No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups - Conviction

Latest Episodes:

Why Platforms Win and Point Solutions Fail with Rippling CEO Parker Conrad Jul 10, 2025

Show notes

As a three-time founder, Parker Conrad has one piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs—don’t do it. The Rippling co-founder and CEO joins Sarah Guo to talk about what he learned from the crash at Zenefits, why most advice to founders is wrong, and how building a real platform—not a point solution—is the only way to win in SaaS. The two get into founder psychology, the myth of learning from failure, and what true ownership looks like inside a company. He also shares why AI won’t shrink teams anytime soon, what people misunderstand about vertical software, and why ambition trumps efficiency with long-lasting companies.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Parker Conrad

00:33 Lessons from Zenefits to Rippling

01:54 The Psychology of Founding a Company

07:56 Rippling's Ambitious Vision

10:41 Building a Platform Company

15:05 Challenges and Strategies in Scaling

30:36 AI's Impact on Software Development

42:06 Public vs. Private: Rippling's Future

44:19 Conclusion

Chai-2: The AI Model Accelerating Drug Discovery with Chai Discovery Co-Founders Jack Dent and Joshua Meier Jul 03, 2025

Show notes

AI has already fueled breakthroughs in biotechnology—but now, further advances in AI are poised to fuel pharmaceutical discoveries as well. Sarah Guo sits down with Joshua Meier and Jack Dent, co-founders of Chai Discovery, whose newly launched Chai-2 designs bespoke antibodies that bind to their targets at a jaw-dropping 20% rate. Jack and Joshua talk about the implications for Chai-2’s success rate at discovering antibodies for the pharmaceutical industry, how structure prediction is pivotal in making the model work, and future potential for using the model to optimize other molecular properties. Plus, they talk about what they believe bioscientists should be learning to best utilize Chai-2’s technology.

Chapters:

00:00 – Joshua Meier and Jack Dent Introduction

01:09 – Genesis of Chai Discovery

06:12 – Chai-2 Model

10:13 – Criteria for Specifying Targets for Chai-2

13:12 – How the Chai-2 Model Works

16:12 – Emergent Vocabulary from Chai-2

18:15 – Hopes for Chai-2’s Impact

20:33 – Reception of the Chai-2 Model

22:16 – Future of Wet Lab Screening and Biotech

27:08 – Optimizing Other Molecule Properties

31:37 – Where Chai Invests From Here

36:20 – What Bioscientists Should Learn for Chai-2

40:23 – How Jack and Josh Oriented to the Biotech Space

43:38 – Platform Investment and Chai-2

46:53 – Scaling Chai Discovery

48:21 – Hiring at Chai Discovery

49:09 – Conclusion

Meet AlphaEvolve: The Autonomous Agent That Discovers Algorithms Better Than Humans With Google DeepMind’s Pushmeet Kohli and Matej Balog Jun 26, 2025

Show notes

Much of the scientific process involves searching. But rather than continue to rely on the luck of discovery, Google DeepMind has engineered a more efficient AI agent that mines complex spaces to facilitate scientific breakthroughs. Sarah Guo speaks with Pushmeet Kohli, VP of Science and Strategic Initiatives, and research scientist Matej Balog at Google DeepMind about AlphaEvolve, an autonomous coding agent they developed that finds new algorithms through evolutionary search. Pushmeet and Matej talk about how AlphaEvolve tackles the problem of matrix multiplication efficiency, scaling and iteration in problem solving, and whether or not this means we are at self-improving AI. Together, they also explore the implications AlphaEvolve has to other sciences beyond mathematics and computer science.

Chapters:

00:00 Pushmeet Kohli and Matej Balog Introduction

0:48 Origin of AlphaEvolve

02:31 AlphaEvolve’s Progression from AlphaGo and AlphaTensor

08:02 The Open Problem of Matrix Multiplication Efficiency

11:18 How AlphaEvolve Evolves Code

14:43 Scaling and Predicting Iterations

16:52 Implications for Coding Agents

19:42 Overcoming Limits of Automated Evaluators

25:21 Are We At Self-Improving AI?

