GeekWire – Details, episodes & analysis

This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we revisit the controversy over Starbucks' hybrid work policy for its new CEO, Brian Niccol; discuss the cyberattack that crippled computer systems at Sea-Tac Airport in the Seattle area this week; and provide an update on last week's episode about AI text-to-music generators.

Articles and topics discussed on this episode:

• Hybrid policy for new Starbucks CEO sparks debate over remote work, corporate jet emissions
• Starbucks’ New CEO Has a Big Carbon Footprint - WSJ
• Starbucks’ New CEO Will Take Charge Without Training Wheels - Bloomberg
• Steve Ballmer Chases NBA Glory at Intuit Dome, the LA Clippers’ Gleaming New Home
• Plane English: Sea-Tac Airport turns to pen and paper to replace digital displays after cyberattack
• Port of Seattle outage continues two days after suspected cyberattack by ‘nefarious characters’
• GeekWire’s quest for an AI theme song opened our ears to the debate rattling the music industry
• GeekWire Podcast listener Fortunato Vega shares his AI-generated theme song on LinkedIn.

With Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper. Edited by Curt Milton.

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Our regular GeekWire Podcast segment “My AI” didn’t have a musical jingle. So of course, we decided to use AI to create one. You can hear the results and our reactions on this week’s show. It's a glimpse into the issues rattling the music industry. Even when the music isn't great, the technology is pretty incredible. But as we discuss, the underlying issues are a lot more complicated. 

With John Cook, Todd Bishop, and Taylor Soper; Audio editing by Curt Milton. 

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we get a deeper understanding of ADHD and neurodivergence in the tech industry and the workplace. Our guest is Brett Greene, a tech community leader in the Pacific Northwest who specializes in this field in his work with companies and individuals as an executive coach.

Related links

• Find a list of ADHD Resources on Brett Greene's website, brettgreenecoaching.com.
• Upcoming event: ADHD Strategies for Tech Founders and Investors: Understanding and Leveraging Neurodivergent Team Members for Maximum Success, July 18 in Bellevue, Wash.
• Brett Greene is founder and CEO of New Tech Northwest.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton.

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As the creator and host of the "Startup Project" podcast, Seattle-area tech senior product manager Nataraj Sindam talks with a wide range of investors and entrepreneurs, contributing to his broad perspective on the future of artificial intelligence, investing, startups, and business technology. He's also author of the Above Average email newsletter, and venture partner with Incisive Ventures.

Our topics this week include: 

• The opportunity to apply the power of large language models and generative AI to the larger world of business-to-business applications, including services tailored to workflows in specific industry verticals. 
• How AI will drive a massive increase in data centers in the next 5-10 years to meet increased demand for compute and storage, and will require new "intelligence layers" in cloud infrastructure.
• The opportunities and challenges for startups to compete with large tech companies in developing foundational AI technologies, and where tech investors are focusing when it comes to AI startups.
• The different incentives in a traditional startup approach (focusing on getting to a minimum viable product) vs. long-term AI moonshots, exemplified by former OpenAI leader Ilya Sutskever's new venture.
• Apple's efforts to integrate AI into its applications and operating systems, and the tradeoffs between the Apple ecosystem and the more wide-ranging Windows/Android platform approach.
• In the return of our "My AI" segment, we discuss a useful way to quickly get a summary of YouTube videos using the Copilot sidebar in the Microsoft Edge browser.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Audio editing and production by Curt Milton.

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It was a big week for cybersecurity for Seattle's tech giants. Microsoft President Brad Smith was in Washington D.C., testifying before the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee about the Redmond company's security challenges. Listen for highlights at the end of the show. 

Meanwhile, Amazon held its annual AWS re:Inforce cloud security conference in Philadelphia.The rise of AI has added some big new wrinkles to the issue of cybersecurity, and AI was one of the main topics in a conversation that I had a few weeks ago with one of the people who keynoted the AWS event this week, Steve Schmidt, Amazon's chief security officer.

Hosted by Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.

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Our guest this week on the GeekWire Podcast is Léonard Boussioux, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business, and adjunct assistant professor at the UW Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering.

Boussioux received his doctorate in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research combines areas including machine learning and AI with a focus on healthcare and sustainability. Last year he launched a class called "Generative AI in the Era of Cloud Computing" at the Foster School.

• Foster School: A New Era Of AI And Human Ingenuity In The Classroom
• Boussioux's website, including photography and AI art: www.leobix.us
• TEDxMIT Salon presentation: Let Art Be Your Superpower
• TEDxBoston: How to Solve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals in 5 mins.

Related Story: How a photo of OpenAI’s Sam Altman, enhanced by AI, sparked a journalistic debate at GeekWire

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we explore the frontier of crowd-augmented cognition, the concept of humans working together with the help of technology, including new ways that artificial intelligence is changing the field.

Our guest is Aniket (Niki) Kittur, a professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where his research focuses on new methods of augmenting human intellect using crowds and computation.

We also talk about a related project that Kittur and his colleagues developed called Skeema, a browser tab manager that helped users organize their work, projects, and ultimately their brains in the process. 

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.

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Microsoft and major PC makers this week announced a plan to incorporate artificial intelligence directly into personal computers, adding on-board neural processing units (NPUs) as part of a new architecture that promises better performance, longer battery life, and local AI processing that unlocks new capabilities and features.

We discuss the new Copilot+ PCs with our guest on this week's GeekWire Podcast, Stefan Weitz, an investor and entrepreneur who worked at Microsoft for 18 years in groups including Microsoft Bing and MSN. He is the founder of the new HumanX conference on AI taking place in March 2025 in Las Vegas.

Weitz is bullish on the potential for Copilot+ PCs to improve the overall computing experience and motivate Windows PC users to upgrade their machines, a long-awaited milestone for Microsoft's flagship operating system.

The new Copilot+ PCs have also raised security and privacy concerns, focused primarily on the "Recall" feature that takes regular screenshots of user activity on the machine, creating an index that can be queried using AI. The company released an FAQ that emphasized the underlying security and privacy controls for users, but also made it clear that the feature will be activated if users accept the defaults during initial bootup of a new machine.

Weitz also shares some of his favorite AI apps and tools, including Cleft Notes and Read AI.

Audio editing by Curt Milton.

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This week's episode features an interview with Loretta Napoleoni, conducted by Ross Reynolds, the longtime public radio host and occasional GeekWire Podcast guest host, in an event presented by Town Hall Seattle on April 18, 2024.

Loretta Napoleoni is an Italian economist and journalist whose books include "Rogue Economics" and "Insurgent Iraq." Her newest book is “Technocapitalism: The Rise of the New Robber Barons and the Fight for the Common Good."

In this interview, she explains the concept of the "present future." This refers to the disorienting era in which we're living, characterized by rapid technological change that creates anxiety and a feeling of being constantly behind.

She also discusses the control of technology by a few powerful entrepreneurs, whom she calls "technocapitalists," and the failure of society and the state to direct technological innovation for the common good.

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This week, we go inside the GeekWire Awards, our annual recognition of the top people, companies and innovations in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, which drew a sold-out crowd to the Showbox Sodo on Thursday May 9 in Seattle. We talk with finalists about AI, the economy and key trends in their industries, and we hear from some of the winners on stage during the program.

RELATED

• Photos: Inside the GeekWire Awards, with the big winners, musical numbers and surprise guests
• GeekWire Awards 2024 revealed: Winners bask in momentum of AI and potential of region

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