Claim OwnershipAI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
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© 2025 AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
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A podcast that explores the good, the bad, and the creepy of artificial intelligence. Weekly longform conversations with key players in the space, ranging from CEOs to artists to philosophers. Exploring the role of AI in film, health care, business, law, therapy, politics, and everything from religion to war.
Featured by Inc. Magazine as one of "4 Ways to Get AI Savvy in 2024," as "Host Jeff Wilser [gives] you a more holistic understanding of AI--such as the moral implications of using it--and his conversations might even spark novel ideas for how you can best use AI in your business."
108 Episodes
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Does AI make us more creative—or quietly replace us? In this episode of AI-Curious, we sit down with Dr. Maya Ackerman—author of Creative Machines: AI, Art, and Us—to probe where human creativity ends and machine creativity begins, and how incentives in Big Tech and venture capital shape the tools we all use. We explore why today’s dominant systems skew “convergent” (safe, samey, oracle-like) instead of “divergent” (surprising, generative), what that means for artists, and how to design...
What does hiring look like when AI is embedded into the world’s largest professional network—and how should leaders, recruiters, and job-seekers adapt? We sit down with Deepak Agarwal, LinkedIn’s Chief AI Officer, for a practical playbook on AI at work: production-grade AI agents for hiring, how semantic job search changes discovery, why “relevance” is the antidote to spammy outreach, and how to build a culture of responsible AI that scales. We unpack where humans stay firmly in the loop—and...
Will GEO replace SEO? (Spoiler alert: Probably!) We dig into how generative engines are reshaping discovery, why executives are already making decisions from AI answers, and what brands should do now to show up accurately and credibly in AI results. In this episode of AI-Curious, we sit down with Curtis Sparrer, co-founder and principal at Bospar PR (and president of the San Francisco Press Club). Curtis has been experimenting across models, building a GEO toolkit (“Audit-E”), and advising co...
What happens when “space robots” stop being sci-fi set dressing and start punching a clock? We dig into a new breed of microgravity robots that do the unglamorous work—so astronauts can do more science. In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Ethan Barajas (CEO) and Jamie Palmer (CTO), co-founders of Icarus Robots, fresh out of stealth with a $6M raise. Their pitch is simple and radical: put agile, teleoperated robots insidespacecraft like the ISS to handle cargo, inspections, and mainten...
What if “AI teammates” aren’t sci-fi at all, but the next mundane tool that quietly kills Monday dread? In this episode of AI-Curious, we sit down with David Shim, CEO of Read.ai, to unpack what workers actually want from AI, how teams are adopting agents from the bottom up, and what a practical “digital twin” might do at work—minus the Black Mirror vibes. We cover fast-path ROI (meeting notes → action items), the shift from “prompts” to ambient workflows, and why the most valuable corporate ...
AI is often framed as a climate problem—energy-hungry data centers, ballooning carbon emissions, and talk of nuclear power just to keep the servers running. But could AI also become part of the solution? In this episode of AI-Curious, we sit down with Josh Dorfman—climate tech entrepreneur and host of Supercool—to explore how artificial intelligence might help tackle climate change. Josh doesn’t offer hand-wavy promises. Instead, we dive into concrete examples where AI is already making a dif...
Can artificial intelligence actually be funny, or is humor still a human stronghold? We explore that question with Eric Doyle, co-founder of ComedyBytes, a Brooklyn-based multimedia comedy show where AI and humans face off in roast battles, dating games, and other interactive formats. Doyle combines the craft of stand-up with the tools of generative AI, building AI characters like “AI Kanye West” or “AI Sarah Silverman” that deliver pre-scripted jokes in real time. In this episode of AI-Curio...
Is Kant the new code? If AI can write, code, and even plan, which human skills suddenly become scarce—and valuable? In this conversation with Robert Capps (former Editorial Director of Wired, contributor to The New York Times Magazine), we dive into his widely shared NYT Mag feature, “AI Might Take Your Job. Here Are 22 New Ones It Could Give You.” We unpack the three big buckets of new work he sees emerging—Trust, Integrators, and Taste—and explore why philosophy majors, auditors, and “AI tr...
Could AI actually improve public education? Not just automate it, but make it more personalized, more equitable — and even more human? We explore this possibility with Dr. Michael Everest, founder of edYOU, an AI tutoring platform being piloted in a Denver-area school district. While many worry that AI could become a shortcut for students to avoid real learning, Everest argues the opposite — that AI can reinforce understanding, boost confidence, and offer 24/7 support tailored to each student...
