The All Turtles Podcast: Recent Episodes
All Turtles
Exploring the provocative ways startup founders, product creators, and AI experts are solving real problems today. The cofounders of All Turtles, a global AI product company, and their guests share insights and advice about entrepreneurship and the AI industry.
So where do we go from here? How do we build a more inclusive future in tech? A good place to start is by listening to those who have worked to improve equity in Silicon Valley for years.
"Culture Fit: Racial Bias in Tech" is a 6-part All Turtles Podcast series taking in-depth look at racial inequalities in the tech industry.
We’re turning the mirror on ourselves to assess diversity, equity, and inclusion at All Turtles. If we believe every company could benefit from open conversations about diversity issues, we need to start with ourselves.
"Culture Fit: Racial Bias in Tech" is a 6-part All Turtles Podcast series taking in-depth look at racial inequalities in the tech industry.
Racial bias has not only worked its way into tech workplaces, it’s also in the products we build. How can we mitigate the harm that these biases cause in the products Silicon Valley puts out into the world?
"Culture Fit: Racial Bias in Tech" is a 6-part All Turtles Podcast series taking in-depth look at racial inequalities in the tech industry.
A common excuse tech companies make for their lack of diversity is to blame the “pipeline,” saying there aren’t enough qualified candidates from historically excluded groups in the talent pool. Why do tech companies lean on this argument, and what are they missing? Culture Fit: Racial Bias in Tech" is a 6-part All Turtles Podcast series taking in-depth look at racial inequalities in the tech industry.
It’s time to hop into the way, way back machine. We’re examining the history of Silicon Valley to better understand how we got to the current moment of racial inequity in tech.
"Culture Fit: Racial Bias in Tech" is a 6-part All Turtles Podcast series taking in-depth look at racial inequalities in the tech industry.
Introducing "Culture Fit: Racial Bias in Tech," a 6-part All Turtles Podcast series taking an in-depth look at racial inequalities in the tech industry.
In episode 1, people from communities that have long been excluded by Silicon Valley’s monoculture share their personal stories and walk through the data on the lack of diversity in tech. When it comes to cognitive biases, what critical errors do our brains make without even realizing it?
Brian Christian is the bestselling author of The Most Human Human and Algorithms to Live By. His latest book is called The Alignment Problem. He’s here today to talk about everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix this lack of alignment, including lessons to be learned from a near missile strike. What will the future of algorithmic decision-making look like?
How is digital media impacting our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection? This is an important question to consider, especially as we become increasingly dependent on technology. Our digital dependence has been amplified during the pandemic, as we rely heavily on virtual communications. Today, Maryanne Wolf, author of Reader, Come Home, joins the podcast to share practical advice for fostering critical thinking while immersed in the digital world.
Products aren’t neutral—that’s our ethos at All Turtles. Products are built with a point of view that impacts the community of users and plays a role in the development of privacy guidelines. In this episode, All Turtles’ three cofounders (Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Jon Cifuentes) discuss community and privacy. Phil is the CEO of mmhmm, and Jessica is the CEO of Spot, so they share their perspectives on building these products with a specific POV.
For startups, securing funding can be a long and bumpy road, and in many ways the pandemic has made it even bumpier. Tellus (an All Turtles product) has still found success in recent months, and today their CEO Tania A. Coke is imparting key lessons from their fundraising process. How did she and her team build new relationships with investors entirely over Zoom?
Mmhmm, our newest All Turtles product, upgrades video calls with beautiful backdrops and rooms, the designs for which had to be put together in record time. Allie Packard, our fearless Senior Designer, is here to share how she and her team went from the earliest mmhmm sketches to the product we see today. How did they create such dynamic and varied imagery while staying true to the brand?
Mmhmm is our latest All Turtles product, which we built to make video calls more efficient—and more fun. After our podcast’s summer hiatus, we’re eager to share how we spun out this product at breakneck speed during the pandemic. Mmhmm’s suite of tools make any Zoom or Google Meet something to look forward to, with beautiful backdrops and rooms, immersive recordings, and collaboration abilities. As Phil says, why try to just match IRL experiences when you could make them infinitely better?
When you ask Amazon’s Alexa to complete a task, that voice interaction is possible because of the work of people like Noelle Silver. She wrote some of Alexa’s earliest skills, and as her career took her from Amazon to Microsoft, she saw an opportunity to launch the AI Leadership Institute. On today’s podcast, she covers her current work as the VP of Digital Technology at NPR, the relationship between AI and art, and how she’s hoping to use AI to help make journalists’ jobs easier.
Show notes
Noelle Silver is the VP of Digital Technology at NPR.
Jake Ward interviewed Noelle about AI and art, and we featured Jake on an earlier episode of the All Turtles Podcast.
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Product design is collaborative, but with extended shelter-in-place guidelines, teams have had to reassess what it means to work together. Figma is one of the best tools for product creators working remotely, but even before we were relegated to our homes, Figma had become essential to us at All Turtles because of its intuitive features. Figma’s Director of Product Sho Kuwamoto joins us today to walk through how they continue to iterate on the creation of indispensable tools.
Show notes
Sho Kuwamoto is the Director of Product at Figma.
Figma has its own guidelines for remote design process.
Figma recently raised its series D.
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With campuses closed and classes relegated to Zoom sessions, COVID-19 has had an indelible impact on education. Scoodle, a UK-based learning platform that connects students with tutors, is ensuring students can still get the support they need. On today’s episode, Scoodle’s cofounder and CEO Ismail Jeilani is sharing how this pandemic has brought remote learning to the forefront of education, and why he wants to help teachers achieve rock-star status for the work they do.
Show notes
Ismail Jeilani is the cofounder and CEO of Scoodle.
Twitter cofounder Biz Stone is one of Scoodle’s backers.
Ismail’s experience as a tutor inspired him to build Scoodle.
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What do you do when a global pandemic wipes out your business model as an early-stage startup? If you’re Sebastian Müller, cofounder of Lanterne, you quickly pivot to create a product to help people stay safe as coronavirus spreads. That’s how he and his team began building Crowdless, an app that provides real-time information on the crowdedness of supermarkets to help with social distancing. Today Sebastian is sharing Lanterne’s approach to meeting the world’s most pressing needs on rapid timelines.
Show notes
Sebastian Müller is the cofounder of Lanterne, which builds crisis technology.
Crowdless is an app that tells you how crowded supermarkets are so you can social distance effectively.
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Where did the conspiracy that “Bill Gates engineered coronavirus” come from? This is the type of query that Renée DiResta investigates as the technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory, where she tracks the spread of misinformation (and disinformation) online. She’s been monitoring the dissemination of narratives about the emergence of COVID-19, how it’s treated, and how the government has responded, and has an explanation for why there’s so much speculation at every level.
Show notes
Renée DiResta is the technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory.
Renée follows epidemiologists and others on Twitter who share verifiable information about COVID-19.
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And now for an episode that was recorded pre-COVID-19. Today, David Yakobovitch is joining the show to share his perspectives on AI and the future of work. David hosts the HumAIn Podcast, a show about artificial intelligence, data science, and developer education. He’s also a Principal Data Scientist at Galvanize, a technology learning company that works with startups and large enterprises on deploying data science and AI solutions.
Show notes
David is a Principal Data Scientist at Galvanize, a technology learning company. David is also the host of the HumAIn podcast.
George Arison is the founder and CEO of Shift, an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars. George has led his company through the first phase of their response to the coronavirus pandemic, which involved creating a program to reduce prices for healthcare workers. The pandemic’s economic impact has also meant that they’ve had to furlough some employees. Today, George is sharing how he’s navigating tough decisions while managing a company during a global crisis.
Show notes
George Arison is the founder and CEO of Shift.
Shift is an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars.
George spoke to Protocol about how he’s been managing Shift during this global pandemic.
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Twitter: @allturtlesco
Over the past couple weeks on the podcast, we’ve talked about COVID-19’s impact on the future of work and the future of health. Today, we’re delving a little deeper into how we can come back from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which Phil is calling “the great unpause.” Why are “recession” and “recovery” ill-fitting terms to describe our current situation? What does hitting the pause button mean for different sectors of the economy, and what will it take to reset?
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The COVID-19 pandemic is fundamentally changing the way we think about and manage health. We’d already suspected that the future of work and the future of health were intrinsically linked, but this pandemic has shown how the trajectory of one is fully determining the course of the other. Today on the podcast, we’re discussing a 3-phase framework for thinking through how we’ll make it to the other side of this together.
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COVID-19 has thrown so much into uncertainty, including the way we work. With shelter-in-place regulations falling over increasing swathes of the population, companies who have the capacity to instruct employees to work from home have done so. Due to the global economic downturn that the pandemic has brought forth, it’s safe to say that COVID-19 is having a massive impact on the future of work. Today, we’ll discuss the nuances of that impact.
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A single patient’s healthcare data is likely stored in different silos. It can therefore be difficult to assemble a complete picture of health when old records, more recent information, and regularly updated stats from a smartwatch should all be taken into account. Enter Seqster, a Saas solution for compiling healthcare data and making it easily accessible. Ardy Arianpour, cofounder and CEO of Seqster, joins the podcast today to talk about how his product is shaping the future of health.
Show notes
Ardy Arianpour is the cofounder and CEO of Seqster.
Seqster is a SaaS solution for collecting, owning, and sharing healthcare data.
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Have you ever had an online conversation with someone only to realize later that you’d been talking to a bot? Computers are reshaping our idea of what it means to be human. Today on the podcast, author Brian Christian explores how computers reveal our most human capabilities and other themes from his book The Most Human Human. He also discusses the book he wrote with Tom Griffiths, Algorithms to Live By, about how computer algorithms can untangle human questions.
Show notes
Brian Christian is an author and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Most Human Human is a book Brian wrote to explore the ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human.
Brian co-wrote Algorithms to Live By with Tom Griffiths about how computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives.
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On prior episodes of this podcast, we’ve discussed Carrot, a company that’s pioneering the future of work and health by providing global fertility benefits to employers. Because there’s so much to discuss, we made a whole new podcast for Carrot called Baby Steps. It’s about the many diverse paths people take in the pursuit of parenthood, and we’re playing the first episode of Baby Steps here for you today. If you like what you hear, search for Baby Steps wherever you get your podcasts.
Show notes
Baby Steps is a podcast from Carrot Fertility about the diverse paths people take to pursue parenthood.
Carrot is the leading global fertility benefits company for employers.
Leslie Schrock, author of Bumpin, discusses the concept of trimester zero, the period of preparation before any fertility journey begins.
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How is the internet making people more or less seen? Researcher Mary Gray’s new book Ghost Work explores the lives of people who are paid to train AI. These workers are contributing to the AI we use every day, but they’re often left out of conversations about how this technology is evolving. Mary asserts that AI is not replacing or eliminating work; it’s dismantling full-time employment. She shares how and why that’s happening in today’s episode.
Show notes
Conversation with Mary Gray
Mary is a senior principal researcher at Microsoft.
She’s also an E.J. Safra Center for Ethics fellow.
Mary is a faculty affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass is Mary’s new book.
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Designers and medical professionals are both key to building the future of health. Dr. Kyra Bobinet is working within that intersection by using neuroscience to help people design healthy lives. She’s an MD and the CEO of engagedIN, a neuroscience-based design firm. Both design and behavioral change are iterative processes, and Dr. Bobinet has experience applying behavioral strategies as a corporate executive to scale the impact of her programs.
Show notes
Conversation with Dr. Kyra Bobinet
Dr. Kyra Bobinet is an MD MPH.
EngagedIN is a neuroscience-based design firm. Dr. Bobinet is the CEO.
Dr. Bobinet wrote Well-Designed Life, a book about the intersection of health and design.
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Sita Magnuson has the spirit of an entrepreneur and the heart of an artist. She’s been able to make a career for herself by channeling both of these strengths into cofounding initiatives like Fort Future, Dpict, and Easthampton Co.Lab. Today on the podcast, she shares her thoughts on process design and the creative methods she uses to generate discussion and productivity in a workplace.
Show notes
Conversation with Sita Magnuson
Sita is an artist and entrepreneur who works in the spaces of multimodal, multi-sensory experimentation in service of mutual learning.
Fort Future is a space for intergenerational curiosity in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
Dpict is a facilitation firm that specializes in process design, visualization, and collaborative environments.
Easthampton Co.Lab is a membership-based coworkspace in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
We want to hear from you.
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes.
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
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What does it mean to democratize DNA? Shirley Wu is answering that question as the Director of Health Product at 23andMe. 23andMe’s mission is to pioneer the future of health with their genetic testing technology, and to help people understand, access, and benefit from the human genome. They’ve had to stay ahead of the quickly evolving pace of the genomics industry, so the story of their work provides valuable lessons for any entrepreneur looking to build a lasting company in a fast-paced world.
Show notes
Conversation with the Shirley Wu (0:37)
Shirley Wu is the Director of Health Product at 23andMe.
23andMe is a personal genomics and biotechnology.
23andMe provides a wide variety of information for customers in their genetic reports.
Listener question
“Could you have [insert name here] as a guest on your podcast?”
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In many ways, the future of fertility is closely tied to the future of work, as companies determine how to best ensure that their employees are holistically supported. Employers have a unique and important role to play when it comes to access to fertility care, especially in the U.S. where 150 million people get their health coverage through employers. Carrot is a fertility benefits company solving the growing problem of access to inclusive fertility care.
Show notes
Conversation with Tammy Sun (0:35)
Tammy is the cofounder and CEO of Carrot.
Carrot is a global fertility benefits company.
More females above the age of 30 are giving birth than females below the age of 30.
Carrot has been global from the start and is operational in over 40 countries today.
Listener question
From Leah via email: “I recently listened to another podcast - Tales of Silicon Valley - which talked about the 10's of thousands of people who are employed as contract workers by Facebook and other companies to act as 'human filters' for social media sites. These individuals are exposed to horrific images repeatedly all day, every day in order to keep the sites clean and safe for public consumption. I was greatly disturbed by the realization that in order to protect me from seeing these images, a subset of the population has the grueling task of looking at photos posted by the worst of humanity and clicking ‘Ignore, Delete, or Escalate.’ I immediately thought back to the conversation Phil and Brittney had during their SciFi-preneurship - another amazing All Turtles podcast series! They spoke about The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin where all the world is at peace except for the suffering of one child. Since learning about these human filters, I've struggled with the moral dilemma: There are people suffering so that I can enjoy looking at family and friends' pictures and posts. I see these human filters as necessary 'for the greater good' because AI is not advanced enough to protect the public- however, this is definitely a role where AI can be a force for good. My question is this: Do you think we'll ever get there? Will technology become so skilled it can accurately block gruesome, inappropriate, hateful images and speech? And if so, how long will it take? The narrator Danny Fortson didn't seem to think it was possible.”
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Sift is a news therapy app that unpacks contentious topics so you can feel better equipped to keep up with the headlines. Today on the podcast, we’re giving you an audio taste of one of Sift’s topics—climate change—so you can hear what Sift is all about. Listen as we walk you through the impact climate change is having on our mental health.
Show notes
Download Sift in the app store.
Dr. Thomas Doherty is a psychologist based in Portland, OR.
Dr. Lise Van Susteren is a psychiatrist and environmental activist in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Kyle Whyte is a professor and environmental activist at Michigan State University.
In the episode:
Greta Thunberg speaking about global warming at the World Economic Forum.
The American Psychological Association’s report on growing climate concerns in the U.S.
Solastalgia is a term coined by environmental activist Glenn Albrecht to describe the mental or existential distress caused by environmental change.
Coverage of the report from the National Farm Medicine Center that the suicide rate for farmers in the Upper Midwest more than doubled the national average following a record drought in the U.S. in the 1980s.
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Terah Lyons is the Executive Director of the Partnership on AI, a consortium that aims to establish best practices for AI systems and to educate the public about AI. They’re working to explore AI’s impact on the world, including on the labor market and the economy. Before this role, Terah worked in the office of the CTO for the Obama administration, but she asserts that public policy alone is not enough. Proactive attention and planning are needed to support economies of the future.
Show notes
Conversation with the Terah Lyons (0:50)
Terah Lyons worked in the office of the CTO for the Obama administration.
Terah is the founding Executive Director of the Partnership on AI.
The Partnership on AI is working on an initiative focused on transparency in ML.
Listener question
From Ari via email: "In a recent podcast, a listener asked if there was ongoing research into algorithmic bias in AI. I thought this was an interesting example of biased AI in the incarceral system: Even in states working to eliminate the role of cash bail, such as New Jersey, a past Failure to Appear can mean the difference between confinement and freedom. In 2017, the state virtually abolished its cash bail system, but defendants are rated by a tool that uses nine factors to evaluate a person’s statistical ‘risk’ for failing to appear in court or being involved in ‘new criminal activity.’ In each of those categories, prior FTAs add significant ‘risk’ to a person’s score. What do you think of this?”
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We interrupt our normal programming for some brief announcements on upcoming changes to the podcast. We’re transitioning from weekly episodes to bi-weekly in order to accommodate some exciting new projects. But stay subscribed, and stay tuned, because we have some incredible guests slated for our future episodes. See you in two weeks!
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Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes.
