Dave

Lucky enough to make really cool shit with great people. One time I helped make the most popular cooking show in the world.

[Alex Heath @alexeheath]

Sundar Pichai's explanation for Demis Hassabis stepping back from running DeepMind and Jeff Dean leaving Google:

"You're seeing natural evolutions as people spend their time doing things for a while... I feel proud to have worked together with Jeff for a long time. Obviously, he was seminal in his contributions here, and we're excited to see what he does with Discovery Loop.

I would say you're going through a moment in the industry where frontier model development is an all-consuming thing. We've had broad AI research, AGI research, and so on, but frontier model development is all-consuming. It's moving, picking up pace, and it's a very scaled operation, all the way from data and compute to the algorithmic work you do, to managing the teams and your model agents. I think it's become an important job in its entirety.

Demis has obviously been thinking about this moment for a long time. He's particularly interested in both how you go through this frontier moment safely and how you apply it to solve other problems. The work he did with AlphaFold and what we are doing now with Isomorphic are examples of how you can apply AGI to solve other problems... I think he wants to spend more of his time on those things"

[Dave @davidheuff]

Working on the Sources Podcast has been incredibly rewarding. Getting to produce interviews by one of the best in the game, with some of the most interesting guests in the world, certainly makes me and the team look good.

[Alex Heath @alexeheath]

I've worked with @davidheuff and his talented team at Hooked Creators on my podcast for over a year, including the recent relaunch of the feed into Sources. Here he walks through how we approach packaging the show for video in a super thoughtful way.

There is no one-size-fits-all here, but when we relaunched the show with Sam Altman as our first guest in early September, I instinctively knew that I wanted to keep it simple: no montages, no crazy eye-popping thumbnails, and no clickbait titles with ALL CAPS and shock-and-awe verbiage.

It may not get as many explosive views, but I'd rather respect the viewer's intellect, attention, and the focus they choose to give me. It's also just a reflection of my sensibility, which I'm trying to lean into more as I think about season 2 of the show in the new year. Here’s to keeping it simple. https://t.co/ljQr6NYQch

[Alex Heath @alexeheath]

I asked CEO Sundar Pichai why he recently took Google free cash flow negative for the first time to ramp up AI capex. His answer: "It's not just hope."

"To do something like this, you need to be confident on multiple levels. We are fortunate to have early signals from such a diversified opportunity set, all the way from consumer to enterprise. And so we are seeing those robust demand signals.

We have the demand signal for Google itself, which is a cutting-edge enterprise in how we are using AI and adopting it. And you're seeing the capability frontier; then you're able to independently, outside of the demand signal, in some objective way actually assess the capability frontier and see how it's progressing.

So you're getting a firsthand sense of it. You're also getting a sense of the breakthroughs from research, which give you a sense of, 'Okay, will Gemini 5.0 be much better than Argon is?' And the answer is yes. So you're getting all those signals across that layer of the stack.

We also have durable long-term contracts with committed revenue, which we are signing. So it's not just hope. You're planning a book of business as well. So you take all that into account, and you lean in in a responsible, disciplined way, which is what you're doing."

[Eric Newcomer @EricNewcomer]

read bad blood before watching You Can See Everything @mlchild

[Max Child @mlchild]

We saw EVERYTHING and think @aGuyOnMyPhone has the most insightful take...the movie is designed to make you believe Holmes!

[Dave @davidheuff]

Heck of a podcast set.

[Alex Heath @alexeheath]

Qualcomm’s CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle

@cristianoamon on the China vs. US AI sentiment, how AI is changing smartphones and wearables, Qualcomm’s data center strategy, and 6G.

We discuss why he thinks phones aren’t going away, how agents will use our personal context, and why he expects smart glasses to become the biggest category of AI wearables. We also cover differences in consumer AI adoption between China and the US, Qualcomm’s acquisition of Modular to offer developers an alternative to Nvidia’s software, and what 6G could change about the devices we use.

This conversation was recorded live at Qualcomm’s recent Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii.

Timestamps:
00:18 How China and the US see AI
04:33 Should AI development slow down?
07:25 Trump, China, and chip geopolitics
08:25 Why the smartphone market is shrinking
11:15 Memory prices and pent-up demand
13:15 Can cloud agents replace the phone?
18:30 What is an AI smartphone?
25:05 The state of VR and smart glasses
29:30 Is there an iPod moment for wearables?
30:45 Why Qualcomm is building data centers
34:45 Modular and the fight against CUDA lock-in
39:05 What 5G actually changed
42:00 Why 6G is built for AI
45:05 When 6G arrives

Spotify: https://t.co/U88P5uIxzN
YouTube: https://t.co/Tzpfex0Pyl
Substack: https://t.co/EzEPgvU26T
Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/5Z5hNw2PFb

Thanks to the show’s premiere sponsors: @Atlassian, @meetgranola, and @mercury.

[Dave @davidheuff]

We’re putting less emphasis on production value in some of our YouTube work. In most cases, it’s working.

Surprising at first. Now it’s starting to look like a pattern, especially in expert-led content.

More room for the person. Less going on around them.

https://t.co/bpScMcRuZ5

[Eric Newcomer @EricNewcomer]

We're going to showcase the AI 100, the most important private AI technology companies, at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit on Nov 12.

