What Was That?!

Nitesh and Vineet

Nitesh and Vineet discuss the latest in the tech and business world, from an Indian perspective.

  1. FEB 12

    What's Been Going on With Claude - and why it Spooked Indian Tech

    Welcome back to What Was That?! , where Nitesh and Vineet discuss the latest in tech, business, and how it impacts us. This week, we try to figure out whether Claude has quietly detonated the software industry or whether everyone just discovered a shiny new hammer and is now declaring the end of carpentry. The trigger: a string of Claude upgrades - tool calling, desktop control, MCP servers - that can now read your files, move things around your machine, talk to internet services, and even build code in plain English. Indian IT stocks promptly had a small panic attack. Naturally. We break down what actually changed. Generative AI is still a probabilistic word predictor with better context windows, not consciousness. But when you combine language models with file access and service integration, things get interesting, And slightly terrifying, but not in the Terminator sense - context failures, hallucinated commands, malware risks, and the minor issue that most humans have no idea what edge cases even are. We rant about Indian IT firms, decades of labor arbitrage, $100+ billion in dividends and buybacks instead of R&D, and whether AI is finally the long-awaited reckoning. And just when things get existential, we arrive at Moltbook - an AI-only social network where bots talk to bots and occasionally shout about nuclear war in all caps. Elon calls it early singularity. We call it Reddit fanfic. Link to a fantastic explainer video: https://x.com/shanselman/status/2018117809931489418?s=20 Section Breakdown with Timestamps00:00 Intro and the problem with generic podcast names03:45 What actually happened with Claude this week04:09 Indian IT stocks drop and market reaction05:47 What generative AI really is - token prediction explained07:46 Tool calling and Claude controlling your computer09:52 MCP servers interacting with internet services11:07 Combining tools - Why this suddenly feels powerful12:16 Nitesh explains his use case for Open Claw15:26 Productivity gains versus real world risk20:07 Enterprise software - is it actually threatened?22:50 Context windows - where AI still fails24:31 Why personal automation could break the internet29:05 Will software engineering shrink or adapt33:00 Indian IT systemic risk and labor arbitrage debate44:21 Enter Moltbook, the AI social network46:01 Bots talking to bots and singularity headlines48:26 Why Moltbook is not consciousness49:10 SaaS investing and what changes next51:17 Bitcoin as the promised hedge that nobody uses54:29 Wrap up and teaser for Bitcoin episode

    55 min

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Nitesh and Vineet discuss the latest in the tech and business world, from an Indian perspective.