Azeem Azhar's Exponential View

Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, joins Azeem to explore how AI is fundamentally transforming software development. In this episode you'll hear: (01:50) What's left for developers in the age of AI? (04:54) How GitHub Copilot unlocks flow state (07:09) Three big shifts in how engineers work today (10:47) Is software development art or assembly line? (15:26) Why developers are climbing the abstraction ladder (19:35) Have we already lost control of the code? (23:15) What it's actually like to work with AI coding agents (39:35) Welcome to the age of ultra-personalized software(45:37) Building the next-generation web Thomas's links:GitHub: https://github.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashtom/Twitter/X: https://x.com/ashtomAzeem's links:Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azharTwitter/X: https://x.com/azeemOur new show This was originally recorded for "Friday with Azeem Azhar", a new show that takes place every Friday at 9am PT and 12pm ET. You can tune in through Exponential View on Substack. Produced by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Ltd

Aaron Levie, CEO & co-founder of Box, joins Azeem Azhar to explore how an “AI-first” mindset is reshaping every layer of Box – from product road-maps to pricing – and what that teaches the rest of us about building faster, smarter organisations.Timestamps:(00:00) Episode trailer(02:04) The "lump of labor fallacy" in sci-fi books(07:37) When individual productivity gains don't translate to teams(12:32) Box's Friday AI demos(21:23) How agents might redefine 100 years of management science(26:37) A lesson on AI innovation from the early days of Ford(29:52) Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and Sergey Brin are coding again?(35:16) Pricing in a post-AI agent world(38:43) Cheaper tokens, heavier usage: AI's margin math(43:02) Solving AI's verifiability problem(48:24) How Aaron uses AI in his personal lifeAaron's links:Box: https://www.box.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boxaaron/X/Twitter: https://x.com/levieAzeem's links:Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azharX/Twitter: https://x.com/azeemThis conversation was recorded for “Friday with Azeem Azhar”, live every Friday at 9 am PT / 12 pm ET. Catch it via Exponential View on Substack.Produced by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Ltd

Lennart Heim, a researcher and information scientist at RAND Corporation, joins Azeem Azhar to unpack a provocative claim: China is catching up with US AI capabilities, but it doesn't matter. Timestamps: (00:00) Episode trailer (01:19) Lennart's core thesis (03:26)   Why compute matters so much (07:31)  The investment split between model R&D and model execution (11:18)  How test-time compute impacts costs (16:14) The geopolitics of compute (21:32) Why does the U.S have more compute capacity than China? (25:01)  The trade-off between economic needs and national-security needs (31:54)  How technology change might shift the battlegrounds (35:33)  Dealing with compute and power concentration (48:19)  Concluding quick-fire question  Lennart's links: Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ohlennartPersonal blog: https://heim.xyz/Azeem's links:Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azharTwitter/X: https://x.com/azeemThis was originally recorded for "Friday with Azeem Azhar", a new show that takes place every Friday at 9am PT and 12pm ET. You can tune in through Exponential View on Substack. Produced by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Ltd

Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, joins Azeem to discuss the Iberian blackout and how we can create a more stable, flexible, and resilient energy grid for the future. This conversation digs into grid technology, market structures, and the real opportunities of the clean energy transition. (00:00) Episode trailer (01:38)  What caused the Iberian blackout? (04:55)  Managing load in traditional vs renewable grids (11:57) The role of market incentives (18:13)  Greg's social experiments within the UK grid (23:49)  How the "virtual power plant" is becoming a reality (26:59)  The path to completing the renewable energy transition (33:15)  Are lobbyists slowing down the transition? (36:26)  What does the next 5-10 years look like? (40:42)  Why the name "Octopus?" Greg's links:Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/g__jLinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/gregsjacksonOctopus Energy: https://octopus.energy/Azeem's links:Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azharTwitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Physicist and entrepreneur Steve Hsu, whose startup Superfocus tackles hallucination problems in large language models, joins Azeem to discuss AI agents, hallucination challenges and what happens when technology meets labor markets. They discuss: (01:31) The deeper shift that Superfocus represents (07:00)  Will models overcome hallucination? (10:15)  AI Agents can replace 80-90% of call center calls(12:27)  What it's like showing customer support AI to customer support people (22:36)  China's mayors are like mini CEOs (30:05)  What will matter most in the supposed "AI race"? (35:58) DeepSeek was not part of the Chinese Government (38:23)  How open source will change the future of deployment (40:59)  What the public doesn't understand about AI tail risk (48:01) How AI plush toys can teach French to 2-year-olds This was originally recorded for "Friday with Azeem Azhar", a new show that takes place every Friday at 9am PT and 12pm ET. You can tune in through Exponential View on Substack. Produced by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Ltd

