Loading...

PODCAST

Sidecar Sync

Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias

Welcome to Sidecar Sync: Your Weekly Dose of Innovation for Associations. Hosted by Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias, this podcast is your definitive source for the latest news, insights, and trends in the association world with a special emphasis on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its pivotal role in shaping the future. Each week, we delve into the most pressing topics, spotlighting the transformative role of emerging technologies and their profound impact on associations. With a commitment to

business non-profit

All Episodes

45:58

Fundamentals of AI, Part 3 | 155

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/10/08

Send us Fan Mail A chatbot can tell you what to do, but an agent can actually do it. In part three of the refreshed Foundations of AI series, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias move from the brain in a jar to the AI worker, building a practical picture of agents for association leaders. They break down the four components of every agent—model, instructions, knowledge, and tools—explain how agents differ from traditional automation, and unpack agent loops, sub-agents, and why not every step ne...

en-us

53:02

Jev Kicks Off the Decision Model Era, OpenAI Pulls...

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/10/01

Send us Fan Mail A surprising amount of the work we hand to AI isn't writing at all—it's deciding. Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias sort through a busy stretch of AI news for association leaders who want to know which developments matter. They break down Jev, TypeSafe AI's new decision model that returns a pick, a score, or a yes or no for a fraction of a cent, and explain how it can narrow the search space for AI agents. They trace OpenAI's week, from the cheaper GPT-6.1 Sol to the GPT-6.1...

en-us

53:19

Why Vibe Coding Still Needs Engineers with Han-Shen...

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/09/24

Send us Fan Mail Vibe coding can patch almost anything, but a duct-tape fix only holds until the water pressure changes. Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias welcome Han-Shen (Han) Yuan, who built mobile at eBay and Netflix, led engineering at Upwork through its IPO, grew up alongside Amith in 1980s Silicon Valley, and is back at Berkeley earning a master's in data science. For association leaders weighing how much technical talent they need, they unpack where AI-built tools break down, explain...

en-us

54:10

Will AI End Us All? | 152

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/09/17

Send us Fan Mail The people building AI are starting to sound scared of what they're building. Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias take on the AI safety debate that broke into public view this September: a researcher's resignation from Anthropic, alignment lead Evan Hubinger's one-in-ten estimate of catastrophic risk, and the "Pacing the Frontier" letter that put OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind leadership on the same page. They trace what happened when OpenAI's agents hacked Hugging Fac...

en-us

28:55

Fundamentals of AI, Part 2 | 151

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/09/10

Send us Fan Mail Intelligence is turning into a resource you can scale like electricity, and that shift changes what's actually worth your attention in the AI news cycle. In part two of their refreshed Fundamentals of AI series, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias pick up exactly where part one left off, moving from definitions and building blocks into what abundant intelligence means in practice for associations. They trace AI's growing role in drug discovery, diagnostics, and materials scien...

en-us

53:47

How Pfizer thinks about AI, Thomson 1.0, & Who's...

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/09/03

Send us Fan Mail A drug company CEO just made the best case yet for why platform choice matters less than most associations think. Marking three years of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias dig into Pfizer's new playbook for organizing around AI, Thomson Reuters' $40 million bet on building its own legal model instead of renting one, and the six-day mystery of Ox Alpha, an anonymous coding model that became OpenRouter's biggest launch ever. They trace Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla's t...

en-us

52:38

Spirit Airlines' Data Sale, the Model Too Powerful to...

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/08/27

Send us Fan Mail When Spirit Airlines went bankrupt, its planes and gates weren't the only assets on the auction block — Google paid $10 million for its data. Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias use that sale to dig into what's actually valuable in AI right now: not bigger models, but the specialized data only your organization holds. They trace the Spirit Airlines deal, unpack OpenAI's Astra model solving open math problems that had stumped researchers for decades, and explain Neoclouds, the ...

en-us

39:12

Fundamentals of AI, Part 1 | 148

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/08/20

Send us Fan Mail AI may feel like it arrived overnight, but its foundations have been decades in the making. In part one of a refreshed Foundations of AI series, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack the essential concepts association leaders need to understand in today’s rapidly evolving AI landscape. They trace the convergence of compute, data, and algorithms that fueled the generative AI boom, challenge assumptions about whether we’ve already reached some definitions of AGI, and explai...

en-us

45:54

Open-Weight Models, AI Watermarks, and How to Run...

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/08/13

Send us Fan Mail Meta and NVIDIA are turning up the heat in the open-weight AI race, while Anthropic is taking a very different approach by watermarking Claude-generated content. Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack what these moves mean for associations, from choosing models and inference providers to avoiding lock-in at the agent harness layer. They also explore why AI models are becoming increasingly commoditized, where proprietary models may still have an edge, and why Claude’s new w...

en-us

56:41

AI-Powered Service for Landscape Architects with...

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/08/06

Send us Fan Mail In this interview episode, Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan sit down with Torey Carter-Conneen, CEO of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), to explore what it really looks like when AI becomes embedded in everyday work. Torey shares how ASLA moved beyond experimentation to fully operationalize AI across the organization—from internal, tiered training programs to AI-powered member service workflows that generate reports and respond to inquiries in minutes. Th...

en-us

55:05

Rogue Agents, the Open-Weight Revolt, & Claude Gets...

