{"id":878,"date":"2026-04-30T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teknologi.news.eraenterprise.id\/?p=878"},"modified":"2026-04-30T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T14:00:00","slug":"how-to-win-and-lose-decoder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teknologi.news.eraenterprise.id\/?p=878","title":{"rendered":"How to win \u2014 and lose \u2014 Decoder"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Hello and welcome to <\/strong>Decoder<\/em><\/strong>, Nilay\u2019s show about big ideas and other problems. This is Nick Statt, senior producer, and I\u2019m joined by host and very occasional guest, Nilay Patel. Nilay, welcome back to your own show.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hello. I hate being the guest.<\/p>\n

Now, you have said that in the past, but there\u2019s also a version of you that says that is the ideal version of this show, where you just get to not do anything and show up and talk about stuff. So I feel like you\u2019re of two minds about what the ideal version of <\/strong>Decoder <\/em><\/strong>is.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Being a permanent guest is a level of success that is hard to attain, where other people just want you to show up because they think you will be interesting. I would love to attain that level of success. At the same time, being the guest means you also have to be interesting all the time. Being the host, you\u2019re just in control. You\u2019re basically saying, \u201cCan you be interesting over and over again for an hour?\u201d And then you see what happens.<\/p>\n

So that is my job today. A few months ago, we did another mailbag episode<\/a>, which we were thinking of as an annual thing that would happen around the holidays, where we respond to listener questions, feedback, criticism, and suggestions. But recently, we thought we should just do this more often because we get a ton of great feedback, and we do really read all of the emails. So we are here again. I thought we would just jump into it. Nilay, are you ready?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, let\u2019s do it.<\/p>\n

View Link<\/a><\/div>\n

So by far, our most popular episode of this year was also our most contentious. It was your interview, Nilay, with Superhuman CEO, Shishir Mehrotra<\/a>, which focused heavily on Grammarly\u2019s expert review controversy<\/a>. We got mounds and mounds of feedback about that episode. Most of it was overwhelmingly positive. There were a lot of interesting emails, comments, and feedback we wanted to highlight here.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some of them were like, \u201cDamn, Nilay\u2019s questions are making me<\/em> nervous,\u201d which was one of our top comments. Another said, \u201cWe need to make tech CEOs this uncomfortable more often.\u201d A Verge subscriber wrote in to say, \u201cThis episode was extremely uncomfortable to listen to and absolutely the reason I became a subscriber less than a week ago.\u201d<\/strong> So I think to kick this all off, Nilay, my first question for you is, how did you feel about the reception to the Superhuman episode? Were you at all surprised by any of the reactions?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was a little surprised by some of the reactions. As Nick alluded to, Shishir was booked to come on the show well before any of the controversy, and I was really excited to talk to him. He had been both the chief product officer and the chief technology officer at YouTube; he\u2019s on the board at Spotify. He was thinking about distributing AI through Grammarly, and distributing AI is actually a really hard challenge. You\u2019re up against Google, you\u2019re up against Apple, which is going to integrate AI into iOS with Google\u2019s models over time. So there\u2019s just a lot to talk about there in the creator economy and where AI is supposed to go and how it\u2019s supposed to work.<\/p>\n

And then this thing happened. I give Shishir a lot of credit for coming on the show. He knew what he was going to get. It\u2019s not that we give people the questions. I think it was just obvious what I was going to ask about from the jump. And my feeling was that he could take the heat because he had these big roles at big companies. I don\u2019t like taking young founders and putting them on trial for the whole industry, but given Shishir\u2019s background, his depth of expertise, his enormous network, and his ability to just sit in there and answer the questions, I felt like we could do that with that episode, right?<\/p>\n

Because of who Shishir was, it felt like I could ask him about the specific issues in the case as a proxy for the bigger issues with AI. And I think a lot of people were responding to that. The thing that surprised me was the reactions that kind of felt like, \u201cYou don\u2019t understand AI. This is just how it\u2019s going to be. You don\u2019t understand what being a builder is like.\u201d<\/p>\n