Sir Niall Ferguson, renowned historian and Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss the evolving relationship between the U.S. and China, Trump's foreign policy doctrine, and what the new global economic and security order might look like. (00:00)  What most analysts are missing about Trump (05:43)  The win-win outcome in Europe–U.S relations (11:17)  How the U.S. is reestablishing deterrence (15:50)  Can the U.S. economy weather the impact of tariffs? (23:33) Niall's read on China (29:29)  How is China performing in tech? (33:35)  What might happen with Taiwan (42:43) Predictions for the coming world order Sir Niall Ferguson's links:Substack: Time MachineBooks: War of the World, Doom: The Politics of CatastropheTwitter/X: https://x.com/nfergusAzeem's links:Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/ Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem Our new show This was originally recorded for "Friday with Azeem Azhar" on 28 March. Produced by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Ltd

In this episode, Azeem Azhar speaks with Ryan Petersen, CEO and founder of logistics platform Flexport, about the current state of global trade amidst escalating tariffs, geopolitical tensions, and technological disruption. Ryan offers unique insights from the frontlines of the US-China trade war and explores how businesses are adapting to a rapidly changing landscape. (00:00) Episode trailer (01:12) Ryan's overall thoughts and predictions (03:40) Why shipping is crucial to your everyday life (08:07) Why tariffs may actually increase global shipping (11:34) Who's pausing their China shipments? (14:29) The mindset of Flexport customers right now (16:02) Is this the end of globalization? (21:48) The fragility and resiliency of global trade (25:27) The most underrated story in the world (30:25) How tech has changed global trade (36:31) Who will win in the new trade settings? (41:20) What could a U.S-China trade deal look like? Ryan's links:Flexport https://www.flexport.com/ Twitter/X https://x.com/typesfast LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpetersen/Azeem's links: Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/ Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem Our new showThis was originally recorded for "Friday with Azeem Azhar", a new show that takes place every Friday at 9am PT and 12pm ET. You can tune in through my Substack linked below. The format is experimental and we'd love your feedback, so feel free to comment or email your thoughts to our team at live@exponentialview.co.Produced by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Ltd

Azeem Azhar welcomes Packy McCormick, founder and investor at Not Boring, to discuss the current tech landscape. In this episode you'll hear: (01:50) What Packy got wrong (and right) about Web3 (10:17) The shift to "know thyself and know thyself-nots" (14:28) Europe just woke up (18:46) Bits and atoms are cool again (21:10) London airport shutdown reveals a deeper challenge (23:32) A new kind of home energy infrastructure (29:28) A theory on Eric Schmidt's new CEO role (34:08) What's the role of nuclear in a solar + battery world? (40:33) The coming tech boom Our new show This was originally recorded for "Friday with Azeem Azhar", a new show that takes place every Friday at 9am PT and 12pm ET. You can tune in through my Substack linked below. The format is experimental and we'd love your feedback, so feel free to comment or email your thoughts to our team at live@exponentialview.co. Packy's links: Substack: https://www.notboring.co/ Twitter/X: https://x.com/packyM Azeem's links: Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/ Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem Produced by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Ltd

