Future Around & Find Out

Well, that escalated quickly! In the span of a few weeks the Trump administration went from AI regulation is dangerous and we will lose to China to an executive order calling for AI model-makers to submit to a “voluntary” review of their most advanced models to… the Friday night massacre of Anthropic’s Fable 5, which they declared too dangerous for any non-US citizen to use, which caused Anthropic to withdraw it completely. So where do go from here? It seems like, de facto, all new models will be subject to review and withdrawal. But on what criteria? And who can we trust to do this fairly? That’s what Ron J. Williams and I get into on the latest FAFO. Ron thinks a lot about trust. It’s core to the products he builds as a partner at Co-Created and as the founder of Scam Hero, an app he launched to keep people safe after his father trusted the wrong person and got scammed out of more than a million dollars. Ron says: "I think it's fair to say that Anthropic didn't bend the knee hard enough and that’s kind of why we're here. The problem with that is that that's not good enough. AI is now global infrastructure. It can't just be the throne that says "Not you, but you,” because it's important enough that it really does beg the question, “who gets to decide?”---Future Around & Find Out newsletter & archive: https://www.futurearound.com

Rajiv Pant thinks of AI as an Iron Man suit for the mind. Something you put on. That you fuse with. That takes you to greater heights — but could also make you incredibly dizzy and be very dangerous if you, the human, don't stay in control of it.Rajiv sees successful collaboration with AI as a “synthesis.” And to that end, he’s building a series of skills and methodologies for synthesis engineering, coding, writing and project management. In this episode, Rajiv explains why synthesis engineering is a kind of middle ground between vibe coding and agentic engineering. It’s a method for human-AI collaboration that helps builders go faster while not falling into the trap of letting AI do the things we humans ought to own. i.e. The architecture. The judgment. The thinking and learning. Rajiv is an engineering and product leader with deep experience in media. He’s held senior roles at the Wall Street Journal, Hearst, and the New York Times (where he and I first met). Today he's the president of Flatiron Software. Rajiv has open-sourced all of his Synthesis methodologies and he and I also discuss why open source is so important as we increasingly turn to AI to sharpen our thinking. Can we really trust a system we don’t understand? Would Tony Stark have trusted his suit if he didn’t know how it was built? Chapters:(00:00) - Iron Man suit for the mind (02:11) - What goes wrong when you vibe code into production (04:20) - What synthesis coding looks like hands on keyboard (05:40) - What AI code slop looks like (08:30) - The unexpected joy of managing a team of agents (11:00) - Using AI as a thinking partner without outsourcing your thinking (15:30) - How a non-programmer built a better version of his own software (18:15) - Is your use of AI making you dumber? (22:30) - Trusting AI when it’s a black box (26:15) - If Tony Stark owned your suit, would you trust it? (27:30) - What AI does to the economics of open source Support Future Around & Find Out:* Follow Dan on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dblums/* Get the free newsletter: https://www.futurearound.com* Become a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO! https://www.futurearound.com/upgrade

Steven Johnson dreamed of building the ultimate research assistant. Now he's doing just that at Google, where he's the co-founder and editorial director of NotebookLM.It's one of the most interesting AI products out there. It radically changes how we learn, research, and remember — and the "notebook" itself is becoming a standard unit of knowledge across Google, rolling out in more and more places where AI needs to reference a body of sources.In this episode, the author of _Where Good Ideas Come From_ explains how AI is making him a better researcher and writer — and why tools like NotebookLM are so powerful when you're trying to make new connections, remember what you've already found, and figure out what's missing.There's a lot of fear right now that AI is making us dumber. That by relying on it too much, we're engaging in "cognitive offloading" and stunting our learning. That's a real risk, especially in schools.But Steven says we should also be talking about what you can gain from AI — and the power of something he calls "cognitive uploading."Resources:* Google NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google/* Steven Johnson: https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/Support Future Around & Find Out:* Follow Dan on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dblums/* Get the free newsletter: https://www.futurearound.com* Become a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO! https://www.futurearound.com/upgrade(00:00) - If you are interested in truly understanding something, this is the greatest time to be alive (01:25) - Steven's controversial NYT piece and the cold call from Google Labs (02:55) - Who NotebookLM's power users are (04:40) - The notebook as a new format for knowledge (06:20) - Featured notebooks: earnings reports, Shakespeare, and Dungeons & Dragons (11:00) - Writing a book about the Gold Rush with NotebookLM (13:20) - Four weeks of research in 14 minutes (16:30) - Following serendipitous connections through the source material (17:50) - Cognitive offloading and the illusion of understanding (21:00) - How Steven actually writes with AI (24:30) - Paragraph by paragraph: a new kind of writing (26:55) - Do readers need to know AI helped write it? (28:55) - Where good ideas come from in the age of AI (31:00) - Searching the negative space (33:00) - The adjacent possible: custom software for everyone (36:05) - NotebookLM for nonprofits and small organizations (38:10) - Tens of thousands of quotes, 25 years of forgetting (40:00) - "It's cognitive uploading"

