All Turtles

If targeted advertising is so bad, then why do we use it at All Turtles? That was the question that came up in a Twitter debate between Phil Libin, cofounder and CEO, and Jeremy Brand Yuan, who runs product marketing. Rather than stir up a social dust storm, they sit down for a pot of tea and make peace. Entrepreneurs looking to market test potential products and messages will learn the pros and cons of behavioral targeting, and how to keep their strategies on the up and up.

Welcome back to our regularly scheduled programming. After our summer SciFi-preneuership series, we’re ready to launch season 3 of the All Turtles Podcast. Today we’re introducing the new season and its themes: the future of work and the future of health. So much of our lives are maladapted for the human experience, and we want to talk about how to build products to help improve people’s physical, mental, and financial health. Stay tuned for season 3.

Sift is a news therapy app that unpacks contentious topics so you can feel better equipped to keep up with the headlines. Within the app, swipe through cards on topics like immigration, gun regulation, and healthcare to learn about these issues at your own pace outside the news cycle. Today on the podcast, we’re giving you an audio taste of one of Sift’s topics — climate change — so you can hear what Sift is all about. We’ll walk you through the impact climate change is having on our mental health.

After a summer of bonus episodes and the release of our Unscaled series, we’re back for season 2 with a slate of exciting upcoming guests and fresh discussion segments. In this season 2 preview, hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega announce some of the names of those who’ll be joining future recordings, from Max Levchin and Jason Calacanis to the cofounder of the Holberton School. They also answer a listener question that starts a discussion about how far extended metaphors should go.

From All Turtles, a weekly podcast that examines entrepreneurship and product development through the lens of an AI startup studio. Join hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, Blaise Zerega, and other members of the All Turtles team for smart insights — peppered with irreverence — about how to go from idea to pilot to product. Each week, they’ll respond to listener questions and discuss the people, ideas, and products changing the world through practical applications of AI.

Drawn to Paris for its burgeoning startup scene, your hosts speak with Edoardo Manitto, Managing Director of All Turtles Paris, on the eve of our Paris office opening. La Ville-Lumière (The City of Lights) is home to highly-skilled talent, smart investors, and a visa program that welcomes skilled immigrants. The first AT Paris product teams hail from across Europe and are addressing such problems as sexual harassment, language learning, and home security. All Turtles Paris is located at Station F.

There’s a clear opportunity for new applications of AI that solve common problems. Join hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega for a discussion about practical AI products and why it’s possible for small teams to build them. Listen as Phil uses a Pocketalk translation device in Osaka and shares sounds gathered while riding Japan Railways. Your hosts answer listener questions about big tech companies and data sets, why there’s plenty of room for startups, and they assess the current state of chatbots. They also share their everyday encounters with practical AI — from language translation to hands-free driving to remembering things.

Another day in Paris, another day in Paradise. Our hosts speak with Christine Foote, cofounder and COO of Leaders, an All Turtles product that matches event organizers with speakers. Foote describes the challenges of broadening the pool of speakers to increase diversity and range of viewpoints, and expanding the types of events where speakers might appear. Part of All Turtles Paris and based at Station F, Leaders makes finding speakers with both expertise and availability seamless for event organizers.

If the iPhone 6 reinvented the world of smartphones, then the iPhone X is poised to reinvent the world of contextual computing. Your hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega take a look at the implications of Apple’s new device for products involving facial recognition and everyday AI. They also discuss the potential for AI-based contraception, what UX-focused grad students ought to learn, and the possibility of a world without information asymmetry.

We’re excited to announce that Butter.ai, an All Turtles product, is joining Box. Jon Cifuentes chats with Jack Hirsch, cofounder and CEO of Butter.ai, about the vision and execution of the deal. Butter.ai was built for people to find documents across multiple productivity apps. Jack shares the story of the team’s initial funding through their time at All Turtles and up to the offer from Box. He reveals how to successfully navigate an acquisition when you’ve built something that solves a real problem.

Riding a rollercoaster, taking a leap of faith, and launching a rocket are just some of the phrases used to describe the challenge of starting a company. Your hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega dive into the day-to-day realities of being a cofounder to reveal the importance of communication, problem solving, and good, old-fashioned hard work. Along the way, they check-in with Jack Hirsch, CEO of Butter.ai, to hear what he’s learned two months after launch. Also, they debunk the gospel of the technical cofounder and describe their interactions with AI while watching HBO, conversing with Replika, and typing in iMessage.