Anthropic's co-founder and chief scientist Jared Kaplan discusses AI's rapid evolution, the shorter-than-expected timeline to human-level AI, and how Claude's "thinking time" feature represents a new frontier in AI reasoning capabilities.In this episode you'll hear:Why Jared believes human-level AI is now likely to arrive in 2-3 years instead of by 2030How AI models are developing the ability to handle increasingly complex tasks that would take humans hours or daysThe importance of constitutional AI and interpretability research as essential guardrails for increasingly powerful systemsOur new show This was originally recorded for "Friday with Azeem Azhar", a new show that takes place every Friday at 9am PT and 12pm ET on Exponential View. You can tune in through my Substack linked below. The format is experimental and we'd love your feedback, so feel free to comment or email your thoughts to our team at live@exponentialview.co.Timestamps:(00:00) Episode trailer(01:27) Jared's updated prediction for reaching human-level intelligence(08:12) What will limit scaling laws?(11:13) How long will we wait between model generations?(16:27) Why test-time scaling is a big deal(21:59) There's no reason why DeepSeek can't be competitive algorithmically(25:31) Has Anthropic changed their approach to safety vs speed?(30:08) Managing the paradoxes of AI progress(32:21) Can interpretability and monitoring really keep AI safe?(39:43) Are model incentives misaligned with public interests?(42:36) How should we prepare for electricity-level impact?(51:15) What Jared is most excited about in the next 12 monthsJared's links:Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/Azeem's links: Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azharTwitter/X: https://x.com/azeem

Kevin Kelly is a co-founder of Wired Magazine and a renowned author and futurist.  Decades ago, Kevin predicted much of today's technological and cultural landscape. In this discussion, he presents his new bold vision for what's coming next: The Handoff to Bots.In this episode, you'll hear:Why declining populations will radically reshape economiesWhat a bot-to-bot economy could look and feel likeWhy people of the future might be paid to read emailsHow AI could help humanity find deeper purposeWhy this future might be closer than you thinkKevin's links:Website/blog: https://kk.org/Twitter/X: https://x.com/kevin2kellyInstagram: / kevin2kelly  Azeem's links:Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar?ori...Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeemTimestamps:(00:00) Intro(02:17) The baby black hole behind Kevin's theory(10:49) Kevin's thesis: The handoff to bots(15:05) This world is closer than we think(19:32) The role of humans in this new world(21:23) Could monopoly influence pose a problem?(28:33) The nature of “struggle” in this new world(32:42) Could we see countries competing for population?(36:06) How a scarcity of humans might change what we value(42:30) What would 1994 Kevin think of 2025 Kevin's blog? Production:Production by supermix.io 

Kai-Fu Lee joins me to discuss AI in 2025. Kai-Fu is a storied AI researcher, investor, inventor and entrepreneur based in Taiwan. As one of the leading AI experts based in Asia, I wanted to get his take on this particular market.Key insights:Kai-Fu noted that unlike the singular “ChatGPT moment” that stunned Western audiences, the Chinese market encountered generative AI in a more “incremental and distributed” fashion.A particularly fascinating shift is how Chinese enterprises are adopting generative AI. Without the entrenched SaaS layers common in the US, Chinese companies are “rolling their own” solutions. This deep integration might be tougher and messier, but it encourages thorough, domain-specific implementations.We reflected on a structural shift in how we think about productivity software. With AI “conceptualizing” the document and the user providing strategic nudges, it's akin to reversing the traditional creative process.We're moving from a training-centric world to an inference-centric one. Models need to be cheaper, faster and less resource-intensive to run, not just to train. For instance, his team at ZeroOne.ai managed to train a top-tier model on “just” 2,000 H100 GPUs and bring inference costs down to 10 cents per million tokens—a fraction of GPT-4's early costs.In 2025, Kai-Fu predicts, we'll see fewer “demos” and more “AI-first” applications deploying text, image and video generation tools into real-world workflows.Connect with us:Exponential View