I kind of get it from one perspective, but I think my response is, A, this is what Decoder <\/em>is about. What are the consequences of building these products? How do these products actually work? How should they actually work? How should we all feel about them? And my sort of more important response is if we don\u2019t ask these questions, if we don\u2019t ask them sort of relentlessly, then we will never make the people building the products actually think about what the answer should be. That was really my goal.<\/p>\n

I know Shishir is thoughtful. I know he came on because he can take the heat, and I took the opportunity to ask the questions as plainly and as bluntly as I could. And maybe that made people feel uncomfortable. I feel like everybody in the room got exactly what they knew was coming, and I think it was a service to the audience because that tension right now is reflected in every conversation about AI.<\/p>\n

Are these companies taking too much from us? Are they running roughshod over the laws we have to protect things like creativity, likeness, and large bodies of work that authors, creatives, and other people should be compensated for when you use them again? And we\u2019re just racing forward without resolving the answers to any of those questions. So I think we accomplished what we wanted to in that episode. I\u2019m not surprised at the reaction it got. I think the thing that surprised me is that\u2019s what we do here on Decoder<\/em>. So coming to the store and being like, \u201cI don\u2019t like the product you\u2019re selling.\u201d Well, that\u2019s what we make. I hope we continue to make it.<\/p>\n

One commenter, Brendan G, said he does media training professionally, and so he obviously hates listening to media-trained executives, he said. He added that either Shishir\u2019s media training was really good, or he was just smart enough to ignore it and decided to have a real conversation, other than occasionally hiding behind lawyers. Brendan also said that from his perspective, it felt like you spent a lot of time grinding what felt like a personal ax. You sounded angry, although he doesn\u2019t know if that was a kind of performance that you were doing. And he said, \u201cFrom a media trainer\u2019s perspective, I would have loved that because it just makes Shishir, in this case, seem reasonable or calm.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

So the question for you, Nilay, is: how did you decide to approach that interview? And did you think of it as you having to kind of play a part on behalf of the people whose likeness Superhuman had appropriated? Or was your strategy just, \u201cOh, I\u2019m going to just nail him on this one part around how much he owes me, and then we\u2019re going to go from there\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s very rare that the story is actually about me. It\u2019s just not a thing that occurs very often on Decoder <\/em>or on The Verge<\/em> as a whole. And so this was one of the rare times where I was just in the story, just straightforwardly, there was an AI clone of me in their product, and that made it feel like I could make this story more human from the beginning. I didn\u2019t have to explain how it would affect regular people. It was just very obvious how it was affecting me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My feeling was that by letting the story naturally be about me, which I don\u2019t like doing and which I think no journalist likes doing, but by letting it naturally be about me, I could make the stakes of it plain. And I think a lot of people who felt themselves reflected in that story, a lot of artists want to go up to a CEO and say, \u201cHow much are you going to pay me?\u201d And very few of us will ever get that opportunity, and this was just one of those opportunities. So I took it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I think the anger piece is really interesting, and I do think that is because it was me in the first person talking about myself. I didn\u2019t feel angry during that interview. I certainly have a temper. It rarely comes out, but I didn\u2019t feel angry. What I felt was intensity. And I think those things are a little different. A lot of our interviews lately have had a lot of intensity to them, and I think maybe you can mistake that for anger, and I should do a better job of communicating the nuances of those emotions, but there\u2019s no anger here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m aware that the tech industry is going to take all of my work and remix it on 1,000 platforms every single day. It\u2019s been happening to me for 15 years. Whatever. That\u2019s just a thing that happens. I think the intensity is, \u201cHey, are we going to stop and think about this for one second? Are we going to think about the value exchange here for one second?\u201d And I get the opportunity to do that. I\u2019m very lucky that I get the opportunity to do that. I think a lot of people never get that opportunity, and I was hoping to reflect that intensity in the questions.<\/p>\n

