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PODCAST

TechStuff

Behind every innovation is a new kind of power. TechStuff unpacks how technology reshapes influence, creativity, and control, from Silicon Valley’s rising moguls to the cultural forces they create. Because tech is the new religion, economy, and entertainment, all at once. Each week, Oz Woloshyn and the brightest minds covering tech dig into the weird, funny, and sometimes unsettling ways technology, AI, and the internet shape our daily lives. From AI and social media to privacy, digital

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All Episodes

32:31

Everyone Is Saying Something Different About the AI...

TechStuff ·

2026/08/21

Is the AI boom real… or are we watching a bubble get ready to burst? Billions of dollars are pouring into artificial intelligence, but figuring out where that money comes from, where it goes, and whether the spending can last is surprisingly complicated. Azeem Azhar, entrepreneur, author, and founder of Exponential View, joins Oz to break down the economics behind the AI boom and the findings from his new report, The State of the AI Economy. Azeem and Oz discuss whether today’s massive

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29:31

Let’s Imagine the Tech Without the Tech Companies -...

TechStuff ·

2026/08/19

The AI conversation has become a battle between utopian promises and apocalyptic warnings. But what happens when we stop asking what AI will do to the world and start asking what it’s actually good for? Oz sits down with Josh Tyrangiel, journalist and author of AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter, to find out where AI is already making a difference. Oz and Josh explore why successful implementation depends more on stubborn humans than flashy

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41:09

Shell Game: The Startup Chronicles

TechStuff ·

2026/08/17

Evan decides it’s time to give his AI agents a little more ... agency. After all, to make the one-person, agent-run startup feasible, they need to be able to do things on their own. But as with humans, freedom sometimes comes with a certain amount of anarchy. To sign up for our newsletter and access ad-free episodes, visit shellgame.co.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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43:14

Anti-Surveillance Sentiment Is In Vogue, Some People...

TechStuff ·

2026/08/14

What’s driving America’s growing backlash against surveillance tech? Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) unpacks the outcry over Flock cameras and why the company thinks they are being unfairly targeted. Then, Gerrit De Vynck (The Washington Post) breaks down Mark Zuckerberg’s latest AI manifesto and Meta’s bid to catch up in the AI race. Finally, Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) explains OpenAI’s strange onstage postmortem of the Hugging Face hack… and why this moment

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35:49

Humanoid Robots Ship This Year, Here’s What To Expect...

TechStuff ·

2026/08/12

As Oz predicted, 2026 may very well be the year of the robot. At least, that’s what the robotics companies are promising. Oz sits down with Stephen Witt, author and frequent contributor to The New Yorker, to find out whether humanoid robots are really ready to hit the market. Spoiler: It’s a mixed bag. Oz and Stephen Witt discuss the hurdles facing humanoid robots and the risks of putting powerful machines in our homes. They also explore the surprisingly fierce debate over whether robots

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40:32

Shell Game: This is Law

TechStuff ·

2026/08/09

As Kyle, Megan, and the gang get to work ideating on the perfect product, Evan is left grappling with some uncomfortable questions about his AI collaborators — whose every attribute and memory he controls. To inform how he thinks about his own unnerving power to create and manipulate human imposters, Evan seeks guidance from Carissa Véliz, an associate professor at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, and the author of the upcoming “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and

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49:03

What the AI Backlash is Really About - Week in Tech

TechStuff ·

2026/08/07

What is Silicon Valley missing about the data center backlash? Jasmine Sun traveled to Wisconsin and Michigan to find out what's driving the public's growing mistrust of tech companies. Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) unpacks the internet's furious response to OpenAI's first influencer brand trip, what it reveals about the company's public image, and why Anthropic seems largely immune to the ire. Then, Reed Albergotti (Semafor) breaks down the dramatic unraveling of AI wunderkind Leopold Aschenbrenner's

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43:30

They Founded a Company as Teens. Now They’re...

TechStuff ·

2026/08/05

Brands, political parties, and businesses all want to know what you think. But what if you're not telling the truth? Cameron Fink, Ned Koh, and John Kessler, the founders of Aaru, believe the future of market research isn't polling humans—it's simulating them. They may be onto something. The three friends founded Aaru as teenagers, and it has since grown into a billion-dollar AI startup. Cameron Fink and Ned Koh join Oz to explain how their platform uses thousands of AI-powered "digital twins"

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37:23

Shell Game: Outdoor Debugging

TechStuff ·

2026/08/03

As Evan gets Hurumo’s employees up and running as fully-functioning colleagues (with support from Maty), he learns what it’s really like to spend your days managing, collaborating with, and socializing alongside autonomous AI agents. And he quickly sees one of the significant cracks in the facade of the AI employee future: It’s one thing to get your agents to start acting like real employees. It’s something else entirely to get them to stop. To sign up for our newsletter and

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41:51

Chinese Humanoid Robots Aren’t Welcome Here, US Says...

