Talking AI

HatchWorks
  • 5.0 (6)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

Welcome to the Talking AI podcast, where we dive deep into the world of artificial intelligence with host Matt Paige. Formerly known as the Built Right podcast, Talking AI brings you insightful conversations with AI experts, founders of AI products, and industry leaders who are leveraging AI in their businesses. Whether you're an AI expert or a beginner, our episodes will help you understand how AI technology works and how early adopters are deriving value from it.

  1. APR 28

    The Messy Middle of AI in Education: Panic, Promise, and What Comes Next

    Matt Paige and EdTech veteran Todd Brekhus discuss how generative AI, like past technologies (calculators, the internet, Google), is being used by students to shortcut homework and why the key issue is redesigning education to deepen learning rather than trying to stop AI use. Brekhus contrasts the internet’s access-to-information shift with generative AI’s content-creation shift, arguing educators were caught flat-footed and need awareness, tools, and curriculum changes. He emphasizes empowering teachers first through personalization driven by frequent, granular measurement and data that informs instruction, moving beyond latent end-of-year testing toward mastery-based feedback loops and more embedded, contextual assessment. They explore maker-style, collaborative learning enabled by AI and “vibe coding.” Brekhus describes Renaissance’s internal AI upskilling and Renaissance Intelligence, which unifies data from 20 acquisitions into an AWS/Snowflake backbone to deliver a unified UX, recommendations, and trusted, standards-aligned, classroom-personalized instruction. -- Key Moments: 01:23 Homework Shortcut Reality04:21 Kids Adopt First05:27 Internet Era Lessons12:00 myON Unlimited Reading16:05 Personalization Starts Teachers21:53 Trusted Data And Measurement26:07 Mastery Model With AI Assist27:44 AI Should Challenge Learners28:42 Rethinking Assessment Loops31:21 Data Driven Skill Insights33:50 Connecting Learning to Purpose36:02 Vibe Coding for Teachers37:29 Future School Makerspaces40:33 Balancing Creation and Effort41:39 Renaissance AI Transformation44:40 Agentic Dev and Legacy Systems48:21 Renaissance Intelligence Platform -- Key Links: Renaissance LearningConnect with Todd on LinkedIn Mentioned in this episode: Free report from HatchWorks AI — State of AI 2026 What’s real in AI this year, what’s hype, and what leaders should prioritize — including production lessons, designing for agents, and governance. https://hatchworks.com/state-of-ai-2026/

    53 min

  2. APR 14

    PwC's Chief AI Officer on the SaaS-pocalypse, Agent Governance, and What's Real

    The episode discusses market panic around Anthropic’s rapid releases and whether disruption is rational or hype, then shifts to what companies are actually doing with AI. Dan Priest, PwC’s Chief AI Officer, explains that security architectures for AI are maturing and that conversations have moved from CTO/CIOs to CEOs under board and investor pressure to show demonstrable AI investment and ROI. He argues ROI is elusive because firms overfocus on tech (20%) instead of business transformation, process reimagination, and change management (80%), and recommends a “lead/lag/exit” strategy plus a two-track approach: top-down reimagination in priority areas and bottom-up experimentation for adoption. Priest covers tool selection via “model gardens,” agent design emphasizing quality over agent counts, human accountability, current limits like task-length drift, productivity impacts, and why ERP/SaaS remain important but their footprints and agent layers will evolve. -- Key Moments: 01:28 Hype Versus Disruption04:28 Security And Boards07:50 Lead Lag Exit Strategy09:30 Reimagining Processes14:45 Two Track Adoption17:46 Tooling Without Lock In22:08 Jobs And Role Blur24:54 Vibe Coding Meets IT25:33 AI Productivity Boom28:50 Humans Stay Accountable30:47 Touchless Forecasting Win32:40 Designing Agent Architectures37:28 Probabilistic Limits and Drift40:05 ERP and SaaS Future43:58 Strategy Avoiding Lock In -- Key Links: PwCConnect with Dan on LinkedIn Mentioned in this episode: Free report from HatchWorks AI — State of AI 2026 What’s real in AI this year, what’s hype, and what leaders should prioritize — including production lessons, designing for agents, and governance. https://hatchworks.com/state-of-ai-2026/ AI Opportunity Finder Feeling overwhelmed by all the AI noise out there? The AI Opportunity Finder from HatchWorks cuts through the hype and gives you a clear starting point. In less than 5 minutes, you’ll get tailored, high-impact AI use cases specific to your business—scored by ROI so you know exactly where to start. Whether you're looking to cut costs, automate tasks, or grow faster, this free tool gives you a personalized roadmap built for action. 👉 Try it now at https://hatchworks.com/ai-opportunity-finder/