We're excited to produce this list in partnership with @BessemerVP.

https://t.co/KiskkvSYRw

[Alex Heath @alexeheath]

Marc Benioff on the AI boom, SaaSpocalypse, and future of Slack

Salesforce CEO @Benioff and I discuss his recent framemogging at Dreamforce, the state of the SaaSpocalypse, and how Slack is more important than ever in the age of AI.

We also talk about the resurgence of San Francisco, his role in the recent acquisition of Hugging Face, the wealth being created by the IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI, and what he thinks the industry can learn from the social media era.

Timestamps:
00:00 Dreamforce Memes and the AI Hype Cycle
04:36 San Francisco’s AI Comeback
07:24 Why AI Leaders Should Give Back
11:50 AI Safety, Regulation and CEO Responsibility
15:57 Betting on AI Agents and Anthropic
21:10 Is the SaaS Apocalypse Overblown?
28:56 Slack as the Operating System for AI Agents 33:39 How Do You Price AI?
36:56 Headless Salesforce and Unlocking Business Data
40:51 How AI Is Changing TIME and the Media
44:15 The Future of AI Interfaces

Thanks to the show's premier sponsors: @meetgranola, @Atlassian, and @mercury.

[Eric Newcomer @EricNewcomer]

HUGE: Introducing Newcomer’s VC Sentiment Report: Unfiltered Insights from Silicon Valley’s Top Venture Capitalists https://t.co/nx52EOhz16

[Newcomer @NewcomerMedia]

Our summits aren’t about sitting in an audience all day.

They’re about connecting with other top AI founders, investors, and leaders.

Apply now: https://t.co/JbLm9qCwB2

Meet the leaders guiding our curated discussion groups, one of the most popular parts of the day: 🧵👇

[Dave @davidheuff]

@chadneidt I’m hopeful. To me, the best version of this is where we keep creative humans in the equation and provide them with tools to make their lives easier.

[Dave @davidheuff]

We keep trying AI podcast clipping tools. We keep going back to human editors.

Why the shortcut keeps creating more work: https://t.co/LQYJTEaAEI

[Dave @davidheuff]

AI stealing more jobs...

[Matt Wolfe @mreflow]

I found an Etch-A-Sketch emulator online and had Astra take control of knobs and then draw me... lol

Quite impressive actually.

[Dave @davidheuff]

@alexeheath Congrats! Excited to see where this takes you!!

[Alex Heath @alexeheath]

I’m joining Sound Ventures to invest in the tech industry I’ve been covering for the last decade.

Ten years ago, I set out to have a front-row seat to the biggest stories in tech. I’ve sometimes played a part in them through my reporting. Along the way, I’ve gotten to know many of the most influential founders shaping the future. Now I want to back them.

I’ll continue to run Sources independently of my work at Sound. The newsletter is continuing, and I’m investing more in the podcast, which has an amazing roster of guests lined up.

I got into covering Silicon Valley because I’m insatiably curious about what technology makes possible. It’s time to follow my curiosity again. https://t.co/kaclAXwwAL

[Matt Wolfe @mreflow]

I guess we're allowed to talk about it now... Astra has absolutely blown my mind. I did get early access to test it out and it's definitely felt like the biggest leap we've seen in a long time!

I asked it to make me a humanoid wolf in Blender, it used computer use, took control of Blender, and made the wolf in 8-minutes.

I asked it to create a clone of Mega Bonk. It made one of the most visually appealing versions of the game I've gotten so far and, using Ultra mode, it did it in 12-minutes.

I asked it to make a website that would impress me and it built a world simulator where I could terraform the earth, change the weather, plant more trees, etc. and it would show how the changes would likely effect the population. It built that in 17-minutes.

I don't know if the speed is because less people were using it than other models but I've been genuinely impressed by what it's created.

I've done a few other tests... Will share more on my news video that's coming out tomorrow.

[Alex Heath @alexeheath]

shoutout @CNBC for featuring the first episode of the Sources podcast this morning #unsustainablesilliness

[Dave @davidheuff]

Should you pivot your YouTube channel or start a new one?

Subscriber count isn’t the deciding factor. The real question is whether your new content still serves the same viewer for the same underlying reason.

Here’s how to test it before starting over: https://t.co/9Y3yCXv72S

[Dave @davidheuff]

Impressive first episode of the Sources Podcast. Excited to be able to support Alex on this journey.

[Alex Heath @alexeheath]

Sam Altman on OpenAI’s next model and the AI backlash

I recently sat down with Sam for a two-part conversation. We covered a lot of ground: the need to slow down frontier research, alignment concerns, OpenAI's next big model, Astra, competition with Anthropic, his thoughts on an IPO, reaching AGI, consumer hardware, and a lot more.

Timestamps:
00:00 Why OpenAI Slowed Training
08:37 What Alignment Means
15:22 Keeping Humans in Control
24:39 AGI vs. Superintelligence
30:04 OpenAI’s Next Compute Bet
31:47 AI Backlash, Jobs, and Creators
41:31 OpenAI’s Missteps and Refocus
45:47 Astra and Computer-Using Agents
47:42 Regulation and the AI Race
51:24 Merging ChatGPT and Codex
54:22 The AI Compute Bubble
57:07 Recursive Self-Improvement and IPO
58:22 Humanoid Robots and Consumer Devices
1:05:47 Life After Superintelligence

This episode was produced in partnership with @TIME.

Thanks to the show's premier sponsors: @Atlassian, @meetgranola, and @mercury.