Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast The Aboard Podcast

LLMs are often far too powerful for the small tasks they’re asked to complete. Is the more-contained Jev the alternative? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich read a question from tech writer John Pavlus about Jev, a new model from Typesafe AI that’s been a major topic of discussion in programming circles recently. LLMs, Rich suggests, are often like using a power riding mower to cut the grass of your tiny lawn. As Paul breaks down Jev and others like it into layman’s terms, they debate whether this kind of technology is the future—or if it’ll just be one more thing absorbed by the AI giants?

How is observability being redefined in the AI era? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich sit down with Charity Majors, the co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb. After a crash course on observability, the conversation pivots to AI and its cascading effects—both on this subfield, and on the tech community overall. Some engineers try to plan for every eventuality, but Charity stresses that the best thinking comes when you accept that anything could go wrong at any time: “There’s liberty in chaos.”

Tech execs are sounding alarms about the dangerously fast pace of LLM development. Will any regulators stop them? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich discuss a heady few days in the world of Big AI, as Dario Amodei called for a slowdown on AI development that was soon echoed by other leaders like Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Do their stated concerns actually match up to reality? In our current political climate, how realistic is the idea of government intervention? Plus: Paul does a pretty convincing imitation of a data center.

Problems with your boss? Why not fire up Claude and hit HR with a lengthy legalistic complaint? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich look at the erosion of human-to-human communication in the AI era, springboarding off a friend’s anecdote about employees sending official-sounding LLM-generated documents to HR rather than starting with simple conversations. AI tools allow us to flood each others’ inboxes. Is that making it impossible to truly communicate?

All the investors are flocking to the Silicon Valley giants, but where is AI really making a difference on the ground? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich welcome back writer and editor Josh Tyrangiel to talk about his new book, AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter. From hospitals to classrooms to the IRS, Josh has been chronicling the ways large and small that people are using AI to transform their fields. Plus: A discussion of the past, present, and future of the media industry, including that time Josh put airplanes having sex on a major magazine cover.

It’s unrestrained summer fun, Paul Ford-style: Using AI tools to actually ship some software. On this week’s podcast, Paul shows Rich his recent vibe-coded project, Stellate.app, which visualizes whimsical, made-up musical genres and plays the corresponding electronically generated music. (Don’t worry: You’ll get to hear some!) This might have been a fun summer project, but what did Paul learn building it—and, importantly, getting it out into the world?

What would you do if your boss said he wanted your help to automate away your job? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich are joined by Kate Lee, the editor in chief of the AI-related publication Every. Kate’s boss, Dan Shipper, has proposed just that: For the past few years, they’ve been building software to try to reliably automate major parts of the editorial process. At Every, writers and editors alike regularly use AI tools. So what does it actually look like when AI is a fundamental part of an editorial workflow?

AI has radically changed the way software is built—so why aren’t we seeing a glut of cool new products as a result? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich browse recent app-related headlines and product announcements, searching for anything that isn’t AI-infrastructure related: What are people actually building on top of LLMs these days? (Spoiler: Not much.) They then attempt to diagnose what’s going on here, invoking a variety of metaphors for building product with AI, from mirages in the desert to wearing a set of beer goggles.

“Verification cannot belong to the verified.” On this week’s episode, Paul is solo in the host chair as he sits down with longtime tech researcher Tricia Wang, the co-founder and CEO of the Advanced AI Society. Verifying AI, she explains, is far more complicated than simply dealing with hallucinations; in a world where AI is operating at a massive scale, how can we trust the outputs—or the people controlling the models? “Where does accountability lie?” she asks. “How do we agree to this thing?” Plus: A long exploration of the art of chicken sexing. (Yes, this relates to AI!)

It might sound like he’s ranting, but the Palantir chief is zeroing in on the truth of our AI moment. On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich break down Alex Karp’s recent appearance on CNBC, in which he discussed Palantir’s position within the ever-expanding world of the AI giants. Orgs might be using OpenAI and Anthropic’s tokens, but Palantir’s position exposes, in Rich’s words, “the gap between transactions and relationships.” Finally, Paul asks Rich to run the new, imaginary consulting practice at Anthropic and obliterate Palantir. Can he do it? Does he have what it takes?