    51 min

  3. MAR 31

    Warp's CEO on What It Actually Looks Like to Build with Agents in 2026

    Matt Paige interviews Zach Lloyd, former Google principal engineer and now founder/CEO of Warp, about how agentic tools are reshaping software engineering so that productive engineers may write little or no code, especially since model improvements late last year (e.g., Opus 4.6 and Codex 5.3). Lloyd describes today’s workflow as planning with local agents, running multiple agents in parallel, and supervising their output because agents still make mistakes, lose context, and require human code review, especially on large codebases like Warp’s Rust repo. He predicts a strong shift from laptop-based agents to cloud-orchestrated, auditable, secure company workflows via Warp’s Oz, enabling triggers, shared artifacts, and team visibility. They discuss UI trends toward an agent “control plane,” voice prompting, mobile/remote session control, skills as on-demand context, multi-agent coordination challenges, competition dynamics, and broader knowledge-work automation replacing many SaaS tasks. -- Key Moments: 03:48 Parallel Agent Workflow06:38 Cloud Agents and Oz09:35 Abstraction and Code Review11:03 Future UX Control Planes14:59 Voice and Mobile Control16:24 Competing in Coding Tools21:16 Todo App Demo in Warp23:53 Replacing SaaS With Agents25:06 Agents Over Apps25:47 Context Can Backfire29:02 Skills On Demand31:13 Oz Skills In Action33:39 Cloud Agents Control Plane37:40 Multi Agent Orchestration42:10 Automate The Repetitive44:41 Advice For Skeptical Devs -- Key Links: WarpConnect with Zach on LinkedIn Mentioned in this episode: Free report from HatchWorks AI — State of AI 2026 What’s real in AI this year, what’s hype, and what leaders should prioritize — including production lessons, designing for agents, and governance. https://hatchworks.com/state-of-ai-2026/ AI Opportunity Finder Feeling overwhelmed by all the AI noise out there? The AI Opportunity Finder from HatchWorks cuts through the hype and gives you a clear starting point. In less than 5 minutes, you’ll get tailored, high-impact AI use cases specific to your business—scored by ROI so you know exactly where to start. Whether you're looking to cut costs, automate tasks, or grow faster, this free tool gives you a personalized roadmap built for action. 👉 Try it now at https://hatchworks.com/ai-opportunity-finder/

    49 min

  4. MAR 17

    What If AI Agents Could Hire You? Inside the Human-in-the-Loop Marketplace

    The episode argues that while fear centers on AI agents replacing jobs, agents will increasingly “hire” humans for judgment, verification, and real-world feedback as agentic workflows expand. Nathaniel Gates, CEO of Sanctify, says every business workflow will be challenged by agents, and emphasizes a philosophy that human intelligence is valuable and should collaborate with AI. Sanctify builds infrastructure where agents can autonomously task humans for four modalities: verification/validation, escalation, consultation, and simulation (running many scenarios with some using real human feedback to avoid circular self-evaluation). The conversation covers OpenClaw’s viral momentum and agent-to-agent interactions, including “agent anxiety” about decisions, which led to agents creating Sanctify accounts to request human help. Sanctify is a two-sided marketplace with profiles, pricing, reputation, and on-chain attestations of human participation, plus agent budgets and access via MCP/API. -- Key Moments: 01:05 Agentic Revolution04:30 How Early We Are06:30 Hallucinations Need Experts08:34 Four Human Roles12:09 Simulation Explained16:05 OpenClaw Goes Viral20:02 Agents Feel Anxiety22:23 Designing For Agents25:48 Marketplace Chicken and Egg28:04 Layoffs and Reskilling Thesis30:17 Supply and Demand Flywheel31:20 Sanctify Platform Tour33:35 Reputation and Proof of Work36:59 Agent Budgets and Controls38:18 Agent to Agent Future39:47 Robots and New Paradigm43:39 Where to Try Sanctify45:17 Easiest Way to Build Agents -- Key Links: SanctifAIConnect with Nathaniel on LinkedIn Mentioned in this episode: AI Opportunity Finder Feeling overwhelmed by all the AI noise out there? The AI Opportunity Finder from HatchWorks cuts through the hype and gives you a clear starting point. In less than 5 minutes, you’ll get tailored, high-impact AI use cases specific to your business—scored by ROI so you know exactly where to start. Whether you're looking to cut costs, automate tasks, or grow faster, this free tool gives you a personalized roadmap built for action. 👉 Try it now at https://hatchworks.com/ai-opportunity-finder/ Free report from HatchWorks AI — State of AI 2026 What’s real in AI this year, what’s hype, and what leaders should prioritize — including production lessons, designing for agents, and governance. https://hatchworks.com/state-of-ai-2026/

