Zero Shot

४.५ (२७)
तंत्रज्ञान
प्रत्येक सप्ताहात अपडेट केलेले

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.

२२ जुलै

What's your AI vocabulary?

On July 12, Satya Nadella published a blog post in which he argued that you pay for AI twice. Once with money, and once with proprietary knowledge you have to feed it. His recommendation to every company: create your private evals. But wait, do you know what an eval is? Could you define it in simple terms? Most people can't. And that’s the thing with the AI vocabulary that has seeped into our lives. On today’s episode of Zero Shot, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar, Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Brady Ng put some common AI concepts and words to test in their own lives. They pick from the following options: A. Never heard of it B. Heard of it, can't define it C. Can define it D. It changed how I work Here are the words they unpack: Frontier models · Open weights · Tokens · Context window · Fine-tuning · Distillation · RAG · Prompt/context engineering · Context store · Prompt library · Context rot · Voice & style · Harness · Loops · Evals Along the way, they discuss Fable, distillation, the hype around prompt engineering, the current push around taste, and the one AI leader missing from all of the action. If this episode resonated with you, we’d love to hear from you and also see you at our sixth live event on how professionals, companies, and India keep their edge as AI gets more powerful. It's on August 1 at the Bangalore International Centre in Indiranagar. Livestream tickets are available if you can't make it in person and prices go up soon. Here are all the details: https://the-ken.com/events/intelligence-independence/ — This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN. — 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 at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears. — Additional material: https://snscratchpad.com/posts/looking-ahead-2026/ https://snscratchpad.com/posts/reverse-information-paradox/ https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/indias-ai-edge-is-that-it-has-no-ai-of-its-own/
१५ जुलै

China let its AI industry run wild to build the best models. Now, it wants control

The US-China AI race typically gets looked at through three lenses: models, chips, and talent pool. But there's a little-known government document that might reveal more about China's AI boom than any of those. It’s a registry that companies building with AI must deal with to legally operate in the country. And the result is a public list of thousands of algorithms. This document answers a few important questions. Which tools are being built? Who's building them? Which sectors are gaining prominence? Kendra Schaefer is our guest on today’s episode of Zero Shot. She's the head of tech policy research at Trivium China, a strategic advisory firm, and leads Trivium Tech Daily, a brief read by global investors, companies and policymakers. She's spent close to 20 years living and working in China's tech sector and among her recent areas of focus is the registry. When we ask Kendra about the registry though, she first takes through the history of the tech industry's relationship with the Chinese government. Kendra's biggest point is a macro one: Chinese tech almost invites over regulation. "They will find any crack in the cement whatsoever and they will dive through it with such gusto," she says, describing how companies race regulators to every loophole before rules can close them. It's a pattern that predates AI. That's where the registry comes in. It was introduced as a website-registration system and has been repurposed for the AI boom. There is this data. Chinese LLMs are being deployed. They are hitting all benchmarks and are among the best in the world. But here is the catch. As Kendra says: "The state always prioritizes security.” "It will put security first no matter what the ramifications are to competition, " she adds. What does that mean in the near future? Tune in! — This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN. — 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 at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears.
८ जुलै • The Ken Premium फक्त

Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur on how agentic commerce will unfold in India

If you've bought anything online in India in the last ten years, you've seen the checkout page. You search, scroll, filter, add to cart, and eventually pay. UPI simplified the payment part. But you still had to do everything else yourself. That's about to change with agentic commerce, says Harshil Mathur, the CEO of Razorpay. Not just change but disappear entirely. Imagine this. Let’s say you want to make cake one evening. An agent figures out the ingredients you need for the recipe, builds the cart, checks the pantry, and finishes the purchase. Without you ever opening an app. This is the future two years from now, according to Harshil. And Razorpay is at the forefront of this transformation. In the last eight months alone, the company has built a UPI-OpenAI-Razorpay pilot for ordering groceries in chat, launched agentic payments across Zomato, Swiggy, and Zepto, rolled out a UPI Reserve Pay flow that practically kills the PIN, and built an agent studio on Claude for merchants to automate disputes, recoveries, and reconciliation. As this future unfolds, there are some questions. What does agentic commerce actually look like end to end? Can India make a mark here like it did with UPI? Can the habits of consumers actually shift? If they do, who loses and who wins? Does this genuinely level the playing field for small businesses, or does it just entrench the platforms that already have scale? And what does any of this mean for the tens of millions of people who haven't touched e-commerce yet? Harshil answers all of these questions on this episode of Zero Shot. Tune in! — This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN. — 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 at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears.
१ जुलै