How is Silicon Valley engaging with ethics and religion today—and how is the Catholic Church responding to AI? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich welcome on Father Brendan McGuire, a former engineer and current Catholic priest who serves at St. Simon Parish in Los Altos, California, aka the heart of Silicon Valley. He discusses his long work speaking between the tech industry and the Church, as an advisor to Anthropic as well as an early commenter on Pope Leo’s recent encyclical on AI, “Magnifica Humanitas.” (Don’t worry, Paul asks the question on everyone’s lips: In what file format does a pope distribute early copies of an encyclical?)

Silicon Valley “disruption” is at odds with the way software creation actually works—and that’s a problem. On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich discuss Rich’s recent Aboard newsletter installment, “Maybe the Valley Could Listen a Little.” about how the dream of an “AI unicorn” who can use these tools to build a product all by themselves is a total fantasy. AI companies are promising revolutionary transformation across industries, but are they mostly just plastering over fundamental issues in processes and systems?

OpenClaw sprung up overnight—and seemed to fade just as quickly. What does that suggest about AI more broadly? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined in the studio by New York Magazine tech reporter John Herrman, whose long career covering all corners of the industry has, like the rest of his peers, recently shifted to all AI, all the time. They discuss his piece for the magazine on OpenClaw—titled “My Adventures With ‘The AI That Actually Does Things’”—before pulling back the lens to look at AI on a whole. Plus: They take a brief diversion into the story John wrote immediately after his OpenClaw reporting, “The Mystery of 'Human Meat' for Sale on Temu.”

How should nonprofits actually be using AI? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich are joined in the studio by Traci Donnelly, the CEO of The Child Center of NY and the founder and president of Make An Impact—and a client of Aboard. After discussing these orgs’ missions, they dive into AI: Traci’s early embrace of the technology, how these tools can transform work in the sector, and the importance of not allowing human-to-human interactions to be supplanted by bots.

Is the AI era destined to make our software lives nasty, brutish, and short? On this week’s podcast, Rich brings Paul the framing of “Hobbesian AI,” specifically from 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s greatest work, Leviathan. Humans need some kind of order, Hobbes argued in the wake of the English Civil War, otherwise they will destroy each other. How can these lessons be applied to our decidedly order-less AI moment?

Is it possible to build an incorruptible company in our current system? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined in the studio by Eric Ries, the author of the 2011 bestseller The Lean Startup, to discuss his latest book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad... and How Great Companies Stay Great. After they discuss his tech origins and the legacy of The Lean Startup within the industry, they dive into Incorruptible, which offers a blueprint for companies to continually fuel growth while still acting in the public good.

Can two people who host a podcast subtitled “software in the age of AI” go half an hour without bringing up the term? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich attempt to talk about something—anything—tech-related that isn’t AI. Topics discussed include the new Ferrari, the rise of sports gambling apps, youthful rebellions past and present, and the wonder that is the Virtual OS Museum. Do they make it through without mentioning LLMs? You’ll have to listen.

Sure, AI might bring on the end times—but you can use it to build your own tax software! On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined in the studio by Craig Mod, a writer, photographer, and self-described “software supertaster” who recently took to Claude to build a version of Quicken that suited his complicated tax-filing needs. First, they discuss the project and assess how likely it is that a non-technologist would be able to create something similar with the current tools. Then, the conversation takes a turn—towards the apocalypse. (It’s fun, we promise!)

Doctors might be using AI to cut down on paperwork, but can these tools really be employed in clinical settings? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich sit down in the studio with Dr. Kamal Menghrajani, a practicing oncologist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School who was previously a member of the Biden White House’s “Cancer Moonshot” team. After she explains how AI is helping in her work, she lays out its real limitations—and discusses how these technologies can distract from more systemic approaches like better patient prevention and screening. Plus: Are her medical students allowed to use LLMs?

Why are so few engineering teams reaping the benefits of AI? On this week’s episode, Paul presents Rich with the findings from a recent report from CircleCI and Thoughtworks on the productivity of enterprise teams using LLMs. While there’s been a dramatic increase in throughput—the amount of code produced—across the board, just 5% of orgs are seeing real gains from these tools, while the majority struggle with errors, bugs, and lower productivity than before AI was introduced. As Paul puts it: “The advantages of this technology are not equally distributed.”