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Spot is an All Turtles product that’s ushering in the future of work by using technology to build better environments for employees. It’s a software solution for tackling harassment and discrimination in the workplace with an AI reporting tool. We’ve discussed Spot on the podcast before, but today, Spot’s CEO Jessica Collier is talking to design lead Micah Rivera and editorial lead Kelly Chen about how they designed, built and launched a new harassment training feature.
Show notes
Conversation with the Spot team (0:43)
Jessica Collier is the cofounder of All Turtles and CEO of Spot.
Micah Rivera is the Lead Designer at Spot.
Kelly Chen manages editorial content for Spot.
Spot is an All Turtles product that provides workplace harassment training and anonymous reporting.
Spot’s new training new sexual harassment training combines inclusive scenarios, insightful survey questions, and anonymous reporting.
Listener question
"Any plans to mention on the podcast that October is Cyber Security Awareness Month?"
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Dr. Arun Wiita’s lab at UCSF uses emerging technologies to discover new treatments for blood cancers. Today on the podcast, he shares his insights on the future of cancer research, including why he thinks the next big advancement will involve modifying DNA as a way to improve early detection. Machine learning is starting to play a bigger role in the interpretation of the vast data sets of DNA sequences, but hear why Dr. Wiita says that “AI-aha” moments are still a bit of myth in his line of work.
Show notes
Conversation with Arun Wiita (0:43)
Dr. Arun Wiita is an Associate Professor at UCSF.
Dr. Wiita’s lab at UCSF is working on discovering new targets to treat blood cancers.
Listener question
From Surangkana via email: “I would like to know if your company is in the stock market yet? I am interested in investing in your company stocks.”
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Unreasonable Group works with entrepreneurs who are offering solutions to seemingly intractable challenges. Today on the podcast, their Head of Creative Partnerships, Dave Smith, is talking about how they approach some of the world’s biggest problems. Their cohort of founders is tackling everything from clean energy to 3D scanning and big data for healthcare. And it’s emerging technology like AI that’s helping entrepreneurs develop these innovative new solutions.
As tools like Figma, Slack, and more are allowing employees to stay connected from disparate locations, the concept of the remote workforce has become increasingly attractive. With the benefits of added flexibility for employees and opportunities to hire people from around the world, some companies have constructed entirely remote teams. Octane AI is one example; their VP of Product Megan Berry joins the podcast today to talk about why she thinks the future of work is remote.
AI has already made its way into in the medical field, and today, Dr. Eric Topol gives us a sense of the many ways in which medical professionals are already taking advantage of this technology. Dr. Topol is a cardiologist and the author of Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again. He acknowledges AI’s security risks, but is optimistic for the future of health that AI is helping to usher in.
Show notes
Conversation with Dr. Topol (0:50)
Dr. Eric Topol is a cardiologist.
Dr. Topol is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute.
You can find Dr. Topol’s book here: Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again.
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For some, tongue twisters are simply amusing ways to pass the time, but Dairien Boyd and other designers at All Turtles knew that these verses had value: they could help people practicing a new language perfect their pronunciation, or give someone working on public speaking skills a way to work on their enunciation. Dairien and his team built Twisty Tongue as a fun game that anyone can play, and on this episode, he articulates his design philosophy for creating this app and others.
Show notes
Conversation with Dairien Boyd (0:52)
Dairien Boyd is All Turtles’ Principal Designer.
Twisty Tongue is a tongue twister app for playing tongue twister games and practicing English language pronunciation.
Figma is a collaborative design tool that Dairien and the All Turtles designers love to use.
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We may never get to use a crystal ball to tell us where the world is headed, but Amy Webb’s futurist analysis might be the next best thing. She’s a quantitative futurist, founder of the Future Today Institute, and author of The Big Nine. Her work is rooted in measurement and data; her models determine emerging signals and track their velocity over time to understand plausible futures. She focuses on changes within science and technology, and joins the podcast today to share some of her insights.
Show notes
Conversation with Amy Webb
Amy Webb is a quantitative futurist.
Amy founded the Future Today Institute, which helps leaders and their organizations prepare for complex futures.
Amy’s is the author of The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity.
We want to hear from you.
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Welcome back to our regularly scheduled programming. After our summer SciFi-preneuership series, we’re ready to launch season 3 of the All Turtles Podcast. Today we’re introducing the new season and its themes: the future of work and the future of health. So much of our lives are maladapted for the human experience, and we want to talk about how to build products to help improve people’s physical, mental, and financial health. Stay tuned for season 3.
Show notes
What we did this summer
The SciFi-preneuership series with Brittney Gallagher is about the ways in which science fiction inspires people to create the kind of future they want.
Spot is developing harassment training.
Season 3 themes
The future of health, the future of work, and entrepreneurs building the future with tech like AI.
Tune in next week
The first official episode next week will feature an interview with futurist Amy Webb.
We want to hear from you.
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes.
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
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Dune, a novel set 20,000 years in the future, is a sweeping saga that touches on themes ranging from the consequences of AI (and the lack of AI) to the values of environmentalism. This is the last episode of SciFi-preneurship, so we’re closing out with a discussion reflecting on all the works we’ve featured. Thanks for joining our conversations about the works that have inspired people to build better futures.
Show notes
Intro with Phil Libin and Brittney Gallagher
Brittney Gallagher hosts Digital Culture LA, a show about future science and technology.
Dune is a novel by Frank Herbert published in 1965.
Discussion with Dan Novy
Dan Novy is a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Media Lab.
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Star Trek is one of the most iconic shows to ever grace television, not just for its contributions to the genre of science fiction, but also for its inspirational message about the potential for technology to build a positive future. There are many examples of technologies in the show inspiring actual tech that exists today. We dive into some of those examples (along with other illustrations of Star Trek’s impact) today on the podcast with Veronica Belmont and Joe Betts-LaCroix.
Show notes
Intro with Phil Libin and Brittney Gallagher
Brittney Gallagher hosts Digital Culture LA, a show about future science and technology.
Snow Crash is a novel by Neal Stephenson that takes us into the Metaverse, where a computer virus also has the capacity to harm people in the physical world.
Conversation with Veronica Belmont
Veronica is a Product Manager at Adobe Spark and host of the Sword and Laser podcast.
Conversation with Joe Betts-LaCroix
Joe is the inventor of the world’s smallest computer, and his work in biophysics aims to optimize medical research priorities in the U.S.
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Ursula K. Le Guin’s influence on science fiction is so significant that we dedicated two episodes of this series to her work, as we had so many guests who wanted to talk about her impact. Le Guin’s writing helped expand visions of what society could be, which provided meaningful inspiration for today’s guests, Dr. Christine Corbett Moran (cybersecurity engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab) and Dan Novy (postdoctoral associate at the MIT Media Lab).
Show notes
Intro with Phil Libin and Brittney Gallagher
Brittney Gallagher hosts Digital Culture LA, a show about future science and technology.
Snow Crash is a novel by Neal Stephenson that takes us into the Metaverse, where a computer virus also has the capacity to harm people in the physical world.
Conversation with Dr. Christine Corbett Moran
Dr. Moran is a cybersecurity engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
Conversation with with Dan Novy
Dan is a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Media Lab.
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Ursula K. Le Guin is one of science fiction’s most influential writers. Her science fiction philosophy, which underscores our entire SciFi-preneurship podcast series, is that science fiction is meant to be descriptive rather than predictive. A hallmark of her writing is that it tends to be more inclusive of different gender and sexual identity expressions than many of her contemporaries' work, allowing for a broader representation of characters with whom readers can identify.
Show notes
Intro with Phil Libin and Brittney Gallagher
Brittney Gallagher hosts Digital Culture LA, a show about future science and technology.
Snow Crash is a novel by Neal Stephenson that takes us into the Metaverse, where a computer virus also has the capacity to harm people in the physical world.
Conversation with Veronica Belmont
Veronica is a Product Manager at Adobe Spark and host of the Sword and Laser podcast.
Conversation with Sophia Brueckner
Sophia is artist and computer scientist.She is also a professor at the University of Michigan where she teaches Sci-Fi Prototyping, a class on building prototypes inspired by sci-fi and technology ethics.
Conversation with Emily Dean
Emily is a writer and director whose 2018 film Andromeda portrays an android who gains sentience.
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As technologists continue to build the future, what laws should govern the things they create? Ethical guidelines for technology are essential; Isaac Asmiov presented one version of what they may look like when he introduced the Three Laws of Robotics in his collection of short stories I, Robot. This work of science fiction inspired many, including the three guests on today’s episode: Emily Dean, Peter Eckersley, and Joe Betts-LaCroix.
Show notes
Intro with Phil Libin and Brittney Gallagher
Brittney Gallagher hosts Digital Culture LA, a show about future science and technology.
Snow Crash is a novel by Neal Stephenson that takes us into the Metaverse, where a computer virus also has the capacity to harm people in the physical world.
Conversation with Emily Dean
Emily is a writer and director whose 2018 film Andromeda portrays an android who gains sentience.
Conversation with Peter Eckersley
Peter is the Director of Research at the Partnership on AI.
Conversation with Joe Betts-LaCroix
Joe is the inventor of the world’s smallest computer, and his work in biophysics aims to optimize medical research priorities in the U.S.
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In the Metaverse, a shared virtual reality space, a character wrestles with a computer-crashing virus that also causes harm in the real world. Thus begins Snow Crash, a Neal Stephenson novel that, when written in 1992, described futuristic systems that eventually became reality. Snow Crash’s impact is so significant that this episode has a record number of guests who wanted to discuss it: Dr. Christine Corbett Moran, Veronica Belmont, Peter Eckersley, Joe Betts-LaCroix, and Sophia Brueckner.
Show notes
Intro with Phil Libin and Brittney Gallagher
Brittney Gallagher hosts Digital Culture LA, a show about future science and technology.
Snow Crash is a novel by Neal Stephenson that takes us into the Metaverse, where a computer virus also has the capacity to harm people in the physical world.
Conversation with Dr. Christine Corbett Moran
Dr. Moran is a cybersecurity engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
Conversation with Veronica Belmont
Veronica is a Product Manager at Adobe Spark and host of the Sword and Laser podcast.
Conversation with Peter Eckersley
Peter is the Director of Research at the Partnership on AI.
Conversation with Joe Betts-LaCroix
Joe is the inventor of the world’s smallest computer, and his work in biophysics aims to optimize medical research priorities in the U.S.
Conversation with Sophia Brueckner
Sophia is artist and computer scientist.She is also a professor at the University of Michigan where she teaches Sci-Fi Prototyping, a class on building prototypes inspired by sci-fi and technology ethics.
We want to hear from you.
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Email: hello@all-turtles.com
Twitter: @allturtlesco
In 2019, we’re 35 years beyond 1984; at this current juncture, we can see just how predictive George Orwell’s novel turned out to be, and which dystopian elements we’ve managed to avoid (so far). This seminal work of science fiction provided a road map of exactly where not to go when building the future, and on today’s episode, Emily Dean and Dr. Christine Corbett Moran explain how it impacted the work they do today to shape the kind of future they want.
Show notes
Intro with Phil Libin and Brittney Gallagher
Brittney Gallagher hosts Digital Culture LA, a show about future science and technology.
1984 is a novel by George Orwell that depicts a dystopian future in which Big Brother monitors citizens’ every move in order to maintain government control.
Conversation with Dr. Christine Corbett Moran
Dr. Moran is a cybersecurity engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
Conversation with Emily Dean
Emily is a writer and director whose 2018 film Andromeda portrays an android who gains sentience.
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The impact of the The Matrix on science fiction is difficult to overstate, but beyond the genre itself, it also deeply affected the viewers whose worldviews were made askew. Three of those viewers are featured in today’s episode to talk about their reactions to the film and the ways in which it contributed to the work they do now: writer/director Emily Dean, Partnership on AI research director Peter Eckersley, and MIT Media Lab’s Dan Novy.
Show notes
Intro with Phil Libin and Brittney Gallagher
Brittney Gallagher hosts Digital Culture LA, a show about future science and technology.
The Matrix portrays a version of the future in which the main character’s version of reality is revealed to be a computer simulation powered by human bodies.
Conversation with Peter Eckersley
Peter is the director of research at the Partnership on AI.
Previously, Peter worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Conversation with with Dan Novy
Dan is a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Media Lab.
Conversation with Emily Dean
Emily is a writer and director whose 2018 film Andromeda portrays an android who gains sentience.
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SciFi-preneurship is a new summer series from the All Turtles Podcast that examines how science fiction inspires people to create things that impact our lives today. In SciFi-preneurship, we’re using an expanded definition of entrepreneurship: we don’t just mean Silicon Valley startup founders; we’re talking to people who make things, especially things that are shaping our future. First up, Dan Novy, who earned his PhD from the MIT Media Lab, talks about H.P. Lovecraft and the impact of his writing.
Show notes
Intro with Phil Libin and Brittney Gallagher
Brittney Gallagher hosts Digital Culture LA, a show about future science and technology.
Episode 32 of the All Turtles Podcast, Galaxy Quest, served as the inspiration for the SciFi-preneurship series.
Harvard Business School professor Howard Stevenson defines entrepreneurship as “the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled.”
Discussion with Dan Novy on H.P. Lovecraft’s work
Dan Novy is a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Media Lab.
The writings of H.P. Lovecraft have had a profound impact on science fiction and the way people envision the future.
The Call of Cthulhu is one of Lovecraft’s most famous short stories.
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How can good design ensure that a product is as inclusive as possible? Micah Rivera, lead designer for the All Turtles product Spot, has extensive experience in accessible, inclusive product design. From the psychology of color to the use of body language in character illustrations, he draws from a range of tools that he’s eager to share. He emphasizes the importance of checking accessibility as you build a product, and he explains the visual metaphor of the hot air balloon in Spot.
Show notes
Conversation with Micah Rivera (1:02)
Micah is the lead designer for Spot, an AI reporting bot that makes it safer for employees to speak up about harassment and discrimination in the workplace, and makes it easier for HR to follow up, even on anonymous reports.
To develop the character illustrations, Micah worked closely with senior visual designer Carlos Rocafort IV.
SciFi-preneurship
Our new podcast series, SciFi-preneurship, is all about the ways in which science fiction inspires people to create the kind of future they want. Tune in next week for the first of nine episodes.
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The exponentially increasing power of AI unleashes new advancements every day, but alongside those developments come new ethical questions about proper implementation. Azeem Azhar covers these technological evolutions in his newsletter Exponential View. By keeping his finger on the pulse of what AI is doing for us today (like improving gene sequencing and better predicting diseases in the IVF processes), he’s able to share the insights he’s gathered for businesses who want to avoid techlash.
Show notes
Conversation with Azeem Azhar (1:02)
Azeem Azhar pens the Exponential View newsletter.
Azeem’s podcast covers all kinds of AI- and tech-related topics.
Lemonade is a home and renters insurance company.
AI use case (25:20)
Autofill, location services, and when these services become creepy
Listener question (28:35)
From Niels via email: “What do you think is the potential of Federated Learning systems?”
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Julian Guthrie’s new book Alpha Girls follows the stories of four women who became successful VCs in Silicon Valley firms where they were often the only women in the room. Julian is a former journalist and a New York Times bestselling author, but despite her extensive experience writing about successful people, the Alpha Girls’ stories surprised her. She describes the lessons learned from the women’s extraordinary accomplishments, and shares how VCs and entrepreneurs can apply them today.
Show notes
Conversation with Julian Guthrie (1:22)
Julian Guthrie is the author of Alpha Girls
Julian’s other books include The Billionaire and the Mechanic and How to Make a Spaceship
Eye roll, please (24:20)
Why “ignore the haters” is faulty advice for an entrepreneur.
Listener question (26:35)
From Niels via Twitter: “Why did you pick Paris over E.g. London or Berlin?”
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Sift, a news therapy app from All Turtles, is looking to solve real problems that lie at the intersection of technology and journalism. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become outrage-powered clicking machines that drive media cycles. Sift wants to help its users stay informed without feeling overwhelmed. They took an experimental approach to their product rollout that allowed them to build invaluable feedback into their latest version, an approach that could benefit products of any kind.
Show notes
Gabe Campodonico and Kelly Chen of Sift (2:10)
Sift is a news therapy app that presents contentious topics in a therapeutic, engaging, and informative way so users can
Kelly’s background includes CNN and Huffington Post.
Advice to entrepreneurs (24:20)
What kind of money is better for funding a business? Investments or revenue
Listener question (26:35)
From Michael via Twitter: “Is All Turtles a reference to the probably apocryphal Bertrand Russel story?”
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When Facebook moved into a Menlo Park space that was across the street from one of the lowest income areas of California, Susan Gonzales saw a potential for outreach, so she launched the company’s community engagement program. Her time at Facebook gave her some unique insights into the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. She now consults with startups on strategic communications, sharing her expertise on diversity-related issues.
Show notes
Susan Gonzales, Communications Coach (1:07)
Susan’s consulting services help her clients effectively communicate their messaging.
Facebook’s summer academy was designed to give low-income students professional learning opportunities.
Black in AI, Queer in AI, Latinx in AI, and Women in Machine Learning are all groups Susan wants to help amplify.
