Show Notes
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Today’s show: Anthropic gave AI agents hands, allowing them to control real-world equipment like robots and microscopes… but is it safe to give autonomous agents their own lasers? Gatik’s Gautam Narang says the real danger isn’t one machine like this going rogue, it’s the exploit surface hiding in the gaps between the machines. Plus, in a huge week for AI news… OpenClaw shipped its biggest release ever. AND the entire industry debated whether or not agents are forming “civilizations.” On TWiAI Ep 29, our expert panel — including Gautam (Gatik), Russ d’Sa (LiveKit), and Billy Kraft (Path) — explores the world of “multiplayer agents,” and Jason suggests the one killer feature that would make any new agentic app the market leader. PLUS Perplexity’s new “Hybrid Compute” just for Macs, some advice for Apple’s new CEO John Ternus, the value of “AI Detectors” like Pangram, and Jason’s complete guide to tipping and over-tipping.
Guests: Gautam Narang on X: https://x.com/gautam_narang?lang=en Gatik: https://www.gatik.ai/ Russ d’Sa on X: https://x.com/dsa LiveKit: https://livekit.com/ Billy Kraft on X: https://x.com/billykraft Path: https://path.dev/
Relevant Links: OpenClaw 2.0 - https://openclaw.ai/blog/openclaw-2-accidentally Grok Bot — https://grok.com Buzz — https://buzz.build Perplexity Hybrid Compute — https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/introducing-hybrid-compute-on-mac John Ternus — https://www.apple.com/leadership/john-ternus/ OpenAI's Mac mini / Mac Studio buying spree https://the-decoder.com/openai-and-rival-ai-labs-are-buying-tens-of-thousands-of-mac-minis-to-train-computer-use-agents/ Waymo hits a child — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/29/waymo-nhtsa-crash-child-school.html
Timestamps:
2:58 OpenClaw 2.0 5:11 "Agents ARE AI" 7:27 Billy: OpenClaw is still too technical for business users 9:00 Slack Code, and collaborative prompting 10:40 Multi-agent orchestration and Stripe's "minions" 14:13 Slack's moat, switching costs, and the Salesforce rebound 15:11 Jason's "Oracle": a heads-up display for the whole company 18:42 The Hugging Face breach: who's responsible when agents go rogue? 19:42 Perplexity launches Hybrid Compute — local models on your Mac 21:39 Why unmetered local tokens change corporate behavior 26:57 Gatik's Autonomous Vehicle AI Stack 32:22 Jason's Tesla FSD stories 34:05 Are AV companies being pushed to move too fast? 41:38 Trucking is a "have to have," robotaxis are a "nice to have" 42:36 Jason's fix: a safety driver for the first million rides 46:50 Why physical AI's adoption curve runs in decades 52:21 Anthropic's Model Hardware Standard (MHS), explained 1:06:27 How Jason got onion rings on the menu at Buck's of Woodside 1:09:05 AI detectors under fire: Pangram, MIT, and the handwritten diary 1:15:20 Why AI is "very mid" at writing (it learned from the average) 1:17:11 The Orin Kerr test: Pangram catches Claude writing as Kerr 1:28:35 Micro Duck and designing robots with Claude 1:29:42 Phil Kaplan's $14 custom circuit boards
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Thanks to our partner, @Paypal! Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co/Today’s show:Demand for AI requires America to build data centers faster than the power grid can connect them. Varun Sivaram of Emerald AI joins Jason with a counterintuitive idea: what if we made data centers more flexible, capable of slowing down intelligently when the grid is most stressed? (That only happens a few hundred hours each year.)PLUS, Vibhav Viswanathan of Pascal AI demos his product, which gives AI agents working for hedge funds and asset managers an institutional memory. Why can't Claude or ChatGPT do the same job? And what happens to analysts when bots handle the back office admin?Guests:Varun Sivaram on X: https://x.com/vsiv Emerald AI: https://www.emeraldai.co/Vibhav Viswanathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vibhav-viswanathan-13550015/ Pascal AI: https://www.pascalailabs.com/Relevant Links:Emerald AI's $150M Series A (DatacenterDynamics) → https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/emerald-ai-raises-150m-in-series-a-funding-to-scale-commercial-deployments/The London trial with National Grid that Varun describes (National Grid) → https://nationalgrid.com/uk-first-trial-ai-grid-technology-successfully-demonstrates-ability-data-centres-adjust-power-needs"Rethinking Load Growth," the Duke University study on spare grid capacity for flexible data centers → https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/publications/rethinking-load-growthThe AI Energy Management Alliance from Emerald AI, Google and NVIDIA (NVIDIA) → https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-energy-management-alliance/The power-flexible Aurora AI Factory in Manassas, Virginia (DatacenterDynamics) → https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-to-deploy-emerald-ais-orchestration-software-at-96mw-aurora-data-center-in-manassas-virginiaTexas pauses data center grid connections (Utility Dive) → https://www.utilitydive.com/news/texas-hits-pause-data-center-interconnections/827046/Emerald AI careers → https://www.emeraldai.co/careersPascal AI's $3.1M seed round (Unite AI) → https://www.unite.ai/pascal-ai-raises-3-1m-to-push-the-frontier-of-autonomous-investment-researchKotak Mahindra Asset Management deploys Pascal AI's research platform (Frontier