Sabrina Halper Show

Sabrina Halper

The mind, the machine, and the meaning of it all.

  1. Engineering Biology With AI: The Future of Medicine

    May 20

    Engineering Biology With AI: The Future of Medicine

    Jack Dent, co-founder of Chai Discovery, gives us a look at how AI could change the way we discover drugs, understand biology, and treat disease. Jack went from cold-emailing Stripe and joining as a teenager to co-founding Chai Discovery, the AI drug design company Sam Altman asked him and Josh to start years before they did. Chai has since raised $225M from investors including OpenAI and Thrive Capital, and built a model that hit a drug-design breakthrough far faster than expected, with roughly 200x better antibody success rates.We talk about whether people could one day help cure their own diseases with AI, whether each of us might have a personalized biology model, and whether medicine shifts from treating sickness to preventing it before it starts. Jack also gets into whether frontier AI labs will build these biology models themselves, what AI can and can’t fix in our current healthcare system, why clinical trials are still such a bottleneck, and how much of science may become less random when AI can generate and test better hypotheses. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 02:28 Inside Stripe When It Was Only 100 People 08:45 How Sam Altman Sparked Chai’s Origin Story 10:52 Why Chai Discovery Exists 16:20 The Chai-2 Antibody Breakthrough 19:24 Approaching Biology as Engineering 24:45 Using AI to treat ourselves26:52 Robotics in labs 27:22 Why Pharma Is Finally Moving on AI 29:49 Can AI Fix Clinical Trials? 32:53 Personalized biology models 36:24 Longevity, Peptides, and Trillion-Dollar Drugs 39:02 Does it matter that the government cuts exploratory science grants? 41:00 What Next-Gen Chai Models Will Do 42:08 Will Frontier AI Labs Build Biology Models? 43:26 Biology is hard

    39 min

  2. Apr 16

    How She Became One of Wall Street’s Most Successful Investors

    Keri Findley, founder of Thiel-Backed fund Tacora Capital, shares a rare glimpse into her life and career: her path to Wall Street, eventually becoming one of the youngest partners at hedge fund Third Point while building its structured credit business from scratch, founding Tacora Capital with Peter Thiel anchoring the first fund as his biggest check ever. Along with wild success comes a target on your back and Keri reflects on difficult moments of litigation, divorce, and betrayal that ultimately informed her outlook on life. She pulls back the curtain on Wall Street: big wins, pressure, risk, and competition. We discuss venture credit, what contrarian investing actually looks like, the AI boom, today's tumultuous private credit markets, and what it means to be a high-ethics person in business. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 – From Columbia grad to Third Point partner: building a trading desk at 25 03:30 – Discovering Wall Street by accident and landing at Morgan Stanley 06:00 – The 2008 financial crisis and making her first high-stakes trades 10:00 – Hedge fund life: massive trades, pressure, and doubling money in mortgage bonds 14:00 – Wall Street rivalries and the fallout with Morgan Stanley 18:00 – The Bloomberg article 22:00 – Calling Alex Spiro and discovering the investigation might not exist 24:00 – Peter Thiel offering to fund the entire first fund and founding Tacora Capital 36:00 – Silicon Valley venture capital, AI hype, and herd mentality in investing 46:00 – The dark side of startups: unethical founder behavior and financial fraud 55:00 – Carrie’s advice to her 21-year-old self: resilience, integrity, and ignoring titles

    56 min

  3. Feb 19

    AI Has Taste Now. The Radical Disruption Coming for Hollywood | Edward Saatchi, Fable Studios