28:10 Effects on Scientific Discovery and Mathematics

31:50 Role of Human Scientists with AlphaEvolve

38:30 Making AlphaEvolve Broadly Accessible

40:18 Applying AlphaEvolve Within Google

41:39 Conclusion

The Operating System for Self Driving Cars (and Tanks, and Trucks...) With Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig of Applied Intuition Jun 17, 2025

Show notes

When will fully autonomous vehicles see widespread adoption? According to Applied Intuition, that future is closer than you may think. Applied Intuition’s CEO, Qasar Younis, and CTO, Peter Ludwig, talk with Elad Gil about how now is the best time to both work on self-driving vehicle technology and monetize it. Qasar and Peter discuss the advantages of developing their own OS in-house for their autonomous applications, self-driving technology’s potential to drive re-shoring of vehicle manufacturing to the United States, and how best to gauge the bar for safety in autonomous systems. Plus, they explore how self-driving technology may reshape the designs of not only vehicles, but cities themselves.

Chapters:

00:00 Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig Introduction

01:28 A Primer on Applied Intuition

11:08 Applied Intuition’s Customers

12:04 Impact of Chinese Vehicles Manufacturers

15:44 EV Policies in the European Market

20:49 Can Robotics and Automation Re-Shore Vehicle Manufacturing?

21:53 Training Models for Autonomous Vehicles

26:41 Gauging the Bar for Autonomous Vehicles Safety

32:03 Timeline for Large-Scale Autonomous Vehicle Adoption

36:28 Rethinking Urban Design for Autonomous Vehicles

38:47 How Applied Intuition Uses AI for Tooling and OS

42:09 Designing for User Experience

43:31 Applied Intuition’s Hiring Strategy

45:01 Conclusion

Will we have Superintelligence by 2028? With Anthropic’s Ben Mann Jun 12, 2025

Show notes

What happens when you give AI researchers unlimited compute and tell them to compete for the highest usage rates? Ben Mann, Co-Founder, from Anthropic sits down with Sarah Guo and Elad Gil to explain how Claude 4 went from "reward hacking" to efficiently completing tasks and how they're racing to solve AI safety before deploying computer-controlling agents. Ben talks about economic Turing tests, the future of general versus specialized AI models, Reinforcement Learning From AI Feedback (RLAIF), and Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP). Plus, Ben shares his thoughts on if we will have Superintelligence by 2028.

Links:

ai-2027.com/

Chapters:

00:00 Ben Mann Introduction

00:33 Releasing Claude 4

02:05 Claude 4 Highlights and Improvements

03:42 Advanced Use Cases and Capabilities

06:42 Specialization and Future of AI Models

09:35 Anthropic's Approach to Model Development

18:08 Human Feedback and AI Self-Improvement

19:15 Principles and Correctness in Model Training

20:58 Challenges in Measuring Correctness

21:42 Human Feedback and Preference Models

23:38 Empiricism and Real-World Applications

27:02 AI Safety and Ethical Considerations

28:13 AI Alignment and High-Risk Research

30:01 Responsible Scaling and Safety Policies

35:08 Future of AI and Emerging Behaviors

38:35 Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Industry Standards

41:00 Conclusion

Teaching AI to Understand the Physical World, with Dr. Fei-Fei Li of World Labs Jun 05, 2025

Show notes

In this episode of No Priors, Sarah and Elad are joined by Dr. Fei-Fei Li, AI pioneer, co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute, and founder of World Labs. Fei-Fei shares why she’s building at the intersection of embodiment and intelligence, and what today’s AI systems are still missing. From the early days of ImageNet to her vision for the next generation of robotics, she unpacks the human and technical motivations behind World Labs. They also discuss the challenges of 3D world modeling, her approach to building exceptional teams, and the special qualities that have led her students like Andrej Karpathy to make major breakthroughs.