Our Doctor Doctor mini-series features conversations between PhDs. Jessica Collier, cofounder of All Turtles, talks to Daniel Nicolae, cofounder of Spot, about each of their transitions from humanities PhDs to working in tech. Spot is an All Turtles product that lets users report workplace harassment and discrimination without talking to a human. Working on Spot, Daniel applied lessons he learned from academia, including the ability to follow through on challenging tasks.

Machine learning has shown the capacity to amplify our cultural and gender biases. Addressing the problem begins with admitting it exists. Join Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega as they discuss ways to limit the impact of language that reinforces stereotypes. They also introduce a new segment called, “Maybe it’s kinda bullshit?” which in this episode casts a skeptical eye on personalization. They evaluate the utility of intelligent assistants from the likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook. Google, and Microsoft, and explain that not all startups should go international.

Dylan Marriott is the cofounder of Spot, an All Turtles product, but during his free time, he’s a pilot. In this mini bonus episode, he talks to Phil Libin about the four lessons he’s learned from flying that are applicable to entrepreneurship. Both flying planes and launching companies require preparation, perspective, maximized optionality, and the ability to keep calm under pressure. Listeners, please prepare for takeoff.

This week’s show is devoted to security and trust. After hackers stole the records of 57 million Uber customers and drivers last year, the company failed to disclose the data breach, and paid the hackers $100,000. Your hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega offer the ride-sharing company no sympathy and explore what’s needed to safeguard everything from DNA to airports to social security numbers. They talk with Alex Pachikov, CEO of Sunflower Labs, who aims to reinvent home security with autonomous drones and AI. Your hosts also consider the roles of HR and physical security devices in the sexual harassment allegations against NBC’s Matt Lauer.

The rumors about Steve Jobs taking acid before dying, Mark Zuckerberg’s first business card, and why Silicon Valley is where it is are just some the tales unearthed by Adam Fisher’s Valley of Genius. Fisher joins host Blaise Zerega to discuss the culture of Silicon Valley and Steve Jobs’ outsized influence upon it, as well as to offer some predictions about its future. From semiconductors to Atari to the PC, their conversation connects the dots to AI, AR, and beyond.

This week’s guest Veronica Belmont shares wisdom and tips from more than a decade of podcasting and recounts her journey to product manager of Growbot. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega speak with Belmont about privacy and anonymity, AI and chatbots, communication and diversity, and the importance of authentic company values. They also discuss the many, many reasons to be polite to your voice assistants. Your hosts revisit the role of AI in battling information asymmetry (Episode 3) and reveal two products they’d like to see made next year.

When it comes to issues of race and gender, how do people impact AI and how does AI impact people? To answer this question, Stephanie Dinkins has been speaking with a robot since 2014 and working with communities of color to develop more inclusive AI and to promote AI literacy. Her conversations with Bina48, a robotic head modeled on a black woman, challenge common assumptions about gender and race by AI and suggest ways to build more equitable systems.

Robots taking jobs. The AI apocalypse. Universal basic income. These themes encompass the fears of many parents as they think about a future for their children. In this week’s episode, Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega address this worry and include advice from the likes of U.S. Senator Mark Warner, Kai-fu Lee, and Stephen Wolfram. Your hosts also assess notable developments in practical AI from 2017 and they share their daily encounters with iMessage, LinkedIn, and financial services app, Penny.

We check in with Replika CEO and cofounder Eugenia Kuyda shortly after her company’s AI confidant became available to more than 1.5 million people on a waitlist. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega speak with Eugenia about the challenges of creating an AI friend that is always there for you. She shares what differentiates Replika from conventional chatbots, therapy apps, and voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, drawing connections between how we behave towards AI and towards each other. Listener questions include glucose monitors and whether growth hacking works.

The new year began with an ominous forecast: 12,000 U.S. retail stores are predicted to close in 2018, a 33-percent increase from 2017. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega examine what this means for jobs, shopping, and the proverbial Main Street full of mom-and-pop stores. They manage to agree that online advertising has never been more annoying and pervasive, and debate whether AI will improve things anytime soon. Listener questions include hyper-personalization and differences between Japanese and American entrepreneurs.

We check in with Octane AI cofounder and COO Ben Parr about bots and ecommerce, and the surprising ways parrots may help build company culture. Along the way hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega question the importance of boards of directors in a segment called, “Maybe it’s kinda bullshit?” They also discuss whether design can address ethical concerns for AI and what the demise of Facebook M means for chatbots.

We check in with Ken Inoue, general manager of All Turtles Tokyo, who explains that being regarded as a “bent nail” can be a good thing. Ken also discusses the “black ships” phenomenon and tells us that Japan is a pun-loving nation. Your hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega share encounters with everyday AI when using Safari on mobile, seeking information on Michelangelo, or going for a mountain bike ride with Strava. Along the way, they answer questions about AI taking jobs and startups with .ai URL suffixes.