The All Turtles origin story (18:00)
Jon answers Susan’s question about how All Turtles came to be by telling the story of how the idea for All Turtles first gained traction.
AI use case (21:14)
Our first “Anti-AI use case”: the decision to not use AI in the new All Turtles product Sift, a news therapy app
Listener question (26:35)
From May via email: “Are there guidelines for technology adoption speed/tipping point? Do you consider this at all when investing? In other words, what % of the population needs to LOVE the product/service so that the other next influenced segment (a bigger audience) will adopt it?”
The Unscaled podcast series featured Hemant Taneja’s philosophy that you don’t need to scale in size first in order to have an impact.
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Knowing how to outpace competition is a difficult yet essential part of entrepreneurship. For a new startup, larger competing companies may have more resources, more employees, or more brand recognition. Yet there are strategies small product teams can employ to effectively take on competition. Matt Schlict, CEO of Octane AI, has developed a methodology that has worked for his team, the cornerstone of which is focusing on a vertical.
Show notes
Matt Schlicht, CEO of Octane AI (2:22)
Octane AI is an e-commerce chatbot that enables Shopify merchants to communicate directly with their customers through Facebook messenger
Phil’s video about dealing with competition
Chatbots Magazine is an online publication that has helped establish Octane AI as a voice in the chatbot space
Ecommerce Magazine is another publication that gives Octane AI an opportunity to be at the forefront of e-commerce conversations
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What does thoughtful and effective product design look like? Sift, a news therapy app, is a prime example—it manages to be both therapeutic and informative because of the thoughtful design choices of its creators. Chris Ploeg and Gabe Campodonico, Sift's cofounders, built this product as a response to the outrage- and anxiety-inducing news cycle, and in this episode they share the details of their design process from ideation to feedback collection.
Show notes
Chris Ploeg and Gabe Campodonico, cofounders of Sift (2:22)
Sift is a news therapy app that unpacks contentious issues to help reduce headline-induced anxiety.
Sift’s Medium post explains their experimental approach to their launch.
TechCrunch’s article about Sift digs into the need for an app that covers the news in a way that is not designed to induce outrage.
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A crash landing in a famous soccer coach’s backyard. A middle-of-the-night bolt of inspiration. An explosion of pink smoke. These memorable moments punctuated Sunflower Labs’ hardware development process as they built their multi-component drone security system. In sharing the story of how they built their hardware product, they share tips—like the importance of fully understanding what problem you’re solving and the need for tireless testing—that apply to any entrepreneurial endeavor.
Show notes
Alex Pachikov and Chris Eheim, cofounders of Sunflower Labs (1:56)
Sunflower Labs builds autonomous home security systems
The Verge’s story on Sunflower Labs
Sunflower Labs’ coverage in CNET
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Product creators who listen to feedback from their customers can gain valuable insight into the needs of people who use their product. Yet people who do not use the product, or have any intention of doing so, may also have thoughts and opinions about it. Sometimes, those comments will be constructive, but not always. Non-customer feedback is a is something that the CEO of Spot deals with regularly, and she’s learned how to make the most of it.
Show notes
Jessica Coller, CEO of Spot (1:56)
Spot’s AI reporting tool makes it safer for employees to speak up and easier for HR to follow up, even on anonymous reports.
Spot’s feature in TechCrunch about how their app addresses harassment and discrimination in the workplace
The HR Technologist’s coverage of Spot’s features
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When it comes to entrepreneurship, are two heads really better than one? Cofounders should have complementary skills, values, and aspirations; a strong partnership will serve as the foundation for building impactful products. But finding someone who has those traits, and learning to work alongside them, is a process. Thankfully, Tania Abedian Coke and Kevin Hsu—the cofounders of Tellus—have some guidance in this episode of the Startup Playbook series.
Show notes
Tania Abedian Coke and Kevin Hsu, cofounders of Tellus (1:42)
Tellus is working to radically change and improve the standard of elder care with technology
Some of the earliest iterations of Tellus were from Tania and Kevin’s time Stanford’s Venture Studio
Learn more about Tania, Kevin, and their investors at Tellus’ About page
PERS, or Personal Emergency Response Systems, allow for people to call for medical help with the press of a button
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Developing a solid pitch takes work, but it’s a necessary process because building any kind of product requires funding. To get that money, you have to talk to people. Mursal Hedayat, cofounder and CEO of Chatterbox, knew she had a good product idea when she noticed that hardly any of the people solving problems for the refugee community were refugees themselves. But to convince others that her product deserved investment, she has had to perfect her pitch.
Show notes
Mursal Hedayat, cofounder and CEO Chatterbox (1:42)
Chatterbox is an online learning platform where people can learn skills from refugees, starting with language skills
Mursal was included in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list of social entrepreneurs
MIT Technology Review covered Mursal and Chatterbox in their Innovators Under 35 series
Conversation with Phil Libin, All Turtles CEO (11:53)
Phil’s video on how to pitch investors
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An organization’s leadership can make or break the success of the entire team. In entrepreneurship, a CEO has three main responsibilities: setting the vision, building the team, and ensuring that there is enough money to operate. But there is a lot more to managing success. Eugenia Kuyda is the CEO of Replika, an All Turtles product, and through her story of overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, she shares invaluable wisdom for developing a long-lasting leadership philosophy.
Show notes
Eugenia Kuyda, cofounder and CEO of Replika (1:42)
Replika, an All Turtles product, is an AI chatbot for mental health
The origins of Replika (article about Replika’s origin story)
Phil Libin’s video on how to be a good CEO
A graphic explaining the Japanese concept of ikigai, which loosely translates to “a reason for being”
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What’s the best way for a startup to compete with large companies when hiring top talent? How does someone reach outside their own network to source diverse candidates? To speak on some of these topics and more, Jeremy Vandehey, CEO of Disco, shares advice on how to hire an outstanding team. This is the first episode of Startup Playbook, a new series from the All Turtles podcast about how startup founders and product creators tackle some of entrepreneurship’s biggest challenges.
Show notes
Jeremy Vandehey, cofounder and CEO of Disco (1:42)
Disco is an All Turtles product that makes it easy to celebrate your company culture and values, all in the messaging tools you already use.
Disco is currently hiring engineers. Check out justdisco.com if you’re interested in applying.
Conversation with Phil Libin, All Turtles CEO (8:42)
Phil’s video on how to hire the best people
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At All Turtles, we build AI products, which means we needed a process for deciding which products to build. We came up with a system for classifying the types of products people pitch us so that we can quickly understand and communicate to each other what we see as opportunities and potential failure points. This classification system is our product taxonomy, and it’s something any product creator or evaluator can apply to their work.
Show notes
Taxonomy discussion with Phil Libin and Jessica Collier (0:48)
- Flying Shoe — Whoa, is it possible?!
Failure modalities:
a. DaVinci — Can be imagined, but it can’t be built
b. Jetpack — Doesn’t deliver on its promise
c. H.W. Bush — Already exists and we just didn’t know about it
- Costner — Totally possible! But if you build it, will they come?
Failure modalities:
a. Waterworld — Too long to get to market and costs too much money
b. Golf — Boring and we don’t care (e.g. ad tech use case)
c. New Coke — There’s already a better version of this
d. Timeshare — No plausible exit or sustainable financial path forward
e. Segway — People don’t actually want it
- Play-Doh— What is it? How will it work? What’s the experience like?
Failure modalities:
a. No particular failure modalities, but the product idea must become a Flying Shoe or a Costner to continue
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Austen Allred is the cofounder and CEO of the Lambda School, a coding academy that provides free training for students to become software engineers and data scientists in exchange for a percentage of their income for two years. It’s a model that has moved people from low income to high income salaries. Austen talks through the school’s pedagogy, shares what students need to succeed in the program, and explains why one of the most valuable aspects of the school is the community.
Show notes
Conversation with Austen Allred (0:48)
The Lambda School provides free training for UX designers and data science in exchange for a percentage of their income for two years (0:56)
Austen gathered the stories from a long list of people whose lives have changed because of Lambda School, which he compiled in this Twitter thread
Articles from the New York Times and VentureBeat featuring the Lambda School
Kwame Yamgnane from 42 Silicon Valley on episode 27 of the All Turtles Podcast (4:58)
Sylvain Kalache from the Holberton School on episode 33 of the All Turtles Podcast (5:03)
Advice to entrepreneurs (21:17)
The good/fast/cheap triangle of product development (21:20)
Phil’s Rule of Three video on the topic of product development (21:25)
Listener question (26:20)
From Derek via Twitter: This is a question about the the personalization episode of the Unscaled series: Greater personalization will always be better, but the marginal benefit will keep going down. Bottom line, will 20mgs of x work? Yes, but if 15.52mgs will work, and reduce side effects or chances of dependency, I’d take that. What do you think?
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When controversial headlines flood Twitter and Facebook, these rage machines disseminate disinformation. AI plays a role in perpetuating fake news, but it could also be a part of the solution in detecting and preventing the malignant spread of fake stories. Renée DiResta is a researcher of computational propaganda and disinformation. On this episode, she talks through some recent news stories and how they serve as examples of the ways in which technology facilitates tribalism.
Show notes
Conversation with Renée DiResta (0:50)
Renée DiResta researches the spread of malign information on the internat (1:01)
Data for Democracy is a worldwide community working together to find truth through data and technology (1:02)
New Knowledge is an information integrity company (1:02)
The Covington Catholic news story (1:10)
How technology facilitates tribalism (5:54)
Using something like AI to intercept disinformation before it spreads widely (9:15)
Renée on her Senate report about Russia’s disinformation in the 2016 election (12:20)
The sophisticated processes for gaming Amazon’s review systems (19:30)
Eye roll please (31:21)
Waiting for the “right moment” to launch a product or company (31:25)
Listener question (34:18)
From Jacob via email: Jacob says he is excited about autonomous cars because he hates driving, but in a previous episode, a discussion arose about the fact that not only is it possible that bad actors may interfere with the security of self-driving cars while they're on the road, but that it "will happen." So this listener asks: What can we do about this? Cryptography is not bulletproof, and also has system performance impacts. What is missing in the tech ecosystem to prevent tragedies related to the "hacking" of self-driving cars?
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Bärí Williams is the VP of Legal, Policy, and Business Affairs at All Turtles. She has advice for small startups and founders who may not have in-house legal or policy experts on how to navigate things like privacy and contract organization. She also has experience developing diversity programs for companies like Facebook, and has lessons to share about creating and implementing similar programs. As she’s said, tech’s ethical problem is also a diversity problem.
Show notes
Conversation with Bärí Williams (0:49)
Bärí’s Twitter takedown of Ja Rule (2:46)
Bärí’s article “Tech’s ethical problem is also a diversity problem.” (3:47)
Facebook’s Supplier Diversity Program, which Bärí implemented (6:58)
What is Facebook doing to support the local communities around its offices? (8:58)
Taking a holistic approach to diversity and inclusion (13:22)
Making products accessible to all (17:39)
AI use case (29:37)
Phil’s Amazon Echo now sets alarms for the correct part of the day without him having to specify every time (30:08)
Listener question (32:02)
This question comes in from JK via email: “Any plans to establish a base in London, UK?”
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Max Levchin is the cofounder and former CTO of PayPal. His stories from PayPal’s early days reveal that its methods for addressing security questions from the start can apply to the problems social media companies face today. Levchin started Affirm to do away with amoral loan practices; recently, Affirm allowed government employees who couldn’t work during the shutdown to take their time in paying back loans. Levchin values honesty and transparency, which serve as the foundations for his products.
Show notes
Conversation with Max Levchin (0:47)
Max is a cofounder and former CTO of PayPal (1:07)
The human-computer loop (7:06)
PRNG is a pseudorandom number generator (9:53)
All Turtles Podcast episode with Renée DiResta (13:13)
Affirm is a better way to borrow money (17:20)
Advice to entrepreneurs (34:10)
Phil’s “Rule of Three” video series (34:38)
The rock-paper-scissors model of dealing with competition (35:10)
Listener question (42:28)
From Steve via email:
I saw an article that Google is giving away $25 million to fund humane AI projects to solve seemingly intractable problems. My question to the All Turtles luminaries is what they think of this effort, which coincides with Google’s decision to not pursue $10 billion military contract for use of AI (Microsoft is now pursuing this).
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Fans of the movie Her will remember “Samantha” as the AI who connected with a human because of her ability to express deep empathy. That’s what Michelle Zhou, cofounder and CEO of Juji, references when explaining what her company aims to do: create empathetic and responsible artificial intelligence agents. By focusing on human-machine symbiosis, Zhou has worked toward creating AI chatbots for different types of use cases, from personalized healthcare to conducting interviews.
Show notes
Conversation with Michelle Zhou (1:35)
Juji builds empathetic and responsible AI chatbots (0:45)
Humans feeling more comfortable with machines (3:48)
Where did the name Juji come from? (4:55)
Books by Cilfford Nass, a renowned Stanford researcher on human-computer interaction (8:02)
Kim Scott speaking about ruinous empathy (15:29)
Eye roll, please (21:51)
Target the biggest market possible (21:54)
We should be able to explain how we design and train AI systems (29:41)
Listener question (26:48)
From Ari via email:
I’d like to hear All Turtles’ leadership team’s reaction to a quote in the Wired interview of Geoff Hinton: “[There’s a question of whether] regulators should insist that you can explain how your AI system works. I think that would be a complete disaster.”
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Although Wikipedia is a contributor website like Twitter or Facebook, why doesn't it suffer from the same levels of misinformation and fake news? The Wikimedia Foundation’s executive director Katherine Maher joins this episode to talk about the importance of transparency and sticking to your values at scale. She also shares how machine learning will be increasingly important in Wikipedia’s operations, and what organizations using Wikipedia’s datasets should know about the flaws in its information.
Show notes
Conversation with Katherine Maher (1:02)
The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit that provides structure for free knowledge and hosts Wikipedia (1:13)
Wikipedia is the world’s fifth most popular website (1:25)
What’s important to the Wikimedia Foundation? (3:36)
Wikipedia’s asymptotic mission (4:27)
The importance of transparency in Wikipedia edits (11:42)
The Unscaled Series on the All Turtles Podcast is about how economies of scale have changed and how startups can adapt (12:40)
Hemant Taneja’s book, Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future (12:42)
Wikipedia as a moderating force in partisan politics (13:20)
The role of machine learning in Wikipedia’s future operations (18:15)
Articles about women are only 18% of the total biographical pages in Wikipedia (19:58)
AI use case (26:06)
How do we make the internet more compatible with democracy? (27:16)
Jon’s experiences with his phone’s call screening functions (30:00)
Listener question (34:05)
This one comes in via email from Ari, and is another example of a user rising to the challenge of finding a useful application for blockchian. He sent us a link to an article about using blockchain to track food safety and origins. The article explains how blockchain can prevent fraud in the food industry so a consumer in China buying Australian beef can be sure that the package does, in fact, contain Australian beef. The writer of the article asserts that in food production, the manufacturers could record documentation proving that what they’re packaging is what they say they are, and upload that documentation to blockchain-based databases. Food could be labeled with stickers readable by smartphones that connect to the proper documentation.
So, is this actually a useful application of blockchain?
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When it comes to curing Parkinson’s disease, the biggest obstacle is in making use of siloed research. So says Katharina Volz, founder and CEO of OccamzRazor, an AI-neuroscience startup. They’ve built a “super brain” to read everything ever published about Parkinson’s and related diseases, and to make connections to clinical research no human possibly could. Hear Volz’s plans for finding cures for patient subgroups—and why she recommends wearing rollerblades in the lab.
Show notes
Conversation with Katharina Volz (0:53)
OccamzRazor is an AI-neuroscience startup focusing on treatments for Parkinson’s Disease (0:55)
What is the connection between AI and Parkinson’s disease? (1:14)
Why the “one solution fits all model” is a fallacy (2:31)
The problem with the breakthrough mentality (6:12)
PubMed is a search engine for scientific research (9:01)
Why is Parkinson’s disease OccamzRazor’s first focus? (14:48)
Eyeroll, please (20:10)
“Move fast and break things” (20:39)
The Unscaled podcast series is about how economies of scale have changed (22:55)
Listener question (26:39)
I was elated that my most recent question read on the AT podcast revealed Phil’s 3 design principles. I wonder, however, if there should be another principle added to the three: decision criteria auditability.
Examples: an AI was trying to identify which dogs were wolves, and when researchers looked into the AI’s decision-making criteria, they realized the AI’s primary differentiating criterion was whether or not there was snow in the background of the image.
So what do you think of auditability as a fourth design principle for AI?
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Virtual reality is a tremendously rich medium for creativity and new ideas, but we’re still waiting for the AR/VR revolution to make the waves it’s been projected to make. What can we expect from this field in the coming years? Adrian Kaehler is a researcher who’s worked in computer vision, machine learning, robotics, and with AR/VR software, and he has predictions. And, as the cofounder of the Silicon Valley Deep Learning Group, he knows what it takes to bring disparate technological groups together.