We audited our AI use. We are now making a case for 'intelligence independence'

How many AI models can you name? Not how many you use… but how many you can actually name. That question sets the ball rolling for this episode. In the next hour, Rohin puts Brady and Praveen—two people who use AI every single day for a living—through a cold read. There is no prep or script. What they couldn't answer is the whole point. Over the course of an hour, three daily AI users discover their stances on where their data goes, on the tools they default to, and their strategy with AI use. The questions they had to answer: What did you use AI for in the last 24 hours? Be specific.On a scale of one to ten, how AI proficient are you?Have you ever thought about where your conversations and data actually go?If you lost access tomorrow, what would you actually lose?Have you taught the AIs you use about yourself? Could you take that to a different tool?Does your company have an AI strategy, or does it just have AI users?Do you think using AI is making you sharper or duller?A year from now, do you want to be more valuable because of AI—or more replaceable?These questions around "intelligence independence" form the basis of The Ken's next live event on Saturday, 1 August, at the Bangalore International Centre. Unlike prior waves of technology, the AI wave doesn't just impact all of us—be it as a country, a company, or a professional—it also extracts what is most valuable from us. Our knowledge. Our intelligence. It's the part of the AI equation we talk about the least. And we want to change that. You can find the tickets here: https://the-ken.com/columns/zero-shot/the-best-time-to-think-about-intelligence-independence-was-four-years-ago-the-next-best-time-is-now/ --- This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN. ---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 at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears.
२४ जून • The Ken Premium फक्त

Shakun Batra and ad director Kobayashi on AI in films, the importance of craft

First came hesitation. Naturally, given both guests are filmmakers. But once the threshold was crossed, there was no looking back. For Shakun Batra — director of Kapoor & Sons, Gehraiyaan, and Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu — the tipping point was a traffic jam shot that cost one-tenth of what they'd built on set. For Kobayashi, it was a car commercial that he hadn’t attempted before. Shakun went on to build an AI division at his production house Jouska Films and collaborate with Google to make a small film using Veo 3. Kobayashi built Bait Society, an AI-native production company, from scratch. One augmented an existing practice. One rebuilt entirely. We assumed these were diverging paths. But at the core, both are simply people who love using technology to make things they'd love to see. In this episode of Zero Shot, we get into who gets credit when AI is in the pipeline, what happens to the crews and guilds being left behind, and why craft and voice still matter. We also go into the writing process in the AI age, the limits of the tools, and what it actually takes to make a feature film with AI today. Both agree on one thing: production is getting easier. The bar for storytelling is going higher. Tune in! ____ This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN. ____ 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 at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears! ____ Additional material: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2439708/ https://www.baitsociety.ai/kobayashi-reel
१७ जून • The Ken Premium फक्त

Uber and Meta have said no to toxenmaxxing. Make way for 'yieldmaxxing'

If you have been paying attention, something has been happening within tech companies. And it has to do with tokens. But not what you think. After killing its AI leaderboard, Meta announced a new platform to track AI usage and spending. Microsoft has started cancelling the Claude Code licenses of its employees. Uber said it ran out of its token budget for 2026. And then came the latest news of Anthropic disabling Fable 5's access following the US government's directive. These four developments signal a shift underway. For the past year, the game was tokenmaxxing: use as much AI as possible, as often as possible, on everything. Enterprises are now asking whether this obsession was worth it. We are giving that question a name: "yieldmaxxing". Our thesis is simple. The big challenge now is this: how we will use AI safely and reliably without lock-ins and exploding bills, while remaining strategically nimble? To figure out what the token burn and its aftermath looks like, we have Gaurav Mishra on this episode of Zero Shot. Gaurav worked across many companies we are talking about. He was at Yahoo, Meta, and headed product for Uber AI. He is now the CEO of Proshort, an AI-powered contextual sales platform. Tune in! ____ This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.____ 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 at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears! ____ Recommended Reading: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/meta-ai-costs-spike-company-225410935.html https://www.projectflux.ai/p/blown-by-april-why-uber-s-3-4-billion-r-d-budget-could-not-hold-the-line-on-ai-coding-spend https://www.thestreet.com/technology/microsoft-ceo-sends-shocking-message-to-employees
१० जून • The Ken Premium फक्त

Physical AI is a Mexican standoff. Who walks away as the winner?