We check in with Jeremy Vandehey, co-founder and CEO of Disco, just 24 hours after his company’s successful launch. Jeremy explains the benefits of building a culture of appreciation and celebrating the contributions of all team members. Your hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega also tackle the tangled connection between .ai, .io, and colonialism, introduce a new segment called “Advice to Politicians,” and share their admiration for the late Ursula K. Le Guin. Listener questions include such topics as robots caring for the elderly, and All Turtles’ plans for 2020.

We kick off the show with a call for listener suggestions to select our first read for The All Turtles Book Club. Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega then dive into a “Maybe it’s kinda bullshit?” segment on patents, asking whether they’ve outlived their usefulness. Your hosts also try to distinguish between human and AI-generated voices. This week’s listener questions lead to revelations about Phil’s 100,000 unread emails, Jessica’s knowledge of container ship videos, and whether Blaise is named for St. Blaise or Blaise Pascal.

As public reckonings with harassment and discrimination abound, it’s becoming clear that the vast majority of these incidents go unreported. We check in with Dr. Julia Shaw, co-founder and Chief Scientist of Spot, a just-launched harassment reporting tool that aims to fix this. Along the way, hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega discuss the likelihoods for artificial general intelligence and artificial super intelligence, which some people have likened to God. We also announce the first selection for our Book Club:Brotopia.

Outside the United States, about 4.5 billion people use prepaid wireless phone services. We check in with Augie Fabela, co-founder and CEO of FastForward.ai, which aims to reinvent the prepaid customer experience. Along the way, Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega offer “Advice to Politicians” about social media and the recent U.S. indictment of 13 Russians for election interference. Your hosts also explore the connection between artificial intelligence and issues of race, gender, and inequality.

At age 42, after co-founding one of the world’s largest wireless carriers and taking it public, Augie Fabela enrolled at a police academy. Today, Fabela serves as a Chief of Police for the Cook County’s Sheriff Department. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega talk with Chief Fabela about using community engagement to reduce gun violence, including an esports project (with involvement from All Turtles). In a “Maybe it’s kinda B.S.” segment, your hosts dissect so-called ID theft protection services. Listener questions include ways to learn new things and to become more efficient.

This episode kicks off our book club discussion of Brotopia, which reveals that sex parties are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gender discrimination in Silicon Valley. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega share their strong reactions to the reporting, history, and advocacy contained in Emily Chang’s book. Along the way, they delight in the ways AI improves reading the New York Times, our grammar, and keeping track of one’s schedule. Responding to listener questions, your hosts lay bets on a timeline for human birth in space, and how to maintain privacy in an age of Alexa.

How close are we to an “Infocalypse” when AI-created audio and video present an alternative version of history? What happens to trust when facts are indistinguishable from fiction? Who controls the message? It’s a topic with roots in an early American novel when the fear wasn’t AI, but — get this — ventriloquism. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega debate the potential for this scenario and possible solutions. They also explain why the studio model is well-suited for building AI products. Listener questions include the origins of the All Turtles name and whether we’re living in a simulation.

DoNotPay is a chatbot that has helped people beat more than 500,000 parking tickets and now can help you get a lower airfare after you’ve booked a flight. We talk with the startup’s founder and CEO Josh Browder about also helping refugees apply for visas and his vision for a lawyer-free future. Phil Libin, Blaise Zerega, and guest host Cathy Dinas recap a trip to Japan, debate the portrayal of AI in the Netflix series Black Mirror, and consider whether hiring a PR firm early in a product’s lifecycle is really just, well, BS.

The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. It’s not a breach, it’s not artificial intelligence. Instead, it’s a logical result of the social network’s business model where users and their data are the product being sold. Also, our inhouse patent expert Leonid Kitainik provides advice for entrepreneurs seeking to protect their intellectual property. Listener questions include whether Bitcoin will become the world’s single currency and how voice interfaces may change computing and work.

Artificial intelligence can render the concept of scale meaningless and enable startups to compete with global giants. Investor Hemant Taneja explains how size becomes a liability in his new book, Unscaled. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega also share everyday encounters with AI including autocomplete success and disasters. They also respond to a listener question about regulating Facebook following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

Artificial intelligence may never do away with life’s two guarantees: death and taxes. But AI is changing the way people process them; memorial chatbots, for example, can take a loved one’s emails, social media, texts, and videos to create a digital facsimile of the dearly departed. And there are so many ways that AI, in theory, could make paying taxes less painful. Along the way hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega respond to listener questions about Walmart’s patent for drone bees and AI in France.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Congressional testimony left many people scratching their heads. Was it an earnest effort to explain Facebook’s plans to prevent another Cambridge Analytica data scandal? Or was it part of a well-orchestrated apology tour? Riffing off Phil Libin’s 7-step analysis of the Facebook hearings, your hosts reveal a fundamental problem with the social network’s dependence on advertising and raise important questions about creating the kind of world we want to live in.

