This Week in AI

The future of AI isn't a smarter chatbot. It's a model that watches your screen, listens to the room, and acts on what it sees. We dug into Thinking Machines' new interaction model, what it means for compute, and the layoff wave that's already here.This week's roundtable: Anastasios Angelopoulos (CEO of Arena, formerly LMArena), Nick Harris (CEO of Lightmatter, photonic computing chips), and Philip Johnston (CEO of StarCloud, building megawatt data centers in space).

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Timestamps:
0:00 Cold open
1:21 Welcome to Episode 13
2:51 Is China closing the AI gap? Arena's data
5:16 Lightmatter and the photonic interconnect bottleneck
9:42 StarCloud 2, Nvidia Space Ruben 1, and orbital data centers
17:24 Thinking Machines' interaction model: what's actually new
28:22 Whisper Flow and the 3-pedal desk setup
33:48 Real-time desktop and camera awareness as the real unlock
40:25 Why this 100x's compute demand
42:43 The polarization of compute and $10M personal data centers
49:25 The layoff wave: Cloudflare, PayPal, Coinbase, Upwork
54:48 The 10x gap between AI-first and non-AI-first employees
59:52 Unlimited agency and the abundance future
1:00:46 Anthropic's Project Luna runs a retail store
1:03:45 Decoupling labor from value creation
1:05:03 P(doom) round

🔗 Guests:
Anastasios Angelopoulos, Arena: https://arena.ai | @ML_Angelopolous
Nick Harris, Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.co
Philip Johnston, StarCloud: https://starcloud.com | @philipjohnston

🔗 Referenced in this episode:
Thinking Machines, Introducing Interaction Models: https://thinkingmachines.ai/blog/interaction-models/
LMArena leaderboard: https://lmarena.ai
Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.co
Starcloud: https://www.starcloud.com
TechCrunch, Cloudflare says AI made 1,100 jobs obsolete: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/08/cloudflare-says-ai-made-1100-jobs-obsolete-even-as-revenue-hit-a-record-high/
Fast Company, Tech layoffs this week due to AI (Cloudflare, PayPal, Coinbase, Upwork): https://www.fastcompany.com/91538995/tech-layoffs-due-to-ai-this-week-cloudflare-paypal-coinbase-upwork
Bloomberg, South Korea floats citizen dividend from AI profits: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-05-12/korea-s-massive-ai-boom-triggers-call-for-tech-tax-roiling-market
PYMNTS, Inside a retail store run entirely by AI (Andon Labs / Luna): https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2026/inside-a-retail-store-run-entirely-by-ai/
Wispr Flow (voice-to-text tool Jason uses): https://wisprflow.ai
Fermi Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

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#ThisWeekInAI #AI #ThinkingMachines #Lightmatter #StarCloud #Arena #Anthropic #ProjectLuna #AIcompute #AIlayoffs #Superintelligence

This week, JCal sits down with two builders working on opposite ends of the AI stack: Naveen Rao, co-founder and CEO of Unconventional AI (his $4.5B startup rethinking the computer from first principles), and Trey Holterman, co-founder and CEO of Tennr, the platform automating the messy paperwork that decides whether millions of patients ever get the care they need.

They break down why AI already beats ER doctors at diagnosis, why Epic is the most hated company in healthcare, what it takes to disrupt healthcare's $5 trillion incumbents, and whether $1.1 trillion in hyperscaler CapEx will pay off before the energy runs out.

Mentioned in the show:
Unconventional AI: https://unconv.ai
Tennr: https://tennr.com
Abridge: https://abridge.com
Ambience Healthcare: https://ambiencehealthcare.com
Epic: https://epic.com
Plaud (NotePin): https://plaud.ai
Whoop: https://whoop.com
Function Health: https://functionhealth.com
Oura: https://ouraring.com
Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com
Perplexity: https://perplexity.ai
Databricks: https://databricks.com
Harvard / Beth Israel ER study: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/ai/ai-outperforms-doctors-diagnosis-harvard-study
Jack Clark on recursive self-improvement: https://jack-clark.net

