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Zero Shot

The Ken

Join Brady Ng, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, and Rohin Dharmakumar of The Ken as they discuss the big ideas in artificial intelligence. You’ll get the macro view, explore their experiments in practical applications, go deeper than the news coverage you’ve seen, and hear about the implications of the latest developments. Nothing is off the table.

  1. -1 J

    Perplexity’s rug pull in India, AI PCs are the new Chromebooks, Deepseek isn’t an AI company

    Welcome back to Zero Shot, where Brady, Praveen, and Rohin discuss and analyse major developments related to artificial intelligence every week. Praveen kicks off this episode with a look at Perplexity’s changes to its Pro plan’s free trial. Perplexity has changed its terms and conditions, and now requires users who signed up for a 12-month free subscription to put a credit card on file. The hosts of Zero Shot discuss why this is happening now. Then, Rohin tells everyone about AI PCs, the spiritual successors to Chromebooks. If you’re already using cloud services every day, would you replace every function on your personal computer with AI applications? AI is truly eating everything, now including hardware—at least in the rhetoric. Finally, Brady highlights that it’s been one year since the “Deepseek Moment”. The company dispelled the notion that Silicon Valley is charting the only way forward for creating better large language models. But Deepseek isn’t an AI company in the conventional sense. It works like a research lab funded by hedge fund profits, which shapes its R&D culture and exemplifies a different vision for bringing about AGI. Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Share your comments, critiques and suggestions with us at zeroshot@the-ken.com. Or write in just to say hi. We respond to everyone who contacts us. Additional Reading Airtel’s free Perplexity Pro paused for Indians with no credit card, angering usershttps://www.msn.com/en-in/money/news/airtel-s-free-perplexity-pro-paused-for-indians-with-no-credit-card-angering-users/ar-AA1U2ig0 Jeff Bezos said the quiet part out loud — hopes that you'll give up your PC to rent one from the cloudhttps://www.windowscentral.com/artificial-intelligence/jeff-bezos-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud-bezos-envisions-that-youll-give-up-your-pc-for-an-ai-cloud-version The numbers behind OpenAI, Gemini, and Perplexity’s deals with Phonepe, Jio, and Airtelhttps://the-ken.com/newsletters/two-by-two/the-numbers-behind-openai-and-perplexitys-deals-with-jio-and-airtel/ CES 2026 – “The Future Is Here” and “Innovators Show Up”https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/237-ces-2026-the-future-is-here-and ‘The enshittification of computer repair is happening.’https://infosec.exchange/@sawaba/115924627821844963 DeepSeek founder Liang’s funds surge 57% as China quants boomhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-12/deepseek-founder-liang-s-funds-surge-57-as-china-quants-boom No business model: DeepSeek's enduring advantagehttps://interconnected.blog/no-business-model-deepseeks-enduring-advantage/ Lossfunkhttps://lossfunk.com/ Sarvam AI’s Rs 10,000 crore pivothttps://the-ken.com/columns/zero-shot/sarvam-ais-rs-10000-crore-pivot/

    54 min
  2. Infosys and Cognizant's message to Microsoft: Thanks, but we found better AI

    14 JANV.

    Infosys and Cognizant's message to Microsoft: Thanks, but we found better AI

    “Everyone is ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the room. The truth is that the tool doesn’t matter unless the IT company adopting them cannot translate it into increased revenue or reduced cost. And that’s the problem” That’s Sidu Ponappa, our first guest on Zero Shot. Sidu is CEO and co-founder of Realfast, a company that uses AI to accelerate Salesforce implementations. Today’s Zero Shot episode is about a simple question – why are India’s IT majors bypassing Microsoft’s Copilot and instead adopting other tools. Infosys just announced an org wide roll-out of Devin. Cognizant has picked Lovable for its 350,000 employees, becoming their largest enterprise customer. Where is Microsoft, which had its early advantage? That’s the question we posed in our discussion, and well, Sidu went beyond to second and third order effects, beyond the tools themselves. And we have something exciting – we want to hear from you about what kind of tools are used in your organisation. If you work in Indian IT (or know someone who does), let us know. Tell us. The poll is below. Oh, also in our second segment, Brady looks at the IPOs of two “AI Tigers” in Hong Kong: Minimax and Zhipu. Often (incorrectly) labeled as China’s responses to OpenAI, these two companies’ listings inadvertently became a source of unease among some AI companies—there is a deadline for their path to public markets. If OpenAI and Anthropic gain ticker codes, these firms will be black holes for liquidity, and any other AI company that goes public after these events aren’t going to be welcomed as warmly by investors. This means AI companies need to make a choice: go public as soon as possible, or expect to stay private for a very, very long time. Take our poll: What AI tools do you use at work? Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Write to us with comments, critiques, suggestions, or just to say hi: zeroshot@the-ken.com. We respond to everyone who contacts us.