Pundits and politicians are stirring up fears about an artificial intelligence “arms race” between nations. But AI projects should be judged by the products they develop and the problems they solve, rather than their countries of origin. Joining the show is UX expert Susan Farrell to discuss user testing and her paper, “Computer-Assisted Embarrassment.”

Public discourse around artificial intelligence continues to focus on self-driving cars, especially in the wake of fatal crashes. Yet data shows autonomous vehicles to be significantly safer than those controlled by people. One day, perhaps soon, the notion of human drivers will seem as absurd as child chimney sweeps. This episode also includes a rant about security questions, “advice to politicians” about immigration, and listener questions about All Turtles in Mexico City and Spot’s research.

Imagine if you could skip college and learn to program for free. Kwame Yamgnane, co-founder and managing director of 42 Silicon Valley, joins this episode to describe how his school’s tuition-free approach to coding instruction is disrupting higher education. Your hosts also examine the importance of physical dexterity when considering AI for IKEA furniture assembly and Tesla’s manufacturing process. And drumroll, please: We announce our next book club selection. (Hint: It’s not Norse Mythology.)

In this episode, we reveal All Turtles’ highly-scientific approach to classifying early-stage products: the Flying Shoe, the Costner, and the Play-Doh. We also examine the most common reasons for failure — and success — of these products. Along the way, we describe being insulted by chatbots and how to improve Netflix recommendations.

When we allow artificial intelligence to impersonate humans, what kind of precedent does that set? It’s one of the questions that was raised after Google unveiled Duplex, and in this episode our hosts consider what the implications of this technology might be. They also ask whether there should be new rules for grammar and speech when speaking with machines. Listener questions include the upcoming book club discussion and our favorite podcasts.

You may have received a slew of emails about GDPR last week. The new regulations seek to protect users’ privacy and took effect on May 25 across the EU. GDPR has guidelines on how long companies can keep users’ data, how they use it, and how they explain their requests for personal information. And because it’s the “World” Wide Web, standards set in Europe will impact companies everywhere. We also celebrate All Turtles’ one-year anniversary, and respond to suggestions about AI impersonating humans.

When Gmail says, “It seems like you forgot to attach a file,” that precise phrasing is the result of careful deliberation by a design team. It’s one example Erika Hall gives in her book Conversational Design. She explains her work as “designing with words” rather than literary writing, and asserts that collaboration by designers, writers, and engineers is required for meaningful user experiences. Listener questions address previous episodes about Duplex and, our favorite scapegoat, blockchain.

Science fiction has long inspired new technologies, from robots to flip phones to artificial intelligence and more. Yet it’s provocative to consider that sci-fi is more often descriptive than predictive. Dystopias can reflect contemporary fears and biases. Utopias may contain robot characters more developed than women characters. Still, the clear path from imagined worlds to today’s tech products is worth celebrating. Speaking of which, this episode marks the end of Season 1. Thanks for listening.

Where can someone learn how to become a software engineer? Computer science programs at universities usually focus more on theory than on what’s actually required to become an employable programmer — and then there’s the matter of cost. The Holberton School offers an alternative: a two-year training program for software engineers where there are no formal teachers or lectures, favoring project-based learning instead. It’s learning by doing, and it’s one of a new breed of schools reinventing education.

People with chronic conditions dedicate a great deal of cognitive overhead to monitoring their own health. Type 2 diabetes patients, for example, have to constantly think about when to eat, what type of exercise to do, and when to take medication. Livongo is a company that aims to change that. For patients with type 2 diabetes, Livongo takes their blood glucose levels and provides actionable recommendations based on that data. It’s another example of how AI and tech are revolutionizing healthcare.

“Data is the new oil” has become a popular declaration in headlines circulating around Silicon Valley, but in this episode, we question the veracity of the phrase. The argument for equating data to oil is that data will be the resource that will shape the 21st century in the way that oil shaped the previous century. While data, like oil, needs to be refined in order to be useful, it’s not necessarily true that the more data you have, the more of a competitive advantage you have. Or… is it?