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Timestamps:
00:00 Cold open
00:51 Welcome & intro to Naveen Rao (Unconventional AI) and Trey Holterman (Tennr)
05:43 Tennr's mission: fixing the U.S. healthcare "black hole"
06:23 Why primary care is changing in the AI era
09:09 The radiologist that wasn't replaced & what AI got right in 2015
15:31 Harvard study: AI beats ER doctors 67% to 55%
20:16 Plaud Pin & the always-on AI in the exam room
22:29 AI scribes, EMR privacy & how Abridge actually works
24:01 Whoop, Aura & when wearable data finally meets the clinic
25:20 Epic, FHIR & the 800-pound gorilla of healthcare
34:21 Disrupting Epic with an open-source EMR play
37:20 The Abridge vs Ambience scribe wars
42:06 Jack Clark's 60% odds on recursive self-improvement by 2028
53:41 Morgan Stanley's $1.1 trillion hyperscaler CapEx forecast
1:04:53 Anthropic's marketing machine & the AI religion thesis

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This week Jason sits down with three founders at the frontier of AI infrastructure, software development, and vertical AI: Matan Grinberg, co-founder and CEO of Factory; Russ d'Sa, co-founder and CEO of LiveKit; and George Sivulka, founder and CEO of Hebbia.
They break down why AI coding agents are more powerful than vibe coding, how voice became the default interface for AI, why LLMs are becoming commoditized like RAM, and what it actually takes to build a moat in 2026.
Mentioned in the show:
Factory: https://factory.ai
LiveKit: https://livekit.io
Hebbia: https://hebbia.com
Cursor: https://cursor.com
DeepSeek V4: https://deepseek.com
SpaceX / xAI: https://x.ai
Polymarket (Cursor acquisition odds): https://polymarket.com/event/will-spacex-acquire-cursor
LM Arena (model benchmarks): https://lmarena.ai
SWE-bench (coding benchmarks): https://swebench.com
Silicon Valley HBO clip (Son of Anton): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0b_D2JgZgY

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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro & AGI debate: where are we really?
02:26 Meet the guests: Matan Grinberg, Russ d'Sa, George Sivulka
03:30 Factory's mission: bringing autonomy to software engineering
04:29 LiveKit's origin: open source WebRTC to ChatGPT voice backbone
07:40 Learned helplessness and the raptor fence: a founder story
10:31 Hebbia: financial superintelligence for capital markets
13:21 SpaceX acquiring Cursor for $60B: the deal breakdown
17:28 Why enterprises can't standardize on one model provider
21:50 The Silicon Valley clip: when AI deletes all the software
23:09 How AI coding tools have changed internal dev workflows
26:28 Moats in the age of vibe coding: what actually protects you
30:12 The relentless iteration promise as a company's core moat
33:40 Slack example: the buy vs. build calculation in 2026
38:10 Deterministic agents and encoding institutional expertise
41:17 LLMs as commoditized infrastructure: where value pools
45:56 DeepSeek V4 drops mid-episode: $3.48 vs. Claude's $25
50:13 AI in financial markets: arbitrage, meme stocks, and ASI
56:58 China blocks Metas acquisition, OpenAI-Microsoft deal redux
58:41 AGI definitions and who wins the US vs. China model race
01:02:13 US open source embarrassment and the talent war
01:05:23 OpenAI's spend vs. revenue: risk of ruin or name of the game?
01:09:14 Apple's new CEO, M-series compute flood, and space data centers
01:12:08 P-doom scores and final thoughts

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This week we sat down with Aravind Srinivas and Edwin Chen. Aravind is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, whose revenue has grown from $100M to $500M on the back of Perplexity Computer. Edwin is the co-founder and CEO of Surge AI, the data training company teaching frontier models how to think, which quietly bootstrapped past $1B in revenue without ever raising a dollar.