TechStuff ·

2026/07/31

Why is the US banning more Chinese technology? Reed Albergotti (Semafor) fills us in on the robot ban and what it means for American innovation. Then, new research on why Chinese open-source AI models may not be as big a threat as Washington makes it seem. Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) tells us about Substack’s new AI detection tool and what it reveals about how creators’ are using AI to build their content.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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33:37

Cerebras Built a New Way to Make Sand Think - The Story

TechStuff ·

2026/07/29

What does it take to power the AI boom? Steve Vassallo, a roboticist turned General Partner at Foundation Capital, helped semiconductor company Cerebras figure it out. Steve and Oz discuss why AI workloads demanded an entirely new kind of chip, what "wafer scale" actually means, and how a decade of near-failures — including a system that literally caught fire — led to the largest semiconductor IPO to date and deals with OpenAI and AWS.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy

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44:03

Trust Needs Proof: Who Really Controls Your AI?

TechStuff ·

2026/07/28

As AI adoption accelerates and global regulations evolve, digital sovereignty has shifted from policy concept to board-level priority. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell sits down live at VivaTech with IBM’s Ana Paula Assis and AXA CIO Giovanni D’Aniello to explore how organizations can balance innovation, control, trust, and resilience in the age of AI.This is a paid advertisement from IBM. The conversations on this podcast don't necessarily represent IBM's

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43:44

Did the AI Catastrophe Just Happen? - Week in Tech

TechStuff ·

2026/07/24

How much can we actually trust AI to stay inside the lines? Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) on the OpenAI models that went rogue — and why this isn't necessarily a sign of the end times… just sloppy security. Reed Albergotti (Semafor) on the company that wants to help anyone make software to power robots. Do we even have to talk about what that means for the future of human labor? Finally, Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) on Phoebe Gates' AI shopping startup Phia. Is it too early to call it

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34:40

What is Palantir’s Alex Karp Thinking? - The Story

TechStuff ·

2026/07/22

What are we supposed to make of Palantir — a company whose software has helped organizations save lives, and end them? And what of CEO Alex Karp's warnings that AI could upend American democracy? Journalist Michael Steinberger spent six years reporting on Karp for his biography, The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State. He tells Oz that Alex Karp, the former progressive, is a provocateur who embraces the complexity of Palantir’s work and

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33:23

Shell Game: Minimum Viable Company

TechStuff ·

2026/07/19

In Season 2 of Shell Game, journalist Evan Ratliff tells a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age; or, how he tried to build a real company, run by fake people. Meet Kyle Law and Megan Flores, Evan’s AI agent cofounders, as he puts to the test the claims about an emerging future in which AI employees work alongside — or instead of — humans. Over the course of the season, the three cofounders will grind it out in a sprint that would sound familiar to any start-up founder

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37:13

Are You Ready For A ‘Hot Surveillance Summer’? - Week...

TechStuff ·

2026/07/17

Who’s afraid of China’s open-source AI models? Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) breaks down the secret battle between Silicon Valley and Chinese AI labs, why Anthropic was surveilling China-based users, and whether "adversarial distillation" is a national security threat or just a term American companies invented to protect their bottom line. Then: ‘hot surveillance summer’ is here. Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) on the changing public perception of smart glasses, why the Kylie

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60:23

Skyline Drive: Organ Trail

TechStuff ·

2026/07/15

Did you love TechStuff’s last episode, 'The Tech That Helps You Live Forever', and want to hear more from Mangesh Hattikudur? Check out Episode 5 of the podcast Skyline Drive: How to Live Forever. In this season of Skyline Drive, Mangesh Hattikudur (Part-Time Genius, Mental_Floss) dives into the booming business of living forever—meeting the scientists, biopunks, and entrepreneurs trying to turn immortality into reality, and framing death as a choice. But the more he learns about an

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35:01

The Tech That Helps You Live Forever - The Story

TechStuff ·

2026/07/15

What's it like to feel your body age in minutes? And will this tech actually affect how long we live? Oz sits down with Mangesh Hattikudur, host of Skyline Drive: How to Live Forever, to find out. This season, Mangesh dives into a world familiar to many Silicon Valley billionaires: longevity. He meets the scientists, entrepreneurs, biopunks, and researchers seeking ways to extend life itself — and speaks with the co-founder of a mysterious start-up, a company that sent the MIT Technology

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44:10

Why Animal Rights Advocates Are Investigating AI...

TechStuff ·

2026/07/10

Do chatbots have feelings? Anthropic, Google, and Meta are hiring computer scientists, neuroscientists, and philosophers to find out. Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) explains why the search for AI consciousness has gone from fringe theory to Silicon Valley mainstream, and why the answer matters more than you think. Then, Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) traveled cross-country to attend an anti-big tech festival in New York City called the Summer of Ludd. She tells us about cleansing her laptop, talking

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36:42

Big Tech’s Most Valuable Product Isn’t AI. It’s the...

TechStuff ·

2026/07/08

Do you work with machines, or for machines? Cory Doctorow, who coined the term “enshittification,” has a new book that asks exactly that. In The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It's Too Late, he challenges the belief that AI is inevitable, explains why tech boosters are pushing this message, and how it leads to companies that are “too big to fail… too big to jail… too big to care.” Cory Doctorow and Oz

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2,633 results

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