“Are you free for a meeting on Tuesday at 4?” “No, but what about Wednesday before 11?” “I’m busy then. Should we try for next week?” This is a well-worn back and forth. Setting up meetings can take a tremendous amount of time, which is why Dennis Mortensen founded x.ai to build AI software for scheduling meetings automatically. In this episode, he explains his philosophy of democratizing access to executive assistants, and why he’s changed his tune on the appropriate ways for AI to mimic humans.

As a board member for companies like Symantec, ServiceNow, and Pure Storage, Anita Sands has a wealth of knowledge on advising companies’ success. She also knows how to pivot: she earned her PhD in atomic and molecular physics, then moved into working in finance, and then built a career in tech. Serving on the boards of public companies has given her ideas for how AI could, in the future, help give boards useful insights to make key decisions for companies.

Jacob Ward is a tech journalist and Burggruen Fellow at Stanford; he’s writing a book about AI and behavioral science. In his research, he’s been concerned to note that people have been handing off critical decision-making processes to AI, which risks long-term damage to humans’ cognitive abilities. As far as ethics in AI development, Jacob shares his idea that people’s cognitive functionings should be treated as a finite natural resource, and companies should be responsible for their extractive models.

Jason Calacanis, angel investor, joins us this week for part one of a two-part interview. As an early investor in companies like Uber and Robinhood, Jason shares his insights for achieving startup success. He explains why a company’s brand is so important from its beginning stages, and delivers a hot take on VC culture today. He also gives his opinion on what the number one killer of startups is, and mulls over the following equation: 1 idea + 1 good idea = zero good ideas.

Angel investor Jason Calacanis joins us for the second part of his two-part interview, continuing the conversation about what his early investments in companies like Uber and Robinhood taught about success. Now, he invests in bold ideas, and urges founders to focus on building products people love. Then, he, Jon, and Phil lament over everything that’s wrong with the elevator pitch, epitomized by Jason’s story of the time someone tried to pitch him while at a urinal.

Mursal Hedayat launched Chatterbox, an All Turtles product, to revolutionize language learning, and it’s a prime example of technology that enhances humans rather than replaces them. Chatterbox is a language and culture training program that employs refugees as tutors. Mursal was inspired to launch Chatterbox because when her mother came to the UK from Afghanistan, she was underemployed. Today, Mursal wants to help refugees make full use of their potential.

Virtual reality is a tremendously rich medium for creativity and new ideas, but we’re still waiting for the AR/VR revolution to make the waves it’s been projected to make. What can we expect from this field in the coming years? Adrian Kaehler is a researcher who’s worked in computer vision, machine learning, robotics, and with AR/VR software, and he has predictions. And, as the cofounder of the Silicon Valley Deep Learning Group, he knows what it takes to bring disparate technological groups together.

When it comes to curing Parkinson’s disease, the biggest obstacle is in making use of siloed research. So says Katharina Volz, founder and CEO of OccamzRazor, an AI-neuroscience startup. They’ve built a “super brain” to read everything ever published about Parkinson’s and related diseases, and to make connections to clinical research no human possibly could. Hear Volz’s plans for finding cures for patient subgroups — and why she recommends wearing rollerblades in the lab.

Although Wikipedia is a contributor website like Twitter or Facebook, why doesn’t it suffer from the same levels of misinformation and fake news? The Wikimedia Foundation’s executive director Katherine Maher joins this episode to talk about the importance of transparency and sticking to your values at scale. She also shares how machine learning will be increasingly important in Wikipedia’s operations, and what organizations using Wikipedia’s datasets should know about the flaws in its information.

Fans of the movie Her will remember “Samantha” as the AI who connected with a human because of her ability to express deep empathy. That’s what Michelle Zhou, cofounder and CEO of Juji, references when explaining what her company aims to do: create empathetic and responsible artificial intelligence agents. By focusing on human-machine symbiosis, Zhou has worked toward creating AI chatbots for different types of use cases, from personalized healthcare to conducting interviews.

Max Levchin is the cofounder and former CTO of PayPal. His stories from PayPal’s early days reveal that its methods for addressing security questions from the start can apply to the problems social media companies face today. Levchin started Affirm to do away with amoral loan practices; recently, Affirm allowed government employees who couldn’t work during the shutdown to take their time in paying back loans. Levchin values honesty and transparency, which serve as the foundations for his products.

Bärí Williams is the VP of Legal, Policy, and Business Affairs at All Turtles. She has advice for small startups and founders who may not have in-house legal or policy experts on how to navigate things like privacy and contract organization. She also has experience developing diversity programs for companies like Facebook, and has lessons to share about creating and implementing similar programs. As she’s said, tech’s ethical problem is also a diversity problem.

