Podcast profile
By Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson
A podcast about understanding how tech works and the way it is changing the world. Hosted by Andrew Sharp with Ben Thompson.
Latest episode
33 min
Topics
Major technology platforms, companies, ecosystems, leadership, and competitive behavior.
Technology-company strategy, business models, operations, competition, and market structure.
Chip design, fabrication, semiconductor markets, packaging, and manufacturing ecosystems.
Formats
Interpretation, opinion, debate, review, and analytical discussion.
Host-led conversation where a guest supplies most of the subject matter.
Audience level
Assumes basic technology literacy and familiarity with common products, roles, and terminology.
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Episodes shown — 10 of 25
On today’s Ben and Andrew begin with Andrew’s article on AI alarmism, the primacy of the effective altruists in AI risk conversations, and why these discussions are exhausting without more evidence, even as AI risk becomes the biggest story in American politics.
Andrew and Ben begin with Ben’s article on Tuesday on the transformative value of LLMs writing things down. From there: More on the Hugging Face incident, a listener asks for advice on getting started with agents, and Meta’s Muse arrives to help normal unlock the potential of agents.
On today’s show Ben and Andrew begin with notes on a home networking project before turning to the release of Fable 5.1, including Anthropic’s announcement that it has walked back the data retention safety initiative the company announced earlier this year.
On today’s show Ben and Andrew begin with initial reactions to Meta’s settlement with 29 states, including behavioral remedies that will impose restrictions on teens using Facebook and Instagram.
On today’s show Andrew and Ben begin with reflections on big Apple news that feels relatively small alongside a world of growth and dramatic questions across technology in the AI era.
From there: Why the turnover at Google may actually be a good sign for Google’s frontier efforts, and extended thoughts the future of AI-generated output, ideas and substantiation, and Anthropic’s plan to watermark outputs.
On today’s show Ben and Andrew begin with Microsoft, Meta and Google in the wake of their latest earnings reports. First: Microsoft’s push to be the middle layer for enterprise AI, threats to the company’s competitive position in the long run, and the subtext of the open weights open letter frenzy two weeks ago.
On today’s show Ben and Andrew begin with takeaways from OpenAI’s sandboxing snafu, including a reminder that the big bad wolf is real, OpenAI’s failures, and the timing challenge with warnings from AI labs.
On today’s show Ben and Andrew begin with a raft of OpenAI news, including reactions to the first reports of what OpenAI’s first hardware product will be, the logic of OpenAI’s hardware business generally, the Codex push in the mac app, and a request for a Codex computer.
On today’s show Andrew and Ben begin with a look at the state of Meta. Topics include: Mark Zuckerberg’s sins of commission vs. omission as a messenger, Meta’s AI opportunity, directionally correct investments, the problems with Meta as a cloud provider, and the absence of religion in Menlo Park.