One commenter wrote something interesting about this. In reference to you asking Shishir how much they should pay you, he said, \u201cI\u2019m going to go out on a limb here and say they\u2019ll pay you zero dollars.And in fact, they just did that. They got free publicity, and you didn\u2019t sue. To him, he won this round.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, you\u2019re not part of the lawsuit yet, or we don\u2019t determine who\u2019s part of the lawsuit as journalists. But I think that relates to a question, Nilay, that we get a lot of the time here on Decoder<\/em>: Are we platforming people that don\u2019t deserve a platform? Are we giving them free publicity to hawk their product, push AI hype, or whatever it is?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have a lot of complicated feelings about the platforming debate. We\u2019ve run The Verge<\/em> for 15 years. We\u2019ve lived through a lot of different versions of \u201cWho do you platform? Should you platform them? Are you just giving people free publicity?\u201d And I\u2019ve arrived at the conclusion \u2014 and I know a lot of people disagree about this, and that\u2019s fine \u2014 that The Verge<\/em>, the thing that we make, choosing not to platform people, effectively does not matter. And you can just look around and be like, \u201cWell, if you ignore things, they don\u2019t go away.\u201d So it is better for us to ask the questions, be direct, and make people face the logical conclusions to the thoughts that they have started to have.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think the people we have on the show are bad actors to the level where we should have a platforming debate. I think they are, by and large, people who are trying to build things, people who want to talk about the way they build things. They are people who are running complex organizations with lots and lots of multifaceted challenges. It just seems better to have honest, sincere conversations about what all those things mean than to say, \u201cI hate every CEO in the world, and we\u2019re never having them on the show.\u201d And that\u2019s my position. It\u2019s our little show, but I\u2019ve become convinced over time that ignoring things does not make them go away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The major platforms have all deplatformed Donald Trump, and now he is our president again, and he is creating a particular kind of chaos that is almost unimaginable. Deplatforming him simply did not work. I don\u2019t know what else to say about that. There are all kinds of ultra-hard right, ultra nationalist figures who have been kicked off platforms, come back on platforms. I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to have a bunch of ethnonationalists on our show anytime soon. I\u2019m not suggesting that\u2019s where we need to go. I just think that this answer about platforming CEOs and giving them free publicity reflects a kind of nihilism that I\u2019m actively trying to get away from. And what I would like to do is to say they come on the show because they know, all these people know, what kind of questions I\u2019m going to ask.<\/p>\n

At this point, the show has a reputation. I have a reputation. They come on because they want to show that they can take the heat, and then my job is to do a good job. And I think that balance, that dance, ideally helps make everybody more considerate. Again, I think you can disagree with all this. A lot of people have disagreed with all of this. I personally have arrived at the conclusion that ignoring things doesn\u2019t make them go away.<\/p>\n

Another episode that we got a ton of feedback about, Nilay, was, of course, one of our most recent episodes with Puck CEO, Sarah Personette<\/a>. In particular, listeners almost universally picked up on Sarah\u2019s evasiveness. A lot of listeners were divided on whether this makes for a good podcast or not. One listener, Alejandro Tauber, sent us a one-line email saying the interview was \u201cmajestic.\u201d Another listener said, \u201cExcellent.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

But we also got an almost equal amount of polar opposite feedback. One commenter wrote, \u201cWhen Nilay has a CEO who comes off as overly media trained or maybe overly prepared, I have a hard time getting through it.\u201d Another commenter said, \u201cHonestly, I couldn\u2019t listen through this one because of all the sidestepping, zooming out, non-answers.\u201d Somebody wrote, \u201cThis interview almost feels combative, but only because the squirming to avoid answering questions is truly out of this world.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