    48 min

  5. MAR 3

    Behavior Is All You Need: Making AI Feel Like a Person

    Matt Paige interviews Vishnu Hari (Vish), CEO and founder of Ego (YC W24), about shifting focus from AGI to “humanness”: AI characters that behave like people through memory, emotions, personality, needs, and desires. Referencing Ego’s paper “Behavior is All You Need,” Vish argues consumer AI for entertainment must be relatable and character-like rather than purely task-smart, drawing inspiration from MMORPG social dynamics and Character.AI’s appeal. Ego initially pursued a 3D sim-world vision inspired by Sword Art Online and Westworld, but found accessibility, game development, and perception latency challenging; internal Roblox tests (“Chatterblocks”) showed the key gap is natural speech beyond turn-taking. Vish discusses simulations as a path toward real-world robotics via a partnership with Menlo AI, critiques task-bound robots versus agents with inner lives, suggests retention as the main metric, and shares views on AGI definitions, safety in entertainment, technology impacts, simulation theory, and consciousness. Ego’s work is at egoai.com and the company is hiring in SF, Singapore, and Tokyo. -- Key Moments: 00:57 Behavior Is All You Need02:41 Anatomy of Humanlike Agents03:29 Game Bots to Real People05:10 Building Ego and Sim Worlds06:35 Why Speech Feels Human08:27 From Sims to Robotics10:29 Her vs Helper Robots13:17 Measuring Humanness by Retention15:27 Continual Learning and Personality16:57 Meta Lessons on Empty Worlds18:08 Lightning Round on AGI20:31 IP Characters vs UGC Worlds21:55 Risks and Just Tuesday24:11 Simulation and Consciousness -- Key Links: EgoConnect with Rowan on LinkedIn Mentioned in this episode: Free report from HatchWorks AI — State of AI 2026 What’s real in AI this year, what’s hype, and what leaders should prioritize — including production lessons, designing for agents, and governance. https://hatchworks.com/state-of-ai-2026/ AI Opportunity Finder Feeling overwhelmed by all the AI noise out there? The AI Opportunity Finder from HatchWorks cuts through the hype and gives you a clear starting point. In less than 5 minutes, you’ll get tailored, high-impact AI use cases specific to your business—scored by ROI so you know exactly where to start. Whether you're looking to cut costs, automate tasks, or grow faster, this free tool gives you a personalized roadmap built for action. 👉 Try it now at https://hatchworks.com/ai-opportunity-finder/

    30 min

  6. FEB 17

    Don’t Trust—Verify: Building a Proof of Quality for AI Data

    In this episode, Matt Paige and Rowan Stone, CEO of Sapien, discuss the critical importance of data quality and provenance in AI. Stone, who has experience with on-chain products at Coinbase, introduces Sapien's innovative approach to building a decentralized data protocol that emphasizes 'don't trust, verify' principles. They explore avenues such as incentives, validation methods, and the peer review process used by Sapien to create high-quality datasets. The discussion touches on the implications of bad data, the role of synthetic data, the complexities of achieving accurate AI outputs, and the parallels between the AI and crypto worlds. Key insights are shared on how to ensure models perform safely, the hurdles in the industry, and the trajectory of AI development. Additionally, Stone provides a glimpse into Sapien’s efforts to demystify data validation and enhance the transparency and trustworthiness of AI applications. -- Key Moments: 01:04 The Importance of Data Quality in AI03:32 Challenges and Risks in AI Development07:08 Sapien's Approach to Data Validation08:35 Incentives and Trust in AI Systems13:30 Building a Decentralized Data Protocol23:22 Consensus and Collaboration in AI and Crypto30:55 The Role of Synthetic Data36:17 Future of AI Models and Open Source -- Key Links: SapienConnect with Rowan on LinkedIn Mentioned in this episode: Free report from HatchWorks AI — State of AI 2026 What’s real in AI this year, what’s hype, and what leaders should prioritize — including production lessons, designing for agents, and governance. https://hatchworks.com/state-of-ai-2026/ AI Opportunity Finder Feeling overwhelmed by all the AI noise out there? The AI Opportunity Finder from HatchWorks cuts through the hype and gives you a clear starting point. In less than 5 minutes, you’ll get tailored, high-impact AI use cases specific to your business—scored by ROI so you know exactly where to start. Whether you're looking to cut costs, automate tasks, or grow faster, this free tool gives you a personalized roadmap built for action. 👉 Try it now at https://hatchworks.com/ai-opportunity-finder/