Think of an action or crime film. At some point, when all of the different threads and plots converge, you witness a high-stakes scene. Three characters are locked in a fight. You don’t know who emerges a winner. This is what is loosely called a Mexican standoff. Apply this analogy to physical AI. There are currently three players in the game. America has BigTech and big models that only seem to be getting bigger. China has actual manufacturing capabilities and a sharp-minded executional focus on hardware. And then there are places like India and Nigeria that provide the data for some of these robots, especially “humanoids”. In this episode of Zero Shot, host Praveen Gopal Krishnan talks to The Ken reporter Sakshi Sadashiv who wrote about the mushrooming gig economy around data collection to create robots that perform human tasks. We are also joined by Pramod Ghadge, the co-founder of Unbox Robotics, an Indian company that has deployed 700 robots across nine countries for a specific use-case: warehouses. Each has a take on who wins. But more importantly, this episode takes you inside the growing Physical AI market. Tune in! Additional Material: AI product differentiation, living with robots, world models, and extreme leverage Tesla and Figure AI are building robots to act like humans. Indian workers are teaching them how The GPT Moment for Robotics Is Here https://unboxrobotics.com/
३ जून • The Ken Premium फक्त

Lossfunk is the third space for Indian AI, beyond industry and academia

After 15 years of building Wingify, Paras Chopra spent some time deliberating about his next stint. For years, he had chased the 0 to 1 journey of building something from the ground up and watching it grow. He wanted that again. But he knew it had to be different. There would be no product. Forget that, he decided the next project would barely have any commercial inclination. Instead, he chased his curiosity as a child passionate about science. That’s how Lossfunk, a “cosy home” for “independent researchers” was born. Paras describes Lossfunk as the place where everyone — from undergrads to PHDs to just inquisitive people— ask foundational questions on AI away from the pressures that burden academia and labs attached to big tech companies. In this episode of Zero Shot, Paras gets into the journey of Lossfunk and talks about its motivations and principles. Now, a lot of the questions Lossfunk is asking might not result in a flashy new product that changes consumer behaviour. They might just become a research paper. Or two. For Paras, that's completeley alright because building a “research attitude” may fully be the point.____ This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.____ 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 at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears! ____ Additional ResourcesLossfunkhttps://lossfunk.com Inverted Passionhttps://invertedpassion.com Esoteric programming languageshttps://spectrum.ieee.org/esoteric-programming-languages-daniel-temkin Manifesto for doing good science in AIhttps://letters.lossfunk.com/p/manifesto-for-doing-good-science Particle Feverhttps://particlefever.com/

सर्व पहा (४५)

The Two by Two podcast is a premium business podcast from The Ken that investigates, discusses and breaks down the most important business stories around you. Hosted from The Ken's newsroom by business journalists Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan, Two by Two will feature guests and experts from across the industry and academia to talk about issues no one else is talking about.

४.४ (132)

व्यवसाय
First Principles is a weekly interview podcast comprising authentic, candid, and insightful conversations between some of India’s most accomplished founders and business leaders, and Rohin Dharmakumar, The Ken’s CEO & co-founder. From personal philosophies, mental models and decision making frameworks, to reading habits, parenting styles or personal interests, each episode will delve into what makes each of these leaders unique.

४.७ (363)

उद्योजकता
You’ll spend 90,000 hours at work in your lifetime. How do you make that time count? 90,000 Hours is a weekly podcast from the newsroom of The Ken that helps you navigate today’s changing world of work, where the traditional 40-year career is gone, entry-level jobs are being replaced by artificial intelligence, and staying relevant means constantly reinventing yourself. Hosted by Rahel Philipose and Vidhatri Rao, the show features conversations with the people creating, breaking, and rewriting the way we work.

४.८ (6)

करिअर
The audio edition of The Ken’s Make India Competitive Again newsletter, spearheaded by Seetharaman G. Every Wednesday, our editors and reporters read the latest edition and chronicle what India is doing, will do, and should do—to not just survive but thrive in the chaos unleashed by Donald Trump.

२.९ (8)

व्यावसायिक बातम्या

सदस्यता एफ.ए.क्यू. पहा

४.५

5 पैकी

२७ मानांकन

Bold and investigative with first principles

२८ जाने

Ak_rulz

Talk is on what’s incentivising the actions in AI and the bigger business interplay. Focus on what’s happened at macro level for india, China and USA
Brevity is the soul of subscription

७ मार्च

Nair DA

Great insights but you guys have to figure out how to compact it the way the Economist and others do. Otherwise the incisive ideas get lost in all the convoluted chatter.
Interesting conversations on AI

१८/११/२०२५

Curious_Idiot

What I particularly like about Zero shot is it’s not a traditional Q&A or reading out headlines from International newspaper, rather it’s free flow discussion among 3 intellectually curious hosts which makes it interesting and also fun at the same time.

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.