The AI Riff

🎙️ Episode 21: “”We’ve hit 21—and with age comes glasses, wisdom, and kicking Rob out (just kidding). This week, we're joined by Mike Morehouse to riff on something far deeper than productivity: what happens when AI makes thinking too easy? This episode unpacks how effortless cognition—the AI-enabled ability to get the right info, right now—might quietly erode our critical thinking, creativity, an...

In this milestone episode of The AI Riff, the crew dives into a listener-suggested bombshell: JPMorgan Chase’s bold move to standardize and scrutinize vendor AI. No more stealth updates. No more casual rollouts. If you can’t answer tough questions about model drift, governance, and fairness—you’re out. We unpack the first-order business implications (hello, vendor disqualification) and second-orde...

New data from NBER and Seismic says workplace use of AI is down. But is that the real story?🎙️ In Episode 19, we dig into what people are actually doing with AI—from quiet quitting ChatGPT at work to cultural drivers of global adoption. Ruth Lee breaks down the big shift from “doing” to “asking” in AI use—and what it means for your job.💥 Plus:- Why developers are (maybe) safe—for now- Copilot flo...

AI adoption is “slipping”—or just maturing? In Ep. 18 we unpack fresh Census data, rate-driven pause vs. true pullback, and why enterprise needs deterministic, scoped AI. Plus: Rolling Stone’s lawsuit vs. Google and the proposed RSL (Really Simple Licensing) for AI training, and where multilingual mortgage tools help Hispanic borrowers—without tripping compliance. Also: shifting model wars (Anthro...

Episode 17 — AI’s Awkward Adolescence (with guest Ben Sizemore)This week on The AI Riff, the crew gets a little bigger. Rob, Kyle, Mario, and Ruth welcome special guest Ben Sizemore, CIO of Land Gorilla, to dive into a theme every technologist knows too well: the messy teenage years of AI.We kick things off with Taco Bell’s botched attempt at an AI drive-thru, where pranksters ordered 15,000 cups...

Hosts Kyle Meyers, Rob Katz, and Mario DiBenedetto, with guest Mike Moorehouse, tear into the myth that AI will “replace jobs.” Spoiler: it won’t—it’ll chip away at tasks, shake up workflows, and expose weak change management. The crew calls out lazy thinking (“just automate the job”) and reframes AI as a catalyst to redesign work itself—like word processors killing typing pools. Mario lays down a...

Episode 15 of The AI Riff dives into the week’s most consequential AI stories—minus the hype. We unpack Google’s Pixel 10 “always-on” features, the privacy and enterprise risk tradeoffs, and Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman’s warning about “AI psychosis” (over-reliance and anthropomorphism). Then we get practical: the governance moves leaders actually need. In this episode:What Pixel 10 signals...

Ep. 14 — Autocomplete, Bubble Talk, and Where the Real AI Value Is Right NowIf “GPT-5 = AGI” was the story you were sold, this episode is your reality check—and your playbook. In 45 minutes, you’ll know what today’s systems actually do well, how to keep them honest, and where the money (and risk) really sits. Mario DiBenedetto, Rob Katz, Ruth Lee, and Kyle Meyers take the gloves off: Gary Marcus’...

Are we at peak AI—or just entering a new phase? In this week’s Riff, Kyle Meyers, Rob Katz, Ruth Lee, and Mario DiBenedetto put the GPT-5 release under a bright light and separate hype from help. We dig into OpenAI’s incremental gains (model routing, coding and health boosts), the wave of open-sourced “older” models (OpenAI and xAI), Anthropic’s steady cadence, and Google’s new assistant—then ask...

Join us as we welcome Ruth Lee into the conversation with Rob Katz, Kyle Meyers, and Mario DiBenedetto for a lively and insightful episode!🔎 In this episode, we explore three pivotal articles trying to figure out who has control over the remote control for AI:Do regulators and state AGs have control? The latest from Massachusetts indicates YES.But Anthropic seems to have plenty of control as indi...

In this episode, we untangle the real risks behind these headlines—whether you're a coder, a creator, or sitting in the C-suite— how AI’s ripple effects are reshaping work, money, and power.

Will AI wipe out middle management or are the jobs created by AI keeping them more focused on their best use of time ..... big win? But at what expense... are we getting dumber as AI gets smarter!

🚨 Mortgage AI Arms Race: Are You Ready? 🚨 UWM’s MIA + LEO. Better.com’s Tin Man. CoreLogic’s Ollie. One by one, the industry’s biggest players are wiring AI into every inch of the loan stack—slashing back-office drag and hunting sub-$5K cost-per-loan. Should you worry you can't compete? But here’s the real question 👉 Who stitches these layers together first, and who gets stitched up? Episod...

This week on The AI Riff , Mario DiBenedetto, Rob Katz, and Kyle Meyers break down AI’s latest identity crisis. From a Stanford-cited study where chatbots pushed users the wrong way, to Klarna’s customer service meltdown, Google’s “audio-style” answers hijacking your search traffic, and New York’s new AI safety act — it’s been a week. We’re asking: Can AI still serve humans productively, safely, a...

What if your university gave you a chatbot before it gave you your student ID? And what if the biggest platforms in tech decided your startup—or your business model—was obsolete before you even shipped? In today’s episode, we map the fault lines being drawn by AI superpowers. OpenAI is rewiring universities. Meta is rewiring infrastructure. And in between? A startup graveyard. But there’s a signal...

This week on The AI Riff , Mario DiBenedetto and Kyle Meyers unpack three big swings and one cold shower: Microsoft’s AI agents chatting with each other, GitHub’s bug-fixing agent that works like a real dev, and a study across 7,000 workplaces showing AI chatbots delivered just a 3% time savings. We dig into why (trust, review overhead, bad data) and where the real wins are next. Inside: How “agen...

In this episode of The AI Riff , Mario and Kyle dig into a wild week of AI highs, lows, and head-scratchers. From Klarna’s “fire the humans, hire them back” experiment, to a Harvard study claiming AI makes people more productive but less motivated , to Elon’s xAI missing safety deadlines—this one’s got it all. 💡 In this episode: Klarna’s $10M AI pivot that didn’t go as planned Why over half of em...

Welcome to the first-ever episode of The AI Riff ! 🎙️ Mario and Kyle kick things off by cutting through the AI noise — no hype, no jargon, just what actually matters. From IBM replacing humans in Human Resources to Amazon’s robot coworkers, they explore where AI is truly headed and what it means for everyday people, from coders to contractors. 💡 In this episode: IBM’s HR experiment: when “human”...