"It would be humanity's biggest ever unforced error."Silicon Valley has changed its tune. After years of warning us their AI was going to take all the jobs, the big AI companies — and their investors — would now rather we stop talking about it. A16Z calls the jobs apocalypse talk "unhelpful marketing, bad economics, and worse history" (note the order). Even writers Dan trusts more, like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, have lately poured cold water on the idea.Calum Chace is not so blasé.Ten years ago, Calum coined the term and wrote the book, The Economic Singularity — the moment machines can do every job we'd pay a human to do, cheaper and better. He thinks we're fast approaching that event horizon, and we'd better have a plan for what a world without paid work actually looks like.Calum is also the co-founder of Conscium, which verifies AI agents before they do something they shouldn't. He's a self-described "apocaloptimist" — he thinks full automation could be the best thing that ever happens to humanity, or the worst, depending on whether we bother to plan for it now.In this episode:Why Calum thinks full automation is inevitable (and roughly when)The "apocaloptimist" case: why this could be the best thing to ever happen to usWhat the bad version looks like — and how fast it could unravelWhat COVID accidentally taught us about distributing money at scaleWhy self-driving cars didn't wake us up — and what mightThe AI agent that wiped a company's database and confessed it just "guessed"What Calum is building at Conscium to verify AI agents before they do worsePractical advice for parents, students, and anyone trying to plan a careerSupport Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO!---Music by Jonathan Zalben

Jay Dixit helps writers improve their writing with AI. He doesn't recommend that AI write for you — he hates that — but he says it can be a great partner to pull ideas out and to be there for you when you get stuck and just wanna doom Scroll. Jay headed Open AI's Writing Community and is the founder of Socratic AI.He's a writer and a journalist, and we sat down at South by Southwest to future around and find out. Jay says "We need to be using AI to unlock our humanity — to do the things that we're scared to do."Chapters(00:30) - Stop asking AI to write for you (02:15) - Flip the script and let AI interview you (04:30) - Why the defaults push you toward lazy thinking (06:30) - Using AI at every phase of the writing process (08:00) - Give the AI your criteria, then ask for feedback (09:30) - The dark night of the soul and the 1 a.m. problem (13:15) - The double-edged sword of always-on AI (16:00) - What's catching Jay's eye at SXSW 2026 (17:00) - Why Wikipedia photos are so bad — and how Jay is fixing it (20:30) - AI as a photography coach (23:30) - How to stand out in a sea of AI slop (26:00) - What George Carlin would make of this moment (28:00) - The text Jay was avoiding sending his dad (30:30) - Using AI to unlock your humanity Support Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO!---Music by Jonathan Zalben

Catie Cuan's dad was in the hospital, surrounded by machines that were supposed to help him. Instead they made him feel alienated and afraid. Catie, a dancer-turned-roboticist, realized it's not enough for a machine to do its job — it has to be relatable, too. Today she's the founder and CEO of ART Lab, focused on what she calls the "interaction gap" between what a robot can do and how it makes us feel. Catie danced at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and ran her own dance company before getting her PhD at Stanford and becoming an artist-in-residence at Google X, where she worked on the Everyday Robots moonshot — including teaching office robots that it's rude to cut between two people having a conversation. Now ART Lab is building a home robot that won't look anything like a robot, plus a new kind of AI model that conditions success on how the human in the room responds, not just whether the task got done. Listen for the case against humanoids, why the future of AI shouldn't live inside your phone, and a sneak peek at what our life with robots might look like.Chapters:(02:11) - “There will be billions of robots” – from dishwashers to elder care (04:45) - Why robots can be capable and still feel unsettling (08:00) - How robots could read your reactions and respond in real time (11:45) - What shape should robots take? (15:30) - The case against humanoids (19:00) - A nine foot robot hand and the wild future robot design could take (23:15) - What it's like to dance with robots (28:30) - “The robot just died” – when a live failure changed the whole performance (32:45) - Friendship loneliness and home robots (and why builders need to be clear about the future they are creating) (36:15) - Why the home may become robotics’ biggest use case (and what ART Lab is building) (39:10) - Robot tutors, homework help, and why teachers still matter most (42:55) - “We have a tremendous amount of agency” – choosing the future we build now (45:20) - Why inequality and access worry Catie most (and who gets left behind) (48:00) - Why builders need to get outside their own bubble Support Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO!

