Zero Shot

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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.

HACE 5 DÍAS

Anti-AI backlash aids big tech, CEOs and prompt-generated rhetoric, Emergent’s emergence

Welcome to Zero Shot, a weekly podcast by The Ken where Praveen, Brady, and Rohin ponder the latest developments in artificial intelligence—in India and around the world. This week, Brady starts by considering how backlashes against AI—whether it stems from job displacement, data centre construction, or general unease and uncertainty—gives major tech companies the conditions to centralise the internet even more. This is particularly true in the US, in contrast to a regulatory regime in China that encourages a set of diverse players. Praveen turns his attention to Deepinder Goyal, the outspoken CEO and co-founder of Zomato, who tweeted out a lengthy treatise in response to strikes by delivery workers. But… it turns out Goyal’s piece of text was probably generated using artificial intelligence. What prompted the change in how Goyal engages with his audience, and what does it mean if more personal messages by business leaders carry this flavour? Finally, Rohin profiles Emergent, a vibe-coding platform that lets users deploy production-ready apps and websites. It uses a multi-agent system that is favoured by non-technical users, and was one of the most-used tools by participants in The Ken’s recent Case-Build Competition. Founded by twin brothers Mukund and Madhav Jha, Emergent has roped in $30 million in funding and hit $25 million annual recurring revenue in five months. Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated by AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. As always, we love hearing from our listeners! Write to us with comments, critiques, suggestions, or just say hi at zeroshot@the-ken.com. We respond to everyone who contacts us. Additional Reading The January Chasmhttps://the-ken.com/newsletter/first-principles/the-january-chasm/ Microsoft: Out with Office, in with Copilothttps://www.office.com Microsoft CEO begs users to stop calling it “slop”https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-satya-nadella-ai-slop IndiaAI startups resist Centre’s plan to seek equity for supporthttps://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/artificial-intelligence/indiaai-startups-resist-centres-plan-to-seek-equity-for-support/articleshow/126356889.cms Manus gets the best of both worlds—Chinese development for a global producthttps://the-ken.com/columns/zero-shot/manus-gets-the-best-of-both-worlds-chinese-development-for-a-global-product/ Mark Zuckerberg: ‘The internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas’https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mark-zuckerberg-the-internet-needs-new-rules-lets-start-in-these-four-areas/2019/03/29/9e6f0504-521a-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html ‘Last one on this topic, and I have been holding this in myself for a while…’https://x.com/deepigoyal/status/2007030873711927381 Emergenthttps://app.emergent.sh/landing/

1 h y 15 min
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
24/12/2025

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
17/12/2025 • SÓLO PARA THE KEN PREMIUM

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
10/12/2025 • SÓLO PARA THE KEN PREMIUM

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
03/12/2025 • SÓLO PARA THE KEN PREMIUM

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
26/11/2025 • SÓLO PARA THE KEN PREMIUM

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
19/11/2025 • SÓLO PARA THE KEN PREMIUM

Threat models, using taste to defend margins, ChatGPT’s ‘collab’ with Phonepe

Welcome back to Zero Shot, where Rohin, Praveen, and Brady discover new ideas and interpretations of the latest developments in artificial intelligence. This week, Rohin wonders what the threats are in our regular usage of AI tools and platforms. Conventional ways of safeguarding against exploits work to an extent, but new vectors are emerging for those who are criminally inclined. Brady encounters an ad for Anthropic’s Claude in one of the least likely of places, then examines how the company is creating scarcity around its infinitely scalable product. What appears to be a play to cast Claude as a premium consumer product is an inverse of OpenAI and Perplexity’s strategies, but could also be a move to protect its enterprise margins. Finally, Praveen looks at an OpenAI collaboration that enables Phonepe’s users to create images, seek career advice, get healthy recipes, receive astrological readings, and more. This could be a lead-in to one specific integration that matters much more to Phonepe, but it isn’t clear whether users are willing to share their financial data if it happens. Zero Shot’s cover art is generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans. We love hearing from our listeners! Send your critiques, suggestions, and ideas to zeroshot@the-ken.com, or write to us just to say hi. Additional Reading: Human behavior is an intuition-pump for AI riskhttps://invertedpassion.com/human-behavior-is-an-intuition-pump-for-ai-risk/ AI and the paperclip problemhttps://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/ai-and-paperclip-problem AI status symbols are popping up everywherehttps://www.businessinsider.com/ai-status-symbols-openai-anthropic-cursor-2025-10 Alexa, Siri, Netflix, Tiktok, ChatGPT, Claude—they all “feel like AI” to consumershttps://menlovc.com/perspective/2025-the-state-of-consumer-ai/ At a major AI conference, one startup got voted most likely to flophttps://www.businessinsider.com/at-an-ai-conference-attendees-were-asked-which-startup-they-would-short-2025-11 Live skydiving with Google Glasshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxmbbtuRszA PhonePe Announces Strategic Collaboration with OpenAI to Bring ChatGPT to Indian Users at Scalehttps://www.phonepe.com/press/phonepe-announces-strategic-collaboration-with-openai-to-bring-chatgpt-to-indian-users-at-scale/

55 min

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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.

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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.

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ECONOMÍA Y EMPRESA
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.

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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.

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