    1 h 2 min
  3. Taking aim for 2026

    31/12/2025

    Taking aim for 2026

    It’s the end of 2025, so we don’t have a full episode of Zero Shot for you today. This podcast launched in September, and we’ve produced 14 episodes for you so far. We’ve covered a wide range of topics, and our conversations—between Praveen, Rohin, and Brady—only work because you’re willing to sit with the complexities we wade into.  We know artificial intelligence will move fast in 2026, so we’ll keep asking the questions that matter in this AI hype cycle. We’re glad you’re coming along with us. So, thank you, and we’ll be back next week. As always, if you’d like to get in touch with any or all of our hosts, please drop us a note at zeroshot@the-ken.com. We respond to all messages. The cover art of Zero Shot is generated by AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.

    2 min
  4. Habitually outlandish valuations, AI’s trough of disillusionment

    24/12/2025 • THE KEN PREMIUM UNIQUEMENT

    Habitually outlandish valuations, AI’s trough of disillusionment

    Welcome to Zero Shot, The Ken’s weekly podcast that interprets the latest big moves in artificial intelligence—in India and around the world. This week, Praveen is on leave, but our two other co-hosts held down the fort.  Brady took inspiration from the tagline of a game show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, to consider some of the wild claims and projections made by OpenAI. Aside from CEO Sam Altman’s public statements, he considered CFO Sarah Friar’s past professional moves, where she made similar (but not as exaggerated) claims about revenue projections when she was Nextdoor’s CEO. It’s a bit of information that retail investors could consider when OpenAI prepares to go public. Then, Rohin described how AI products lost their novelty in 2025, entering the trough of disillusionment as described by the Gartner hype cycle. This presents an opportunity for companies that can develop products with an “anti-AI premium”, where the absence of artificial intelligence could find fans in customers.  The cover art of Zero Shot is generated by AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. If you have comments, critiques, or suggestions, you should share them with us! Write in at zeroshot@the-ken.com. We respond to every listener who contacts us. Additional Reading Whose Line Is It Anyway?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whose_Line_Is_It_Anyway%3F_(American_TV_series) Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstonehttps://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-Johnstone/dp/0878301178 Why OpenAI went into crisis PR mode (in November)https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/06/tech/openai-backtracks-government-support-chip-investments Nextdoor secures dismissal with prejudice in securities class actionhttps://www.cooley.com/news/coverage/2025/2025-11-20-nextdoor-secures-dismissal-with-prejudice-in-securities-class-action ‘How to disable all the AI features in Firefox to increase performance?’https://askubuntu.com/questions/1556081/how-to-disable-all-the-ai-features-in-firefox-to-increase-performance The Gartner hype cyclehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle Eugen Rochko: ‘I've finally switched to the @Vivaldi browser.’https://mas.to/@Gargron@mastodon.social/115737483372515885 Meta tolerates rampant ad fraud from China to safeguard billions in revenuehttps://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-tolerates-rampant-ad-fraud-china-safeguard-billions-revenue-2025-12-15/ LG will let TV owners delete Microsoft Copilot after customer outcryhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-18/lg-will-let-tv-owners-delete-microsoft-copilot-after-customer-complaints

    50 min
  5. Energy engineers, SaaS prices and the moment of AI truth, Broadcom and the bubble

    17/12/2025 • THE KEN PREMIUM UNIQUEMENT

    Energy engineers, SaaS prices and the moment of AI truth, Broadcom and the bubble