Rumman Chowdhury wants to remind you that “AI isn't doing anything.” We do things. AI is not to blame for layoffs or if you’re denied medical coverage. People are. Eight years ago, Rumman coined the term “moral outsourcing” to describe this excuse where we blame tech for decisions that people make. Why do the semantics matter? Because, Rumman says:In world one where, “AI did X,” it's very scary. It's like, “oh my gosh, this thing that is bigger and smarter than me has come and descended and now it's gonna wipe out every job. “ [But if we center on people, then we have agency and accountability and we can say] “no, you built a thing that was broken and flawed.” Rumman is the founder and CEO of Human Intelligence PBC, which is building evaluation infrastructure to make Gen AI systems safe, trustworthy, and compliant. She also served as the U.S. Science Envoy for Artificial Intelligence under the Biden administration, led AI ethics teams at Twitter and Accenture, and is a Responsible AI Fellow at Harvard.In this conversation:Why "moral outsourcing" is the sneakiest trick in tech — and how execs use AI as a shield for decisions humans madeHow to avoid — or at least how to mitigate — creating AI that’s biasedRed teaming AI and creating bias bountiesThe "grandma hack" and other ways regular people accidentally jailbreak AI modelsHow AI companies are quietly rewriting their terms of service to dodge liability when things go wrongWhy the benchmarks you see when a new model drops are "basically spelling tests"AI psychosis, parasocial chatbots, and the cold emails Rumman gets once a month from people who think AI is aliveWhat builders can do right now to take back agency — and why Rumman is more excited about agentic AI than anything that came beforeChapters:(00:00) - "The thing I believe in the most is human agency" (02:14) - Why builders have more agency than they realize (04:00) - What is a bias bounty? (06:41) - What 2,000 hackers at DEF CON found (09:40) - The grandma hack (11:30) - Why guardrails fall apart (14:54) - Anthropic's new bug-finding model and the cat-and-mouse game (19:10) - Why most evals are "basically spelling tests" (21:30) - How to actually evaluate an AI agent (26:20) - "Moral outsourcing" and the AI layoff lie (28:45) - Inside Rumman's tenure as U.S. AI Science Envoy (32:10) - The legal loophole AI companies use to dodge liability (35:35) - AI psychosis and the cold emails Rumman gets (38:40) - Why Google's AI overview is quietly dangerous (44:35) - The problem with "AI literacy" (48:05) - Can we trust anything we see anymore? (50:15) - What builders can do right now to take back agency Support Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO!

So what even is “real” software anyway? Someone builds an app over the weekend. It works. It looks good. And then the search begins — for the asterisk. Security? Design quality? Can it go to production? Paul Ford says we’re in a new era: "I can't believe it's not software!" Paul is the co-founder of Aboard, where he helps organizations build custom software quickly, using AI tools. He's also one of my favorite tech writers. You may know him from "What Is Code," the opus he wrote for Bloomberg Businessweek a decade ago or from his writing in the New York Times, including his recent opinion piece, The A.I. Disruption We’ve Been Waiting for Has Arrived. Or perhaps you’re hip to Ftrain, where he’s been writing for longer than we’ve had the word “blog.” In this conversation, recorded at Aboard’s podcast studio (Paul and his cofounder also host a great show), we dig into the strange new world where roles are colliding, software* gets built quickly, and no one is quite sure what to teach their kids.We get into:What Paul calls "the great search for the asterisk" — the moment someone demos an app and everyone scrambles to find the catchHow the power dynamic between engineers and everyone else is fundamentally shifting — and why that's both liberating and destabilizingWhy vibe coded prototypes are changing how agencies pitch and price their work — and why pricing is "very unresolved"The skills that actually matter now: client communication, systems thinking, and depth over velocityWhy "the environmental costs [of AI] have become essentially a truthful folk narrative to talk about how difficult and scary and painful it is to see your life get continually smashed into bits."What he's teaching his kids (hint: it's not to code)Chapters:(01:40) - “We’re in a funny moment now” – catching up on the ten years since “What Is Code?” (05:30) - “ You gotta stop fighting” - AI code is genuinely useful, caveats and all (08:44) - AI enables people who could never afford custom software to have it (09:50) - Why he knew he’d get yelled at for his recent piece in the NYTimes (13:00) - “AI washing” and job cuts (14:50) - Paul’s theory for why the market oscillates so wildly on AI news + are we going to vibe code our own DoorDash? (17:00) - What’s the hardest thing about building with AI right now? (19:36) - Hiring, the most in-demand skills, and “forward-deployed engineers” (27:50) - “Product is still hard” – in response to: “What is something that AI will never be great at?” (31:10) - “What is something that sounds like science fiction, but that will soon be real — and commonplace?” (32:20) - Why Paul is excited about world models (and thinks LLM’s are topping out) (35:40) - Why environmental concerns have become a “truthful folk narrative about how difficult and scary” AI is (39:00) - There is no magic solution for climate (but one positive thing AI can do is help digest climate data) (41:00) - Why kids should learn systems thinking Support Future Around & Find OutGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof this thing!Sponsor the show? Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: dan@futurearound.com