We get a lot of feedback about episodes like this, where people are overly prepared, or they just don\u2019t want to answer something. And some people can\u2019t handle it because it makes them too uncomfortable. It kind of sounds like they\u2019re watching a cringe comedy. We heard this about Superhuman quite a bit. Some people said they couldn\u2019t listen to the whole thing because it made them too uncomfortable.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The broader topic here, of course, is that we sometimes deal with challenging subjects that are either too [media] trained, boring, or difficult to talk to. They\u2019re evasive, or they\u2019re uninterested in straying from their talking points, and that creates a lot of unnecessary friction that is plainly obvious to anyone who\u2019s listening to the interview. <\/strong><\/p>\n

How are you thinking about those kinds of situations, whether you would describe them as adversarial or challenging? Have you been tweaking your approach or your style in terms of how you get through these interviews, or try to extract more insight out of them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The weirdest thing about doing an interview show is that the episodes are only good if the other person is good. I can\u2019t make Sarah Personette understand her business more than she does. I tried, man. I don\u2019t think she understands it at all. Not even a little bit. And the questions I was asking her, I don\u2019t think, were particularly adversarial. We got off that recording, and I think it was Kevin McShane, our editorial director, who said, \u201cI don\u2019t think Sarah realized she\u2019s on the same side as you, because she was in outer space.\u201d I am not going to back off on, \u201cDo you understand the basics of your business?\u201d That seems like fair game to me, and I don\u2019t think she does.<\/p>\n

I also feel like, with Shishir as a good example, I knew that he was prepared. I knew he had the experience and the history. He could do it. If you\u2019re the guy who runs product at YouTube, people have asked you a lot harder questions, and you face a much hotter fire than I can provide to you in a one-hour conversation. So there\u2019s a spectrum here, and I\u2019m just going to flat-out say it. I thought Sarah blew it. I thought that was one of the worst performances on the show we\u2019ve ever had. And I think you could tell about halfway through that episode that I was just like, \u201cDo you know anything?\u201d Maybe she does. Maybe she just didn\u2019t know what show she was on, she wanted to give her TED Talk, she got derailed, and that\u2019s that. On the other hand, I feel like if I do think you know what you\u2019re saying, if I do think you have the depth of understanding and you\u2019re ready for it, then the pressure should only escalate.<\/p>\n

Maybe it all feels the same in the end, but to me, just sitting in the room, they feel like very different vibes. And that\u2019s what I want to do. As I said, to make an interview show, the other person has to want to show up. We always say Decoder<\/em> is a game you can win. They have to want to be here and participate honestly and openly. They have to think that they\u2019re going to come out the other end, and they won\u2019t feel completely attacked because otherwise, we won\u2019t get guests. They can just hang up. They can just click the button and go. So the show has to be an environment that reflects and respects the participation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time, if it\u2019s a game you can win, it\u2019s also a game you can lose. And I think we\u2019re just seeing that dynamic. I think everyone is very used to very puffy influencer interviews. There\u2019s a lot of that going around lately, and maybe everyone should just be one more turn more prepared.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a real hunger from the audience for what you might call accountability journalism. The joke that you\u2019ve said before is that the audience wants you to end every episode by arresting a CEO. And we\u2019ve even had some commenters referencing that as an editorial strategy. Some people are saying they want you to be even tougher. But this is running headlong into the idea that companies don\u2019t necessarily want to do these kinds of interviews all the time or even often, and that people don\u2019t like being put into unpredictable situations where they don\u2019t know the questions, they don\u2019t know what you\u2019re going to ask.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then, audiences themselves are sometimes not really that interested in that kind of product, like the end result of that. For instance, Diary of A CEO is not hard-hitting journalism, even though it\u2019s very engaging, and Acquired as well. TBPN is certainly not journalism, and whatever monitoring of the situation from Andreessen Horowitz is not journalism at all.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