What happens when AI becomes a co-pilot for writers, researchers, and journalists — not in theory, but in practice? In this episode of AI-Curious, we speak with Bill Wasik, Editorial Director of The New York Times Magazine, who recently oversaw their special issue, “Learning to Live with AI.” We explore how AI is already transforming journalism, nonfiction writing, and historical research — and why the most interesting impacts may come not from content creation, but from how we discover, orga...
What are the top minds in AI actually talking about behind closed doors? At the HumanX conference—arguably the flagship event in the AI ecosystem—hundreds of speakers (from CEOs to policymakers to Kamala Harris) shared their unfiltered thoughts on the state and future of artificial intelligence. But with so much happening at once, even attendees couldn’t absorb it all. So HumanX did something novel: they partnered with Read.AI to record and synthesize every single session. The result? A real-...
What if we’re all chasing the wrong kind of AI? Dr. Ruchir Puri, Chief Scientist of IBM, argues that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is overrated—and that we should be focusing instead on AUI: Artificial Useful Intelligence. This is a pragmatic, business-focused approach to AI that emphasizes real-world value, measurable outcomes, and implementable solutions. In this episode of AI-Curious, we explore what AUI actually looks like in practice. We discuss how to bring AI into your organiza...
What exactly is AGI—Artificial General Intelligence—and how close are we to achieving it? Will it transform the world for better or worse? And how can we even tell when true AGI has arrived? In this episode of AI Curious, we sit down with Dr. Ben Goertzel, the iconic computer scientist who coined the term AGI more than 20 years ago. As the founder of SingularityNET and the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, Ben has spent decades thinking about the architecture, risks, and potential of gen...
What happens when an AI agent says something harmful, or makes a costly mistake? Who’s responsible—and how can we even know who the agent belongs to in the first place? In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Evin McMullen, CEO and co-founder of Billions.Network, a startup building cryptographic trust infrastructure to verify the identity and accountability of AI agents and digital content. We explore the unsettling rise of synthetic media and deepfakes, why identity verification is found...
What exactly are AI agents doing out in the wild — and are they actually helping sales teams, or just adding noise? We explore the fast-evolving world of AI sales agents with a real-world case study from Alta, a startup deploying purpose-built AI agents named Katie, Alex, and Luna. In this episode of AI-Curious, we speak with Stav Levi-Neumark, Alta’s CEO and co-founder, about how agentic AI is already transforming sales workflows—from prospecting to pipeline generation to inbound response. W...
What does it mean to grow up in a world where AI is simply… normal? In this episode of AI-Curious, we're joined by Matt Britton, branding strategist and author of Generation AI: Why Generation Alpha and the Age of AI Will Change Everything, for a wide-ranging discussion about how artificial intelligence is transforming childhood, education, branding, healthcare, and the very fabric of society. We look at how Gen Alpha will interact with AI “sidekicks,” how the role of brands might erode in a ...
How is AI reshaping higher education? What do students actually need to learn in the age of large language models? And why might skills-based learning soon rival or even replace the traditional degree? In this episode of AI-Curious, we speak with Ben Tasker, "Dean of AI" at Southern New Hampshire University. Ben walks us through the structure of his “applied AI” curriculum, how his team uses AI to build courses in just 14 days, and why prompt engineering is becoming an essential literac...
Millions of people are finding companionship -- or even love -- with AI bots. (The heart wants what the heart wants.) In this episode of AI-Curious, we dive into the strange, sticky, and sometimes surprisingly emotional world of AI romantic partners. We’re joined by author and historian Jennifer Wright, who recently wrote a sharp op-ed for The Washington Post titled “Please Break Up With Your AI Lover.” While millions are already turning to AI bots for companionship, Jennifer makes a compelli...
LLMs are *so* 2024. Say hello to LGMs. In this episode of AI-Curious, we explore a side of AI that rarely gets the spotlight: Large Geospatial Models (LGMs). You’ve heard of LLMs — now meet their real-world counterpart. LGMs could power everything from autonomous vehicles and urban planning to smarter first-response systems and industrial logistics. We speak with Bill Lakeland, CEO of Spexi, a company building a decentralized fleet of self-flying drones that are actively mapping the planet — ...
What's *actually* happening with AI in the halls of the C-suite? In this episode of AI-Curious, we speak with Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice and former CMO of Salesforce, about how business leaders are adapting to the rapid rise of AI in the workplace. We explore what it means to lead during a time of disruption, how AI agents and digital workers are already being deployed across organizations, and why the biggest challenge is often not the tech—but the mindset. Sarah shares her perspective o...
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