a16z Podcast
Betsey Stevenson is a labor economist at the University of Michigan, and she was an economic adviser to President Obama. Betsey’s problem is this: How can we create a world where the benefits of AI are broadly shared?
Betsey draws on history – including how the invention of household appliances created a crisis of meaning for American women – to understand how we should respond to the challenge of AI. And she suggests policies to help spread the wealth AI could bring.
In this episode, Betsey explains:
- How Engels’ Pause serves as a warning for workers
- How 20th century women adapted to automation
- How AI has changed life for college students
- The argument for taxing AI firms and distributing the proceeds to the public
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Submarines and the Future of Defense Manufacturing
David Ulevitch speaks with Chris Power, founder and CEO at Hadrian, and Vice Admiral Robert Gaucher, the Pentagon’s first direct reporting portfolio manager for submarines, at the opening of Hadrian’s Factory Four in Cherokee, Alabama.…
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The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare
Erin Price-Wright speaks with Adam Warmoth, founder and CEO of Chariot Defense, and Alex Miller, CTO of the U.S. Army, about the power crisis at the heart of modern military operations. As the battlefield becomes…
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Why Every Satellite Needs Earth | Northwood CEO on a16z
Bridgit Mendler, Co-founder and CEO of Northwood, joins a16z’s Erik Torenberg to discuss the critical but overlooked bottleneck in space: ground infrastructure. Northwood is building the systems that connect satellites back to Earth, enabling faster,…
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Inside Palantir: Building Software That Matters with Shyam Sankar
In this conversation, Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer at Palantir Technologies, discusses his new book Mobilize, his commission in the U.S. Army, and why he believes the most important thing America can do right now…
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AI Just Gave You Superpowers — Now What?
A new paper, “Some Simple Economics of AGI,” is making the rounds—Web3 with a16z we sat down with author Christian Catalini (MIT Crypto Economics Lab) and Eddy Lazzarin (CTO of a16z crypto), in conversation with…
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AI, Supply Chains, and the Future of Economic Power
Erik Torenberg sits down with Jacob Helberg to discuss AI, manufacturing, supply chains, and the new geopolitics of technology. Drawing on themes from Helberg’s book The Wires of War, they explore why hardware, industrial capacity,…
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What’s Missing Between LLMs and AGI – Vishal Misra & Martin Casado
Vishal Misra returns to explain his latest research on how LLMs actually work under the hood. He walks through experiments showing that transformers update their predictions in a precise, mathematically predictable way as they process…
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AI Startups vs. Big Chatbots — With Olivia Moore
In this episode, originally aired on Big Technology Podcast, Olivia Moore discusses whether AI startups can compete with the big chatbots, why American sentiment toward AI is so negative, and what she learned from giving…
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Marc Andreessen on the Mindset of Great Founders — with David Senra
Marc Andreessen joins David Senra for a conversation about entrepreneurship, history, and what drives some of the world’s most ambitious builders. In this conversation with David, Marc reflects on patterns he’s seen across great founders,…
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Emil Michael: Iran, Anthropic and the Future of AI at the Pentagon
This conversation with Emil Michael, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and acting director of the Defense Innovation Unit, was recorded at the a16z American Dynamism Summit in Washington, D.C. Michael walks through how…