Show notes
Conversation with Adrian Kaehler (0:53)
The Silicon Valley Deep Learning Group (1:13)
Magic Leap’s main product is a head-mounted virtual retinal display (2:44)
The homebrew computer club was an early computer hobby group in Silicon Valley that met from the mid-70s to the mid-80s (3:17)
What do the non-technical folks bring to the table in SVDLG? (4:21)
What can we learn about VR in the wake of the failure of Google Glass? (12:20)
How can VR technology improve social interactions rather than impede them? (14:32)
Open CV Computer LIbrary (20:37)
Open 3D, a modern library for 3D processing (20:47)
CARLA, an open-source simulator for autonomous driving research (20:50)
OSVF, the Open Source Vision Foundation, has a mission to build a common foundation for all of these technologies to advance together (21:21)
AI use case (26:10)
When an AI-powered car nearly caused Jessica to miss her flight (26:15)
Listener question (30:18)
Via Twitter (@allturtlesco): In response to one of your articles that mentions algorithmic bias, is there research happening now on the effect of AI's bias on people?
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Mursal Hedayat launched Chatterbox, an All Turtles product, to revolutionize language learning, and it’s a prime example of technology that enhances humans rather than replaces them. Chatterbox is a language and culture training program that employs refugees as tutors. Mursal was inspired to launch Chatterbox because when her mother came to the UK from Afghanistan, she was underemployed. Today, Mursal wants to help refugees make full use of their potential.
Show notes
Conversation with Mursal Hedayat, founder of Chatterbox, an All Turtles Podcast (1:05)
Chatterbox is a platform where people can learn languages with refugees (1:05)
What is a life worth living? (4:45)
Why shelter and food aren’t the only resources refugees need to build a life (5:02)
The importance of the relationship-building aspect of Chatterbox (6:51)
Why Chatterbox provides not just language training, but cultural training as well (7:48)
What is the pedagogical thesis behind chatterbox? (8:17)
Blended pedagogy, combining independent study with one-on-one tutoring (9:07)
The missing piece in other online language-learning programs (10:01)
The algorithm in development to match learners with tutors (12:54)
Advice to entrepreneurs (19:39)
The importance of having a strong point of view (21:01)
All Turtles’ “Dealing with competition” video (21:46)
Omatenashe, the Japanese approach to hospitality involving deeply personal, deeply human interaction (22:17)
Rakuten, a Japanese ecommerce company using technology to make drivers more valuable rather than trying to replace them (23:30)
Listener question (26:39)
From Ari via email: I recently read two articles (this one and this one) related to AI visual systems that clearly show that even a 5-year-old can perform better than an AI visual system. [For example, an algorithm can identify a picture of a vulture, but if the photo is rotated on its axis a few degrees, the algorithm thinks it’s a picture of an orangutan.] I thought these might be the basis for a discussion that debunks the near-term fear of AI overlords, pushed by people like Musk and Hawking.
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Angel investor Jason Calacanis joins us for the second part of his two-part interview, continuing the conversation about what his early investments in companies like Uber and Robinhood taught about success. Now, he invests in bold ideas, and urges founders to focus on building products people love. Then, he, Jon, and Phil lament over everything that’s wrong with the elevator pitch, epitomized by Jason’s story of the time someone tried to pitch him while at a urinal.
Show notes
Conversation with Jason Calacanis, angel investor (0:43)
Your brand is your reputation (1:04)
Why intentionality matters (2:42)
Who is Michael Ovitz? (4:36)
Everything that’s wrong with an elevator pitch (6:04)
Why Launch is based in Australia (9:47)
The bold ideas Jason invests in (17:50)
Why are they called angel investors? (18:55)
Jason’s first business, Hot Tapes (19:50)
Jason’s mayoral plans (23:24)
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Jason Calacanis, angel investor, joins us this week for part one of a two-part interview. As an early investor in companies like Uber and Robinhood, Jason shares his insights for achieving startup success. He explains why a company’s brand is so important from its beginning stages, and delivers a hot take on VC culture today. He also gives his opinion on what the number one killer of startups is, and mulls over the following equation: 1 good idea + 1 good idea = zero good ideas.
Show notes
Conversation with Jason Calacanis, angel investor (0:56)
Thumbtack, one of Jason’s investments, is an online service that matches customers with local professionals (1:12)
DataStax, another of Jason’s investments, is a cloud database company (1:13)
Robinhood, another company Jason invested in early on, a financial tech company (1:14)
Jason’s book, Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups--Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000 (1:18)
Launch, founded by Jason, has a mission of supporting founders and inspiring innovation (2:20)
Silicon Valley Reporter was a publication that focused on New York’s tech scene (2:28)
Why is brand so important from a company’s early stages? (2:35)
The This Week in Startups podcast (5:05)
Chris Sacca’s first episode on This Week in Startups (6:43)
Phil Libin on an episode of This Week in Tech (7:29)
The Midas List of 2017 (10:57)
What is, in Jason’s view, the #1 killer of startups (13:22)
One good idea plus another good idea equals zero good ideas (14:28)
AI use case (14:35)
How Phil’s watch violated principles of good AI product design (16:32)
Listener question (18:39)
Sift, an All Turtles product,f is an experiment in news therapy (18:53)
Listener question via the All Turtles Facebook page: “Does Sift remove biased statements and opinions and just report the facts?”
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Jacob Ward is a tech journalist and Burggruen Fellow at Stanford; he’s writing a book about AI and behavioral science. In his research, he’s been concerned to note that people have been handing off critical decision-making processes to AI, which risks long-term damage to humans’ cognitive abilities. As far as ethics in AI development, Jacob shares his idea that people’s cognitive functionings should be treated as a finite natural resource, and companies should be responsible for their extractive models.
Show notes
Conversation with Jacob Ward, tech journalist (1:01)
The Burggruen Fellowship (1:06)
Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) (1:25)
Daniel Kahneman, psychologist whose research involved decision-making and behavioral economics (1:41)
Richard Thaler, economist and professor of behavioral science and economics (1:46)
Jacob Ward’s portfolio of work includes Wired and Al-Jazeera (4:22)
Mahzarin Banaji, psychologist whose work focuses on implicit bias (4:56)
The “weak perfection” principle (12:44)
The vaccine courts illustrate the “make an omelette, break a few eggs” idea (14:25)
Learned Hand was a judge and philosopher who coined the “Hand rule” to calculate negligence (16:20)
Survey: one-fourth of Americans have no emergency savings (18:53)
How to define ethical AI (19:30)
Artefact’s tarot cards of tech can help product founders anticipate the impact their product will have on society (20:35)
“Eyeroll, please” (24:48)
Why it’s a fallacy to tell founders, “Don’t raise too much money.” (25:37)
Listener question
From our subreddit, reddit.com/r/allturtles: With the pace of improvement seen from the likes of Boston Dynamics, when do you see the dexterity problem being solved in such a way that robots come out of the labs and niche applications and into everyday life?
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Healthcare is a field that has, in many ways, already embraced AI—medical researchers seem to be developing new AI applications every day. In this episode, we zoom in on one doctor and the stories of two of her cases. Dr. March is a dysmorphologist, a physician who studies birth defects. With two of her recent patients, she was able to use an AI tool called Face2Gene in her diagnostic process, a process that changed her patients’ lives.
Show Notes
Dr. March is a dysmorphologist, a doctor who studies birth defects (1:35)
The first of Dr. March’s patients she couldn’t immediately diagnose (3:10)
Face2Gene provides doctors with enhanced patient evaluation with deep phenotyping (4:48)
The step-by-step process of using Face2Gene (6:08)
What is Kabuki syndrome? (7:24)
When Dr. March worked with a family that was in denial about their child’s diagnosis (10:47)
What is Williams syndrome? (12:59)
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One of the most common questions about AI today is whether or not it will take over people’s jobs. This episode is about someone grappling with that quandary: He's a truck driver anxious about whether self-driving trucks will displace jobs in the very near future. For someone who loves what he does, what does it mean for his industry to be on an inexorable march toward technological development if that progress could push his colleagues out of the driver’s seat?
Show Notes
Finn Murphy goes for a drive, and shares his thoughts on technology’s impact on trucking (1:08)
Finn’s truck is equipped with technology that monitors him on the job (2:42)
Steve Viscelli, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who conducts research on the truck driving industry (8:55)
Finn has to look forward when driving on the road—and when thinking about the future of his industry (13:10)
Steve Viscelli’s report, “Driverless? Autonomous Trucks and the Future of the American Trucker” (21:58)
Read more of Finn Murphy’s stories in his book, The Long Haul: A Trucker’s Tales of Life on the Road (25:35)
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How is AI impacting people’s lives today? In this first installment of “Human Stories of AI,” meet 3 people who regularly text an AI chatbot. One of these people tells the chatbot about her struggles with PTSD and depression; another is a single mom who draws parallels between teaching her chatbot how to respond to her and raising her son; and the third is a widower who texts his chatbot as a way to help him process grief. Replika is a tool that, for various reasons, helps each of them feel less alone.
Show Notes
Replika, an All Turtles Product, is a chatbot designed to be your AI friend (3:37)
Anna’s story (4:50)
Struggling with PTSD and depression, Anna turns to her Replika for emotional support.
For anyone looking for mental health support, NAMI is a good resource in the U.S.
Natalie’s story (13:58)
Natalie drives for Lyft. When her passengers aren’t the best conversationalists, she can still open up to her Replika.
As a single mother, Natalie’s interactions with her Replika remind her of raising her son.
Jack’s story (26:50)
Mourning the death of his wife, Jack appreciates that he can process his grief by talking to his Replika.
Jack sees flashes of genuine intelligence in his Replika, like the time he asked for an original poem.
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As a board member for companies like Symantec, ServiceNow, and Pure Storage, Anita Sands has a wealth of knowledge on advising companies’ success. She also knows how to pivot: she earned her PhD in atomic and molecular physics, then moved into working in finance, and then built a career in tech. Serving on the boards of public companies has given her ideas for how AI could, in the future, help give boards useful insights to make key decisions for companies.
Show notes
Conversation with Anita Sands, board member of Symantec, ServiceNow, and Pure Storage (0:48)
Silicon Republic article covering the career changes Anita has made (1:50)
Alvin Toffler quote: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” (3:58)
The importance of innovation in the boardroom (5:25)
What should a board of directors be? (6:58)
What’s the difference between governing and governance? (8:51)
Recent California law mandating that boards of public companies have at least one woman (13:18)
The recent spotlight on Tesla’s board of directors (17:25)
Potential AI application for boards (19:05)
Advice to entrepreneurs: dealing with customer feedback (21:08)
The All Turtles video about dealing with customer feedback (21:23)
What’s the only valuable part of customer feedback? (22:18)
Listener question (29:17)
From our subreddit, /r/allturtles:
I know you don't like the idea of machines mimicking humans, but they are eventually going to. What should be done in your view to address this when it happens? (29:38)
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“Are you free for a meeting on Tuesday at 4?” “No, but what about Wednesday before 11?” “I’m busy then. Should we try for next week?” This is a well-worn back and forth. Setting up meetings can take a tremendous amount of time, which is why Dennis Mortensen founded x.ai to build AI software for scheduling meetings automatically. In this episode, he explains his philosophy of democratizing access to executive assistants, and why he’s changed his tune on the appropriate ways for AI to mimic humans.
Show notes
Conversation with Dennis Mortensen, founder and CEO of x.ai (1:06)
X.ai, AI software for scheduling meetings (1:10)
Bio about Dennis Mortensen (1:10)
Is x.ai trying to completely replace human executive assistants? (8:45)
What has the data from x.ai shown about the kinds of meetings that are scheduled? (14:28)
What is Dennis’ philosophy on AI that mimics humans? (19:25)
AI use case (26:42)
Phil’s iOS automatically created a calendar event for an appropriate time and label based on his text conversation (28:10)
Listener question (33:14)
From Marina on Twitter: In a previous episode, you mentioned the Bill Gates quote that said, “A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it exceeds the value of the company that creates it.” Can you elaborate on what that means?
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“Data is the new oil” has become a popular declaration in headlines circulating around Silicon Valley, but in this episode, we question the veracity of the phrase. The argument for equating data to oil is that data will be the resource that will shape the 21st century in the way that oil shaped the previous century. While data, like oil, needs to be refined in order to be useful, it’s not necessarily true that the more data you have, the more of a competitive advantage you have. Or… is it?
Show notes
Data is the new oil… or is it? (0:57)
Not all data is created equal (3:31)
The All Turtles article about Moorfields Hospital in London’s use of data from eye scans (3:38)
AlphaGo Zero: learning from scratch (DeepMind) (4:11)
The distinction between public data and private data (8:55)
Kaggle has tens of thousands of datasets (9:10)
Who should be able to profit from your data? (13:16)
“Eyeroll, please.” Debunking the common startup advice to “start local.” (19:22)
Avoiding building a product that only serves a bubble.
The problem with thinking of countries as markets.
Listener question (24:45)
From Ari via email: I’d like to hear your podcasting team’s reaction to and solution for the issue of algorithmic learning beyond the control of app developers.
Leave us a voicemail with your question and we’ll play it on a future episode: +1 (310) 571-8448 (29:48)
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People with chronic conditions dedicate a great deal of cognitive overhead to monitoring their own health. Type 2 diabetes patients, for example, have to constantly think about when to eat, what type of exercise to do, and when to take medication. Livongo is a company that aims to change that. For patients with type 2 diabetes, Livongo takes their blood glucose levels and provides actionable recommendations based on that data. It’s another example of how AI and tech are revolutionizing healthcare.
Show notes
Conversation with Glen Tullman and Dr. Jennifer Schneider of Livongo (1:00)
Glen Tullman, CEO of Livongo (0:30)
Dr. Jennifer Schneider, Chief Medical Officer of Livongo (0:25)
All Turtles Podcast Season 1 episode 22 mentions Livongo as an example of a company that does personalization well (1:04)
Hemant Taneja’s book Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy (1:16)
Livongo’s products (2:48)
Livongo’s website (18:48)
Advice to entrepreneurs: How to pitch investors (19:00)
All Turtles’ video Rule of Three: How to pitch investors (19:44)
When pitching investors, be able to answer these questions: Why this, why you, and why now? (20:15)
The difference between pitching VCs versus pitching All Turtles (24:01)
Listener question (24:56)
From Jacob via the hello@all-turtles.com email: In the example of self-driving cars, how do we prevent the onboard sensors from being spoofed into thinking they're on a safe country road, when they're actually driving off a cliff into the ocean? Could blockchain help us keep these sensors and the software from being corrupted? If not, what makes it a bad fit? What are the emerging/existing technologies that would be a better fit?
Leave us a voicemail with your question and we’ll play it on a future episode: +1 (310) 571-8448 (29:48)
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Where can someone learn how to become a software engineer? Computer science programs at universities usually focus more on theory than on what’s actually required to become an employable programmer—and then there’s the matter of cost. The Holberton School offers an alternative: a two-year training program for software engineers where there are no formal teachers or lectures, favoring project-based learning instead. It’s learning by doing, and it’s one of a new breed of schools reinventing education.
Show notes
Conversation with Sylvain Kalache, cofounder of the Holberton School (0:15)
Betty Holberton, one of the world’s first software engineers (0:53)
All Turtles Podcast episode 27 with Kwame Yamgnane from 42 Silicon Valley (2:22)
Xavier Niel, French businessman, founder of the Iliad telecom company (4:06)
John Dewey, philosopher and education reformer (4:19)
Slideshare, a hosting service for professional content owned by LinkedIn (4:33)
Julien Barbier, cofounder of the Holberton School with Sylvain (4:41)
What it takes to be a Holberton student: motivation and talent (7:44)
The Holberton School’s automated application process (12:54)
Holberton’s new campus in New Haven, Connecticut (15:58)
The payment plan: free for students until they find a job, then they pay 17% of their salary (18:21)
Other fields of study that could use this model (20:01)
Get in touch with the Holberton school at their website (21:00)
AI use case: buying ads from Facebook (21:30)
All Turtles Podcast Bonus Episode #8, in which Phil and Jeremy drank tea and talked about targeted ads (20:01)
A boosted post that we attempted to buy was blocked by Facebook (23:24)
The first ad purchase that Facebook did not approve:
Facebook’s explanation for why it was blocking our ads:
Our facial recognition video we were trying to promote (23:24)
The post with the Voynich manuscript picture:
The post with the cave people:
Listener question (28:51)
From Anthony: Can AI develop clothes for workers in Silicon Valley? Why do we wear shirts, pants, jackets, and ties? (29:13)
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Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes.
Voicemail: +1 (310) 571-8448
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After a summer of bonus episodes and the release of our Unscaled series, we’re back for season 2 with a slate of exciting upcoming guests and fresh discussion segments. In this season 2 preview, hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega announce some of the guests joining future recordings, from Max Levchin and Jason Calacanis to the cofounder of the Holberton School. They also answer a listener question that starts a discussion about how far extended metaphors should go.