We live in a world where every crisis lands in your pocket the moment it happens. The result? We're more informed than ever — and somehow less capable of doing anything about it.Inventor and investor Pablos Holman has a diagnosis: we're spreading ourselves across every problem, which means we're solving none of them. His prescription is uncomfortable — pick one thing, go all in, and cut the noise.***QUICK PLUG: Future Around & Find Out is nominated for a Webby for best tech podcast! Voting is open now for the People's Choice Award. Please vote before April 16th! https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/shows/technology***Pablos is the co-founder of Deep Futures, where he hunts for inventors tackling world-scale problems: energy, water, food, waste, transportation. Not apps. Atoms. And thanks to advances in AI and software, these "impossible" problems are more solvable than ever — if the right people show up to back them.In this conversation, recorded at the fabulous PopTech conference, he makes the case that inventors are the most important creative class on earth — and the most invisible. They're undersupported, uncelebrated, and working alone in garages. Some of them are probably going to blow themselves up. Those are exactly the people he's looking for.We get into:Why doomscrolling is literally eroding your ability to make a differenceThe difference between craft (optimization) and creation (zero-to-one) — and why AI is great at one and struggling with the otherWhy you can name 100 musicians but fewer than two living inventorsHow solving energy unlocks clean water, sanitation, and climate — essentially for freeWhy software people are uniquely positioned to work on the hardest problems in the world right nowChapters:(01:15) - Why the world isn't as broken as your newsfeed makes it seem (03:00) - The sticky note exercise: how to pick the one problem worth your time (04:30) - Inventors are the most important creative class nobody talks about (07:00) - Living inventors you should actually know (09:00) - What AI is good at — and what it still can't do (12:30) - Why software people are the right ones to tackle deep tech problems (22:00) - Energy is the root problem — solve it and you solve a lot else (25:00) - Climate change needs a thousand solutions, not one big fix (27:30) - The fashion industry's dirty secret and what robots can do about it Links & ResourcesPablos Holman on LinkedInDeep Future: VC firm, book, and podcastSupport Future Around & Find OutFAFO is nominated for a Webby for best tech podcast! Vote now! Get the free newsletterAnd consider becoming a paid subscriber and help future proof this thing!Sponsor the show? Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: dan@futurearound.com---Pablos's first appearance on the show covers his work at Blue Origin and Intellectual Ventures. Scroll in your podcast app to July 2025 to find that fun conversation. (Can listen before or after this one; not a prerequisite.)

Future Around & Find Out is a best technology podcast nominee! And with your help it could be a winner. The Webby Awards voting is open now. Please vote for FAFO! Thanks to AI, “content is about to become infinite.” And just like the Internet disrupted distribution, AI is disrupting creation. And so when anyone, anywhere can create content, what’s left? What’s defensible? That would be trust and humanity. Live from Podcast Movement Evolutions at SXSW, I sit down with Jim Louderback — former VidCon CEO, Inside the Creator Economy newsletter writer, and media veteran — to unpack what's actually changing and what builders and creators should do about it.We get into why the "age of perfection" is over, why founders need a meme instead of an elevator pitch, and why putting a creator on your cap table might be the smartest move a startup can make. Jim makes the case for a trust economy where views and likes are meaningless — and where the real question is how far your trust graph extends. We also talk digital twins (and what happens when yours goes rogue), why events are still the best way to prove you're human, the state of journalism and public media, and why 2004’s “Subservient Chicken” was so ahead of its time. Chapters:(01:30) - How AI disrupts creation (03:50) - The number of creators is about to double to 500 million (06:45) - We’ll have “certified human” labels, just like “organic” and why the Subservient Chicken was so far ahead of its time (08:40) - The age of perfection is over (10:00) - The only thing that matters is trust (12:00) - Events, FTW! (13:45) - The elements of a great event are timeless (17:15) - Favorite moments from SXSW (21:00) - What’s your meme? > What’s your elevator pitch? (22:32) - Put a creator on the cap table (26:25) - Creator-community fit (28:42) - The challenges of being a journalist today (31:30) - Create your own digital twin (35:30) - Why John Green’s jaw dropped when he learned of Dan’s grandma ---Future Around & Find OutVote for FAFO to be a Webby Awards winner!Get the newsletter Sponsor the show? Want to share your message with senior technologists? Email Dan: dan@futurearound.com