When controversial headlines flood Twitter and Facebook, these rage machines disseminate disinformation. AI plays a role in perpetuating fake news, but it could also be a part of the solution in detecting and preventing the malignant spread of fake stories. Renée DiResta is a researcher of computational propaganda and disinformation. On this episode, she talks through some recent news stories and how they serve as examples of the ways in which technology facilitates tribalism.

Austen Allred is the cofounder and CEO of the Lambda School, a coding academy that provides free training for students to become software engineers and data scientists in exchange for a percentage of their income for two years. It’s a model that has moved people from low income to high income salaries. Austen talks through the school’s pedagogy, shares what students need to succeed in the program, and explains why one of the most valuable aspects of the school is the community.

At All Turtles, we build AI products, which means we needed a process for deciding which products to build. We came up with a system for classifying the types of products people pitch us so that we can quickly understand and communicate to each other what we see as opportunities and potential failure points. This classification system is our product taxonomy, and it’s something any product creator or evaluator can apply to their work.

When Facebook moved into a Menlo Park space that was across the street from one of the lowest income areas of California, Susan Gonzales saw a potential for outreach, so she launched the company’s community engagement program. Her time at Facebook gave her some unique insights into the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. She now consults with startups on strategic communications, sharing her expertise on diversity-related issues.

Sift, a news therapy app from All Turtles, is looking to solve real problems that lie at the intersection of technology and journalism. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become outrage-powered clicking machines that drive media cycles. Sift wants to help its users stay informed without feeling overwhelmed. They took an experimental approach to their product rollout that allowed them to build invaluable feedback into their latest version, an approach that could benefit products of any kind.

Julian Guthrie’s new book Alpha Girls follows the stories of four women who became successful VCs in Silicon Valley firms where they were often the only women in the room. Julian is a former journalist and a New York Times bestselling author, but despite her extensive experience writing about successful people, the Alpha Girls’ stories surprised her. She describes the lessons learned from the women’s extraordinary accomplishments, and shares how VCs and entrepreneurs can apply them today.

The exponentially increasing power of AI unleashes new advancements every day, but alongside those developments come new ethical questions about proper implementation. Azeem Azhar covers these technological evolutions in his newsletter Exponential View. By keeping his finger on the pulse of what AI is doing for us today (like improving gene sequencing and better predicting diseases in the IVF processes), he’s able to share the insights he’s gathered for businesses who want to avoid techlash.

How can good design ensure that a product is as inclusive as possible? Micah Rivera, lead designer for the All Turtles product Spot, has extensive experience in accessible, inclusive product design. From the psychology of color to the use of body language in character illustrations, he draws from a range of tools that he’s eager to share. He emphasizes the importance of checking accessibility as you build a product, and he explains the visual metaphor of the hot air balloon in Spot.

We may never get to use a crystal ball to tell us where the world is headed, but Amy Webb’s futurist analysis might be the next best thing. She’s a quantitative futurist, founder of the Future Today Institute, and author of The Big Nine. Her work is rooted in measurement and data; her models determine emerging signals and track their velocity over time to understand plausible futures. She focuses on changes within science and technology, and joins the podcast today to share some of her insights.

For some, tongue twisters are simply amusing ways to pass the time, but Dairien Boyd and other designers at All Turtles knew that these verses had value: they could help people practicing a new language perfect their pronunciation, or give someone working on public speaking skills a way to work on their enunciation. Dairien and his team built Twisty Tongue as a fun game that anyone can play, and on this episode, he articulates his design philosophy for creating this app and others.

AI has already made its way into in the medical field, and today, Dr. Eric Topol gives us a sense of the many ways in which medical professionals are already taking advantage of this technology. Dr. Topol is a cardiologist and the author of Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again. He acknowledges AI’s security risks, but is optimistic for the future of health that AI is helping to usher in.

As tools like Skype, Slack, and other instant communication methods allow employees to stay connected from disparate locations, the concept of the remote workforce has become increasingly attractive. With the benefits of added flexibility for employees and opportunities to hire people from around the world, some companies have constructed entirely remote teams. Octane AI is one example; their VP of Product Megan Berry joins the podcast today to talk about why she thinks the future of work is remote.

Unreasonable Group works with entrepreneurs who are offering solutions to seemingly intractable challenges. Today on the podcast, their Head of Creative Partnerships, Dave Smith, is talking about how they approach some of the world’s biggest problems. Their cohort of founders is tackling everything from clean energy to 3D scanning and big data for healthcare. And it’s emerging technology like AI that’s helping entrepreneurs develop these innovative new solutions.

