get to talk to people who put in very blunt terms what I could have written a five-page report on. But it's quite simple. People wanna be employed." ruby justice thelot Nancy

MTS

45,005 views • 1 month ago

What happens when a global recording artist is also a self taught technologist? In this episode of IsraelTech, Yoel Israel sits down with global artist Nissim Black to explore the intersection of music, technology, AI, media, and spirituality. Before becoming an internationally known artist, Nissim grew up watching computers being built in his home and experimenting with music production equipment as a kid. That early exposure shaped the way he approaches creativity and technology today. They discuss how podcasting and music production rely on many of the same tools, how AI is already transforming the music industry, and why independent creators now have more power than traditional media. The conversation also dives into deeper questions about morality, media narratives, and why technology itself is not the real risk. The real question is how people choose to use it. This episode covers everything from AI generated music to the future of media platforms and why storytelling still matters more than ever. Hosted by Yoel Israel

What happens when a global recording artist is also a self taught technologist? In this episode of IsraelTech, Yoel Israel sits down with global artist Nissim Black to explore the intersection of music, technology, AI, media, and spirituality. Before becoming an internationally known artist, Nissim grew up watching computers being built in his home and experimenting with music production equipment as a kid. That early exposure shaped the way he approaches creativity and technology today. They discuss how podcasting and music production rely on many of the same tools, how AI is already transforming the music industry, and why independent creators now have more power than traditional media. The conversation also dives into deeper questions about morality, media narratives, and why technology itself is not the real risk. The real question is how people choose to use it. This episode covers everything from AI generated music to the future of media platforms and why storytelling still matters more than ever. Hosted by Yoel Israel

IsraelTech

27,666 views • 6 months ago