Nathan Benaich, Founder and General Partner of Air Street Capital, joins me to discuss AI in 2025. From runaway consumer adoption to evolving enterprise moats, from still-elusive AI-driven drug breakthroughs to the renewed vigour in robotics, several core themes stood out.1. Frontier models & AI at scaleIn 2024, we witnessed the astonishing growth of frontier models and their deployment on a massive scale. OpenAI's GPT-4 and GPT-4 o1, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini have all demonstrated that being “at the frontier” is increasingly the price of admission.2. Consumers, voice and infinite worldsOn the consumer side, we have reason to believe 2025 will be the year of AI-enabled workflows that feel truly natural. Voice, multimodality and integration into daily routines—like transcribing my morning thoughts during a commute—are becoming routine.3. Accelerating science & drug discoveryWhile AI accelerates lab automation and data analysis—improving reproducibility and speeding up processes—the promised “AI-designed blockbuster drug” is still in the pipeline. Clinical timelines and regulatory hurdles do not compress easily.4. Geopolitics, funding and the sovereign questionAs training costs skyrocket and models require unimaginable scale, questions mount… Who funds these massive compute requirements? Will nation-states view these labs as strategic assets, akin to telecoms or chipmakers?5. From explosive capability gains to refined utilityWe've grown numb to what was once astonishing—perfect speech synthesis, infinite text generation, zero-shot coding. The capabilities of models now surpass human levels in many benchmarks. The next major shifts may be subtler, or simply less obviously spectacular.Connect with us:Exponential ViewNathan Benaich 

Dylan Patel, founder of SemiAnalysis and one of my go-to experts on semiconductors and data center infrastructure joins me to discuss AI in 2025. Several key themes emerged about where AI might be headed in 2025:1/ Big Tech's accelerating CapEx and market adjustmentsThe hyperscalers are racing ahead in capital expenditure, with Microsoft's annual outlay likely to surpass $80 billion (up from around $15 billion just five years ago). By mid-decade, total annual investments in AI-driven data centers could climb from around $150–200 billion today to $400–500 billion. While these expansions power more advanced models and services, such rapid spending raises questions for investors. Are shareholders ready for ongoing, multi-fold increases in data center build-outs?2/ The competitive landscape and new infrastructure playersThe expected explosion in AI workloads is drawing in a wave of new specialized GPU cloud providers—names like CoreWeave, Niveus, Crusoe—each gunning to become the next vital utility layer of AI compute. Unlike the hyperscalers, these players tap different pools of capital, including real-estate-like finance and private credit, enabling them to ramp up aggressively. This dynamic threatens the established order and could squeeze margins as competition heats up. The market is starting to understand that.3/ The semiconductor supply chain isn't the only bottleneckWe often talk about GPU shortages, but the real sticking point is broader infrastructural complexity. Yes, Nvidia and TSMC can ramp up chip supply. But even if you have enough high-end silicon, you still need power infrastructure and grid connectivity. Building multi-gigawatt data centers in the US—each the size of a utility-scale power plant—is now firmly on the agenda. In some states, data centers already consume 30% of the grid's electricity. By 2027, AI data centers alone could account for 10% or more of total US electricity consumption, straining America's aging infrastructure.4/ Commoditization of models and margin pressureA year ago, advanced language models were scarce and expensive. Today, open-source variants like Llama 3.1 are driving commoditization at speed, slicing away the profit margins of plain-vanilla model-serving. If your model doesn't outperform the best open source, you're forced to compete on price—and that's a race to the bottom. Currently, only a handful of players (OpenAI and Anthropic among them) enjoy meaningful margins. As models proliferate, value will increasingly flow to those offering distinctive tools, integrating closely into enterprise workflows and locking in switching costs.5/ Into 2025: exponential curves and new market normsDespite these challenges—soaring costs, stalled infrastructure build-outs, margin erosion—Dylan is confident that exponential scaling will continue. The sector's appetite for GPUs, specialized chips and next-gen data centers appears insatiable. We could easily see record-breaking fundraising rounds north of $10 billion for private AI ventures—funded by sovereign wealth funds and other capital pools that have barely scratched the surface of their capacity to invest in AI infrastructure. There's also a very tangible productivity angle. AI coding assistants continue to reduce the cost of software development. Some software companies could be looking at 20–30% staff reductions in these technical teams as high-level coding becomes automated. This shift, still in its early days, will have profound downstream effects on the entire software ecosystem.Find us:Exponential ViewSemiAnalysis

As we race towards a future powered by AI and data centres, how will the insatiable demand for energy impact the environment? With the richest companies ploughing billions into energy generation, might there be some unexpected upsides for the climate transition? And can exponential technologies address the climate crisis on a finite planet? Cleaning Up host Michael Liebreich sits down with Azeem Azhar, founder of Exponential View, to explore the complex relationship between exponential growth, climate change, and the societal implications of transformative technologies. Michael and Azeem delve into the promises and pitfalls of a future shaped by the rapid advancements in renewable energy, battery storage, and artificial intelligence. This podcast was originally published on Cleaning Up. 