Show Notes:

0:00 Why and what Dr. Fei-Fei Li is building

3:00 World models at World Labs

6:44 Missing gaps in the AI future

9:16 Robotics and physical intelligence

16:15 Greatest challenges of 3D

19:08 Fei-Fei’s work in PhD in ImageNet

23:05 Special moments in Dr. Li's career

29:33 Building teams

32:05 Human-centered AI

AI Consolidation, Biotech Opportunities, and World Models with Sarah and Elad May 29, 2025

Show notes

In this episode of No Priors, Sarah and Elad unpack the current state of the AI market - whether it’s consolidating, what’s enabling or blocking key mergers, and where the most promising untapped opportunities lie, particularly in biotech. They also explore the rise of world models and how AI’s novel methods for understanding complex systems may ultimately reshape how humans approach discovery and problem-solving.

Show Notes:

0:00 Is the AI market consolidating into clear winners? + the physics of the current landscape

7:01 Why more companies don’t merge (even when it makes sense)

10:09 Exploring biotech’s biggest commercial opportunities and the challenges founders face

17:14 Building world models

21:34 How AI is expanding the way humans reason, design, and evolve systems

AI is Making Enterprise Search Relevant, with Arvind Jain of Glean May 15, 2025

Show notes

Arvind Jain joins Sarah and Elad on this episode of No Priors. Arvind is the founder and CEO of Glean, an AI-powered enterprise search platform. He previously co-founded Rubrik and spent over a decade as an engineering leader at Google. In this episode, Arvind shares how LLMs are transforming enterprise search, why most tools in the space have failed, and the opportunity to build apps powered by internal knowledge. He discusses how much customization is still needed on top of foundation models, what made building Glean uniquely challenging compared to Arvind’s previous ventures, and what’s next for the company.

Show Notes:

0:00 Introduction

0:58 How LLMs are changing search

2:05 Building out Glean’s platform

5:09 Why most search companies failed

8:41 Out of the box vs. bespoke models

10:26 Creating apps on top of internal knowledge

15:34 User behaviors & insights

19:11 Unique challenges of building Glean

21:51 Product-led growth vs. enterprise sales

25:00 Succeeding in traditionally bad markets

27:08 What Glean is excited to build next

Gaming as the Future of Education with Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn May 08, 2025

Show notes

On this episode of No Priors, Sarah talks to Luis von Ahn, founder and CEO of Duolingo, the world’s most popular education app with over 116 million monthly users and a market cap of approximately $17 billion. Controversially, it has recently committed to being “AI-first.” They discuss why motivation is the biggest challenge in education, how Duolingo harnesses game mechanics and behavioral insights to keep learners engaged, and the company’s efforts to leverage AI to personalize education at scale. Luis also shares thoughts on the Duolingo brand, courses beyond language (chess and math), and the broader impact of AI on content creation.

Links: Duolingo is now AI-First: http://bit.ly/3RQzny3

Show Notes:

0:00 Introduction

4:01 Optimizing learning behavior through tech

11:20 Adopting AI at Duolingo

17:25 AI’s threat to content companies

18:34 An unhinged corporate brand

21:28 How do people learn?

25:16 What people misunderstand about Duolingo?

26:24 How AI is transforming learning at scale

30:28 Leveraging AI across the business

O3 and the Next Leap in Reasoning with OpenAI’s Eric Mitchell and Brandon McKinzie May 01, 2025

Show notes

This week on No Priors, Elad and Sarah sit down with Eric Mitchell and Brandon McKinzie, two of the minds behind OpenAI’s O3 model. They discuss what makes O3 unique, including its focus on reasoning, the role of reinforcement learning, and how tool use enables more powerful interactions. The conversation explores the unification of model capabilities, what the next generation of human-AI interfaces could look like, and how models will continue to advance in the years ahead.