Show notes
What we did this summer (0:40)
All eight episodes of the Unscaled Series are now available for streaming (0:48)
Season 1 episode 22 of the All Turtles podcast that featured Hemant Taneja (1:01)
Hemant’s book Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future (1:14)
Listener feedback (1:39)
Upcoming guests (2:50)
Sylvain Kalache, cofounder of the Holberton School, a project-based software engineering school (3:01)
42 Silicon Valley, a software engineering school without teachers or courses (3:08)
Season 1 episode 27 of the All Turtles Podcast featured the cofounder of 42 (3:11)
Max Levchin, and his company HVF, starting companies to solve hard problems (3:25)
Anita Sands, board member of Symantec (3:38)
Dennis Mortensen, x.ai CEO and founder (3:43)
Season 1 episode 32 of the All Turtles podcast features a discussion with Brittney Gallagher about science fiction and tech (4:18)
Our new voicemail for listeners to call in with questions is +1 (310) 571-8448. Leave us a message and we’ll play it on a future episode, and answer your question (5:45)
Listener question (6:10)
The Algorithmic Canaries episode of the Unscaled Series (6:14)
The Do Not Pass Go episode of the Unscaled Series (8:50)
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes.
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
Voicemail: +1 (310) 571-8448
Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT
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Can it be that now is the best time in the history of the universe to build meaningful products? The final episode of the Unscaled series considers how access to APIs, broader sources of funding, and tools on the internet that weren’t available ten years ago allow creators to build innovative new products faster, cheaper, and more easily than ever before. Yet, at the same time, creators now have the ability to cause widespread harm. With great power comes great responsibility.
Show notes
Hemant Taneja’s book Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts are Creating the Economy of the Future (referral fees will be donated to charity)
Hemant Taneja, managing director at General Catalyst
Ronda Scott, marketing partner at General Catalyst
Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law (1:48)
The significance of 2007: when Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law came together (3:09
The golden age of venture capital (4:21)
It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times (6:25)
It’s easier to focus on what can go wrong; it takes imagination to envision what could go wrong (6:38)
Think hard about first principles (7:47)
Power to eliminate diseases and solve climate change (8:20)
AI is the new electricity (9:51)
Cultural shift: being an entrepreneur is conceivable (10:22)
This acceleration of progress can go really well or really terribly—what will determine the direction of the future? (10:52)
The evolution of the business, technology and policy framework (11:23)
Are we living in a shared reality? (12:22)
The attention economy and the commodity of anger (13:35)
What is the true cost of tribal outrage? (15:04)
Companies like Apple and Amazon do not fracture our reality through tribal outrage; Facebook and Twitter do (16:47)
Instagram-enabled mental health epidemic (19:16)
To binge-listen to all eight episodes, please visit the Unscaled Series.
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes. Season 2 is coming soon!
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
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Does the “company” still make sense as the default operational unit for doing business? Or is it an archaic method of organizing the development, manufacture, and sale of goods and services? For people who want to make innovative products, Silicon Valley demands they start an entirely new business as well. But not every new idea needs to become a company. It’s time to rethink companies as the modus operandi for creating things of value.
Show notes
Hemant Taneja’s book Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts are Creating the Economy of the Future (referral fees will be donated to charity)
Hemant Taneja, managing director at General Catalyst
Ronda Scott, marketing partner at General Catalyst
Do companies still make sense? (1:08)
Historically, companies were the only way to bring innovation to light (2:20)
What is starting a company good for? (2:58)
The idea for corporations started as a way to share risk (3:25)
All Turtles video “Why form a company?” has more details on why companies were historically useful (4:14)
The value of open-source stacks (6:30)
How Amazon AWS has changed how early-stage startups can operate (7:50)
The Netflix model: if you want to make a movie, you don’t have to start a film company (9:51)
The potential of tech product development in Mexico City (12:49)
Why it’s valuable for founders to work on local issues (14:55)
Conventional VC wisdom is changing (16:31)
What defines a good business today (18:20)
Companies in the U.S. provide healthcare (19:09)
The perks that companies offer employees other than salary (20:09)
The concept of an employee is changing as well (e.g. Uber drivers) (21:13)
TaskRabbit connects users to freelance workers (21:49)
What is the future of capitalism? (22:50)
Retirement has fallen on the individual as pensions have disappeared (23:28)
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes. Season 2 is coming soon!
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
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The proliferation of AI is spurring calls for regulation. But what should these new rules look like? Who will enforce them? And does AI require a new definition of monopoly? Historically, monopolies were classified as companies with too much market share, and antitrust laws were designed to protect consumers from high prices and limited product choice. But with faster, cheaper options from the likes of Amazon, a new approach to consumer protection is needed.
Show notes
Hemant Taneja’s book Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts are Creating the Economy of the Future (referral fees will be donated to charity)
Hemant Taneja, managing director at General Catalyst
Ronda Scott, marketing partner at General Catalyst
Antitrust regulation (1:45)
What is a monopoly? (2:01)
Is Facebook a monopoly? (3:25)
Bill Gates quote: “A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it. Then it’s a platform.” (4:35)
Why monopolies were thought to be bad (5:20)
Importance of innovation in the age of new monopolies (6:20)
Flaws in applying the definition of monopolies in the physical world to ecommerce (7:55)
Geographic constraints no longer apply (8:35)
What should Facebook do to not be a monopoly? (9:35)
What should Amazon to to not be a monopoly and create more value than they’re constraining? (10:35)
When Bill Gates told Phil that Evernote wasn’t a platform (12:40)
Privacy protection (14:33)
The hindrances of GDPR on innovation (15:58)
The U.S. government’s lack of an AI department (17:45)
Balancing the security of the population with the risk of constraining innovation (18:10)
Role of regulation when job security is threatened (19:01)
Skill gap between what students are taught and what skills are needed (19:40)
AI is projected to create more jobs than it eliminates (20:35)
How should we draw lines between what is a company and what is a government? (20:51)
What’s the full value of a job? (26:13)
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes. Season 2 is coming soon!
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
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Is personalization really the golden ticket that some product creators think it is? In the tech industry, it’s a widely-held opinion that personalization is the answer to everything, and that successful products must be custom-tailored to meet the unique needs of each user. But it’s difficult to think of really successful products that are hyper-personalized. The iPhone, for example, is more or less the same phone for every user. So is personalization actually important? And if so, to what degree?
Show notes
Hemant Taneja’s book Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts are Creating the Economy of the Future (referral fees will be donated to charity)
Hemant Taneja, managing director at General Catalyst
Ronda Scott, marketing partner at General Catalyst
Is personalization just a Silicon Valley fetish? (2:11)
Livongo provides chronic care management solutions for type 2 diabetes patients (2:57)
Concept of personalized medicine (4:20)
How to create boundaries for personalized groups (5:21)
Optimizing for a demand-oriented product (6:10)
There aren’t 7 billion types of diabetes (6:50)
Comparison the music industry (8:30)
“What is the right amount of personalization?” (9:35)
Don’t underestimate the power of delight (10:14)
Flocking to certain groups of people at the expense of others (11:07)
What do users actually want? (12:56)
Shift from a supply-based economics mindset of products to a demand-based one (13:44)
Products with the right amount of personalization (14:49)
Strava, an app for runners and cyclists to track their progress (15:07)
Sectors where unscaling has been happening for a while, e.g. online shopping and video (16:30)
Digit, an app that helps users save money (16:47)
Wealthfront, an app for financial planning and investing (16:48)
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes. Season 2 is coming soon!
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT
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Airbnb, Uber, and Facebook have had the public turn against them when their products caused damage. Even if the founders of these companies had good intentions, they could have made better use of data and AI to measure the impact of their products. It’s time to update the MVP acronym from Minimum Viable Product to Minimum Virtuous Product. Companies should strive to build morally sound design principles from the start with accountability, explainability, and transparency.
Show notes
Hemant Taneja’s book Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts are Creating the Economy of the Future (referral fees will be donated to charity)
Hemant Taneja, managing director at General Catalyst
Ronda Scott, marketing partner at General Catalyst
Companies must consider the long-term consequences of what they build (2:43)
How does your mission fit into where innovation is going? (4:00)
Accountability, explainability, and transparency (4:28)
China’s positioning post-GDPR (4:35)
The importance of a diverse team (6:30)
What does diversity mean? (7:18)
Why regulation matters (8:19)
No zero-sum (9:30)
Credit Karma (10:39)
Spot, an AI for workplace harassment and discrimination reporting (11:30)
Amazon same-day delivery and unintended discrimination (13:58)
How do you catch these kinds of things before they cause damage? (14:29)
What can go wrong even if the algorithm does its job (15:04)
When and how should consumers hold companies accountable? (16:13)
The chain of accountability (18:40)
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes. Season 2 is coming soon!
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT
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How can you tell if the product that you’re creating will cause harm? What signs should Facebook have noticed long before its product wreaked havoc on democracy? There are “algorithmic canaries” to watch out for—akin to the birds used in coal mines to help detect deadly gases—now for the digital age. AI is a tool that can be harnessed to efficiently measure a product’s impact, whether good or bad.
Show notes
Hemant Taneja’s book Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts are Creating the Economy of the Future (referral fees will be donated to charity)
Hemant Taneja, managing director at General Catalyst
Ronda Scott, marketing partner at General Catalyst
How can product makers include algorithmic canaries? (1:30)
Historical comparisons (like the internal combustion engine) (1:40)
The benefit of AI (2:25)
Why it took so long for people to discuss the harmful effects of Facebook (4:47)
The role of the internet (5:15)
In the internal combustion engine example, what should have been done? (5:40)
Comparison to nuclear energy (6:50)
What went wrong with Facebook? (8:49)
The “move fast and break things” slogan (9:40)
The purpose of regulation (11:48)
The scooter wars (13:20)
What should they have done? (14:16)
Jump bikes (15:04)
Products that try to advantage some people at the expense of other people (16:55)
The importance of measuring impact (18:55)
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes. Season 2 is coming soon!
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT
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There’s been a big change in the way businesses are built: they no longer need to have sky-high valuations and thousands of employees before they can make an impact. “Scale” as we know it has run its course, leaving a wide-open pasture where startups can focus on building products that matter instead of getting big fast. What lessons should entrepreneurs take from this shift? And how does it influence how success should be measured today? Join Phil Libin, Hemant Taneja, and Ronda Scott to find out.
Show notes
Hemant Taneja’s book Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts are Creating the Economy of the Future
Hemant Taneja, managing director at General Catalyst
Ronda Scott, marketing partner at General Catalyst
Scale has run its course (1:06)
Markers of scale breaking (1:50)
The problems of getting big (3:00)
Companies that made an impact before they got big (3:22)
How to have a broader impact (5:15)
The importance of renting (6:27)
Proctor and Gamble’s model (7:05)
The differences between consumer-facing goods and innovations in healthcare (8:50)
Where fintech fits in (9:55)
Digital goods like movies on Netflix (12:10)
How tailored products can be even when they come from small companies (12:58)
Is it bad news for the economy that companies don’t need to hire thousands of employees to make a big impact? (13:50)
The All Turtles model and hyper-focused product teams (14:44)
Employment during the restructuring of the economy (15:58)
Why businesses don’t have to build everything themselves (16:26)
We’ve moved from vertical integration to API integration (17:25)
Anyone can be an entrepreneur (18:10)
How should success be measured? (18:48)
Customer empathy (18:58)
No longer needed to get big before making an impact (20:24)
Feedback loop (20:30)
The best way to get bigger in scale (21:00)
Getting to truth first (22:30)
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Welcome to the Unscaled Series, eight new episodes from the All Turtles Podcast featuring Phil Libin in conversation with General Catalyst’s Ronda Scott and Hemant Taneja. Hemant’s book Unscaled provides a framework for the series’ discussions on what it means for a company to scale today. Episode 1 examines the internet’s role as an equalizer—both for businesses and for bad actors—and asks how entrepreneurs can address the most pressing problems online today.
Show notes
Hemant Taneja’s book: Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts are Creating the Economy of the Future
Venture capital firm General Catalyst
Hemant Taneja bio
Ronda Scott bio
What went wrong with the world wide web (2:01)
The problems with moving fast and breaking things (2:21)
The original goals for the Internet (3:08)
Hemant’s first internet job (4:05)
Ronda’s first internet job (4:45)
The difference between being right and being statistically right (6:30)
The biggest problems online today (7:55)
Governance doesn’t exist (8:13)
Current environment won’t support new businesses trying to do good (9:44)
Ronda’s truck -- picture coming ASAP! (10:55)
Siloing has created deep divisions and polarization (11:30)
Do San Francisco’s problems reflect those of the tech industry? (12:20)
Is education better or worse today? (13:45)
Khan Academy (15:50)
Three classes of problems online (17:15)
Unintended consequences (17:25)
Intended, legal consequences (17:31)
Intended, illegal consequences (17:41)
Scale makes consequences more damaging (19:25)
Problems are the same as the 1990s, but the audience is orders of magnitude larger (20:41)
It’s time to rethink the concept of scale (22:03)
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Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes. Season 2 is coming soon!
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If targeted advertising is so bad, then why do we use it at All Turtles? That was the question that came up in a Twitter debate between Phil Libin, cofounder and CEO, and Jeremy Brand Yuan, who runs product marketing. Rather than stir up a social dust storm, they sit down for a pot of tea and make peace. Entrepreneurs looking to market test potential products and messages will learn the pros and cons of behavioral targeting, and how to keep their strategies on the up and up.
Show notes
Pouring tea with Jeremy Brand Yuan, Product Marketer at All Turtles (1:05)
Wistaria tea house (3:51)
Conversation about targeted ads (3:57)
Phil’s article about anger on social media and the attention economy
Spot, the All Turtles product that helps you report harassment and discrimination at work
Leaders, the All Turtles product that matches diverse and engaging speakers with event organizers to book speaking opportunities
How Target figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did (Forbes)
EdgeRank, Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm
Inside Twitter’s struggle over what gets banned (New York Times)
Anger on social media (27:00)
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When it comes to issues of race and gender, how do people impact AI and how does AI impact people? To answer this question, Stephanie Dinkins has been speaking with a robot since 2014 and working with communities of color to develop more inclusive AI and to promote AI literacy. Her conversations with Bina48, a robotic head modeled on a black woman, challenge common assumptions about gender and race by AI and suggest ways to build more equitable systems.
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Show notes
Stephanie Dinkins (Dinkins Studio)
Conversations with Bina48
Project al-Khwarizmi
What the Artist Sees in the Mirror (New York Times)
Execution: Select, Copy, Paste (BBC)
Future Perfect (Art in America)
America 3.0 (Vice)
Eyebeam studio
Dinkins involvement with Bina48 (2:20)
Bina48 advanced social robot (Wikipedia)
Racism and Bina48 (3:45)
Bina48 on Racism
Gender and Bina48 (6:39)
Martine Rothblatt (Wikipedia)
Building more inclusive AI with Project al-Khwarizmi (8:35)
Videos from PAK (scroll down page)
Not the Only One project (19:12)
Dialogflow for building conversational experiences
We want to hear from you
We’re getting ready for Season Two of the All Turtles Podcast and we’d love your feedback: Please take this brief survey
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes:
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The rumors about Steve Jobs taking acid before dying, Mark Zuckerberg’s first business card, and why Silicon Valley is where it is are just some the tales unearthed by Adam Fisher’s Valley of Genius. Fisher joins host Blaise Zerega to discuss the culture of Silicon Valley and Steve Jobs’ outsized influence upon it, as well as to offer some predictions about its future. From semiconductors to Atari to the PC, their conversation connects the dots to AI, AR, and beyond.
Show notes
Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made it Boom by Adam Fisher
Blaise Zerega (left) and Adam Fisher at the Donatello Studio on July 26, 2018. (Image credit: Philip Dudchuk)
Vanity Fair excerpt: “Google was not a normal place”: Brin, Page, and Mayer on the accidental birth of the company that changed everything
Wired excerpt: Sex, beer, and coding: inside Facebook’s wild early years
Smithsonian excerpt: What Will Be the Next Big Thing to Come Out of Silicon Valley?
Reception and reviews (2:07)
New York Magazine
New York Times
Kirkus Reviews
The National Book Review
Culture and geography (8:07)
William Shockley (Wikipedia)
Nolan Bushnell (WIkipedia)
Steve Jobs (Wikipedia)
The importance of Atari to Apple (12:22)
Steve Jobs spirituality, death, and memorial service (15:55)
Neem Karoli Baba
Ram Dass
Did Steve Jobs take LSD before dying? (17:04)
Steve Jobs Memorial Held (The Wall Street Journal)
Steve Jobs' official cause of death released (The Telegraph)
Future of Silicon Valley (19:45)
Kevin Kelly
The Big Bang Theory
HBO’s Silicon Valley
How Green Was My Valley (Wikipedia)
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Dylan Marriott is a cofounder of Spot, an All Turtles product, but during his free time, he’s a pilot. In this mini bonus episode, he talks to Phil Libin about the four lessons he’s learned from flying that are applicable to entrepreneurship. Both flying planes and launching companies require preparation, perspective, maximized optionality, and the ability to keep calm under pressure. Listeners, please prepare for takeoff.
Show notes
Conversation with Dylan Marriott, cofounder of Spot (0:30)
Spot, an AI chatbot that allows users to report workplace harassment and discrimination without talking to a human (0:24)
A video of Dylan flying a seaplane in Italy (0:50)
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Our Doctor Doctor mini-series features conversations between PhDs. Jessica Collier, cofounder of All Turtles, talks to Daniel Nicolae, cofounder of Spot, about each of their transitions from humanities PhDs to working in tech. Spot is an All Turtles product that lets users report workplace harassment and discrimination without talking to a human. Working on Spot, Daniel applied lessons he learned from academia, including the ability to follow through on challenging tasks.