Azeem Azhar is joined by Richard Socher, CEO and founder of You.com, an AI chatbot search engine at the forefront of truthful and verifiable AI. They explore approaches to building AI systems that are both truthful and verifiable. The conversation sheds light on the critical breakthroughs in AI, the technical challenges of ensuring AI's reliability, and Socher's vision for the future of search.

As 2024 begins, leaders are facing increasing uncertainty and a host of difficult decisions. Azeem Azhar returns to bring clarity amid a complicated information landscape, with his analysis of 12 core themes that will shape the year ahead, including AI adoption, geopolitics, decentralization, the energy transition, and more.

Generative AI has a lot to offer health care professionals and medical scientists. This week, host Azeem Azhar speaks with renowned cardiologist, scientist, and author Eric Topol about the change he's observed among his colleagues in the last two years, as generative AI developments have accelerated in medicine.

In this conversation, Azeem Azhar speaks with climate lead at Hugging Face, Sasha Luccioni, to shed light on the environmental footprint of AI, the pressing issues in AI deployment, and the potential paths to a more ethical and sustainable AI future.

AI is enabling new strides in autonomous driving. In this episode, Azeem Azhar joins the co-founder and CEO of Wayve, Alex Kendall, to explore how the AI revolution is opening new market opportunities for the auto industry. Wayve is a UK-based start-up that makes AI technology for self-driving vehicles.

Organizations across the world have been grappling with the opportunities and challenges of generative AI. In this episode, Azeem Azhar joins AI pioneer and entrepreneur Andrew Ng to debate whether we're at an inflection point in the AI revolution.

Azeem Azhar speaks with Aravind Srinivas, the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity.ai, about the looming challenges in AI research and product development, such as user-centric design and the importance of open-source models.

The upheaval at OpenAI sent shockwaves through the tech world. Karen Hao, a contributing writer who covers AI at The Atlantic, joins Azeem Azhar to break down the ideologies and power struggles within OpenAI and their implications for the development of artificial intelligence. She also explains how these internal conflicts reflect broader challenges in AI development and governance.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on every business leader's agenda. How do you ensure the AI systems you deploy are harmless and trustworthy? This month, Azeem Azhar picks some of his favorite conversations with leading AI safety experts to help you break through the noise. Today's pick is Azeem's 2020 conversation with the pioneering AI scientist Fei-Fei Li, professor of computer science at Stanford University and the founding co-director of Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on every business leader's agenda. How do you ensure the AI systems you deploy are harmless and trustworthy? This month, Azeem picks some of his favorite conversations with leading AI safety experts to help you break through the noise. Today's pick is Azeem's 2021 conversation with veteran AI scientist Murray Shanahan, professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London and principal scientist at DeepMind.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on every business leader's agenda. How do you ensure the AI systems you deploy are harmless and trustworthy? This month, Azeem picks some of his favorite conversations with leading AI safety experts to help you break through the noise. Today's pick is Azeem's conversation with Joanna Bryson, a leading expert on the questions of AI governance and the impact of technology on human cooperation.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on every business leader's agenda. How do you ensure the AI systems you deploy are harmless and trustworthy? This month, Azeem picks some of his favorite conversations with leading AI safety experts to help you break through the noise. Today's pick is Azeem's conversation with Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation. Meredith is a co-founder and chief advisor of the AI Now Institute, an independent research group looking at the social impact of artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on every business leader's agenda. How do you ensure the AI systems you deploy are harmless and trustworthy? This month, Azeem picks some of his favorite conversations with leading AI safety experts to help you break through the noise. Today's pick is Azeem's conversation with Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, a pioneer in the field of applied algorithmic ethics. She runs Parity Consulting, the Parity Responsible Innovation Fund, and she's a Responsible AI Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

As exponential technologies like artificial intelligence march on, the ability to make future-proof decisions is all the more important for leaders. Azeem Azhar's new TV show and podcast, Exponentially with Azeem Azhar, goes beyond mainstream conversations about technology to explore new ways of thinking about our collective future. Guests include: Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Vinod Khosla.