What’s wrong with Sam Altman? Ask the guy who spent 18 months reporting on him. On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined by New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz, who recently put out a lengthy article on the OpenAI chief that he co-reported with Ronan Farrow. After they dive into some of the specific details of the piece, they discuss the broader questions Altman’s position in the industry raises. If AI really is as powerful as he claims it will someday be, why are we allowing one person to have that much power over it?

What does it take to make a really good product with AI tools? On this week’s podcast, Paul walks Rich through his recent adventures building a robust aggregated newsletter tool—first to track the AI industry, then generalized and customizable for any industry. Vibe-coding platforms continue to evolve, but you still need a lot of technical knowledge to make something that really works. Is that high bar likely to lower in the coming months and years?

“The blind vibe-coding revolution is upon us.” On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined by Andrew Leland, the author of the Pulitzer-finalist The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight, to discuss how blind and low-vision people are using AI tools to create and adapt software to suit their accessibility needs. With limits to what any out-of-the-box software or device might do, is AI the way to give disabled people technological solutions that really work? Plus: Rich bravely makes it through the whole recording despite being surrounded by two massive Emacs stans.

Employees at the big consulting firms are being told to use AI. Are they going to automate themselves out of a job? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich discuss a recent set of directives from the CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers about AI adoption and consider what they frame as the “AI consulting paradox”: To show value, consultants need to introduce AI into their client relationships, potentially cutting their own value as a result. How will consulting manage this transition in the short or long term? Plus: Paul reports on his recent conversations with a New School journalism class that visited the office and shared their feelings about using AI.

Sure, you can build “stuff” with AI, but is anyone paying attention to product these days? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich sit down with someone who is: Hilary Mason, CEO of the immersive online roleplaying game company Hidden Door. After discussing Hilary’s background in data science and machine learning, Paul takes a spin through a game scenario (Brooklyn vampires in a fantasy tavern!) while Hilary outlines the product decisions around Hidden Door’s game mechanics, AI-related or otherwise. Plus: Rich outlines his own attempts to make a game with AI for a family gathering, which, in his words, “led to children crying.”

AI is blurring—and even destroying—the distinctions between disciplines. Do we need a new way to talk about work? On this week’s episode, Paul tests out a few of his AI-era neologisms on a skeptical Rich: Perhaps you are a “custolient,” looking to purchase the services of a “praygency” for your next project? (Yes, Paul insists the “y” in “praygency” is vital.) Are these new blended terms helpful, or just a way of talking around a very uncertain landscape?

Is the future of work sitting back and watching your company of bots plan their offsite? On this week’s episode, Paul is joined in the studio by journalist Evan Ratliff, the host and creator of the wildly popular Shell Game podcast, which is about, per the show’s description, “how Evan tried to build a real startup, run by fake people.” Evan’s AI agents were an exercise in immersive journalism (and yes, they did in fact go wild planning their offsite), but would he ever consider running a company of bots for real?

With AI drastically cutting delivery times in tech and beyond, how should practitioners price their time? On this week’s podcast, Paul tells Rich about a recent experience with a potential client, where he skipped steps and rapidly vibe-coded through the prototyping process and they….didn’t really know what to make of the result. If things that used to take months can now be done in hours, what are clients actually paying for?

Can AI help heal our broken healthcare system? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined in the studio by Erynn Petersen, a longtime technologist and the current CEO of Emme, a healthtech startup that works to lower medical costs for both providers and patients. First, she lays out some of the systemic problems that saddle Americans with huge bills (or lead them to avoid seeking care entirely). Then, she discusses how AI tools might revolutionize the industry—as well as the ways the technology could make an unequal system even worse.

People are constantly talking about how AI is transforming engineers’ work, but where does that leave the product manager? On this week’s podcast, Paul (who has hired many PMs) and Rich (who is also a PM himself) tilt the AI-and-code lens away from the engineers and onto the role they describe as the diplomat of software creation, liaising between business, design, and engineering needs. Should PMs feel threatened by LLMs, or empowered by them? How can they use these tools to add value to the org and their role within it?

