Podcast
Short Fuse
Hosted by Short Fuse · EN
Technology and socio-economic big bets
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15episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Zeitgeist
2w ago00:33:42Tap to summarizeIn this episode, Duncan and Ollie explore the concept of the zeitgeist, analyzing various perspectives from AI models and their own insights. They discuss societal trust, technological change, cultural shifts, and potential future scenarios, offering a deep and humorous look at the mood of our times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Musk Sues Open AI, Mythos Locked, Meta Layoffs, Tokenomics, More Robots
Apr 3000:27:56Tap to summarizeMusk is suing OpenAI, Anthropic is keeping Mythos locked behind Project Glasswing, and the age of subsidised AI is ending. We're back after a break to work through the news that piled up.Duncan and Ollie cover the OpenAI lawsuit and what discovery might surface, why Mythos staying behind closed doors is as much an economics story as a safety one, the Opus 4.7 pricing sleight of hand, Meta's keystroke logging and latest round of layoffs, the missing AI productivity gains, and humanoid robots at CES vs Hannover Messe.00:00 Welcome Back and Podcast Overview00:47 Elon Musk vs OpenAI: The Lawsuit03:39 The Future of AI and OpenAI's Challenges07:05 Consumer Preferences in AI: Anthropic vs OpenAI08:35 Meta's AI Strategy and Workforce Concerns10:30 Mythos and Cybersecurity: The Cost of AI Models14:53 The Economics of AI: Subsidies and Costs20:04 Humanoid Robots: CES vs Hannover MesseShort Fuse is a podcast about emerging tech, human behaviour, and cultural movements. Hosts take long and short positions on the stories that matter and defend their reasoning.Visit shortfuseresearch.com for written analysis, the discovery tracker, and bespoke research. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Memory
Mar 2700:32:52Tap to summarizeYou probably won't remember this episode. That's partly the joke, and partly the point. Duncan and Ollie get into what AI is doing to human memory: why it's already unreliable, why offloading recall to a machine might be making it worse, and why you'll eventually stop noticing the difference between a decision you made and one a chatbot/agent made for you. Also: a 17p refund dispute, and Ollie's four-and-a-half-year search for a new car.Long or short on memory? They're both short. The argument is worth hearing anyway. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Short Fuse News: Meta Confused, Vibe Coding, Bernie vs Claude, NVIDIA DLSS5
Mar 2000:38:52Tap to summarizeMeta's VR retreat turns out to be more complicated than the LinkedIn takes suggested. Karpathy vibe-coded a jobs analysis, got ratio'd, and deleted it. Bernie Sanders got Claude to endorse a data centre moratorium, which tells you more about how these models work than it does about data centres. Nvidia's DLSS5 is yassifying your favourite game characters whether you asked for it or not. And the big tech giants signed a voluntary energy pledge at the White House, which is going about as well as the stakeholder capitalism open letter from 2019.Also: the Carey System gets its first official outing, Ollie is still not buying a car, and Duncan nearly gets something right about Jensen Huang. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Education
Mar 1300:42:02Tap to summarizeAre teachers obsolete? Duncan and Ollie place their bets on the future of education in an age of AI tutors, personalised learning, and students who are angrier about AI than you'd expect. From Alpha Schools and their two-hour AI-led curriculum to Duncan's catastrophic one-out-of-ten test score that got a standing ovation from a chatbot, this one gets into the real questions: what is education actually for, who benefits when human teachers get replaced, and does any of this solve the fact that seven years of French lessons produced zero French speakers? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Capitalism
Mar 600:51:47Tap to summarizeWhat happens to capitalism when AI can outproduce 10,000 workers on a single GPU? When white collar jobs vanish, software builds itself, and the middlemen connecting buyers to sellers get replaced? Duncan and Ollie go long and short on the future of the entire economic system, using a viral (and wildly controversial) research report as their launchpad. They cover the barriers standing between today and full AI automation, why developer hiring keeps rising despite coding AI, the hidden RAM crisis driving up the price of everything from phones to cars, and what happens when consumers start pushing back against an infrastructure they never asked for. The answer to whether capitalism survives might be less about technology and more about how greedy, stubborn, and inventive humans turn out to be. Plus, a live AI-generated poem about economic collapse that invents at least one word. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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SHORT FUSE NEWS
Mar 200:20:03Tap to summarizeOllie and Duncan are back with a quick news roundup, from layoffs and market-moving essays to the growing debate around AI safety and government contracts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Leadership
Feb 1200:45:18Tap to summarizeAre human leaders becoming obsolete in the age of AI? Join Duncan and Ollie as they dig into the future of leadership. Discover if AI can truly replace the intuition, inspiration, and moral judgment of human leaders. This episode explores the subtle ways AI is reshaping leadership roles and questions whether our uniquely human traits can keep leadership alive. Perfect for anyone curious about the future of leadership in a tech-driven world. Hit play to find out if the future is leaderless or more human than ever. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Moltbook, AI Catfighting, Silent Speech
Feb 300:40:11Tap to summarizeOn this week's Short Fuse podcast, Duncan and Ollie dive into the latest tech intelligence dashboard to dissect the biggest stories shaking up the industry. From the persistent debates on government surveillance and job displacement to the "catfight" between AI giants, we break down what's hype and what's actually happening.We explore the rise of local AI agents like "MoltBot" and the security nightmares they might bring, alongside Apple's fascinating (and slightly creepy) acquisition of Q.AI for silent speech. Plus, we discuss Elon Musk's latest moves with SpaceX acquiring xAI and what it means for the future of tech valuation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Advertising
Jan 2600:39:15Tap to summarizeOpenAI is finally bringing ads to ChatGPT. In this episode, Duncan and Ollie decide if they are Long or Short on this strategy.The cost of computing power is massive. We discuss whether advertising is the necessary answer for OpenAI or if it fundamentally breaks the utility of the product. The discussion covers the incentives behind the move, the likely impact on user behaviour, and what this signals for the wider industry.We debate if this is a smart commercial play or a sign of trouble.In this episode:Are we Long or Short on ChatGPT ads?The trade-off between user experience and revenue.First principles: Why ad-supported AI might look different than search.Subscribe to Short Fuse for more analysis on tech, culture, and where we are placing our bets. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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