In his brief commentary, Azeem Azhar discusses the increasing complexity and capabilities of large language models (LLMs) and the transformative potential they hold.

In his brief commentary, Azeem Azhar lays out why the future of the Web is underpinned by AI, and what this means for the traditional business model of the internet.

In his brief commentary, Azeem Azhar shares his outlook on how artificial intelligence will change the labor market, drawing on research published by Goldman Sachs.

Drawing on Carlota Perez's framework, Azeem Azhar considers whether large language models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4, will drive a paradigm shift across our economies.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is dominating the headlines, but it's not a new topic here on Exponential View. This week and next, Azeem Azhar shares his favorite conversations with AI pioneers. Their work and insights are more relevant than ever. Jürgen Schmidhuber is a recognized pioneer in the field of deep neural networks. His techniques form the basis of the modern AI systems used by billions of people daily on services like Google, Facebook, and the Apple iPhone. In 2019, Jürgen joined Azeem to discuss the next thirty years of artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is dominating the headlines, but it's not a new topic here on Exponential View. Azeem Azhar shares his favorite conversations with AI experts. Their work and insights are more relevant than ever. Gary Marcus has a reputation for being a contrarian in the AI community. A neuroscientist, founder, and the author of Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust, Marcus has been a vocal critic of deep learning as the best way forward for AI. in 2019, he joined Azeem Azhar to discuss the alternatives for building better machine intelligence.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is dominating the headlines, but it's not a new topic here on Exponential View. This week and next, Azeem Azhar shares his favorite conversations with AI pioneers. Their work and insights are more relevant than ever. DeepMind's co-founder and CEO, Demis Hassabis, joined Azeem in 2020 to explore his company's progression from gaming to accelerating scientific discovery. In 2023, DeepMind's parent company Alphabet announced consolidation of its biggest research units, DeepMind and Google Brain, into a new division led by Demis.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is dominating the headlines, but it's not a new topic here on Exponential View. This week and next, Azeem Azhar shares his favorite conversations with AI pioneers. Their work and insights are more relevant than ever. OpenAI has stunned the world with the release of its language-generating AI, ChatGPT-4. In 2020, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined Azeem Azhar to reflect on the huge attention generated by the precursor to GPT-4 and what that could mean for the future research and development toward the creation of artificial general intelligence (AGI).

After producing more than 160 episodes of Exponential View over the last six years, we're taking a break to reflect on what we've learned and how the conversations we've hosted with leaders are changing our perspective on the future. While we percolate on the future of our podcast, we have a challenge for you: find all the phenomenal conversations we've hosted that you haven't heard yet –and take alisten. (And please let us know which episodes helped you understand the world and your future!)

This episode is a special introduction to Cold Call, another podcast from Harvard Business Review. Host Brian Kenny explores Shield AI's work with the U.S. government to develop autonomous combat robots. Harvard Business School professor Mitch Weiss and Brandon Tseng, Shield AI's CGO and co-founder, join Brian to discuss the challenges start-ups face in working with the public sector, and how investing in new ideas can enable entrepreneurs and governments to join forces to solve big problems.

How do you talk about a product before anything like it exists? How do you guide the engineers building it and the marketing department who has to sell it? As co-creator of the iPod and iPhone, founder of the learning thermostat Nest, and with over 300 patents to his name, Tony Fadell is a serial entrepreneur who now focuses on investing. He tells Azeem Azhar how he uses opinion-based decision-making in his work, and why thinking like a product manager helps drive radical innovation.

Carbon recycling takes our polluting carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and, with the help of bacteria, turns them into ethanol. This can replace oil as the basis for carbon-based chemicals industries (e.g., fertilizers, plastics, clothing, health and beauty products, etc.), as well as offering sustainable fuel and animal feed. Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech, joins Azeem Azhar to share her vision of the future where greenhouse gases provide a core contribution to our sustainable life.

