Times Tech

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**Times Tech**

From Silicon Valley to The City, tech journalists Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott bring you the inside track on the new industrial revolution.

Co-hosted from San Francisco and London, this weekly podcast delivers the latest news and freshest interviews with the people creating the future.

As West Coast Correspondent for The Sunday Times, Danny is on the ground to witness the technological whirlwind that first roared out Silicon Valley. From London, working as The Times’ Technology Business Editor, Katie has seen the waves of boom and bust rolling through one of the world’s financial capitals. Together they explore this strange new world of high finance and tech giants, explaining how we got here and what is just around the corner.

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Latest Episodes:

Interlude: Back next week Mar 31, 2023

Show notes

Danny in the Valley will back next week. Jury duty forced me to cancel all meetings and pods this week!

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Rippling’s Parker Conrad: “We raised $500m in one day to survive the SVB collapse” Mar 24, 2023

Show notes

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).

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Primer’s Sean Gourley: “AI is the biggest change to war since the internal combustion engine” Mar 17, 2023

Show notes

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).

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Earth’s Tom Harries: “Turning people into soil” Mar 10, 2023

Show notes

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).

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UC Berkeley’s Stuart Russell: “ChatGPT is a wake-up call” Mar 03, 2023

Show notes

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).

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Character.ai's Noam Shazeer: "Replacing Google - and your mom" Feb 24, 2023

Show notes

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).

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Forum Mobility’s Matt LeDucq: “Electrifying trucking” Feb 17, 2023

Show notes

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).

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Giant's Cameron McLain: "Buddhism, music and venture capital" Feb 10, 2023

Show notes

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).

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Now's Lara Hodgson: "Don't follow your passion" Feb 03, 2023

Show notes

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).

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Mammoth’s Trevor Martin: “Programming the code of life” Jan 27, 2023

Show notes

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Trevor Martin of Mammoth Biosciences, to talk about “programming biology” (4:10), the slow grind of innovation (7:25), CRISPR (10:20), the problems he’s trying to solve (16:15), curing thousands of diseases (19:40), reaching for a science fiction future (24:40), meeting Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna (27:40), starting the company (35:00), becoming the chief executive (38:50), raising $265m (43:45), and what comes next (47:15).

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