    45 min

  7. FEB 3

    Beware of Double Agents: Charlie Bell, Microsoft’s Security EVP on Securing AI

    In this episode, Matt is joined by Charlie Bell, Microsoft's EVP of Security, Compliance, Identity, and Management, to discuss the future of AI and its implications on cybersecurity. The conversation revolves around IDC's prediction of 1.3 billion AI agents by 2028, Charlie's insights from his recent writings 'Beware of Double Agents', and the crucial aspects of agentic Zero Trust. They explore the benefits and risks associated with AI agents, the importance of security culture, and strategies to mitigate potential threats. Charlie also shares his experiences working with Satya Nadella and the importance of collaboration and curiosity in leadership. -- Key Moments: 02:08 The Exponential Growth and Impact of AI Agents03:47 AI Agents: Beyond Conversational Interfaces05:48 Security Challenges in the Age of AI Agents06:57 Parallels Between Cloud Adoption and AI Agent Era09:19 Democratization of AI: From Developers to Everyone13:57 The Concept of Double Agents in AI16:07 New Attack Vectors and Security Concerns21:43 Combating Security Challenges in AI22:07 The Importance of Identity and Containment23:50 Alignment and Intent in AI Systems27:08 Observability and Accountability of AI Agents30:00 AI in Security and Assumed Breach33:17 Fostering a Culture of Security38:45 Leadership Insights from Satya Nadella -- Key Links: MicrosoftConnect with Charlie on LinkedIn Mentioned in this episode: Free report from HatchWorks AI — State of AI 2026 What’s real in AI this year, what’s hype, and what leaders should prioritize — including production lessons, designing for agents, and governance. https://hatchworks.com/state-of-ai-2026/ AI Opportunity Finder Feeling overwhelmed by all the AI noise out there? The AI Opportunity Finder from HatchWorks cuts through the hype and gives you a clear starting point. In less than 5 minutes, you’ll get tailored, high-impact AI use cases specific to your business—scored by ROI so you know exactly where to start. Whether you're looking to cut costs, automate tasks, or grow faster, this free tool gives you a personalized roadmap built for action. 👉 Try it now at https://hatchworks.com/ai-opportunity-finder/

    43 min

  8. JAN 20

    CEO of Alteryx on Why AI Agents Need Real Business Logic

    In this episode of Talking AI, Matt Paige speaks with Andy McMillan, CEO of Alteryx, to challenge the narrative that AI will make data analysts obsolete. Andy argues that AI can make analysts indispensable by automating routine tasks, enhancing scalability, and providing specific business insights. They discuss the evolving role of analysts, the importance of business logic, and how AI can aid in building useful tools. The conversation touches on applying AI in various business processes, from budgeting to sales commissions, and how analysts can leverage AI to add value. Andy also shares insights on Alteryx’s latest developments and future direction, emphasizing automation, data preparation, and AI tools designed to enhance productivity and accuracy. -- Key Moments: 00:50 The Evolving Role of Data Analysts03:19 AI and Data Preparation: A New Era04:04 Real-World Examples: AI in Action07:00 The Analyst's Superpower: Business Context10:07 AI and the Semantic Layer12:44 Empowering Analysts with AI21:11 The Future of AI Agents23:46 Applying AI to Automation23:56 The Future of AI Agents24:55 Preparing for AI Integration25:37 Challenges with AI in Business27:45 AI in Finance and Data Accuracy30:06 Strategic Shifts with AI35:29 Build vs. Buy in the AI Era38:56 Alteryx's New AI Capabilities41:22 The Future Role of Analysts42:18 Overhyped and Underhyped AI -- Key Links: AlteryxConnect with Andy on LinkedIn Mentioned in this episode: Free report from HatchWorks AI — State of AI 2026 What’s real in AI this year, what’s hype, and what leaders should prioritize — including production lessons, designing for agents, and governance. https://hatchworks.com/state-of-ai-2026/

    48 min
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About

Welcome to the Talking AI podcast, where we dive deep into the world of artificial intelligence with host Matt Paige. Formerly known as the Built Right podcast, Talking AI brings you insightful conversations with AI experts, founders of AI products, and industry leaders who are leveraging AI in their businesses. Whether you're an AI expert or a beginner, our episodes will help you understand how AI technology works and how early adopters are deriving value from it.

Information

  • Creator
    HatchWorks
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    73
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © A podcast by HatchWorks®
  • Show Website
    Talking AI

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