    Edward Saatchi (Saatchi & Saatchi family, former Head of Oculus Story Studio, Founder of Fable Studios) joins us to make the case that Hollywood is sleepwalking into the most radical disruption in the history of storytelling."Creativity is at a deep blue and Kasparov moment" "AI isn't just a tool in the toolbox for filmmakers. It's a competitor" We talk about: ★ Whether AI can be truly creative - Edward says yes ★ Silicon Valley's quiet takeover of Hollywood ★ Tech companies becoming media companies ★ The rise of the one-person film ★ Why AI will bring an aesthetic shift to cinema Then we go deeper into what this actually means for authorship, storytelling, and who gets to have a creative voice, when the cost of making a film collapses to near zero. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Finding the New Medium of AI Art 00:57 From Obama Campaign Tech to VR Storytelling at Oculus 03:02 Why VR Didn’t Pan Out 04:03 Fable Studios’ Vision 04:20 Why “Cheaper VFX” Misses the Point of AI in Hollywood 07:09 The Playable Star Wars Thought Experiment (and Studio Pushback) 09:08 AI Media: Interactive, Remixable, Personal 12:48 Simulation-First Story Worlds 14:51 AI Will Be Creative 16:43 World-Building vs. Prompt Engineering 20:03 Hollywood’s Shifting Attitude 24:37 One-Person Films, YouTube Discovery, and AI-Generated Feeds 29:21 Can AI Art Have a Point of View? 31:10 From Creativity to Consciousness: Why Simulations Matter 32:13 ‘Exit Valley’: Using AI Satire Against Tech Power 36:50 Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood 40:52 Video Models, Robotics, and the ‘War on Cliché’ 44:45 Generated Media’s Role in Globalizing Content 50:51 ‘AI Aesthetic’ in Film 56:06 Saatchi & Saatchi: Edward’s Family Roots

    1 hr

  4. Feb 6

    Moxie Marlinspike, Founder of Signal

    Moxie Marlinspike founded Signal, the nonprofit privacy messenger used by millions. He’s now building Confer, a fully private, end-to-end encrypted AI chat. This conversation covers everything.TIMESTAMPS:00:00 Intro 01:09 Building Physical World Projects Centered on Experiences07:43 Tales from Hitchhiking15:04 The Birth of Signal22:23 Privacy in the Digital Age31:21 Introducing Confer: Private AI Chat37:17 Generative AI and Developer Responsibility38:21 Encryption and Cryptography: A Historical Perspective39:15 Skepticism Towards Crypto41:24 The Impact of Self-Publishing and Cancel Culture44:01 Imagining MoxieLand49:41 Why Do Conspiracy Theories Exist58:00 Signal Gate1:02:30 Limits of Solo Ambitions1:05:09 Solving Aging1:09:00 Moxie’s Next Physical World Project FOLLOW:Follow MoxieSign up for ConferFollow SabrinaPlease support this show by subscribing!

    1h 13m

  5. Jan 8

    When AI Becomes Conscious, How Will We Even Know? — Ken Liu

    Ken Liu: Renowned sci-fi author of The Paper Menagerie, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, and his new book All That We See or Seem; producer of Pantheon; futurist who works with world governments to prepare for what’s ahead. TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) Introduction (1:41) Mechanism vs meaning: what science explains vs what stories explain (5:47) What is consciousness, really? (6:42) Psychedelics and the mystery of the mind (7:55) Can intelligence exist without consciousness? (12:10) How mind-uploading might actually work (and the Singularity) (19:15 — Falling in love with AI - why “imaginary companions” aren’t new (23:40) Modern day myths around romantic love (27:15) Preservation vs. transformation of humanity (32:37) When technical skill disappears: what is craft? (40:00) When using AI actually makes us feel more human (41:05) Writing, imagination, and “All That We See or Seem” (47:35) Dreams, reality, and how we know what’s real (54:45) Privacy in an age of digital selves (58:03) Data, the commons, and how knowledge should be shared Follow Ken: https://x.com/kyliu99 Buy his new book All That We See or Seem : https://www.amazon.com/All-That-Seem-Julia-Novel/dp/1668083175 When will AI become conscious and how would we even know if it did? We talk about the decoupling of intelligence and consciousness in today's LLMs, and the ethical questions in regulating models.Ken walks me through a thought experiment to understand the singularity: what uploading our minds might actually look like, a theme explored in his Netflix series Pantheon. If we replace our minds piece by piece with silicon, at what point do “we” disappear? In the age of AI, when many technical skills are made obsolete, who are the experts of craft? We explore why falling in love with AI may be grounded in our religious history, and is an act of falling in love with our own reflection. We discuss how phones have killed daydreaming and access to the collective unconscious, and the mysteries of psychedelics, natural intelligence, and the universe at large. “We are willing to die for the sake of a story. In fact, it’s the only thing humans have ever willingly died for.” Most of human life, Ken argues, has two levels of explanation: 1.Evolution & 2.Stories — the way we make sense of the world and find meaning in it.