    Welcome back to Zero Shot, where Brady, Praveen, and Rohin take on the big ideas and latest developments in artificial intelligence every Wednesday. This week, Praveen looks at a new future career in India—the energy engineer. With Amazon and Microsoft committing to a combined $52.5 billion of investments in India, these tech giants’ data centres will require immense power. India currently doesn’t produce enough renewable energy to service this demand, and even if there were enough power, there are other hurdles. Rohin considers how SaaS companies are contending with an existential crisis. If their clients can replace their software with AI agents, then what value do SaaS companies hold in the future? Some providers have opted to insert AI capabilities into their products and raise their prices, but that is not sustainable in the long run.  Brady looked at Broadcom’s stock slump and provided another way to think about the AI investment bubble. The company designs chips for Google. Its revenue has shot up but the company is trapped in fulfilling contracts with lower margins. This all comes down to the picks-and-shovels vendors being unable to capture value in the AI supply chain. It’s another sign that the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Meta will reap the biggest benefits, no matter how the business of AI transforms in the coming years. The cover art of Zero Shot is generated by AI. Everything else is made by humans. We love to hear from our listeners! If you have comments, critiques, or suggestions, write to us at zeroshot@the-ken.com.  * Additional Reading Tower of the Sunhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_the_Sun I’m Kenyan. I don’t write like ChatGPT. ChatGPT writes like mehttps://marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-i-dont-write-like-chatgpt The Ken’s Case-Build Competition: Disrupt the Incumbentshttps://the-ken.com/case-competition-2025/submissions/  Microsoft and Amazon’s multibillion-dollar bets on Indiahttps://www.ft.com/content/d564ba34-7514-43ca-90db-b4fa01737a10 India’s e-bus dream is finally coming to life. The power grid can’t keep uphttps://the-ken.com/story/indias-e-bus-dream-is-finally-coming-to-life-no-one-told-the-power-grid/ AI agents are starting to eat SaaShttps://martinalderson.com/posts/ai-agents-are-starting-to-eat-saas/ Broadcom tumbles 11% despite blockbuster earnings as ‘AI angst’ weighs on Oracle, Nvidiahttps://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/12/broadcom-tumbles-10percent-after-earnings-as-ai-trade-sells-off-.html Global funds view Indian stocks as a top hedge against AI riskshttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-14/global-funds-view-indian-stocks-as-a-top-hedge-against-ai-risks

    53 min
  6. People evaluating people, AI’s changing seasons, shattering the mobile internet

    10/12/2025 • THE KEN PREMIUM UNIQUEMENT

    People evaluating people, AI’s changing seasons, shattering the mobile internet

    Welcome back to Zero Shot, where Rohin, Praveen, and Brady deliver their takes on new developments in artificial intelligence every Wednesday. This week, Rohin considers how AI will change the way employers hire. With AI-generated responses being the norm, hiring managers see a larger variation between the quality of submitted materials and in-person interviews than ever before. Applicants might need to “show and tell” to demonstrate their expertise. The importance of strong verbal communication, quick response times, and language fluency could also matter more.  Then, Praveen takes us through the four seasons of AI and how Deepseek acknowledged a growing gap between closed and open-source language models, which marks the difference between AI development in the US and China. Naturally, Deepseek is building new stuff: an attention mechanism that will be used in its newer models to handle long context more efficiently. Finally, Brady maps out how mobile apps will soon become pipes that feed agents. A new ZTE phone that is steered by an AI agent developed by Bytedance offers a glimpse into the future, where screens matter less and “machine users” emerge. There will need to be new ways of thinking about the metrics that matter—daily active users and session lengths won’t tell us much—and there are other fundamental implications for UI/UX design. Zero Shot’s cover art is generated by AI. Everything else is made by humans. Send us your ideas, critiques, and suggestions at zeroshot@the-ken.com, or drop us a note just to say hi. We love hearing from our listeners. * Additional Reading Worry, the explainer is deadhttps://www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/sorry-the-explainer-is-dead/ Japanese game studio tasks job seekers to draw in front of them to make sure their portfolios aren't AI-madehttps://80.lv/articles/japanese-game-studio-tasks-job-seekers-to-draw-in-front-of-them-to-make-sure-their-portfolios-aren-t-ai-made Why does AI write like… that?https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/magazine/chatbot-writing-style.html What it’s like to interview a software engineer preparing with AIhttps://www.kapwing.com/blog/what-its-like-to-interview-a-software-engineer-preparing-with-ai/ “There are four seasons in a year”https://x.com/mehulmpt/status/1995474826031460466 DeepSeek-V3.2: Pushing the frontier of open large language modelshttps://arxiv.org/abs/2512.02556 Alibaba Cloud founder expects big AI shakeup after OpenAI hypehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0PaVrpFD14   Demo of ByteDance’s AI agent on a ZTE phonehttps://x.com/TaylorOgan/status/1996539953979785521 AI browsers aren’t smart enough yet to take over the internethttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-12-08/what-is-agentic-browsing-and-why-are-ai-browsers-not-replacing-chrome-yet Woman hailed as hero for smashing man’s Meta smart glasses on subwayhttps://futurism.com/future-society/woman-hero-smashing-meta-smart-glasses-subway OpenAI, ARIA, and SEO: Making the web worsehttps://adrianroselli.com/2025/10/openai-aria-and-seo-making-the-web-worse.html Trump administration moves to deny visas to factcheckers and content moderatorshttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/trump-administration-us-visa-crackdown