Quantitative hedge funds, which rely on the work of employed mathematicians to develop complex trading strategies, are nothing new. But what if the mathematical work is outsourced to anyone, via a contest where the best predictions are rewarded with cryptocurrency? Richard Craib, founder of Numerai, explains to Azeem Azhar how his $70 million fund uses collective intelligence to perform well, despite the turmoil in the markets.

Hydrogen has long been hyped as a fuel of the future. It's abundant and its waste product is water. But it's only recently that the availability of cheap renewable energy has allowed hydrogen to be produced competitively without the use of fossil fuels. Azeem Azhar speaks with Raffi Garabedian, co-founder and CEO of Electric Hydrogen, to explore the market opportunity and roadmap to wide adoption of “green hydrogen.”

From The Jetsons to Back to the Future, flying cars are a staple of popular science fiction. German start-up Volocopter is working to turn that fiction into reality. Volocopter's CEO Florian Reuter joins Azeem Azhar to explore how this radical new transport could transform our cities. They also break down the steps required to fulfill his vision of creating a door-to-door taxi service to rival Uber, via autonomous electric helicopters.

Web3's ability to attach value and incentives to almost every part of human activity has radical implications not only for how businesses engage with their customers, but also for how people can self-organize to drive social change. Web3 investor and analyst Packy McCormick makes the case, in conversation with Azeem Azhar, that an optimistic outlook rooted in market dynamics can enable new sustainable businesses that operate for the public good.

As the gaming industry evolves to meet the challenges and opportunities of Web3, could it drive the mass adoption of crypto? Amy Wu leads investment, M&A, and gaming initiatives at cryptocurrency exchange FTX. She speaks with Azeem Azhar about how she evaluates crypto and Web3 as an investor, how she expects the gaming landscape to change in the next two years, and why the community that comes with NFT ownership is more important to her than potential profit.

What is the metaverse, how will we use it, and why might the financial innovations of Web3 and blockchain technology be crucial to its success? Citi's Ronit Ghose, one of the world's foremost analysts of technology's influence on financial innovation, returns to the podcast to discuss how money will function in the metaverse.

Venture capitalists offer their investors outsized financial returns in exchange for taking on considerable risk. But what if that risk includes backing products where the economics of the end market aren't clear? Moreover, what if the companies being supported have the non-financial goal of tackling climate change? As more money than ever pours into climate tech, Azeem Azhar speaks with Shayle Kann, a partner at Energy Impact Partners, about the challenges of investing in the net zero economy.

Today's cancer therapies are difficult, expensive, and slow to create. But the combination of new computing and new biological technologies is leading to a better understanding of the human immune system, with the goal of offering a better class of cancer therapies. Azeem Azhar speaks with Immunai co-founder and chief technology officer Luis Voloch about how AI is unlocking the secrets of the immune system and opening new avenues for novel cancer treatments.

This episode is a special preview of the new podcast, What's Your Problem? from Pushkin Industries. What's Your Problem? explains the problems really smart people are trying to solve right now, from creating a drone delivery service to building a car that can truly drive itself. Jacob Goldstein, former host of Planet Money, talks with entrepreneurs, executives, and engineers about the future they're trying to build – and the problems they have to solve to get there. In this preview, Jacob talks with Keenan Wyrobek, who explains the problems he has to solve to expand his drone delivery business from Ghana and Rwanda to the United States. You can listen to What's Your Problem? at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/wypview.

We could soon be living more of our lives in immersive virtual worlds, but what will that look like and how will it affect us? New York University professor of philosophy and neural science David Chalmers discusses what the metaverse might offer us, the moral quandaries it could pose, and what our rights there might look like.

As war returns to Europe, General Sir Richard Barrons, former commander of the UK's Joint Forces Command (whose remit included military intelligence, special forces, and cyber), joins Azeem Azhar to explore how technology is changing warfare and why we must take a more active role in stewarding peace. (This episode was originally broadcast on October 23, 2019.)