    1h 5m

  6. 11/27/2025

    Isabelle Boemeke - The Real Story of Nuclear: Fear, Politics, and the Grid We Need for AI

    Isabelle Boemeke went from Brazilian model to the internet’s most creative nuclear advocate who led the largest pro nuclear rally in US history. In this episode, we talk about nuclear energy's wild history, political drama, and what America’s energy grid needs to look like to keep up with the future demands. Shownotes:  0:00 : Introduction 1:37 : Growing up in rural Brazil 3:44 : Getting to the United States 5:15 : Reading Richard Dawkins, getting involved in the climate movement, learning about nuclear 12:05 : A historical deep dive: What went wrong with nuclear energy? 24:32 : What really happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl - separating fear from facts. 30:43 : Deaths from Nuclear Vs. Fossil Fuels 37:15 : Nuclear Proliferation Risk 42:17 : Gaps in the US supply chain & AI’s need for more energy 49:40 : Promise vs. reality of SMRs (Small modular reactors) 54:54 : Designing energy grid for the US 59:10 : Why are Germany, Taiwan, and Australia shutting down nuclear energy programs? 1:02:10 : Saving California’s last nuclear plant Diablo Canyon 1:08:24 : Today’s nuclear renaissance

    1h 10m

  7. 11/14/2025

    OpenAI’s Isa Fulford on Building Deep Research, ChatGPT’s Agent, and the Future of the Internet

    Isa Fulford is only a few years out of school and is already the mind behind Deep Research and ChatGPT Agent - two of the most important and ambitious projects at OpenAI. She’s a close friend from our Stanford days, someone I adore, and someone the world is going to hear a lot more about in coming years. We talk about how her upbringing and violin training shaped the discipline behind her professional work. Isa breaks down how these systems were built, how they think, and where AI is heading, from agents talking to agents to a future where humans guide the work instead of doing it.SHOWNOTES: 0:00 Introduction 1:50 Early life, math, music, and discipline 4:40 Stanford, Journey into AI, & joining OpenAI 7:15 Deep Research, building datasets, & early indications 11:35 Building ChatGPT Agent 13:47 What comes next from OpenAI? 15:58 Personal Use of AI 16:40 Future of Internet + Agent Communication 19:03 Personal AI agents 20:06 Safety Risks 22:44 AGI 24:03 Agents for personal growth 25:00 How AI is changing the way we work 27:43 Talent war and poaching 28:30 Lessons from Sam Altman: raise ambition level 30:18 Rapid questions EPISODE LINKS: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SabrinaHalper Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sabrina-halper-show/id1627753991

    32 min

  8. 11/06/2025

    Life After AGI — Richard Ngo (Philosopher & Researcher, ex-OpenAI / DeepMind)

    Richard Ngo is a leading AI philosopher and researcher, formerly at OpenAI and DeepMind. We discuss what life looks like once we have AGI and how every aspect of the human experience could change. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 – Introduction 01:44 – Technology as an Inequality Engine 03:52 – AI as a Personal Tutor vs. Distraction Machine 06:11 – Therapy, Coaching, and Emotional Mediation 09:16 – The Future of Work and the Socio-Political Economy 13:15 – Relationships, Intimacy, and AI Companions 19:03 – Marriage Decline and the Birth Rate Crisis 22:15 – Speed of Change and Political Control 23:55 – Human Augmentation and Speciation 30:52 – Comparing Artificial Intelligence to Natural Intelligence 35:57 – Religion, Continuity, and Identity in the Future 37:26 – China vs. the U.S. in AI Governance 39:39 – Why Richard Left OpenAI 43:43 – Drones, Simulation, Power, and More

    47 min
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5
out of 5
12 Ratings

About

The mind, the machine, and the meaning of it all.

Information

  • Creator
    Sabrina Halper
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    26
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Sabrina Halper
  • Show Website
    Sabrina Halper Show

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