    58 min
  7. One-human unicorns, Suno’s musical future, ‘back to the age of research’

    03/12/2025 • THE KEN PREMIUM UNIQUEMENT

    One-human unicorns, Suno’s musical future, ‘back to the age of research’

    Welcome back to Zero Shot, where Praveen, Brady, and Rohin discuss the biggest moves in artificial intelligence. This week, Brady mulls over the possibility of running a one-human unicorn—an idea whose most vocal proponent is Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO. He references the second season of Shell Game, a podcast where the host is experimenting with building a startup involving AI agent co-founders and colleagues. This brings about larger ethical and philosophical questions, such as whether humans always need to maintain a sense of community and companionship when they’re tackling big goals. Rohin points to Suno’s $250 million fundraise and the platform’s strategy to create, engage, and monetise in the long run. Besides, when it comes to music that is generated from prompts, ownership and intellectual property remain a concern. Suno is positioned as a platform where users can visit and discover new music, which brings to mind Sora, OpenAI’s app for generating short videos. The question is whether users will see Suno as a trusted place that hosts engaging, unique music. Finally, Praveen visits Ilya Sutskever’s appearance on Dwarkesh Podcast. Sutskever was the chief scientist and a co-founder of OpenAI, and makes the point that there is enough compute to prove out almost any idea involving artificial intelligence. This type of work doesn’t require the largest amount of compute, so “we are no longer in the age of scaling; we’re back in the age of research.” Zero Shot’s cover art is generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans. If you have suggestions, critiques, or fresh ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Write to us at zeroshot@the-ken.com, or just drop us a note to say hi. Additional Reading Tega Brain’s Slop Evaderhttps://tegabrain.com/Slop-Evader  Low-background steelhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel  The Plasticene era: Current uncertainties in estimates of the hazards posed by tiny plastic particles on soils and terrestrial invertebrateshttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969724023957  OpenAI takes stake in Thrive Holdings in latest circular dealhttps://www.ft.com/content/53e2003e-c5c0-42a1-937a-eaea77ac4d41  Accenture dubs 800,000 staff ‘reinventors’ amid shift to AIhttps://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/01/accenture-rebrands-staff-reinventors-ai-artificial-intelligence  ‘Google Antigravity just deleted the contents of my whole drive’https://old.reddit.com/r/google_antigravity/comments/1p82or6/google_antigravity_just_deleted_the_contents_of/  Shell Game, Season 2https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shell-game/id1753117762  James Watson and Edward O. Wilson: An Intellectual Ententehttps://www.harvardmagazine.com/2009/09/james-watson-edward-o-wilson-intellectual-entente  A.F. Steadman reads the prologue of Skandar and the Unicorn Thiefhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmzH_IcYWQY  Suno creates an entire Spotify catalog’s worth of music every two weeks, says investor pitch deck for $250M fundraisehttps://www.billboard.com/pro/suno-creates-spotify-catalog-music-two-weeks-pitch-deck/  Silicon Valley has more companies than ideas – Illya Sutskeverhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNq0PWHIgOw  Jack Dorsey funds diVine, a Vine reboot that includes Vine's video archive | TechCrunchhttps://techcrunch.com/2025/11/12/jack-dorsey-funds-divine-a-vine-reboot-that-includes-vines-video-archive/