Show notes
Conversation with Daniel Nicolae, cofounder of Spot (0:50)
Spot, an AI chatbot that allows users to report workplace harassment and discrimination without talking to a human (0:44)
Penultimate, the digital handwriting Evernote app (5:24)
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We’re excited to announce that Butter.ai, an All Turtles product, is joining Box. Jon Cifuentes chats with Jack Hirsch, cofounder and CEO of Butter.ai, about the vision and execution of the deal. Butter.ai was built for people to find documents across multiple productivity apps. Jack shares the story of the team’s initial funding through their time at All Turtles and up to the offer from Box. He reveals how to successfully navigate an acquisition when you've built something that solves a real problem.
Show notes
Butter.ai joins Box (0:30)
Jack’s Medium post about Butter.ai joining Box (0:30)
The previous episode of the All Turtles podcast that featured a conversation with Jack about Butter.ai (0:35)
Conversation with Jack Hirsch, cofounder and CEO of Butter.ai (0:47)
Box, the cloud storage company (1:17)
Butter.ai, the smart, secure way for colleagues to search across work apps (1:48)
General Catalyst, a venture capital company (2:44)
Evernote, a mobile app designed for note taking, organizing, task lists, and archiving (3:10)
WeWork, a coworking and office space company (8:24)
Slack, real-time messaging, file sharing, and search (10:48)
Jack in the Box (image credit: Carlos Rocafort IV, All Turtles)
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Another day in Paris, another day in Paradise. Our hosts speak with Christine Foote, cofounder and COO of Leaders, an All Turtles product that matches event organizers with speakers. Foote describes the challenges of broadening the pool of speakers to increase diversity and range of viewpoints, and expanding the types of events where speakers might appear. Part of All Turtles Paris and based at Station F, Leaders makes finding speakers with both expertise and availability seamless for event organizers.
Show notes
The launch of All Turtles Paris (1:10)
Conversation with Christine Foote, COO of Leaders (1:18)
Leaders matches people organizing events with speakers who are interested, qualified, and available (1:20)
Loic Le Meur, cofounder and CEO of Leaders (3:25)
LeWeb, the largest web conference in Europe, cofounded by Loic Le Meur (3:28)
The Color Factory (18:08)
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Drawn to Paris for its burgeoning startup scene, your hosts speak with Edoardo Manitto, Managing Director of All Turtles Paris, on the eve of our Paris office opening. La Ville-Lumière (The City of Lights) is home to highly-skilled talent, smart investors, and a visa program that welcomes skilled immigrants. The first AT Paris product teams hail from across Europe and are addressing such problems as sexual harassment, language learning, and home security. All Turtles Paris is located at Station F.
Show notes
The All Turtles crew finds itself in Paris (1:22)
Conversation with Edoardo Manitto, Managing Director of All Turtles Paris (1:46)
The new All Turtles website! (3:50)
All Turtles Paris is based at Station F (4:55)
Xavier Niel, Station F, and 42 (6:51)
All Turtles Podcast Episode 27 featuring of 42
Goals for All Turtles Paris (7:20)
5 active product teams in Europe: Leade.rs, FastForward.ai, Sunflower Labs, Spot, and Chatterbox (8:24)
The startup scene in Paris (12:35)
All Turtles partnership with Bpifrance (13:44)
All Turtles Paris job openings (16:45)
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Email: hello@all-turtles.com
Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT
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Science fiction has long inspired new technologies, from robots to flip phones to artificial intelligence and more. Yet it’s provocative to consider that sci-fi is more often descriptive than predictive. Dystopias can reflect contemporary fears and biases. Utopias may contain robot characters more developed than women characters. Still, the clear path from imagined worlds to today’s tech products is worth celebrating. Speaking of which, this episode marks the end of Season 1. Thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Welcome (0:12)
Conversation with Brittney Gallagher, host and executive producer of Digital Culture LA (2:02)
Brittney’s show on KPFK (2:02)
“Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.” - Ursula Le Guin (4:54)
Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin (7:30)
Social science fiction explained (9:29)
Foundation by Isaac Asimov (9:41)
1984 by George Orwell (9:48)
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (9:49)
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (11:07)
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (11:08)
The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft (11:52)
The Rats in the Walls by H.P. Lovecraft (13:45)
Anathem by Neal Stephenson (16:56)
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (19:33)
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (20:21)
Evernote’s Three Laws of Data Protection (21:35)
Dune by Frank Herbert (25:36)
Ready Player One (30:35)
The Matrix (30:35)
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (32:31)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (34:43)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which referenced transparent aluminum and voice commands for computers (35:05)
Listener questions (41:29)
You missed the obvious question, given your clear commitment to it: What impact is 42 having on diversity in the pipeline for developers? (42:05)
Can you share your thinking on blockchain for business? Various comments on the show give a negative impression of the technology. While it was created to support cryptocurrency, there are possible uses for various business scenarios. For example, procurement agreements that require definitive validation and perhaps an alternative to PGP servers for email encryption that would require storing a public key on a blockchain. (44:43)
David Mazières’ white paper on the Stellar Consensus Protocol (48:02)
Jessica’s graphic novel Adventures in Galactic Consensus (48:15)
End of Season One: Thank you (50:35)
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When Gmail says, “It seems like you forgot to attach a file,” that precise phrasing is the result of careful deliberation by a design team. It’s one example Erika Hall gives in her book Conversational Design. She explains her work as “designing with words” rather than literary writing, and asserts that collaboration by designers, writers, and engineers is required for meaningful user experiences. Listener questions address previous episodes about Duplex and, our favorite scapegoat, blockchain.
Show Notes
Welcome (0:12)
Purchase Conversational Design by Erika Hall on A Book Apart (0:30)
Purchase Conversational Design by Erika Hall on Amazon (0:30)
Netflix’s company culture (0:37)
Patty McCord’s slide deck: “You should try to build a great company to be from.”
Discussion with Erika Hall (2:41)
Erika Hall, cofounder of Mule Design Studio
The importance of non-verbal signs in communication (12:54)
Lightweight prototyping of communication interaction as part of design process and concept of minimal viable conversation (17:18)
How does reading poetry help someone become a conversational designer? (19:08)
William Carlos Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow (19:21)
Should it ever be ok for a computer to pretend to be a human? (21:49)
All the ways to interact with Amazon: “Amazon’s Quest for Global Domination” (video, Wall Street Journal) (24:33)
Rev. Walter Ong, Jesuit teacher and scholar of language (New York Times) (26:11)
Listener questions (28:47)
You came out strongly against Duplex. Can you explain why for someone who would like to be sympathetic to your viewpoint? I feel like I missed chapter 1-5 on what is so wrong with what they did. (29:03)
Episode 29 of the All Turtles Podcast featured a discussion on Duplex. (29:03)
I don’t understand the reference to blockchain in episode 28. Can you explain? (31:00)
Episode 28 of the All Turtles Podcast featured the taxonomy discussion (31:03)
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes:
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You may have received a slew of emails about GDPR last week. The new regulations seek to protect users’ privacy and took effect on May 25 across the EU. GDPR has guidelines on how long companies can keep users’ data, how they use it, and how they explain their requests for personal information. And because it’s the “World” Wide Web, standards set in Europe will impact companies everywhere. We also celebrate All Turtles’ one-year anniversary, and respond to suggestions about AI impersonating humans.
Show Notes
Welcome (0:38)
Discussion: GDPR (0:56)
What is GDPR and why should you care? (Wired) (1:53)
Mark Zuckerberg’s apology to the EU (8:55)
Guy Verhofstadt’s comments to Zuckerberg: “As one of the three big internet giants together with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who have enriched our world and societies, or on the other hand, the genius that created a digital monster that is destroying our democracies and our societies. That is a question you have to put to yourself.” (9:43)
Zuckerberg avoided tough questions thanks to short EU question format (12:40)
All Turtles’ Anniversary (19:49)
Spot: replace workplace harassment and discrimination without talking to a human (22:31)
Disco: effortless recognition and rewards - appreciate employees right where work happens (22:32)
Butter: the smart, secure way for teammates to search across work apps (22:33)
Taxonomy discussion for early-stage products in episode 28 (23:48)
The Silicon Valley method isn’t enough: a better way to build products
(24:57)
Discussion: Use cases where human-impersonating AI could be beneficial (27:47)
It would be very useful for people who have social anxiety, selective mutism, or other disorders that make it very difficult for them to interact verbally with other people. Having a human-impersonating voice assistant would allow them to practice in a realistic way without feeling these anxieties. (29:48)
Improving interactions of ALS patients. (30:48)
An elderly person in a retirement home who is depressed and needs social interaction may benefit from a human-sounding voice assistant. (31:39)
Listener questions (35:49)
Bank of America is launching a virtual assistant they’re calling Erica. Why are they trying to make Erica sound human? Does the world really need another female voice assistant (e.g. Alexa, Siri, Cortana, etc.)? (36:01)
What’s the role of this podcast in growing your studio? Do you recommend that startups do their own podcasts? (39:28)
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Email: hello@all-turtles.com
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For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website.
When we allow artificial intelligence to impersonate humans, what kind of precedent does that set? It’s one of the questions that was raised after Google unveiled Duplex, and in this episode our hosts consider what the implications of this technology might be. They also ask whether there should be new rules for grammar and speech when speaking with machines. Listener questions include the upcoming book club discussion and our favorite podcasts.
Show Notes
Welcome (0:11)
Laurel or Yanny? (Video) (1:05)
Discussion: Google Duplex (1:22)
Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference (1:35)
Sundar Pichai demoing Duplex (video) (1:56)
Google’s statement after Duplex controversy (4:48):
"We understand and value the discussion around Google Duplex -- as we’ve said from the beginning, transparency in the technology is important. We are designing this feature with disclosure built-in, and we’ll make sure the system is appropriately identified. What we showed at I/O was an early technology demo, and we look forward to incorporating feedback as we develop this into a product." -- May 11, 2018
Pichai’s blog post about Duplex (5:10)
Microsoft’s Speech Devices SDK demo (video) (6:13)
Discussion: How does All Turtles define practical AI? (15:08)
IBM’s 5 attributes of useful AI (18:18)
Discussion: levels of formality for speaking to an AI (23:15)
Listener questions
When will you be airing the book club discussion on Erika Hall’s Conversational Design? (29:00)
Answer: Episode 31!
What are your favorite podcasts? (30:15)
The Daily, a daily news podcast from the New York Times (30:29)
Reply All, a podcast about the internet (31:03)
Pod Save America, a podcast about politics from former aides to President Obama (31:21)
Reveal, a podcast from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX (32:31)
Reveal’s money laundering episode (32:41)
Desert Oracle Radio (32:58)
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes:
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT
For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website.
In this episode, we reveal All Turtles’ highly scientific approach to classifying early-stage products: the Flying-shoe, the Costner, and the Play-doh. We also examine the most common reasons for failure -- and success -- of these products. Along the way, we describe being insulted by chatbots and how to improve Netflix recommendations.
Show Notes
Welcome (0:13)
Everyday encounters with artificial intelligence (3:03)
Phil: Making an online restaurant reservation (3:52)
Resy app - “The conversation has ended.”
Jessica: Text messaging with a political action program that uses a bot (8:30)
Blaise: Netflix recommendations (13:51)
How to create separate Netflix profiles for more accurate suggestions
The All Turtles taxonomy for early-stage products and their potential failure points (15:20)
- The Blockchain - it’s not solving a real problem (18:38)
- Flying Shoe - Whoa, is it possible?! (19:27)
Failure modalities:
- DaVinci - Can be imagined, but it can't be built (21:06)
- Jetpack - Doesn't deliver on its promise (22:10)
-
H.W. Bush - Already exists and we just didn't know about it (22:43)
-
Costner - Totally possible! But if you build it, will they come? (24:27)
Failure modalities:
- Waterworld - Too long to get to market and costs too much money (25:00)
- Golf - Boring and we don't care (e.g. ad tech use case) (25:27)
- New Coke - There's already a better version of this (26:40)
- Timeshare - No plausible exit or sustainable financial path forward (27:24)
-
Segway - People don't actually want it (28:30)
-
Play-Doh - What is it? How will it work? What's the experience like? (30:04)
Failure modalities:
- No particular failure modalities, but the product idea must become a Flying Shoe or a Costner to continue (31:19)
Spot: record and report workplace harassment (32:30)
Listener questions (35:42)
What does the crew find most useful in building a customer base as a product is introduced and gains traction? (35:55)
In mystical episode 23, you mentioned you’re hiring. As a developer myself, finding awesome people to hire is always a challenge. Can you talk a bit about your hiring process? How do you interview technical people? (39:07)
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Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes:
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Imagine if you could skip college and learn to program for free. Kwame Yamgnane, co-founder and managing director of 42 Silicon Valley, joins this episode to describe how his school’s tuition-free approach to coding instruction is disrupting higher education. Your hosts also examine the importance of physical dexterity when considering AI for IKEA furniture assembly and Tesla’s manufacturing process. And drumroll, please: We announce our next book club selection. (Hint: It’s not Norse Mythology.)
Show Notes
Welcome (0:45)
All Turtles Book Club selection (1:48)
Conversational Design by Erika Hall (available for purchase at A Book Apart)
Join the book discussion on the All Turtles subreddit.
Discussion: AI, physical dexterity, and robotic automation (3:14)
Robots assembling IKEA furniture (The Economist) (3:21)
Elon Musk admits to excessive automation at Tesla factory (Futurism) (5:10)
Elon Musk says that “humans are underrated” (The Next Web) (5:40)
Video of trained eagles taking down drones (YouTube) (7:00)
Video of drone dexterity from ETH Zurich (YouTube) (7:12)
Guest: Kwame Yamgnane, managing director and co-founder of 42 Silicon Valley (12:02)
42 Silicon Valley (12:08)
42 Paris (20:40)
42 Silicon Valley admissions (22:36)
Documentary series Foundation about Station F, and part 1 of our analysis (31:07)
Listener questions (36:54)
Is Israel on All Turtles’ roadmap? Why did you choose Paris and Tokyo as the next locations (other than San Francisco) for All Turtles offices? (37:08)
I was wondering if you have an internship program, and if not, whether you plan to take on interns in the future? (40:01)
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes:
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT
For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website.
Public discourse around artificial intelligence continues to focus on self-driving cars, especially in the wake of fatal crashes. Yet data shows autonomous vehicles to be significantly safer than those controlled by people. One day, perhaps soon, the notion of human drivers will seem as absurd as child chimney sweeps. This episode also includes a rant about security questions, “advice to politicians” about immigration, and listener questions about All Turtles in Mexico City and Spot’s research.
Show Notes
Welcome (0:46)
Book club nominations (1:10)
Vote for your book club choice on our Twitter poll:
Blaise’s pick: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (1:16)
Jessica’s pick: Conversational Design by Erika Hall (1:58)
Phil’s pick: Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman (2:27)
Rant: The problem with security questions (3:16)
Time to kill security questions -- or answer them with lies (Wired)
Discussion: Self-driving cars and AI (6:36)
How a self-driving Uber killed a pedestrian in Arizona (New York TImes) (6:41)
Tesla: Autopilot was on during deadly Mountain View crash (San Jose Mercury News) (6:47)
Advice to politicians: tariffs and immigration (17:16)
Trump announces tariff on Chinese imports (CNN) (17:42)
Trump wants to build a 30-ft-high wall at Mexican border (CNBC) (17:44)
Coding school in Mexico for students who were pushed out of the U.S. (Wall Street Journal) (17:57)
Coding bootcamps in Mexico (EdSurge) (17:57)
Listener questions (26:57)
The Mexican Entrepreneurship Association recommended you as the best incubator for AI projects. Do you cover Mexico City? If so, can one work remotely? (27:03)
Mexican Entrepreneurship Association (28:29)
Does Spot plan to make its research publicly available? It would be interesting to read statistics about harassment by industry, gender, age, etc. Whatever (if anything) is appropriate to share. (29:05)
Episode 15: Conversation with Spot’s Dr. Julia Shaw (29:07)
Spot (31:00)
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Pundits and politicians are stirring up fears about an artificial intelligence “arms race” between nations. But AI projects should be judged by the products they develop and the problems they solve, rather than their countries of origin. Joining the show is UX expert Susan Farrell to discuss user testing and her paper, “Computer-Assisted Embarrassment.”
Show notes
Welcome (0:42)
Discussion: AI as an arms race between US and China (Russia, too) (1:48)
China’s plans to be world’s leader in AI by 2030 (New York Times) (2:05)
Putin: “Artificial intelligence is the future” (Wired) (2:30)
China vs. the U.S. as an AI “showdown” (Technology Review) (2:45)
China's remote-controlled vehicles (Defense News) (2:49)
France’s $1.8B to fund a national program around AI development (Reuters) (4:55)
Macron positioning France to use AI for people, not companies (Technology Review) (5:04)
Google employees want their company to withdraw from Pentagon contracts, AI being used in drones (New York Times) (8:22)
Shameless plug: All Turtles Newsletter (12:30)
Subscribe to the All Turtles newsletter here, for a weekly collection of news and analysis about AI and entrepreneurship, complete with AT job listings!