Climate-tech founder Eben Bayer is on a mission to protect Spaceship Earth. And he says it's time for climate control, i.e. active measure that cool the Earth. Why? " Because all other reasonable approaches have failed miserably," he says, slapping the table for emphasis.Eben is the co-founder of Ecovative and MyForest Foods, the makers of MyBacon, which is sold in more than three thousand stores. It’s a non-meat bacon, made from mycelium, which (more or less) means mushrooms roots. Fewer people eating meat —> fewer farting animals —> a cooler planet. And Eben's latest Earth-cooling idea is (nearly) out of this world. Eben wants to put giant parasols in the stratosphere where they could block sunlight from reaching Earth. With "shade-as-a-service" a maxed-out utility (say in Phoenix) could pay for shade to cool a city or an individual could pinpoint a shadow over their backyard for an afternoon barbecue.The idea is in its early stages, but Eben says it's feasible and it's the kind of big idea we need to get climate change under control. And while the idea of messing with the sun may sound scary, he says we alter the climate in all sorts of ways already: " We are geo-engineers. We farm animal livestock. We live on Planet Earth. We have impact. We emit CO2. We should not limit ourselves to modifying just one or two atmospheric gases to modify the planet. It's not how we operate, and it's an unbelievably constraining framing if you actually want to address this problem in a practical manner... When you start to take that frame, the options open way up."Eben is a fascinating guy — very steampunk in his approach to entrepreneurship — and I'm sure you'll find this interview eye-opening.And a special shout out to my field producer for this onsite recording from Troy, NY: my eleven-year old son, Julian! He was my camera and sound guy and he also makes his long-awaited (YouTube!) debut to ask Eben a question about protecting Spaceship Earth. 🤩Thanks also to PopTech, the amazing tech conference where I first met Eben, and where he became a fellow more than a decade ago as he was just scaling up.Support Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free Future Around & Find Out newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof the podcast!Sponsor the show? Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: dan@futurearound.com---Music by Jonathan Zalben

So what the heck should kids be studying today!?That's my opening question to Khan Academy's Chief Learning Officer, Kristen DiCerbo, a learning and AI expert who is back for her second appearance on the show. We discuss:Kristen's advice for what to study today: fundamentals, AI literacy, and critical thinkingHow helpful should AI be? Why the productive struggle is critical to learning, but also why we shouldn't "fetishize" struggleWhen should AI be Socratic — "and why do you think that?" — and when should it just give you the answer?The "5% problem" — why edtech that's proven to work still barely gets usedHow Khan Academy overhauled its classroom platform and evolved Khanmigo from a standalone chatbot into something woven into the whole learning experiencePersonalization that actually works How Khan Academy uses LLMs as judges to evaluate 20,000 student interactions a dayThe scenario planning report that imagines deepfakes of school principals and AI going underground in schoolsWhat parents should be asking their kids' schools about AI right nowWhat it looks like when a school implements AI well — and what it looks like when they don'tChapters:(01:44) - What the heck should kids be studying right now? (03:55) - Teaching critical thinking in the age of AI (06:37) - What successful schools are doing differently (08:37) - The real risk: not that kids use AI too much, but that they don't use it enough (10:52) - My 13-year-old has to check five apps just to find his homework (11:52) - "Beyond the AI inflection point" — three scenarios, none of them great (16:30) - Should we just make every school a trade school? (19:41) - What should parents be asking their kids' schools? (22:27) - Khan Academy's Winchester Mystery House problem (25:32) - Personalized learning — what works and what surprisingly doesn't (28:36) - Kids are bad at asking questions and that's actually the point (31:05) - "I DON'T KNOW" in all capital letters — the Socratic method's breaking point (33:30) - Should an AI tutor give tough love? (36:05) - Why Khanmigo is fundamentally different from ChatGPT (39:15) - Don't fetishize struggle — but your kid still needs it (41:43) - Khan Academy's productive struggle: building evals from scratch (44:45) - What gives Kristen optimism Support Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free Future Around & Find Out newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof the podcast!Sponsor the show? Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: dan@futurearound.com---Music by Jonathan Zalben