Dr. Arun Wiita’s lab at UCSF uses emerging technologies to discover new treatments for blood cancers. Today on the podcast, he shares his insights on the future of cancer research, including why he thinks the next big advancement will involve modifying DNA as a way to improve early detection. Machine learning is starting to play a bigger role in the interpretation of the vast data sets of DNA sequences, but hear why Dr. Wiita says that “AI-aha” moments are still a bit of myth in his line of work.

Spot is an All Turtles product that’s ushering in the future of work by using technology to build better environments for employees. It’s a software solution for tackling harassment and discrimination in the workplace with an AI reporting tool. We’ve discussed Spot on the podcast before, but today, Spot’s CEO Jessica Collier is talking to design lead Micah Rivera and editorial lead Kelly Chen about how they designed, built and launched a new harassment training feature.

We interrupt our normal programming for some brief announcements on upcoming changes to the podcast. We’re transitioning from weekly episodes to bi-weekly in order to accommodate some exciting new projects. But stay subscribed, and stay tuned, because we have some incredible guests slated for our future episodes. See you in two weeks!

Terah Lyons is the Executive Director of the Partnership on AI, a consortium that aims to establish best practices for AI systems and to educate the public about AI. They’re working to explore AI’s impact on the world, including on the labor market and the economy. Before this role, Terah worked in the office of the CTO for the Obama administration, but she asserts that public policy alone is not enough. Proactive attention and planning are needed to support economies of the future.

In many ways, the future of fertility is closely tied to the future of work, as companies determine how to best ensure that their employees are holistically supported. Employers have a unique and important role to play when it comes to access to fertility care, especially in the U.S. where 150 million people get their health coverage through employers. Carrot is a fertility benefits company solving the growing problem of access to inclusive fertility care.

What does it mean to democratize DNA? Shirley Wu is answering that question as the Director of Health Product at 23andMe. 23andMe’s mission is to pioneer the future of health with their genetic testing technology, and to help people understand, access, and benefit from the human genome. They’ve had to stay ahead of the quickly evolving pace of the genomics industry, so the story of their work provides valuable lessons for any entrepreneur looking to build a lasting company in a fast-paced world.

Sita Magnuson has the spirit of an entrepreneur and the heart of an artist. She’s been able to make a career for herself by channeling both of these strengths into cofounding initiatives like Fort Future, Dpict, and Easthampton Co.Lab. Today on the podcast, she shares her thoughts on process design and the creative methods she uses to generate discussion and productivity in a workplace.

Designers and medical professionals are both key to building the future of health. Dr. Kyra Bobinet is working within that intersection by using neuroscience to help people design healthy lives. She’s an MD and the CEO of engagedIN, a neuroscience-based design firm. Both design and behavioral change are iterative processes, and Dr. Bobinet has experience applying behavioral strategies as a corporate executive to scale the impact of her programs.

How is the internet making people more or less seen? Researcher Mary Gray’s new book Ghost Work explores the lives of people who are paid to train AI. These workers are contributing to the AI we use every day, but they’re often left out of conversations about how this technology is evolving. Mary asserts that AI is not replacing or eliminating work; it’s dismantling full-time employment. She shares how and why that’s happening in today’s episode.

On prior episodes of this podcast, we’ve discussed Carrot, a company that’s pioneering the future of work and health by providing global fertility benefits to employers. Because there’s so much to discuss, we made a whole new podcast for Carrot called Baby Steps. It’s about the many diverse paths people take in the pursuit of parenthood, and we’re playing the first episode of Baby Steps here for you today. If you like what you hear, search for Baby Steps wherever you get your podcasts.

Have you ever had an online conversation with someone only to realize later that you’d been talking to a bot? Computers are reshaping our idea of what it means to be human. Today on the podcast, author Brian Christian explores how computers reveal our most human capabilities and other themes from his book The Most Human Human. He also discusses the book he wrote with Tom Griffiths, Algorithms to Live By, about how computer algorithms can untangle human questions.

A single patient’s healthcare data is likely stored in different silos. It can therefore be difficult to assemble a complete picture of health when old records, more recent information, and regularly updated stats from a smartwatch should all be taken into account. Enter Seqster, a Saas solution for compiling healthcare data and making it easily accessible. Ardy Arianpour, cofounder and CEO of Seqster, joins the podcast today to talk about how his product is shaping the future of health.

COVID-19 has thrown so much into uncertainty, including the way we work. With shelter-in-place regulations falling over increasing swathes of the population, companies who have the capacity to instruct employees to work from home have done so. Due to the global economic downturn that the pandemic has brought forth, it’s safe to say that COVID-19 is having a massive impact on the future of work. Today, we’ll discuss the nuances of that impact.