    53 min
  8. Perplexity kills student incentives, moving past peak Nvidia, the Google Empire strikes back

    26/11/2025 • THE KEN PREMIUM UNIQUEMENT

    Perplexity kills student incentives, moving past peak Nvidia, the Google Empire strikes back

    Welcome back to Zero Shot, where Brady, Praveen, and Rohin offer their perspectives on the latest developments in artificial intelligence. This week, Praveen describes how Perplexity aborted its Campus Partner Programme in India after allegations of fraud surfaced. In a bid to drum up usage for its Comet browser, Perplexity had rolled out a referral-for-pay system, enticing students to convince others to download the AI browser… except they may have been legions of bots. If living, breathing people can’t be convinced to use Comet, then what does that say about it as a product? Rohin dived into the successes of Nvidia, which is the most successful “shovel seller” among companies in the AI sector. Advanced sales of its Blackwell and Rubin chips over the next 14 months, for instance, have reached $500 billion. But given how Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) are now able to train state-of-the-art language models, the lustre around Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) has faded just a bit. Finally, Brady unpacks the rollout of Gemini 3 by Google, which has compelled even OpenAI’s Sam Altman to pause and acknowledge that it’s a threat to everyone else. Gemini 3 excels at visual tasks, and it’s part of the architecture that makes Google’s new integrated development environment Antigravity stand out. Not only does Google have this advanced language model, but also the trust of enterprise and retail users—setting it apart from other companies such as OpenAI.  Zero Shot’s cover art is generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans. If you have fresh ideas, critiques, or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a note at zeroshot@the-ken.com, or just write to us to say hi. Additional Reading ‘It’s hell for us here’: Mumbai families suffer as data centres keep the city hooked on coalhttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/24/mumbai-datacentres-coal-air-pollution  ‘AI eats the world’, November 2025https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations  Insurers retreat from AI cover as risk of multibillion-dollar claims mountshttps://www.ft.com/content/abfe9741-f438-4ed6-a673-075ec177dc62  ‘Perplexity cancels Campus Partner Programme in India after widespread fraud’https://www.theleftshift.com/perplexity-cancels-campus-partner-programme-in-india-after-widespread-fraud/  ‘Earn thousands as a Campus Partner’ of Perplexityhttps://x.com/sherlock_ux/status/1980849775382786069?s=20  ‘Perplexity has cancelled its Campus Partner Programme in India following allegations of fraud tied to its referral system’https://x.com/arsh_goyal/status/1985255590038524346?s=20  The algorithm that detected a $610 billion fraud: How machine intelligence exposed the AI industry’s circular financing schemehttps://substack.com/home/post/p-179453867  Nvidia’s ‘I’m not Enron’ memo has people asking a lot of questions already answered by that memohttps://www.theverge.com/business/828047/nvidia-enron-conspiracy-accounting  ‘Made by humans’, Perplexity says the quiet part out loud, AI in courtroomshttps://the-ken.com/podcasts/zero-shot/made-by-humans-perplexity-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud-ai-in-courtrooms/  ChatGPT Go's free year turns Indian markets into its biggest test bedhttps://www.business-standard.com/companies/news/chatgpt-go-s-free-year-turns-indian-markets-into-its-biggest-test-bed-125112401042_1.html  “Attention is all you need”https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762  Altman Memo Forecasts ‘Rough Vibes’ Due to Resurgent Googlehttps://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-ceo-braces-possible-economic-headwinds-catching-resurgent-google

    54 min
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Join Brady Ng, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, and Rohin Dharmakumar of The Ken as they discuss the big ideas in artificial intelligence. You’ll get the macro view, explore their experiments in practical applications, go deeper than the news coverage you’ve seen, and hear about the implications of the latest developments. Nothing is off the table.

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