Public opinion on LLMs like Claude varies widely—but how do the people who actually work at Anthropic think about it? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined in the studio by New Yorker staff writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus to discuss his recent feature, which he reported from within Anthropic HQ. They discuss the piece, and then they hash out the real questions: What’s the correct literary metaphor for an LLM? Does an AI company really need psychologists for its chatbots? And, perhaps most importantly, should you be polite to Claude?

Anthropic founder Dario Amodei wants AI to be regulated. Will anyone listen? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich dive into Amodei’s recent (lengthy) essay, “The Adolescence of Technology,” which argues for social responsibility both from within and around the AI industry. Amodei might have the best intentions, but with less mindful competitors in the space, are his ideas nothing more than wishful thinking?

Is Moltbook—aka “Reddit for Robots”—merely a novelty, or does it contain bigger ideas about the future of tech? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich start by discussing the autonomous agents of OpenClaw before they move on to Moltbook, the social network where said agents can hang out. (No humans allowed!) How do these LLM developments fit into the broader history of the web, and what do they suggest about where AI might be headed?   

AI is poised to transform the healthcare sector—but what does that mean in practice? Fresh off hosting a healthtech event in Aboard’s Manhattan offices, Paul and Rich talk through the ways AI is reshaping this massive segment of the American economy. AI might lead to breakthroughs for researchers and diagnosticians alike, but is its real superpower…cutting down on paperwork? Plus: What happens when every patient arrives at their appointment armed with a diagnosis from Dr. ChatGPT?

“I built it in six hours. Let’s deploy it to production!” On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich engage in one of their favorite pastimes: Corporate roleplay. Taking on the personas of Doug, a vibe-coding engineer, and (Mr.) Jeremy, his skeptical boss, they act out a scenario that’s surely unfolding at organizations large and small right now. Doug might be too hasty when he declares his vibe-coded software ready for client use, but is Jeremy actually being too cautious?

Claude Code has emerged as a true development tool—but will non-tech people actually use it? This week on the podcast about “software in the age of AI,” Paul and Rich discuss, well, software in the age of AI: Specifically, what the rise of Claude Code means for the world of software on a whole. Are we really at a point where a layperson could create the software they need via a prompt? And if we are, what are the barriers stopping people from doing so today?

How is one of the internet’s biggest spaces for human creativity adapting in the AI era? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined in the studio by Rafe Colburn, the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Etsy. After discussing Rafe’s long history at the company, they tackle the AI topic two ways: First, how the Etsy engineering org is using AI tools, and second, Etsy’s recent deal with OpenAI to display their products directly in ChatGPT searches. Plus: Rafe and Paul teach Rich the proper term for those little charms you stick in the holes of your Crocs. 

What will the AI story be in 2026: Society-wide transformation or incremental change? On the first podcast of the new year, Paul and Rich (gently) argue over what they expect to see in the AI space over the coming months. These tools might allow people to build software far faster than before, but how much will that disrupt the industry itself? Plus—perfect for a podcast full of tech predictions—they discuss why humans are terrible at predicting the future of tech. 

AI is transforming what we buy—and how we buy it. On the final podcast of the year, Paul and Rich are joined by Dan Frommer, founder of The New Consumer, to talk through his brand-new Consumer Trends Report for 2026. First, they discuss shifting consumer dynamics over the past few decades, from the rise of digital-native direct-to-consumer brands to the omnipresence of the TikTok Shop. Then, they dig into New Consumer survey results around our current moment in AI, particularly the generational differences towards the technology. 

Is there space for everyone in LLM world? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich traverse the always-changing AI landscape from one end of the spectrum to the other. First, the Christian LLM company Gloo, currently headed by former Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger, which is building technologies for the “faith ecosystem.” Then, Sam Altman’s recent announcement that OpenAI will begin producing erotic content for verified users. In one version of our AI future, there’s room for lots of smaller companies with different values and frameworks—but when this technology has been so quickly dominated by just a few giant players, is that future impossible?

