Ftrain, by Paul Ford

“Verification cannot belong to the verified.” On this week’s episode, Paul is solo in the host chair as he sits down with longtime tech researcher Tricia Wang, the co-founder and CEO of the Advanced AI Society. Verifying AI, she explains, is far more complicated than simply dealing with hallucinations; in a world where AI is operating at a massive scale, how can we trust the outputs—or the people controlling the models? “Where does accountability lie?” she asks. “How do we agree to this thing?” Plus: A long exploration of the art of chicken sexing. (Yes, this relates to AI!)

It might sound like he’s ranting, but the Palantir chief is zeroing in on the truth of our AI moment. On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich break down Alex Karp’s recent appearance on CNBC, in which he discussed Palantir’s position within the ever-expanding world of the AI giants. Orgs might be using OpenAI and Anthropic’s tokens, but Palantir’s position exposes, in Rich’s words, “the gap between transactions and relationships.” Finally, Paul asks Rich to run the new, imaginary consulting practice at Anthropic and obliterate Palantir. Can he do it? Does he have what it takes?

How is Silicon Valley engaging with ethics and religion today—and how is the Catholic Church responding to AI? On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich welcome on Father Brendan McGuire, a former engineer and current Catholic priest who serves at St. Simon Parish in Los Altos, California, aka the heart of Silicon Valley. He discusses his long work speaking between the tech industry and the Church, as an advisor to Anthropic as well as an early commenter on Pope Leo’s recent encyclical on AI, “Magnifica Humanitas.” (Don’t worry, Paul asks the question on everyone’s lips: In what file format does a pope distribute early copies of an encyclical?)

Silicon Valley “disruption” is at odds with the way software creation actually works—and that’s a problem. On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich discuss Rich’s recent Aboard newsletter installment, “Maybe the Valley Could Listen a Little.” about how the dream of an “AI unicorn” who can use these tools to build a product all by themselves is a total fantasy. AI companies are promising revolutionary transformation across industries, but are they mostly just plastering over fundamental issues in processes and systems?