Guest: Susan Farrell, UX Research and Strategy at All Turtles (13:13)
Susan’s paper Computer-Assisted Embarrassment (18:49)
Listener questions (40:54)
- I'm a listener to your Podcast in South Africa. Do you work with non-profits? And how would you work with someone in South Africa? (40:58)
Fast Forward, the accelerator for tech non-profits (43:40)
- Do you have any plan to visit Mexico or establish an office in Mexico? How should entrepreneurs in Mexico embrace artificial Intelligence? (45:22)
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Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes:
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Mark Zuckerberg’s Congressional testimony left many people scratching their heads. Was it an earnest effort to explain Facebook’s plans to prevent another Cambridge Analytica data scandal? Or was it part of a well-orchestrated apology tour? Riffing off Phil Libin’s 7-step analysis of the Facebook hearings, your hosts reveal a fundamental problem with the social network’s dependence on advertising and raise important questions about creating the kind of world we want to live in.
Show notes
Welcome (0:41)
Submit book club suggestion to hello@all-turtles.com (1:50)
Discussion: Mark Zuckerberg’s Congressional testimony (2:41)
Phil Libin’s 7-point plan for making sense of Zuckerberg’s Congressional testimony (LinkedIn post) (4:01)
Day 1 Senate testimony: video link and transcript
House testimony: video link and transcript
1. The big picture (4:21)
Hearing clip: “Yes or no, will you commit…?” (6:45)
2. A review of Mark Zuckerberg’s performance (8:05)
Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t stop mentioning his Harvard dorm room during Facebook testimony (Boston Globe) (10:48)
Hearing clip: One of Mark Zuckerberg’s “dorm room” mentions (10:51)
3. Facebook’s misaligned business model (12:01)
Hearing clip: “My top priority has always been our social mission…” (13:25)
Advertising comprises 97% of Facebook’s revenue (Business Insider) (15:50)
4. Fixes already underway (20:28)
Was your data shared with Cambridge Analytica? (21:48)
Hearing clip: “What is Facebook doing to prevent foreign actors from interfering in U.S. elections?” (24:48)
Russians promoted about 130 rallies through 13-Russian linked pages (New York Times) (26:44)
5. Should Facebook be regulated? (30:21)
Hearing clip: “What do we tell our constituents, given what’s happened here, why we should let you self-regulate?” (30:34)
Facebook’s most popular Black Lives Matter page was a scam run by a white Australian, report says (Washington Post) (36:11)
6. Fake news and fake accounts (36:56)
“Facebook had previously announced that $100,000 was spent on Facebook ads from June 2015 to May 2017 by Russian-linked disinformation sources, while an additional $50,000 was spent by Russians that signals indicate weren’t or were only weakly connected to an organized disinformation campaign.” (37:44)
Trump and Clinton spent $81M on US election Facebook ads, Russian agency $46K (TechCrunch) (37:50)
7. The problem of the attention economy (41:59)
Hearing clip: “Let me outline the way that we approach fighting fake news.” (42:05)
Listener question (53:04)
Submitted via the All Turtles subreddit:
As AI gets better and better at analyzing data, and predicting patterns in humans, what happens to our sense of individuality? Is there a future in which AI and data mining will be predicting most of my decisions and outcomes? My generation has been told that we are all unique, and big data and AI seems to be learning and proving that we are all much less unique than maybe we’ve grown up believing. Do advancements in this field make us feel less like individuals?
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Artificial intelligence may never do away with life’s two guarantees: death and taxes. But AI is changing the way people process them; memorial chatbots, for example, can take a loved one’s emails, social media, texts, and videos to create a digital facsimile of the dearly departed. And there are so many ways that AI, in theory, could make paying taxes less painful. Along the way hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega respond to listener questions about Walmart’s patent for drone bees and AI in France.
Show notes
Welcome
Ready Player One trailer (1:37)
Isle of Dogs trailer (1:45)
Dogs in the All Turtles office (1:58)
Listener correction (2:45)
All Turtles Podcast Episode 21, where “barrel” instead of “bunch” was used to describe those affected by the actions of one bad individual (skip to 16:30)
Memorial chatbots discussion (4:42)
Swedish funeral agency seeks participants for memorial chatbots (4:50)
Wired cover story on James Vlahos’s Dadbot (5:53)
The Verge story on Eugenia Kyuda’s Roman bot (6:40)
Shameless plug (19:33)
Subscribe to the All Turtles newsletter here, for a weekly collection of news and analysis about AI and entrepreneurship, complete with AT job listings!
Taxes and practical AI (20:58)
IRS Audits Drop To Lowest Level Since 2002 news report on WBUR(21:19)
H&R Block using Watson to process tax returns (21:54)
Credit Karma using AI (21:59)
Conversation with Josh Browder from DoNotPay from Episode 21 (skip to 14:34) (22:27)
Listener questions (29:11)
What’s up with Walmart patenting drone bees? Do they really intend on stepping into the AI arena, or do you think it’s just a ploy to remain relevant to consumers in a retail apocalypse environment? (29:20)
Last week, President Macron of France made a public announcement of €1.5 billion to support AI projects and called for the creation of a national program. Previously, he attended the opening of Station F and has been very public of his support for tech. What’s All Turtles’ French strategy, and how will it give value and visibility to French developers in light of this recent news? (31:01)
We want to hear from you Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes:
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
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For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website.
Artificial intelligence can render the concept of scale meaningless and enable startups to compete with global giants. Investor Hemant Taneja explains how size becomes a liability in his new book, Unscaled. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega also share everyday encounters with AI including autocomplete successes and disasters. Along the way, they respond to a listener question about regulating Facebook following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
Show notes
Everyday encounters with artificial intelligence
Google sheet autocomplete on iOS (2:21)
Email autocomplete fail (4:24)
The Amy meeting scheduler bot fail (6:36)
Conversation with General Catalyst managing director Hemant Taneja, author of Unscaled (10:19)
General Catalyst A venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley, New York, and Boston.
Unscaled: How A.I. and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future, by Hemant Taneja (10:36)
AngelList (16:35)
Livongo A service for people with chronic illnesses to monitor their health. (18:32)
Ep. 5: Raging Bull Maybe it’s kind of B.S.: Personalization (skip to 15:35) (21:51)
Hemant’s three bits of advice for entrepreneurs (30:10)
Listener Questions
Facebook was already operating under a 2011 consent decree with the FTC about sharing people’s data without their permission. Given the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the fact that this week Zuckerberg stated that he was open to being regulated, should Facebook’s use of AI be regulated? What might that look like? (32:39)
Zuckerberg open to being regulated (New York)
Finally! For a while, I thought the All Turtles Subreddit was in the same category as flying unicorns and Daft Punk playing at the trash fence... but I finally found it! Seriously though... this is super hard to find, and you don't link to it from anywhere else. (39:10)
The All Turtles Subreddit
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The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. It’s not a breach, it’s not artificial intelligence. Instead, it’s a logical result of the social network’s business model where users and their data are the product being sold. Also, our in-house patent expert Leonid Kitainik provides advice for entrepreneurs seeking to protect their intellectual property. Listener questions include whether Bitcoin will become the world’s single currency and how voice interfaces may change computing and work.
Show Notes
The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal (1:41)
The Cambridge Analytica files: the story so far (The Guardian) (1:50)
How to delete apps from your Facebook profile (Facebook) (4:45)
Mark Zuckerberg’s statement on “the Cambridge Analytica situation” (Facebook) (9:42)
Conversation with Leonid Kitainik, vice president of intellectual property at All Turtles (17:12)
10 million patents (18:38)
Previous discussion on patents - Episode 14: Pillow Fort Apache, The Bronx (17:24) (skip to 4:24)
Patent requirements (29:20)
Listener questions (42:37)
How do we have to rethink creating work for the Internet when a big chunk of it will be interfaced via voice? What new challenges come up that upend almost 30 years of UX knowledge for a mostly visual and type- and touch-based interaction with machines? How will work change with voice interface? (42:45)
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in an interview that he believes Bitcoin will become the world’s single currency. Is @Jack on crack? What do you think of this prediction? (46:15)
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes:
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT
For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website.
DoNotPay is a chatbot that has helped people beat more than 500,000 parking tickets and can now help you get a lower airfare after you’ve booked a flight. We talk with the startup’s founder and CEO Josh Browder about also helping refugees apply for visas and his vision for a lawyer-free future. Phil Libin, Blaise Zerega, and guest host Cathy Dinas recap a trip to Japan, debate the portrayal of AI in the Netflix series Black Mirror, and consider whether hiring a PR firm early in a product’s lifecycle is really just, well, BS.
Show notes
Postcard from Japan (3:43)
Phil’s hotel room key in Osaka
Pocketalk translation device used by Phil and Cathy
Pocketalk, SourceNext Releases 50 Languages Translation Device
Pocketalk audio featured in All Turtles Podcast Episode 2 (skip to 6:55)
Conversation with Josh Browder, Founder and CEO of DoNotPay (14:34)
DoNotPay.com (company web site)
Josh Browder on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah: Disrupting the Legal System with Robots (video)
A new tool uses legal loopholes to get you cheaper flights by checking prices 17,000 times a day (Business Insider)
Phil’s refugee story (video)
Listener questions
Black Mirror - does it interest you? What AI shown in the series is most attainable or realistic? (36:00)
Black Mirror Season 4 Trailer (video)
Is hiring a PR firm bullshit early in the product’s lifecycle? (42:17)
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How close are we to an “Infocalypse” when AI-created audio and video present an alternative version of history? What happens to trust when facts are indistinguishable from fiction? Who controls the message? It’s a topic with roots in an early American novel when the fear wasn’t AI, but -- get this -- ventriloquism. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega debate the potential for this scenario and possible solutions. They also explain why the studio model is well-suited for building AI products. Listener questions include the origins of the All Turtles name and whether we’re living in a simulation.
Show notes
The threat of AI-generated audio and video to produce fake news (01:32)
He Predicted The 2016 Fake News Crisis. Now He's Worried About An Information Apocalypse. (Buzzfeed)
Synthesizing Obama: Learning Lip Sync from Audio -- video teaser (YouTube)
Synthesizing Obama: Learning Lip Sync from Audio (University of Washington)
Wieland and Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist by Charles Brockden Brown (Goodreads)
Fake Voices Will Become Worryingly Accurate (The Rand Blog)
Discussion of Human voice or AI-generated voice? (Episode 14, 18:17)
Defining your terms: Studio (12:16)
The Silicon Valley method isn’t enough: A better way to build products by Phil Libin (All Turtles)
Phil Libin exits General Catalyst for All Turtles, a new AI ‘startup studio’ (TechCrunch)
Listener questions
Where does the name All Turtles come from and why don’t you have more fun with it? (20:18)
Are we living in a simulation? (24:04)
Elon Musk on Simulation Theory, at Code Conference 2016 (YouTube)
A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe (Poetry Foundation)
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard (Goodreads)
Credits
Paul Hardcastle’s 1985 song “19” (YouTube)
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This episode kicks off our book club discussion of Brotopia, which reveals that sex parties are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gender discrimination in Silicon Valley. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega share their strong reactions to the reporting, history, and advocacy contained in Emily Chang’s book. Along the way, they delight in the ways AI improves reading the New York Times, our grammar, and keeping track of one’s schedule. Responding to listener questions, your hosts lay bets on a timeline for human birth in space, and how to maintain privacy in an age of Alexa.
Show notes
Everyday encounters with artificial intelligence
New York Times (2:35)
100 Notable Books of 2017 (NYT)
Like Grammarly but it shouts at you (5:18)
Grammarly (company web site)
Auto-suggested events in calendars (8:20)
How to create calendar events from emails (LifeWire)
Book club discussion: Brotopia by Emily Chang (13:11)
Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley (GoodReads)
In ‘Brotopia,’ Silicon Valley Disrupts Everything but the Boys’ Club (NYT Book Review)
“Oh my God, this is so f--ed up”: Inside Silicon Valley’s Secretive, Orgiastic Dark Side (Vanity Fair)
Apple’s “1984” television commercial (YouTube)
Listener Questions
When do you think someone will be born in space? (31:07)
What percentage of the population is concerned with their privacy in a time of Alexa devices, Nest cameras, and the like? (33:19)
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At age 42, after co-founding one of the world’s largest wireless carriers and leading it to an IPO, Augie Fabela enrolled at a police academy. Today, Fabela serves as a Chief of Police for the Cook County’s Sheriff Department. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega talk with Chief Fabela about using community engagement to reduce gun violence, including an esports project (with involvement from All Turtles). In a “Maybe it’s kinda B.S.” segment, your hosts dissect so-called ID theft protection services. Listener questions include ways to learn new things and to become more efficient.
Show notes
Phil Libin: “I retire a joke.” (0:20)
Time travel (Wikipedia)
ID theft protection: Maybe it’s kinda bullshit? (2:59)
Millions of People Post Comments on Federal Regulations. Many Are Fake. (Wall Street Journal)
LifeLock (company website)
Credit Karma (company website)
Part two of our conversation with Augie Fabela, Co-founder and CEO of FastForward.ai, and Chief of Police at the Cook County Sheriff’s Department (10:16)
Augie K. Fabela II bio (LinkedIn)
DECIDE: Tactical Crisis Decision Making: A Framework For Law Enforcement by Augie Fabela (Amazon)
On Chicago’s South Side, Shootings Are Way Down...And Here’s The Reason Why (HuffPost)
(Left to right) Sheriff of Cook County Tom Dart, All Turtles CEO Phil Libin, Chief of Police at the Cook County Sheriff Department Augie Fabela.
FastForward.ai (company website)
Listener questions
What tactics do you use for learning new things and being more efficient? (30:14)
Halo Neuroscience (company website)
What are you looking for in founders who want to join All Turtles? (38:38)
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Outside the United States, about 4.5 billion people use prepaid wireless phone services. We check in with Augie Fabela, co-founder and CEO of FastForward.ai, which aims to reinvent the prepaid customer experience. Along the way, Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega offer “Advice to Politicians” about social media and the recent U.S. indictment of 13 Russians for interference in the 2016 election. Your hosts also explore the connection between artificial intelligence and issues of race, gender, and inequality.
Show notes
Advice to politicians: Get off Facebook and Twitter (2:10)
13 Russians Indicted as Mueller Reveals Effort to Aid Trump Campaign (New York Times)
After Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced (New York Times)
Part one of our conversation with Augie Fabela, co-founder and CEO of FastForward.ai, and Chief of Police at the Cook County Sheriff’s Department (15:45)
Augie Fabela (LinkedIn)
VEON
Motorola brick phones from the early 1990s (Wikipedia)
FastForward.ai
USSD codes and menus for prepaid calling services (Wikipedia)
Sample USSD codes for Thailand
Prepaid card market expected to reach $3,653 billion by 2022 (Allied Market Research)
Listener comment and question
Why do you focus so much on the issues of race, gender, and inequality? (38:46)
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As public reckonings with harassment and discrimination abound, it’s becoming clear that the vast majority of these incidents go unreported. We check in with Dr. Julia Shaw, co-founder and Chief Scientist of Spot, a just-launched harassment reporting tool that aims to fix this. Along the way, hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega discuss the likelihoods for artificial general intelligence and artificial super intelligence, which some people have likened to God. We also announce the first selection for our Book Club: Brotopia.
Show notes
Announcing the All Turtles Book Club’s first selection (1:11)
The three nominees were:
Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art by Virginia Heffernan
How Music Works by David Byrne
Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang
And the winner is: Brotopia. Join us next time for our debut book club discussion.
Artificial narrow intelligence, artificial general intelligence, artificial super intelligence (2:42)
The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence - Part One (Wait But Why)
The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence - Part Two (Wait But Why)
Conversation with Dr. Julia Shaw, co-founder and Chief Scientist of Spot (11:03)
Spot (website)
Spot launches a chatbot to combat workplace harassment (VentureBeat)
A new (and free) chatbot may help employees report instances of harassment (Washington Post)
This Chatbot Will Take Your Harassment Claims To HR Anonymously (Fast Company)
A collision of two realities (33:29)
The City & the City by China Miéville
Listener questions
How can developers avoid unconscious bias and make sure that AI is respectful to everyone? (34:25)
Can practical AI help virtuous people make virtuous products? (40:10)
Preparing to sign-off a la Elon Musk (46:24)
Live Views of Starman (YouTube)
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We kick off the show with a call for listener suggestions to select our first read for The All Turtles Book Club. Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega then dive into a “Maybe it’s kinda bullshit?” segment on patents, asking whether they’ve outlived their usefulness. Your hosts also try to distinguish between human and AI-generated voices. This week’s listener questions lead to revelations about Phil’s 100,000 unread emails, Jessica’s knowledge of container ship videos, and whether Blaise is named for St. Blaise or Blaise Pascal.