The COVID-19 pandemic is fundamentally changing the way we think about and manage health. We’d already suspected that the future of work and the future of health were intrinsically linked, but this pandemic has shown how the trajectory of one is fully determining the course of the other. Today on the podcast, we’re discussing a 3-phase framework for thinking through how we’ll make it to the other side of this together.

Over the past couple weeks on the podcast, we’ve talked about COVID-19’s impact on the future of work and the future of health. Today, we’re delving a little deeper into how we can come back from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which Phil is calling “the great unpause.” Why are “recession” and “recovery” ill-fitting terms to describe our current situation? What does hitting the pause button mean for different sectors of the economy, and what will it take to reset?

George Arison is the founder and CEO of Shift, an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars. George has led his company through the first phase of their response to the coronavirus pandemic, which involved creating a program to reduce prices for healthcare workers. The pandemic’s economic impact has also meant that they’ve had to furlough some employees. Today, George is sharing how he’s navigating tough decisions while managing a company during a global crisis.

Today, David Yakobovitch is joining the show to share his perspectives on AI and the future of work. David hosts the HumAIn Podcast, a show about artificial intelligence, data science, and developer education. He’s also a Principal Data Scientist at Galvanize, a technology learning company that works with startups and large enterprises on deploying data science and AI solutions.

Where did the conspiracy that “Bill Gates engineered coronavirus” come from? This is the type of query that Renée DiResta investigates as the technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory, where she tracks the spread of misinformation (and disinformation) online. She’s been monitoring the dissemination of narratives about the emergence of COVID-19, how it’s treated, and how the government has responded, and has an explanation for why there’s so much speculation at every level.

What do you do when a global pandemic wipes out your business model as an early-stage startup? If you’re Sebastian Müller, cofounder of Lanterne, you quickly pivot to create a product to help people stay safe as coronavirus spreads. That’s how he and his team began building Crowdless, an app that provides real-time information on the crowdedness of supermarkets to help with social distancing. Today Sebastian is sharing Lanterne’s approach to meeting the world’s most pressing needs on rapid timelines.

With campuses closed and classes relegated to Zoom sessions, COVID-19 has had an indelible impact on education. Scoodle, a UK-based learning platform that connects students with tutors, is ensuring students can still get the support they need. On today’s episode, Scoodle’s cofounder and CEO Ismail Jeilani is sharing how this pandemic has brought remote learning to the forefront of education, and why he wants to help teachers achieve rock-star status for the work they do.

Product design is collaborative, but with extended shelter-in-place guidelines, teams have had to reassess what it means to work together. Figma is one of the best tools for product creators working remotely, but even before we were relegated to our homes, Figma had become essential to us at All Turtles because of its intuitive features. Figma’s Director of Product Sho Kuwamoto joins us today to walk through how they continue to iterate on the creation of indispensable tools.

Mmhmm is our latest All Turtles product, which we built to make video calls more efficient — and more fun. After our podcast’s summer hiatus, we’re eager to share how we spun out this product at breakneck speed during the pandemic. Mmhmm’s suite of tools make any Zoom or Google Meet something to look forward to, with beautiful backdrops and rooms, immersive recordings, and collaboration abilities. As Phil says, why try to just match IRL experiences when you could make them infinitely better?

Mmhmm, our newest All Turtles product, upgrades video calls with beautiful backdrops and rooms, the designs for which had to be put together in record time. Allie Packard, our fearless Principal Designer, is here to share how she and her team went from the earliest mmhmm sketches to the product we see today. How did they create such dynamic and varied imagery while staying true to the brand?

Products aren’t neutral — that’s our ethos at All Turtles. Products are built with a point of view that impacts the community of users and plays a role in the development of privacy guidelines. In this episode, All Turtles’ three cofounders (Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Jon Cifuentes) discuss community and privacy. Phil is the CEO of mmhmm, and Jessica is the CEO of Spot, so they share their perspectives on building these products with a specific POV.

Brian Christian is the bestselling author of The Most Human Human and Algorithms to Live By. His latest book is called The Alignment Problem. He’s here today to talk about everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix this lack of alignment, including lessons to be learned from a near missile strike. What will the future of algorithmic decision-making look like?

For startups, securing funding can be a long and bumpy road, and in many ways the pandemic has made it even bumpier. Tellus (an All Turtles product) has still found success in recent months, and today their CEO Tania A. Coke is imparting key lessons from their fundraising process. How did she and her team build new relationships with investors entirely over Zoom?

Brian Christian is the bestselling author of The Most Human Human and Algorithms to Live By. His latest book is called The Alignment Problem. He’s here today to talk about everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix this lack of alignment, including lessons to be learned from a near missile strike. What will the future of algorithmic decision-making look like?