Zero Shot

Welcome back to Zero Shot, where Rohin, Praveen, and Brady deliver their takes on new developments in artificial intelligence every Wednesday.This week, Rohin considers how AI will change the way employers hire. With AI-generated responses being the norm, hiring managers see a larger variation between the quality of submitted materials and in-person interviews than ever before. Applicants might need to “show and tell” to demonstrate their expertise. The importance of strong verbal communication, quick response times, and language fluency could also matter more. Then, Praveen takes us through the four seasons of AI and how Deepseek acknowledged a growing gap between closed and open-source language models, which marks the difference between AI development in the US and China. Naturally, Deepseek is building new stuff: an attention mechanism that will be used in its newer models to handle long context more efficiently.Finally, Brady maps out how mobile apps will soon become pipes that feed agents. A new ZTE phone that is steered by an AI agent developed by Bytedance offers a glimpse into the future, where screens matter less and “machine users” emerge. There will need to be new ways of thinking about the metrics that matter—daily active users and session lengths won’t tell us much—and there are other fundamental implications for UI/UX design.Zero Shot’s cover art is generated by AI. Everything else is made by humans.Send us your ideas, critiques, and suggestions at zeroshot@the-ken.com, or drop us a note just to say hi. We love hearing from our listeners.*Additional ReadingWorry, the explainer is deadhttps://www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/sorry-the-explainer-is-dead/Japanese game studio tasks job seekers to draw in front of them to make sure their portfolios aren't AI-madehttps://80.lv/articles/japanese-game-studio-tasks-job-seekers-to-draw-in-front-of-them-to-make-sure-their-portfolios-aren-t-ai-madeWhy does AI write like… that?https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/magazine/chatbot-writing-style.htmlWhat it’s like to interview a software engineer preparing with AIhttps://www.kapwing.com/blog/what-its-like-to-interview-a-software-engineer-preparing-with-ai/“There are four seasons in a year”https://x.com/mehulmpt/status/1995474826031460466DeepSeek-V3.2: Pushing the frontier of open large language modelshttps://arxiv.org/abs/2512.02556Alibaba Cloud founder expects big AI shakeup after OpenAI hypehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0PaVrpFD14  Demo of ByteDance’s AI agent on a ZTE phonehttps://x.com/TaylorOgan/status/1996539953979785521AI browsers aren’t smart enough yet to take over the internethttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-12-08/what-is-agentic-browsing-and-why-are-ai-browsers-not-replacing-chrome-yetWoman hailed as hero for smashing man’s Meta smart glasses on subwayhttps://futurism.com/future-society/woman-hero-smashing-meta-smart-glasses-subwayOpenAI, ARIA, and SEO: Making the web worsehttps://adrianroselli.com/2025/10/openai-aria-and-seo-making-the-web-worse.htmlTrump administration moves to deny visas to factcheckers and content moderatorshttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/trump-administration-us-visa-crackdown

Welcome back to Zero Shot, where Praveen, Brady, and Rohin discuss the biggest moves in artificial intelligence.This week, Brady mulls over the possibility of running a one-human unicorn—an idea whose most vocal proponent is Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO. He references the second season of Shell Game, a podcast where the host is experimenting with building a startup involving AI agent co-founders and colleagues. This brings about larger ethical and philosophical questions, such as whether humans always need to maintain a sense of community and companionship when they’re tackling big goals.Rohin points to Suno’s $250 million fundraise and the platform’s strategy to create, engage, and monetise in the long run. Besides, when it comes to music that is generated from prompts, ownership and intellectual property remain a concern. Suno is positioned as a platform where users can visit and discover new music, which brings to mind Sora, OpenAI’s app for generating short videos. The question is whether users will see Suno as a trusted place that hosts engaging, unique music.Finally, Praveen visits Ilya Sutskever’s appearance on Dwarkesh Podcast. Sutskever was the chief scientist and a co-founder of OpenAI, and makes the point that there is enough compute to prove out almost any idea involving artificial intelligence. This type of work doesn’t require the largest amount of compute, so “we are no longer in the age of scaling; we’re back in the age of research.”Zero Shot’s cover art is generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans.If you have suggestions, critiques, or fresh ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Write to us at zeroshot@the-ken.com, or just drop us a note to say hi.Additional ReadingTega Brain’s Slop Evaderhttps://tegabrain.com/Slop-Evader Low-background steelhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel The Plasticene era: Current uncertainties in estimates of the hazards posed by tiny plastic particles on soils and terrestrial invertebrateshttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969724023957 OpenAI takes stake in Thrive Holdings in latest circular dealhttps://www.ft.com/content/53e2003e-c5c0-42a1-937a-eaea77ac4d41 Accenture dubs 800,000 staff ‘reinventors’ amid shift to AIhttps://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/01/accenture-rebrands-staff-reinventors-ai-artificial-intelligence ‘Google Antigravity just deleted the contents of my whole drive’https://old.reddit.com/r/google_antigravity/comments/1p82or6/google_antigravity_just_deleted_the_contents_of/ Shell Game, Season 2https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shell-game/id1753117762 James Watson and Edward O. Wilson: An Intellectual Ententehttps://www.harvardmagazine.com/2009/09/james-watson-edward-o-wilson-intellectual-entente A.F. Steadman reads the prologue of Skandar and the Unicorn Thiefhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmzH_IcYWQY Suno creates an entire Spotify catalog’s worth of music every two weeks, says investor pitch deck for $250M fundraisehttps://www.billboard.com/pro/suno-creates-spotify-catalog-music-two-weeks-pitch-deck/ Silicon Valley has more companies than ideas – Illya Sutskeverhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNq0PWHIgOw Jack Dorsey funds diVine, a Vine reboot that includes Vine's video archive | TechCrunchhttps://techcrunch.com/2025/11/12/jack-dorsey-funds-divine-a-vine-reboot-that-includes-vines-video-archive/ 

Join Brady Ng, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, and Rohin Dharmakumar of The Ken as they discuss the big ideas in artificial intelligence. You’ll get the macro view, explore their experiments in practical applications, go deeper than the news coverage you’ve seen, and hear about the implications of the latest developments. Nothing is off the table.