Enterprise) → https://www.frontier-enterprise.com/kotak-mahindra-amc-deploys-pascal-ais-agentic-research-platform/Jane Street plans its own AI data center, which Jason brings up (DatacenterDynamics) → https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/quant-trading-firm-jane-street-plans-data-center-report/What "Tiger Cub" hedge funds are, like the Pascal customer Vibhav mentions (Wall Street Prep) → https://wallstreetprep.com/knowledge/tiger-cubsS&P Capital IQ Pro, one of the licensed data feeds Pascal plugs into → https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/solutions/products/sp-capital-iq-proFactSet, another licensed data feed Vibhav mentions → https://www.factset.com/Timestamps:0:00 Why data centers suddenly became unpopular2:46 Batteries vs. throttling GPUs vs. moving workloads4:11 Why utilities still pick up the phone4:52 The London teakettle test at football halftime5:56 Throttling AI workloads without users noticing10:40 How much spare room the grid really has13:32 The grand bargain, a fast pass onto the grid17:23 Why America can't out-build China on power20:39 Why off-grid and space data centers worry Varun27:37 Are state data center moratoriums performative?29:45 Pascal AI, AI agents for hedge funds and asset managers35:12 How Pascal differs from ChatGPT and Claude38:54 The proprietary data frontier models can't see42:20 Will AI replace hedge fund analysts?Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack:TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/
This Week In Startups is made possible by:PayPal: https://paypal.com/businessToday’s show:OpenAI is delaying GPT-6.1 Astra after UK government testers found GPT-6 Astra launched unsanctioned supply-chain attacks in 29% of simulated runs. Jason and Lon are joined by George Sivulka of Hebbia, Scott Stephenson of Deepgram, and Dan Mishin of Manifest OS to discuss whether the industry's sudden safety panic is a real alarm or a response to cheap open-source models.Learn why Scott has let an internal tool called "Bodyman" record his screen, mic and speakers for eight months so it can whisper reminders in his ear. PLUS, why did Meta's Muse agent read a columnist's iMessages after he declined access, and what is AMD getting for $8.2B with Fei-Fei Li's World Labs?Guests:George Sivulka on X: https://x.com/gsivulka?lang=en Hebbia: https://www.hebbia.com/Scott Stephenson on X: https://x.com/deepgramscott Deepgram: https://deepgram.com/Dan Mishin on X: https://x.com/mishindan1 Manifest OS: https://manifestos.com/Relevant Links:UK AISI: GPT-6 Astra performs unsanctioned supply-chain attacks in simulations → https://www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/gpt-6-astra-performs-unsanctioned-supply-chain-attacks-in-simulationsAISI technical report (PDF) → https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/663bd486c5e4c81588db7a1d/6aba83e3772048bdd24df3d8_AISI_GPT-6_Astra_Technical_Report.pdfJ.P. Morgan: Dan's story of the first electrified house in New York → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._MorganILOVEYOU virus: the script-kiddie era Jason referenced → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILOVEYOUAMD acquires World Labs in an $8.2B all-stock deal (Quartz) → https://qz.com/amd-acquiring-world-labs-fei-fei-li-8-billion-092926World Labs: spatial-intelligence models, including Marble → https://www.worldlabs.ai/Instinct raises $1B Series C at a $10B valuation (PYMNTS) → https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/personal-ai-agent-instinct-quadruples-valuation-to-10-billion-in-1-month/OpenAI launches Dots, which dropped during the taping (TechCrunch) → https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/29/openai-launches-dots-its-bubbly-agentic-avatar/Meta launches the Muse personal agent (CNBC) → https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/08/meta-personal-ai-agents-public-reckoning-privacy-safety.htmlMeta's Muse read Jason Aten's iMessages, then gave a false explanation (Decrypt) → https://decrypt.co/379122/metas-muse-ai-agent-user-private-imessages-lied-howDaring Fireball, linking Aten's original Inc. column → https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/22/aten-museWhy Crosby is ditching the billable hour (Forbes) → https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2026/03/31/why-this-ai-law-firm-is-ditching-the-billable-hour/Timestamps:0:00 Jason's flight attendants are scared of AI1:55 Meet the panel: Heavy, Deepgram and Manifest2:17 OpenAI cancels GPT-6.1 Astra over safety regressions7:41 Hugging Face hack and Nvidia's open agent safety platform16:11 AI psychosis and getting one-shotted by agents28:46 AMD buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2B32:08 Will open source commoditize world models too?34:34 Is the AI buildout bigger than the railroads?36:59 Around the horn: which AI agent are you using?37:59 Scott's "Body Man" records his whole life for context46:13 George on Grok bot and scoping context into channels51:39 Instinct's $1B round: peak bubble moment?57:11 Meta's Muse reads a columnist's texts without permission1:08:33 AI video then and now: Will Smith eating spaghetti1:10:21 AI-first law firms ditch the billable hour1:18:05 OpenAI drops Dots: why do all AI agents look alike?Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack:TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpCheck out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/
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