#217: The Pope's AI Encyclical, AI's PR Emergency, The Soaring Cost of Intelligence & The Great AI Jobs Disconnect

More from The Artificial Intelligence Show All episodes →

1. 

   E222 · 30 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 25 min

   #222: GPT-5.6, Government Staggers AI Model Releases, Agents Are Transforming Work & Growing Data Center Backlash

   OpenAI just previewed GPT-5.6, but for the first time, the U.S. government is deciding who gets access to a frontier AI model. Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput break down what they're calling the soft nationalization of artificial intelligence: a staggered, government-approved release, the Dean Ball essay responding to it, and what it means when Washington, not the labs, controls the most powerful models. Plus: OpenAI's new Codex research on agents at work, the looming question of Chinese models, and the data center backlash uniting both parties. Show Notes : Access the show notes and show links…

2. 

   23 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 26 min

   #221: Anthropic vs. the White House, Microsoft CEO on the Future of Firms & AI’s Token Crisis

   Anthropic's most powerful models are still offline, and the U.S. government now wants a guarantee no lab can give. Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput unpack the ongoing export-control standoff, the Lutnick letter, and what it means for the models expected this week, then turn to Satya Nadella's "future of the firm" essay, the unsolved mess of AI pricing and usage limits, a wave of lab talent shakeups including Noam Shazeer's move to OpenAI, the G7 AI summit, Midjourney's leap into medical scanning, and research showing AI can out-persuade expert humans. Show Notes : Access the show notes and show…

3. 

   18 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 6 min

   #220: AI Answers - The 2026 State of AI for Business Report

   Seventy-one percent of professionals expect AI to eliminate more jobs than it creates — but only 20% worry about their own. In this AI Answers episode, Taylor Radey joins Paul and Mike to unpack that disconnect and nine other findings from the 2026 State of AI for Business report, drawn from 2,109 respondents. From why CEOs rate themselves furthest ahead to why only 13% of organizations have the governance to scale, this is the data behind what's actually happening inside companies right now. Download the full report at stateofbusiness.ai Timestamps: 00:00:00 — Intro 00:05:05 — Top 10 Key…

4. 

   16 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 15 min

   #219: Claude Fable 5, OpenAI IPO, Apple Siri AI Finally Unveiled & Is the Era of Affordable AI Over?

   The U.S. government forced Anthropic to pull Fable 5 and Mythos 5 from general availability just days after they launched as the most capable models publicly available. Paul and Mike work through how it happened, Dario Amodei's policy essay, and the question every business leader should be sitting with: what do you build on when a model can be switched off? Then it's OpenAI's confidential IPO filing, Apple's long-awaited Siri AI, the real economics behind your AI subscription, and a DeepMind paper on the road from AGI to ASI. Show Notes : Access the show notes and show links here AI-Pulse…

5. 

   E215 · 9 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 25 min

   #218: Anthropic IPO, Trump AI Executive Order, Rising AI Costs & OpenAI Merges Codex Into ChatGPT

   Anthropic filed for an IPO and published a paper warning that recursive self-improvement may arrive faster than anyone is ready for. Paul and Mike break down both, then cover Trump's AI executive order, government stakes in AI labs, and the corporate scramble to control AI token costs. Rapid fire: Apple WWDC previews, OpenAI's Codex-ChatGPT merger, Brockman's super PAC, AI rolling up the accounting industry, Stanford law professors losing to AI 75% of the time, and product updates from Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Anthropic. Show Notes : Access the show notes and show links here AI-Pulse…

6. 

   E216 · 26 May 2026 · 1 hr 30 min

   #216: Google I/O, Musk v. OpenAI Verdict, Andrej Karpathy Joins Anthropic & Meta Layoffs

   Google I/O dropped dozens of announcements this week, including Gemini 3.5 Flash, Gemini Omni, the "biggest upgrade to search in 25 years," and a closing statement from Demis Hassabis that we are at the foothills of the singularity. Paul and Mike unpack it all: what the Karpathy-to-Anthropic move really means, why the Musk v. OpenAI verdict matters beyond the headlines, and what to make of profitable companies like Cloudflare and ClickUp publicly announcing AI-driven workforce restructuring. They also cover the Gallup data showing Americans oppose data centers more than nuclear power, and…

7. 

   E215 · 19 May 2026 · 1 hr 35 min

   #215: Musk v. OpenAI Round 3, AI's Hot New Job, The AI Jobs Apocalypse Debate & The 2026 State of AI for Business Report

   Three big stories define this week: the Musk v. OpenAI trial wraps with the jury advising but the judge deciding. Then: why did every major AI commentator publish the same argument in the same week that AI won't kill jobs? And: Forward Deployed Engineers: are they the future of enterprise AI adoption or just consultants with a better name? Rapid fire covers the AI hate wave showing up across the country, Anthropic's two-scenario roadmap for the US-China AI race, cybersecurity threats that give organizations just three to five months before attackers catch up, and a full product update…

8. 

   12 May 2026 · 1 hr 30 min

   #214: Musk v. OpenAI Round 2, Coinbase AI Layoffs, AI “Soft Nationalization & xAI Folds Into SpaceX

   The second week of Musk v. OpenAI delivered texts, secret Tesla AI plots, and backstage chaos around Sam Altman's 2023 firing. Paul and Mike also break down Coinbase's AI-native restructuring memo, the White House's very brief flirtation with model vetting, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark's prediction that AI will autonomously train its own successors by 2028, and the bizarre Anthropic-SpaceX compute deal that emerged from out of nowhere. Rapid fire covers GPT-5.5 Instant, Claude Managed Agents updates, Sierra's $950M raise, and more. Show Notes : Access the show notes and show links here…

9. 

   7 May 2026 · 55 min

   #213: AI Answers - What AI Should Never Do, Enterprise Scaling, Governing AI & Navigating IT Roadblocks

   Leadership wants AI everywhere. IT security can't keep up. Marketing is racing ahead while legal and finance dig in. And every week brings another story of an AI agent doing something nobody told it to do. Paul Roetzer and Cathy McPhillips answer 15 listener questions on how to actually move organizations forward and where the real opportunities lie for individuals, SMBs, and enterprises right now. 00:00:00 — Intro 00:07:01 — How do you move a company out of AI policy paralysis? 00:08:54 — How should regulated, hands-on teams introduce AI? 00:12:30 — When companies are stuck, what tends to…

10. 

    5 May 2026 · 1 hr 40 min

    #212: Musk v. OpenAI Trial Begins, OpenAI-Microsoft Partnership, Big Tech Earnings & Anthropic Eyes $900B Valuation

    Elon Musk's federal trial against OpenAI opened this week, and he admitted under oath that xAI distills OpenAI's models. That's just where Episode 212 starts. Paul and Mike cover the full story: the Musk-OpenAI trial and its implications for every company built on ChatGPT, the abrupt rewrite of the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership and the removal of the AGI clause, blockbuster Big Tech earnings (Google Cloud up 63%, Azure AI at $37B run rate), an AI agent that wiped a startup's entire production database in nine seconds, Anthropic eyeing a $900B valuation, a real and growing populist AI…