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Timestamps:
00:00 Cold open
01:00 Welcome & intro to Aravind Srinivas and Edwin Chen
02:40 Why Perplexity Comet and Perplexity Max are taking off
05:25 Edwin on Surge AI and why "data labeling" is the wrong term
10:47 Tim Cook steps down — what Apple's new CEO should do
13:56 Owning your agent loops: why Apple wins
21:20 "The iPhone is not getting disrupted by AI at all"
23:09 $242B raised in Q1 2026 and the late-stage capital flood
23:55 Edwin on bootstrapping Surge past $1B without raising
25:09 The ChatGPT "one weird trick" story and clickbait models
30:58 Claude Code as a loss leader to dominate token collection
33:30 Are we in the endgame for coding?
35:35 Autocomplete to auto-diff to auto-outcomes
38:54 The death of the no-code movement
41:34 30% headcount growth, 5x revenue, the efficiency playbook
45:41 AI in Hollywood, Gal Gadot, and $70M movies that should cost $200M
50:29 "People don't buy models, they buy products"
57:20 Specialization vs commoditization — what actually accrues value58:00 "LM Arena is a cancer on AI"
63:34 Perplexity's heuristics for measuring user intent65:41 Model Council, Jensen Huang, and orchestrating frontier models
71:23 Most impressive AI experiences — WhisperFlow, Grok on X, Claude Design, and WHOOP
78:29 Hiring at Surge AI and Perplexity
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Links Mentioned on the Show:
Perplexity: https://perplexity.ai/
Surge AI: https://surge.ai/
Perplexity Comet: https://comet.perplexity.ai/
Perplexity Max: https://perplexity.ai/max
Claude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-code
Claude Design: https://claude.com/claude-design
OpenAI Codex: https://openai.com/codex
GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot
Cursor: https://cursor.com/
LM Arena: https://lmarena.ai/
Kimi K2: https://www.kimi.com/
DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com/
Apple Silicon: https://www.apple.com/mac/m4/
WhisperFlow: https://wisprflow.ai/
WHOOP: https://www.whoop.com/

This week we sit down with Lin Qiao and Demi Guo on This Week in AI Episode 9. Lin is the co-founder and CEO of Fireworks AI, a frontier inference platform processing tens of trillions of tokens per day, built by seven ex-Meta engineers who created PyTorch. Demi is the co-founder and CEO of Pika, building humanized AI agents for creative work, agents you interact with like a person, not a prompt box.

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Timestamps:
00:00 Welcome & intro to Lin Qiao and Demi Guo
02:38 Lin's journey from Meta to Fireworks AI
05:13 Building PyTorch and bootstrapping AI infrastructure
06:58 Who Fireworks competes with and why enterprises need it
08:43 Activating the 95% of private data locked in enterprises
11:31 Demi's journey building Pika and the pivot to humanized agents
16:03 The best interface for creation is a human-like agent
16:42 The AI layoff trap — a prisoner's dilemma for firms
19:00 Cambrian explosion of startups and the hobbyist-to-inventor pipeline
22:07 Flattening organizations and the death of middle management
28:03 Taste, judgment, and why "slop" is the real risk
31:22 Why agents drift and the case for constant iteration
33:40 Rethinking agents: not tools, but children you raise
39:36 How close are open-source models to frontier?
43:20 Token usage and the economics of running agents
46:15 Toys becoming tools — the hobbyist signal
48:59 Public perception of AI: America vs. China vs. Silicon Valley
53:04 Agents as self-expression and identity creation
57:06 The expert vs. public perception gap on AI's impact
63:17 Meta's Muse model and the open-source debate
68:26 Data drought, synthetic data, and the next architecture leap
72:06 Hiring at Fireworks AI and Pika
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Links Mentioned on the Show:
Fireworks AI: https://fireworks.ai/
Pika: https://pika.art/
PyTorch: https://pytorch.org/
"The AI Layoff Trap" paper (UPenn & Boston University): https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20617
Fortune: CFOs say AI cuts will be 9x bigger than reported: https://fortune.com/2026/03/24/cfo-survey-ai-job-cuts-productivity-paradox-2026/
HBR: Companies firing based on AI potential, not performance: https://hbr.org/2026/01/companies-are-laying-off-workers-because-of-ais-potential-not-its-performance
New Yorker profile on Sam Altman (Ronan Farrow): https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/11/sam-altman-responds-to-incendiary-new-yorker-article-after-attack-on-his-home/
Sam Altman home attack: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/10/sam-altman-house-hit-with-molotov-cocktail-openai-office-threatened.html
Block layoffs — Jack Dorsey cites AI: https://fortune.com/2026/02/27/block-jack-dorsey-ceo-xyz-stock-square-4000-ai-layoffs/
Pew Research — AI experts vs. public perception: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/03/how-the-us-public-and-ai-experts-view-artificial-intelligence/
Meta Muse Spark announcement: https://ai.meta.com/blog/introducing-muse-spark-msl/
DeepSeek V3: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3
Bubble Pal AI toy (Shenzhen): https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hugging-every-fun-thought-haivivi-unveils-the-worlds-first-aigc-toy-bubblepal-302209714.html
Cursor (Composer): https://cursor.sh/
NVIDIA Nemotron: https://developer.nvidia.com/nemotron
Qwen (Alibaba): https://qwenlm.github.io/
Mistral AI: https://mistral.ai/