"If you had a great tutor, you wouldn't sit down and say please write my paper for me." - @stevenbjohnson The first generation raised on ChatGPT booed AI at graduation. Three founders unpack why, plus Apple's brand new Siri, NotebookLM's biggest update, and whether anyone "wins" the agent race. This week @Jason covered these topics and more with: • Jeffrey Quesnelle (@theemozilla) building Hermes Agent at Nous Research @NousResearch • Steven Johnson (@stevenbjohnson) Editorial Director of NotebookLM @NotebookLM and @GoogleLabs • Russ d'Sa (@dsa) building the voice infra behind ChatGPT, Tesla & Grok at LiveKit @livekit 7 moments worth your time: 1:40 Hermes Agent and the open source race 7:32 Why AI got booed at graduation 10:48 LiveKit powering ChatGPT, Tesla, Grok 27:50 The massive Siri update 52:49 "Functional AGI, unevenly distributed" 57:24 Brittle to brilliant: agents that now just work 1:02:00 Tokenmaxxing and the $1M a year engineer

For some reason, @Jason neglected to mention in the summary below that I also do a very poor impression of Bono near the end of this (otherwise very engaging) conversation. Thanks for having me back @ThisWeeknAI!

"I no longer really write code in the same way that I used to." - @theemozilla Started in BASIC at age 8, built his whole identity on code. Jeffrey Quesnelle says the model finally caught up to him, and instead of mourning it, he gets to "rewind the clock and be eight or nine again." Co-founder & CEO of Nous Research (@NousResearch), the open source lab behind Hermes Agent. He joins @jason to talk functional AGI, the agent harness, and token budgets at a lean lab. This Week in AI Episode 17 out now.

Watch on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5BW…

Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=QwCglij6…

Send this to anyone that is still just using ChatGPT. The chat loop has a ceiling. You copy, paste, re-upload, re-explain. You're not working with an assistant, you're operating one. Claude Cowork runs on your computer and works on your actual files. I told it to relocate and rename files. Done in 20 seconds. Then I set it to run every Wednesday on its own. Anything that takes more than two steps, automate it.

"Be a surgeon, don't use a shotgun." That's @AlexFinn's entire approach to AI, and it's why he never hits the limits everyone else is whining about. He is building Henry Intelligent Machines (@HenryForAll). He joins @alex on prompt discipline, why AI's gains aren't landing, and picking the right model for the job. This Week in AI Episode 16 is out today.

Everyone's freaking out about AI costs. Some of it is real. A lot of it is just "token maxing," companies gamifying usage on leaderboards. Naveen Rao (@NaveenGRao) is attacking the real problem at @unconvAI, building brain-inspired analog chips to crash the cost of intelligence per dollar. He joins @alex to argue that a big slice of today's AI spend is theater, why "developers are disappearing" is wrong, and how energy will remain the bottleneck for compute. This Week in AI Episode 16 is out today. @Jason

Tell your AI to make your customers happy. It'll give out $1000 gift cards. The AI doesn't cheat. It just follows your instructions. Richard Socher wants you to be clear with your prompts. Otherwise it will fail. @RichardSocher

The software engineering job you worked so hard for is now deleted Companies are still hiring. But Tanay Kothari, founder of Wispr Flow, doesn't care about your code. He cares about how you write prompts for Claude. You don't have to be a great coder. Just a great thinker. @tankots @WisprFlow

"Nobody has actually lost their job to AI. They lost it due to the promise of AI" was from @bernhardsson! Great Quote!

The future needs better marketing

Claude went down at 11:00 PM CT, May 21st 2026 But this happens almost every other day. This is why you need to be model agnostic. Don't let one model going down stop you from building.

Who's actually building AI? 3 months and 14 episodes into This Week in AI, @Jason has sat down with founders and operators across infra, models, dev tools, consumer, creative, robotics, healthcare, and more. INFRA & COMPUTE Chase Lochmiller (Crusoe) @ChaseLochmiller Lin Qiao (Fireworks AI) @lqiao Chris Lattner (Modular) @clattner_llvm Nick Harris (Lightmatter) @theanalognick Mitesh Agrawal (Positron AI) @mitesh711 Alex Cheema (EXO Labs) @alexocheema Philip Johnston (Starcloud) @PhilipJohnston Naveen Rao (Unconventional AI) @NaveenGRao Russ d'Sa (LiveKit) @dsa FOUNDATION MODELS & RESEARCH Kanjun Qiu (Imbue) @kanjun Carina Hong (Axiom Math) @CarinaLHong Jeremy Fraenkel (Fundamental) @fraenkelj EVALS & BENCHMARKS Anastasios Angelopoulos (Arena) @ml_angelopoulos DEV TOOLS, CODING & AUTOMATION Karri Saarinen (Linear) @karrisaarinen Matan Grinberg (Factory) @matanSF Spiros Xanthos (Resolve AI) @spirosx Wade Foster (Zapier) @wadefoster CONSUMER & SEARCH Aravind Srinivas (Perplexity) @AravSrinivas Richard Socher (youdotcom & Recursive) @RichardSocher Tanay Kothari (Wispr Flow) @tankots Steven Berlin Johnson (NotebookLM) @stevenbjohnson CREATIVE & MEDIA Demi Guo (Pika) @demi_guo_ Victor Riparbelli (Synthesia) @vriparbelli Mikey Shulman (Suno) @MikeyShulman Grant Lee (Gamma) @thisisgrantlee ROBOTICS Jake Loosararian (Gecko Robotics) @jakeloosy Boris Sofman (Bedrock Robotics) @bsofman HEALTHCARE Shiv Rao (Abridge) @ShivdevRao Trey Holterman (Tennr) @TreyHolterman ENTERPRISE, VERTICAL & DATA George Sivulka (Hebbia) @gsivulka Kashif Ali (TaxGPT) @ChKashifAli Alex Elias (Qloo) @ape TALENT & WORKFORCE Ali Ansari (micro1) @aliansarinik Jonathan Siddharth (Turing) @jonsid Thank you all for joining! Episode 14 out now: youtube.com/watch?v=szd0TYQq…