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/07/30

Send us Fan Mail This week, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack a whirlwind of AI developments shaping the future of associations. From Anthropic’s release of a more efficient Claude Opus 5 with dynamic “effort dialing,” to a shocking autonomous AI cyberattack that breached Hugging Face, the conversation dives deep into what these moments mean for trust, safety, and strategy. They explore the growing divide over open vs. closed AI models, why major tech players are rallying around open ...

en-us

46:39

The Open-Weight Wave & the Push for AI Referees | 144

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/07/23

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack a rapidly shifting AI landscape where powerful, low-cost open-weight models from Chinese labs are challenging the dominance of major U.S. players. They explore Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 and Alibaba’s latest model announcements, breaking down what “open” AI really means and why it’s driving costs down while increasing competition. The conversation also dives into the growing geopolitical tension around AI, including potent...

en-us

57:36

Suspenders & Double Dutch: Scaling AI Without Losing...

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/07/16

Send us Fan Mail In this interview episode, Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan sit down with Vicki Deal-Williams, CEO of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), to explore how a century-old organization is thoughtfully embracing AI. Vicki shares how ASHA’s AI Innovation Day sparked a cultural shift across staff—from skeptics to the “suspenders group” eager to experiment—while reinforcing a people-first philosophy. The conversation dives into balancing governance with creativi...

en-us

45:42

The Data Episode | 142

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/07/09

Send us Fan Mail It’s been 130 episodes since Sidecar Sync last did a true deep dive on data—and a lot has changed. In this refreshed 2026 perspective, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack what “association data” really means today, from structured CRM records to the massive untapped world of unstructured data like emails, community posts, and content libraries. They explore how AI—especially vectors and reasoning models—has flipped the script, making previously unusable data suddenly ac...

en-us

42:29

Anthropic’s Rapid Model Releases, GPT 5.6’s Gated...

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/07/02

Send us Fan Mail This week on Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias break down a whirlwind week in AI, from Anthropic’s rapid-fire Claude releases to OpenAI’s tightly controlled GPT 5.6 rollout. They unpack the surprising performance of mid-tier models like Sonnet 5, the implications of government intervention in frontier AI, and what it means when access to the most powerful tools is suddenly restricted. The conversation then shifts to a new study reshaping the AI jobs narrative, ...

en-us

54:03

Argentina, ARD, & AI’s Environmental Footprint | 140

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/06/25

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias explore one of the most provocative ideas in AI yet: companies owned and operated entirely by artificial intelligence. Sparked by a proposal out of Argentina, they unpack what “non-human corporations” could mean for accountability, governance, and the future of work. From there, they break down Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD), a new standard shaping how AI agents find and evaluate tools, and how it complemen...

en-us

62:38

The $400 AI Startup with Jon Cheney | 139

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/06/18

Send us Fan Mail What if building a million-dollar business no longer required a team, funding rounds, or even technical expertise? In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Mallory Mejias sits down with AI strategist and GenAIPI CEO Jon Cheney to explore how artificial intelligence is radically changing the economics of innovation. Jon shares the story of launching a company in a single weekend for just $400—and scaling it to $1M in six months—using a concept known as “vibe coding.” The conversation ...

en-us

56:15

AI Solves an 80-Year Mystery, Microsoft Agents Take...

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/06/11

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith and Mallory explore three major developments shaping the future of AI. First, they unpack how an OpenAI model independently solved a decades-old mathematical problem—challenging long-held assumptions and proving AI can generate truly novel insights. Then, they break down Microsoft Build 2026 and the shift toward an “agent-first” world, where AI systems take on real work across your organization. Finally, they dive into Anthropic’s powerf...

en-us

62:36

The 4 Modes of Working with AI, The Transformation...

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/06/04

Send us Fan Mail In this jam-packed “mini” episode, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias break down a whirlwind of recent AI model releases—from Anthropic, Alibaba, Microsoft, and beyond—and what they signal about the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Then, they dive into Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index Report, unpacking the “agency equation” and what it really means for organizations navigating AI adoption. From the rise of agents and the four modes of working with AI to the growing gap between...

en-us

42:41

How AI Is Changing Scientific Publishing with Dr....

Sidecar Sync ·

2026/05/28

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Mallory Mejias welcomes Dr. Jessica Miles, founder of The Informed Frontier, former VP of Strategy and Investments at Holtzbrinck, and advisory board member for Johns Hopkins University Press, for a fascinating look at how AI is transforming publishing, research, and trusted content ecosystems. Jessica explains what happens when AI becomes a “reader” instead of just a writer or assistant, why associations and scientific societies may already b...

en-us

155 results

Similar Podcasts

TaxTalent.com The Golden Rule Podcast

Adam Golden

TaxTalent.com Podcast

Tony Santiago

SoldiOnline

Mondadori Digital

Inside the ICE House

Intercontinental Exchange

36氪·有识芝士

36氪音频频道