AI is reshaping the media, the internet, and the culture at large—and Max Read is writing about it. On this week’s podcast, the longtime journalist and author of the popular “Read Max” newsletter comes into the studio to talk about the intersections of tech and culture in our current AI moment. Topics discussed include Max’s journey from a general-interest journalist to covering tech platforms and internet culture, the ways he uses AI tools in his own work, and whether he thinks the slop flooding our feeds is actually popular with users.

The AI industry teeters on the edge of the bubble, but AI tools are better than ever. What does this mean for the future of the technology? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich talk through Paul’s recent experiments with—you guessed it!—synths to illustrate just how good AI-assisted coding tools have gotten, especially for those with programming expertise. But we’re a long way from the average consumer being able to get what they want with the push of a button. What do these two divergent paths suggest about the trajectory of the AI industry? 

As people feed their whole lives into LLMs, how can they protect themselves? On this week’s Aboard Podcast, Paul and Rich are joined by Arushi Saxena, a trust and safety expert who’s worked everywhere from big tech to startups to the U.S. government. What does trust and safety mean in the AI age, both for individuals and for companies working with LLMs? Arushi also gives an overview of the trust and safety world, but sorry, folks: What happens at TrustCon stays at TrustCon.

Big tech doesn’t care about medium-sized businesses—but is AI really the solution? On this week’s podcast, Paul is fresh off the plane from Phoenix, Arizona, where he was speaking to business owners at the Inc. 5000 Conference. As he gives Rich a full report, they discuss the specific needs of the “SMB”—small-to-medium-sized business—and how little interest the software industry has in the very large middle of the business spectrum. Can AI help these orgs get the software they actually need?

AI is making job hunting near-impossible on both sides of the hiring equation. Is there a way out of this automated mess? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich look at AI’s effect on an already unpredictable job market. Hirers are getting spammed with AI-generated applications, while sincere job seekers are getting swiftly rejected via AI hiring tools. As AI ushers in a hyper-transactional era of diminished trust between strangers, how can applicants and hiring managers actually connect with each other? 

Traffic to vibe-coding tools is plummeting. Financial analysts are invoking 1929. Is the big AI crash inevitable? On the latest Aboard Podcast, Paul and Rich assess our current moment in AI and its (over)valuation in the global economy. Will the bubble pop—and if it does, how big will that pop be? And as they evaluate the problems with our lopsided AI landscape, they speculate about what AI as a technology—rather than an investment vehicle—could look like in the future.  

AI videos from tools like OpenAI’s Sora and Meta’s Vibes are flooding our feeds. Is this the future? On the Aboard Podcast, Paul and Rich tackle a trio of AI topics. First: They look at a report from the Yale Budget Lab on which industries are adopting AI the fastest. (Spoiler: Only one is fully embracing it. Take a guess!) Then, they talk about spammy AI-generated bug reports submitted to the developer of cURL—and what happened when someone found real bugs with AI. And finally: Welcome to Slopworld! You can generate whatever video you want with a single sentence. Isn’t that kind of…boring?

All over the New York City subway, ads for the AI wearable “Friend” are being defaced. It seems clear that New Yorkers don’t want what Silicon Valley is selling—but will the general consumer bite? On this week’s Aboard Podcast, Paul and Rich assess the tensions between big tech and the public, in New York and beyond. After decades of having our data be packaged and sold, will anyone want to wear a necklace that listens to them 24/7? Plus: Paul describes what his skincare routine would be like if he were a billionaire.

The big tech CEOs are openly embracing Trump—so what do we all do now? On this week’s Aboard Podcast, Paul and Rich dig into Steven Levy’s recent cover story for WIRED’s politics issue that breaks down the industry’s hard pivot towards Trumpism. What did these leaders think they were signing up, and what are they actually getting? Plus: By way of metaphor, Rich offers up the world’s worst bundt cake recipe (it’s full of gold!). 

The Aboard Podcast is about software in the age of AI—but what non-AI things are happening in the world of software? Not much, Paul and Rich are sorry to report. In the first half of this week’s episode, they discuss how AI is sucking up all the tech oxygen in the room. Then, they pivot to talking about AI and kids: What should parents be teaching their kids about these tools? (Or should they even let them use LLMs at all?)