Danny In The Valley

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Rehan Jalil, founder of Securiti, to talk about trying to grab control of data (3:00), the generative AI boom (7:35), growing up in Karachi, Pakistan (10:05), getting one of 200 slots in a top engineering school (14:35), going to America (18:15), the dotcom boom (18:45), his first two companies (21:00), taking advantage of market chaos (25:15), and what he learned from three startups (27:40) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Hany Farid, of UC Berkeley’s School of Information, to talk about the new age of AI (artificial intelligence) misinformation (4:00), the proliferation of new tools (6:40), AI doomerism (9:50), regulation (13:10), history repeating itself (15:40), the AI election (18:20), simple ways to regulate AI (22:45), why imposing rules is easier than the industry would have us believe (28:50), the challenge presented by the open-source approach (30:30), and how the 2024 election could go wrong (34:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Tamir Berliner and Tomer Kahan, founders of Sightful, to talk about inventing the world’s first “augmented reality” laptop (4:30), the end of the screen (8:10), what they learned from Magic Leap (10:30), making technology disappear (12:00), raising money (18:30), the advantages of starting the company in Israel (21:45), Apple’s big announcement (25:00), getting past the “Glasshole” problem (26:15), their backgrounds (29:00), and selling the first 1,000 laptops (31:30) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Manny Medina, chief executive of Outreach, to talk about how artificial intelligence is invading the sales business (2:30), why it will enhance humans (6:10), growing up farming shrimp in Ecuador (7:45), communism (9:30), coming to America (11:45), his original startup idea, and abandoning it (14:50), why his capitalist life does not conflict with his communist upbringing  (18:50), what is happening in the economy (21:30), moving from a tiny apartment (25:20), and the power of belief (32:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Cristobal Valenzuela, founder of Runway, to talk about using AI to edit and create videos (3:00), starting out at art school (6:50), quitting his job and starting the company in 2018 (8:30), his art career (9:30), rushing to raise money before his visa ran out (14:10), the critical breakthroughs (16:45), what “diffusion” is (18:30), the future of film (21:00), zero-cost content (28:30), coming to America from Chile (33:00), and the challenge of recruiting people (36:20). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Stability.ai's founder Emad Mostaque, to talk about whether artificial intelligence (AI) is going to kill us all (3:30), why AI is the most important invention since the internal combustion engine (8:00), the next leap (12:40), the explosion of large language models and chatbots (17:00), why he is being sued (21:40), how AI can improve humans (25:30), how it will serve as the new platform (31:00), how he plans to make money (33:30), growing up in London (35:30), his charity (39:10), London's status as a hub (44:50), the most vulnerable industries (49:10), and his problem with OpenAI (56:10). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Loyal founder Celine Halioua, to talk about extending the life of dogs (3:00), pushing to get first product on market in 2025 (6:10), the regulatory path (10:40), growing up in Texas (15:40), how health anxiety seeded her passion for longevity science (21:00), leaving Oxford after being sexually harassed (25:10), coming to San Francisco to work with Laura Deming on longevity (28:50), choosing to work on dogs (31:30), raising money (39:35), convincing top people to join Loyal (42:30), the development timeline (47:00), and the future of longevity science (50:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Vijay Pande, head of Andreessen Horowitz’s $1.5bn bio fund, to talk about how artificial intelligence is impacting healthcare (3:30), tools that “understand” biology (8:50), trying to eliminate cancer (12:50), trying to get techie founders to get into healthcare (14:25), America’s plunging life expectancy (18:00), the (potential) end of radiology (21:10), AI’s “hallucination" problem in healthcare (25:55), the future of therapy (29:00), putting healthcare on the Moore’s Law curve (33:10), using automation to slash the industry’s costs and inefficiencies (37:30), the next trillion dollar company (40:00), if capitalism is the best way to crack healthcare (45:40), and solving the billing problem(48:35). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Stephen Hsu, founder of SuperFocus.ai, to talk about genetic testing of children (5:15), his new startup SuperFocus (9:15), the hallucination problem for artificial intelligence (11:40), how the Ai revolution could go very badly (17:55), creating an army of AI workers (24:00), how companies are reacting (27:30), starting a company amid the Cambrian explosion of AI companies (32:35), creating AI study buddies (37:00), the “who owns the data” question (43:15), and how education is the tip of the spear in the age of AI (48:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Ben Rapoport to talk about his plan it implant his first brain-computer interface in a human this year (5:00), his background in neurosurgery and electrical engineering (10:30), why BCI’s are ready now (13:30), Precision’s approach (16:45), preventing the device being rejected by the body (23:15), what this device will allow (24:45), restoring sense of touch to paralyzed people (32:55), exoskeletons (32:45), his time at Elon Musk’s Neuralink (41:00), and the dawning age of brain computer interfaces (44:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Matt Welsh, founder of Fixie.ai, to talk about how artificial intelligence will replace human programmers (3:25), its growing capabilities (8:20), the power of natural language prompts (13:20), running the numbers (16:15), historical precedents (21:30), on whether there is a development “brick wall” coming (25:00), why this AI moment has arrived (27:50), whether OpenAI will have a defensible business model (32:30), Fixie’s plan (35:40), a world of bespoke AIs for different industries (41:20), Welsh’s history at Google, Apple and startups (43:50), starting Fixie (46:30), and the societal shift to come (50:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny in the Valley will back next week. Jury duty forced me to cancel all meetings and pods this week! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Parker Conrad, founder and chief executive of Rippling, to talk about getting caught in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (3:30), receiving a call at 5:30 am (8:30), how wide the SVB blast radius was (11:00), moving $130m to JP Morgan in three hours (13:45), raising $500m in a day (17:00), why some people still didn’t get paid (23:40), the growing vulnerabilities of regional banks (30:20), the importance of SVB to tech (32:30), Conrad's experience at Zenefits (37:15), why automating things with software is harder than it seems (42:30), and operating in a slowing economy and tighter funding environment (44:40). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson things on Sean Gourley, founder of Primer AI, to talk about how he got into the industry (3:45), and then getting into counterintelligence (6:40), the image recognition revolution (9:00), raising money from the CIA (11:00), AI in war (16:30), how machines beat human Top Gun pilots (20:00), AI as the “third offset” (22:00), how the US is still living with a Cold War mentality (27:30), the AI arms race with China (30:00), the long ties between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley (34:15), how it has become easier to recruit (37:30), the Chat GPT effect (40:40), the next weapon of mass destruction (45:00), and Tiktok and the information war (48:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Tom Harries to talk about his previous cremation startup (3:20), how he got into human composting (5:00), the problems with burial and cremation (8:20), society’s changing attitude toward funerals (13:50), perfecting the microbial breakdown process (14:50), controlling temperature (21:10), using human remains to reforest land (24:20), raising $10m (27:15), why it takes 45 days to compost a body (33:05), building a household death brand (34:40), and how he got into the death business (36:50). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Stuart Russell, professor at UC Berkeley and one of the world’s leading experts on artificial intelligence (AI), to talk about working in the field for decades (4:00), AI’s Sputnik moment (7:45), why these programmes aren’t very good at learning (13:00), trying to inoculating ourselves against the idea that software is sentient (15:00), why super intelligence will require more breakthroughs (17:20), autonomous weapons (26:15), getting politicians to regulate AI in warfare (30:30), building systems to control intelligent machines (36:20), the self-driving car example (39:45), how he figured out how to beat AlphaGo (43:45), the paper clip example (49:50), and the first AI programme he wrote as a 13-year-old. (55:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Noam Shazeer, founder of Character.ai, to talk about his work at Google (4:00), joining the search giant in 2000 (6:50), what is deep learning (5:10), starting on language models in 2015 (9:10), starting the company in 2021 (10:50), virtual therapists (15:00), monetizing (20:40), what is possible (23:00), growing up coding and doing maths (31:00), winning the international Math Olympiad (32:20), how this compares to the Internet itself (34:30). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Matt LeDucq, founder of Forum Mobility, to talk about drayage (4:25), its health impacts (6:20), starting out in renewable energy twenty years ago (9:10), how drayage is like solar decades ago (12:10), the coming wave of electric lorries (13:30), building giant depots (16:45), the cost question (18:20), and electric grid challenge (20:20), being the tip of the spear (23:25), deciding to start the company (28:50), putting steel in the ground (34:10), learning to be a CEO (39:45), and what the rest of the world is doing (42:10). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Cameron McLain, co-founder of Giant, to talk about why he chose the name (3:05), what he did before starting a venture fund (7:00), moving to America (8:30), dabbling in Buddhism philosophy (10:30), getting into the music industry (12:45), starting and selling a company (15:25), finding good founders (17:30), bringing in Lord Browne as an advisor (24:50), the importance of timing (26:20), raising money right as the pandemic hit (29:40), the climate opportunity (33:15), betting on biology (36:00), and his worst day (41:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Lara Hodgson, founder of NOW, to talk about her previous companies (3:15), how a payment problem led to the launch of Now (8:55), meeting US political star Stacey Abrams (12:15), the Now account (15:15), the origins of the “net 30 “ payment model (22:00), the state of the economy (23:30), her meandering career (28:15), taking advantage of being a women in a male-dominated industry (33:15), focusing on impact rather than your passions (38:00), and why she looks out the window (40:40). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.