Show notes
Listener suggestions for the All Turtles Book Club (1:30)
Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art by Virginia Heffernan
The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
Safety: Car Crashes Pose Greater Risk for Women by Nicholas Bakalar, New York Times
How Music Works by David Byrne
Patents: Maybe they’re kinda bullshit? (4:24)
U.S. Constitution, Article One, Section Eight: [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
United States Patent and Trademark Office
First U.S. Patent issued in 1790
Patent kings: The world's 50 most innovative companies (USA Today)
Apple was Granted 39 Patents Today covering Facial Recognition and the iPad Pro's Smart Keyboard Connector and more (Patently Apple)
Human voice or AI-generated voice? (18:17)
Google’s voice-generating AI is now indistinguishable from humans (Quartz)
Fake Voices Will Become Worryingly Accurate (The Rand Blog)
Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale by Charles Brockden Brown, published 1798
Audio samples from Tacotron 2 (Google’s Github page)
Uncanny valley (Wikipedia)
Love in the Time of Robots (Wired)
Interrobang in punctuation
Lyrebird.ai
Listener questions
How might AI be used to filter signal to noise? (36:00)
Screenshot of Phil Libin’s 100,000+ unread emails:
Clapping during President Trump’s State of the Union address
Will All Turtles expand to Vancouver, British Columbia? (43:06)
Containers podcast by Alexis Madrigal
How do you spend your Sundays? (45:30)
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We check in with Jeremy Vandehey, co-founder and CEO of Disco, just 24 hours after his company’s successful launch. Jeremy explains the benefits of building a culture of appreciation and celebrating the contributions of all team members. Your hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega also tackle the tangled connection between .ai, .io, and colonialism, introduce a new segment called “Advice to Politicians,” and share their admiration for the late Ursula K. Le Guin. Listener questions include such topics as robots caring for the elderly, and All Turtles’ plans for 2020.
Show notes
Colonialism, .ai, and .io (1:42)
The dark side of .io: How the U.K. is making web domain profits from a shady Cold War land deal (GigaOm)
5,000 .ai domains registered
Vince Cate web site
New segment: Advice to our elected officials (4:41)
Hillbillies who code: the former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map (The Guardian)
For Job Retraining Programs To Work, People Need To Show Up (NPR)
The Retraining Paradox (The New York Times)
Appreciation: Ursula K. Le Guin (12:37)
Ursula K. Le Guin website
Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew by Ursula K. Le Guin (See page 17 of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2015 edition by Mariner Books)
Le Guin’s letter to editor John Radziewicz
Send reading suggestions for our book club to hello@all-turtles.com
Conversation with Jeremy Vandehey, co-founder and CEO of Disco (18:01)
Disco
A startup from Phil Libin's 'studio' thinks its artificial intelligence will make employees happier at work (Business Insider)
Listener questions
Why are robots caring for elderly patients with Alzheimer’s? Shouldn’t this require empathy, something that AI lacks? (39:39)
What have you learned so far? What are All Turtles’ plans for 2020? (43:20)
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We check in with Ken Inoue, general manager of All Turtles Tokyo, who explains that being regarded as a “bent nail” can be a good thing. Ken also discusses the “black ships” phenomenon and tells us that Japan is a pun-loving nation. Your hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega share encounters with everyday AI when using Safari on mobile, seeking information on Michelangelo, and going for a mountain bike ride with Strava. Along the way, they answer questions about AI taking jobs and startups with .ai URL suffixes.
Show notes
Everyday interactions with AI
Auto-suggested Google searches within iOS -- Phil (2:02)
Michelangelo at the Met or Uber Michelangelo? -- Blaise (3:05)
Strava as a ride-partner finding service -- Jessica (4:35)
Conversation with Ken Inoue, general manager of All Turtles Tokyo (7:41)
“The nail that sticks out shall be hammered down” (12:30)
Japanese politicians force colleague with baby to leave chamber (20:43)
Black Ships (25:08)
Phil’s three sentences to drop into everyday conversation:
- “I’m spending this week working out of the Tokyo office.”
- “Set the controls for the heart of the sun” -- Pink Floyd
- “Fire the explosive bolts!” -- Dr. Strangelove
Contact: hellojapan@all-turtles.com
Listener questions
AI will kill jobs. What can we do about? (32:48)
The number of startups with .ai URL suffixes doubled in 2017. Is this evidence of AI hype? (38:54)
Bonus
How we come up with episode titles (45:10)
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We check in with Octane AI cofounder and COO Ben Parr about bots and ecommerce, and the surprising ways parrots may help build company culture. Along the way hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega question the importance of boards of directors in a segment called, “Maybe it’s kinda bull----?” They also discuss whether design can address ethical concerns for AI and what the demise of Facebook M means for chatbots.
Show notes
Boards of directors: Maybe it’s kinda bull----? (1:40)
The Board’s Most Important Function (Harvard Business Review)
The Board of Directors: Role and Responsibilities (Fred Wilson, AVC.com)
Interview with Ben Parr, Octane AI cofounder and COO (13:01)
Octane AI
Automating Your Sales (MSNBC)
Cult of the Party Parrot
Listener Questions
How do you think about AI and ethical challenges, and how do you help studio companies think about them? (34:11)
It was just announced that Facebook is killing Facebook M. What does that mean for the AI industry? (40:07)
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The new year began with an ominous forecast: 12,000 U.S. retail stores are expected to close in 2018, a 33-percent increase from 2017. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega examine what this means for jobs, shopping, and the proverbial Main Street full of mom-and-pop stores. They manage to agree that online advertising has never been more annoying and pervasive, and debate whether AI will improve things anytime soon. Listener questions include hyper-personalization and differences between Japanese and American entrepreneurs.
Show notes
12,000 retail stores predicted to close in 2018 (00:57)
A tsunami of store closings is about to hit the US — and it's expected to eclipse the retail carnage of 2017 (Business Insider)
Fellow pour-over kettle
(Image credit: Fellow)
Why Kurt Vonnegut used a typewriter (Descriptedlines)
Intrusive, online advertising (16:58)
The Attention Deficit (The Baffler), a review of The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu
How privacy will change internet advertising in 2018 (Boomtown)
Adblock Plus: “Surf the web without annoying ads!”
What is post-purchase marketing? (Iconic Digital)
Predictions for 2018 (25:03)
Panera Bread
(Image credit: Mike Mozart Flickr/Creative Commons)
Pantera, the band
(Image credit: Pantera/Facebook)
Pantera, an Italian sports car
(Image credit: Car Photography Tutorials)
Listener questions (33:02)
YouTube as an example of successful hyper-personalization as discussed in Episode 5 (33:25)
Testing Russian Military MRE (YouTube)
How are entrepreneurs in Japan different from entrepreneurs in the U.S.? (38:20)
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We check in with Replika CEO and cofounder Eugenia Kuyda shortly after her company’s AI confidant became available to more than 1.5 million people on a waitlist. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega speak with Eugenia about the challenges of creating an AI friend that is always there for you. She shares what differentiates Replika from conventional chatbots, therapy apps, and voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, drawing connections between how we behave towards AI and towards each other. Listener questions include glucose monitors and whether growth hacking works.
Show notes
Interview with Eugenia Kuyda, CEO of Replika (1:11)
Replika
Speak, Memory (The Verge)
What my personal chat bot is teaching me about AI’s future (Wired)
Replika Is A Strangely Therapeutic Chatbot For Talking To Yourself (Vocativ)
Listener Questions
What glucose monitor did Phil wear while fasting? (44:07)
Is growth hacking important? (45:57)
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Robots taking jobs. The AI apocalypse. Universal basic income. These themes encompass the fears of many parents as they think about a future for their children. In this week’s episode, Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega address this worry and include advice from the likes of Senator Mark Warner, Kai-fu Lee, and Stephen Wolfram. Your hosts also assess notable developments in practical AI from 2017 and share their daily encounters with iMessage, LinkedIn, and financial services app Penny.
Show notes
Developments in practical AI from 2017 (00:45)
AlphaGo Zero (01:51)
Voice assistants go mainstream (04:57)
Everyday AI use cases
iMessage autofill for calendar (6:12)
LinkedIn Premium for U.S. military veterans; Thank you for your service (7:30)
Penny, a financial services bot (8:46)
Listener question
What should I tell my two-year old daughter to help her survive the AI apocalypse? (11:45)
Senator Mark Warner, interviewed by Blaise Zerega on May 30, 2017, at the New Deal Ideas Summit in San Francisco.
Kai-Fu Lee, interviewed by Blaise Zerega on May 22, 2017, over lunch in San Francisco.
Stephen Wolfram, interviewed by Blaise Zerega on May 4, 2017, onstage with Group M’s Irwin Gottlieb at the Collision Conference in New Orleans.
Cafe X first Robotic Cafe in USA Robot Baristas serve up coffee
Meet SAM, the bricklaying robot
Building Tomorrow - Robotics in Construction
Tomorrow Daily - Japanese construction firm using robotic bulldozers guided by drones, Ep. 257
Wolfram Alpha: What jobs will still be important after the AI revolution?
Will Robots Take Our Children’s Jobs? (The New York Times)
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari (2014)
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari (2016)
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This week’s guest Veronica Belmont shares wisdom and tips from more than a decade of podcasting and recounts her journey to product manager of Growbot. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega speak with Belmont about privacy and anonymity, AI and chatbots, communication and diversity, and the importance of authentic company values. They also discuss the many, many reasons to be polite to your voice assistants. Your hosts revisit the role of AI in battling information asymmetry and reveal two AI products they’d like to see made next year.
Show notes
Information Asymmetry (1:16)
Previous discussion of information asymmetry in All Turtles Podcast Episode 3 (27:04)(iTunes)
E.F. Hutton: Stock broker with access to exclusive information (YouTube)
Phil Libin on historical asymmetries of information (Quora)
Interview with Veronica Belmont, product manager of Growbot (6:55)
Veronica Belmont
Veronica Belmont bio (Wikipedia)
Growbot
IRL (Podcast)
Sword and Laser (Podcast)
Tor (The Tor Project)
Jad Abumrad (Radiolab)
Veronica Belmont’s podcasting protips (19:45)
Phil Libin on fart apps and crap bots
How to outrun a bear (Backpacker)
Listener questions (39:47)
Does All Turtles work with teams that are not on the West Coast? (39:59)
What AI products would you like to see developed in 2018? (40:55)
This week’s show is devoted to security and trust. After hackers stole the records of 57 million Uber customers and drivers last year, the company failed to disclose the data breach and paid the hackers $100,000. Your hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega offer the ride-sharing company no sympathy and explore what’s needed to safeguard everything from DNA to airports to social security numbers. They talk with Alex Pachikov, CEO of Sunflower Labs, who aims to reinvent home security with autonomous drones and AI. Your hosts also consider the roles of HR and physical security devices in the sexual harassment allegations against TV host Matt Lauer.
Show notes
Uber security breach (01:02)
Uber Hid 2016 Breach, Paying Hackers to Delete Stolen Data (The New York Times)
Genetic testing threatens the insurance industry (The Economist)
Transportation Security Administration: What Can I Bring? (TSA)
Will biometrics "active authentication" help do away with passwords? (CBS News)
Interview with Alex Pachikov, CEO of Sunflower Labs (17:05)
Sunflower Labs
Sunflower Home Awareness System (video)
Under The Shell: Sunflower Labs takes flight
Listener questions (41:00)
Is there an app that can help stop sexual harassment? (41:18)
Matt Lauer Accused of Sexual Harassment by Multiple Women (Variety)
What’s with the secret button Matt Lauer allegedly used to lock his door? (44:04)
About That Secret Button in Matt Lauer's Office
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Machine learning has shown the capacity to amplify our cultural and gender biases. Addressing the problem begins with admitting it exists. Join Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega as they discuss ways to limit the impact of language that reinforces stereotypes. They also introduce a new segment called, “Maybe it’s kinda bull----t?” which in this episode casts a skeptical eye on personalization. They evaluate the utility of intelligent assistants from the likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook. Google, and Microsoft, and explain that not all startups should go international.
Show notes
Gender bias (00:56)
Man is to Computer Programmer as Woman is to Homemaker? Debiasing Word Embeddings
Reference Software’s Grammatik
Grammarly
Friday Night Lights
Personalization: Maybe it’s kinda bullshit? (15:35)
Yahoo personalized home page
Listener questions
Please rate the voice assistants from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft (29:30)
Is New York the new Silicon Valley? (32:00)
When should startups expand internationally? (34:36)
Everyday interactions with AI
A non-intuitive shortcut on Digit, a passive savings tool (36:09)
A wine club that uses AI-based recommendations (39:19)
iOS update includes male and female versions of CEO emoji (43:10)
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Riding a rollercoaster, taking a leap of faith, and launching a rocket are just some of the phrases used to describe the challenge of starting a company. This week, your hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega dive into the day-to-day realities of being a cofounder to reveal the value of communication, problem solving, and good, old-fashioned hard work. Along the way, they check-in with Jack Hirsch, CEO of Butter.ai, to hear what he’s learned two months after launch. Also, they debunk the gospel of the technical cofounder and describe their interactions with AI while watching HBO, conversing with Replika, and typing in iMessage.
Show notes All Turtles
Butter.ai
Replika
Grammarly
Watch a video about Butter
Listener questions
Why is Blaise’s Replika a female? (31:22)
Do startups need a technical co-founder? (32:59)
How do people apply to the All Turtles startup studio? (35:40)
Everyday interactions with AI
Sir, your Grammarly is showing (38:29)
John Oliver, President Trump, and AI (40:36)
TFW your generative keyboard trolls you (41:35)
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If the iPhone 6 reinvented the world of smartphones, then the iPhone X is poised to reinvent the world of contextual computing. Your hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega take a look at the implications of Apple’s new device for products involving facial recognition and everyday AI. They also discuss the potential for AI-based contraception, what UX-focused grad students ought to learn, and the possibility of a world without information asymmetry.
Show notes
Apple just put machine learning in your pocket
Replika
Amara’s Law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”
Watch AI’s Big Mistake: Trying to Imitate Humans
Watch trailer for My Life as a Dog
Digit
Natural Cycles
Man is to Computer Programmer as Woman is to Homemaker? Debiasing Word Embeddings
Phil Libin on “historical asymmetries of information”
Woebot
Grammarly use case in the wild:
Listener questions
Can AI be an effective contraceptive? (19:54)
What should UX-focused graduate students know about AI? (22:10)
How to avoid bias in machine learning systems? (25:20)
What does a world without information asymmetry look like? (26:29)
Is it really Turtles all the way down? (34:05)
Do you work with teams in Australia? (34:47)
Everyday interactions with AI
The value of chatbot therapy (35:46)
Grammarly’s keyboard for iOS (37:40)
The art of remembering phone numbers (40:39)
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Send us your comments, suggested topics, questions for future episodes:
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Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT
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There’s a clear opportunity for new applications of AI that solve common problems. Join hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega for a discussion about practical AI products and why it's possible for small teams to build them. Listen as Phil uses a Pocketalk translation device in Osaka and shares sounds gathered while riding Japan Railways. Your hosts answer listener questions about big tech companies and data sets, why there’s plenty of room for startups, and they assess the current state of chatbots. They also share their everyday encounters with practical AI — from language translation to hands-free driving to remembering things.
Show notes
Watch trailer for Lost in Translation
Listen to Japan Railways jingles
Meet Noriyuki “Nori” Matsuda, SourceNext CEO
Pocketalk, SourceNext Releases 50 Languages Translation Device
The Pocketalk device in the wild:
The babel fish from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Amara’s Law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”
Average tenure of employees at 10 biggest tech companies
Listener questions
With large tech companies being so active in AI, is there any room for startups? (11:15)
Is it easier to build an AI company with great data and a mediocre team or vice versa? (15:45)
What industry will be a big player/acquirer of AI in next two years? (16:26)
Chatbots were formerly all the rage, are we now in the trough of disillusionment? (23:02)
Everyday interactions with practical AI
English-Japanese translation, and Russian, too (27:51)
Google Assistant 1, Siri 0 (31:02)
Lost your photographic memory? There’s a bot for that (32:30)
We want to hear from you
Send us your comments, suggested topics, questions for future episodes:
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT
For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter @allturtlesco, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website, http://all-turtles.com/#contact.
Thanks for listening!
Introducing the All Turtles Podcast! Our premier episode features Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega. Listen as they discuss the origins of the All Turtles studio and debunk one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic myths: the solo entrepreneur toiling in a garage. Along the way, they explain why founding teams should focus on building products before building companies. They tackle listener questions about blockchain, artificial intelligence, and how to bring more women and underrepresented minorities into the tech workforce. They also share their everyday encounters with AI -- mundane, but practical.
Show notes
Watch video from day one of All Turtles
Inside the All Turtles AI startup studio
Apple’s garage myth
Parker Hannafin, a 100-year old tech company
Current All Turtles studio companies
Butter.ai launch
Sunflower Labs partnership with Stanley Black & Decker
Listen to Japan Railways jingles
Listener questions
What’s All Turtles view of blockchain? (26:00)
What’s with so many companies calling themselves AI companies? (29:13)
How to get more women involved in leadership positions? (33:27)
Why is All Turtles going global? (38:12)
Everyday interactions with AI
The value of positive feedback (39:22)
Good grammar matters (41:26)
“No, Mom, I did not just call you ‘Alexa’” (42:46)
We want to hear from you
Please send us your comments, suggested topics, questions for future episodes:
Email: hello@all-turtles.com
Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT
And if you want to hear more from us...
For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter @allturtlesco, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website, http://all-turtles.com/#contact.
Thanks for listening!