But I think we saw a version of this kind of play out recently with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Dwarkesh Patel<\/a>, where he\u2019s not a traditional journalist, but he asked some challenging questions<\/a>. It kind of broke people\u2019s brains because they weren\u2019t used to seeing anyone check somebody like Jensen, a rich tech guy, but also head of the most valuable company in the world. And people think he\u2019s infallible. This was a rare moment where people were divided on the purpose of the interview.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So Nilay, the question for you is, how are you thinking about that tension between the functions of journalism, what the audience wants, and then what the audience actually responds to when it comes to tough questions? And also, why do you think people are coming on this show when we\u2019re not paying them, we\u2019re not telling them what we\u2019re going to ask beforehand. Even though they know what to expect, they are going in kind of blind.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My favorite is when people show up, and they\u2019re not ready to be asked what the structure of their company is or how they make decisions. I feel like those are gimmes at this point, and every now and again, it\u2019s just like, \u201cOh, you didn\u2019t know.\u201d You can always tell how things are going to go when those questions seem like a surprise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I think journalism is critically important. Obviously, we make journalism here. All of us who are making the show right now are journalists; we\u2019re steeped in it. Maybe we\u2019re just high on our own supply and the platforms are going to kill us all in the end, but I think it\u2019s important. And our audience\u2026 You can see it now that we make more clips and put them on social platforms. The audiences who have never encountered us before, because the algorithms are just taking the videos wherever they go, they\u2019re like, \u201cOh, I love this.\u201d So that\u2019s the product we make. It seems to have found some audience. I hope we continue to find more audience and we can all keep doing this because I like making journalism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I know why people come on the show. It has finally clicked for me. I\u2019ve had a lot of conversations about it. Nick and Kate, our producers, will tell you, \u201cWe don\u2019t do a ton of outbound booking anymore. We have an incoming list that\u2019s a mile long.\u201d People want to be on the show. And the number one reason that I hear is that all of these executives know that their own teams aren\u2019t going to listen to the audience. Their own teams aren\u2019t going to read the emails, and it is good for them as leaders to go get the external validation, not their own comms stuff, not their own branded content, not their own fake TED Talks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of them do fake TED Talks, which is wild. We\u2019ve moved on to fake podcasts. We\u2019ve gotten pitches for me to do a fake podcast that will then be clipped into fake podcast clips. And I\u2019m like, \u201cI don\u2019t need to. I have a real podcast.\u201d But this is the market that we live in, and everyone can see through it. Everyone can see through it. So if you can come on this show and explain your company well, explain how you make decisions as a leader, explain how your company is structured, take a little heat, be asked some challenging questions, and do a good job, then it is actually good for those folks out in the world with our audience, which is big and growing, but it is also good for them inside of their companies. And so, as I said, you can win that game, and you can lose that game.<\/p>\n

That external validation is so important. I look at TBPN, and congratulations on selling a podcast with 70,000 YouTube subscribers for $200 million. That\u2019s great. It is very engaging. I\u2019ve watched a lot of it. They were inside the industry, they\u2019re unapologetic, boosters of the industry, and now they\u2019re inside a company in the industry. They have no ability to provide external validation. They\u2019ve lost the thing that might provide conflict, and conflicts are what drive all great stories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Andreessen Horowitz has started and failed 10 million media brands. They had a tech blog called Future that was just about how great everything was, and it failed because no one wants to read it, because conflict and emotion are what drive stories. You can\u2019t get that if you\u2019re inside. If you are working at a place where you are not allowed to criticize the people who work at your own company, you are never going to write a good story about that company. You can write great press releases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So I know what role we play in the ecosystem at The Verge<\/em> and on Decoder<\/em>, and it is to be outside, and you have to show up here on our terms and do a good job. We have a big audience, and if you do a good job, I think the audience will be excited for you. If you do a bad job, I think the audience is going to let you know it. That\u2019s hard to get. And we\u2019re also precious about all of the rest of it. We won\u2019t do brand deals, integrated sponsorships, and all the stuff that compromises that core promise that we make as journalists. I talk about that stuff a lot. I don\u2019t need to overdo it now, but to me, that\u2019s why everybody shows up. It\u2019s hard to find the thing <\/em>that we make anymore.<\/p>\n

The producers and I will not give anyone the questions that they\u2019re going to face on Decoder <\/em>in advance. We will not let them tell us what topics they want to cover. We will not accept edits afterwards or approvals on answers afterwards. You have to show up, you have to do a good job, and sometimes you can do a bad job, and everybody can see it.<\/p>\n

I also think a lot of people are very confused by influencer media where those asks are tied to brand deals, integrations, and money made down the line, and there are approvals, but we just don\u2019t do it. Sometimes people think they can pressure us, and our response to pressure is to turn it right back around.<\/p>\n

The last time we did a mailbag episode, we got a lot of feedback about AI, how <\/strong>The Verge<\/em><\/strong> covers it, how we cover it here on <\/strong>Decoder <\/em><\/strong>when we talk to CEOs, and how we approach AI coverage in our explainer episodes with reporters like Hayden Field. A lot of the feedback was like, \u201cOh, you\u2019re not hard enough on AI. You need to go harder.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

But we\u2019ve noticed something interesting in the last three, four, five months, which is that we\u2019re starting to see a lot of mixed feedback around AI, especially people saying we\u2019re too critical or we\u2019re fixating on the wrong perspectives<\/a>. It\u2019s not a bubble, or people are actually using it now. Companies are token maxxing<\/a>. There\u2019s Claude Code, there\u2019s OpenClaw. There\u2019s all this stuff happening, and AI is changing.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

So Nilay, I know you\u2019re thinking about how AI coverage is evolving all the time. How are you thinking about it right now, especially for <\/strong>Decoder<\/em><\/strong>? Are we fixating too much on questions like whether the industry is a bubble, or whether there\u2019s mainstream appeal or product market fit for this technology? How is that thinking evolving?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have really mixed feelings on how to cover AI, and it is related to all of the polling we\u2019re constantly talking about. It\u2019s how regular people are encountering it more and more, and they\u2019re hating it more and more. And I really take to heart that Decoder <\/em>is the business show that sits on top of a big consumer tech website. So The Verge<\/em>, as a publication, is very much for consumers. That\u2019s what we cover here. We don\u2019t do a lot of enterprise tech coverage on The Verge<\/em>. We focus relentlessly on technology and how it makes regular people feel. Decoder <\/em>is a business show, right? I\u2019m asking CEOs what their org charts look like. That is very far from anything any consumer cares about. I think understanding how the companies and the people think really helps you understand the products. When we do the product coverage, we get a really interesting feedback loop where I understand the businesses that built the products, and I think that\u2019s reflected in the products.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then I can come back around, and you hear me do it on Decoder <\/em>all the time and say, \u201cAlso, we run a giant reviews program. We use your products, and I think your products are bad.\u201d And it\u2019s hard to find that dynamic anywhere else. I think that\u2019s honestly what makes The Verge<\/em> unique and what makes the relationship between Decoder <\/em>and The Verge<\/em> unique. Specifically as applied to AI, I think for a long time, we were using the products, and they just couldn\u2019t do the things the company said they could do.<\/p>\n

You can use free ChatGPT all day and all night, and if you have an ounce of self-reflection, you will say to yourself, \u201cThis is not alive.\u201d It\u2019s just prompting me to ask another question at the end of every response, and I don\u2019t see how you get from here to this thing that can run an entire business, to this thing will attain sentience, to this thing will be AGI. You can just look at the product and see that it doesn\u2019t work. David Pierce recently reviewed the Starbucks integration in ChatGPT<\/a>, and the thing is a miserable failure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We can just look at the products and see what they are and see the promises these companies are making, and ask very directly, are those promises being kept? And I think on the consumer side, the answer is manifestly no. They cannot do the things they promised consumers they could do. I think that is very much why consumers are turning on AI. They\u2019re not getting the value, but they\u2019re getting all the demands.<\/p>\n

The thing that has changed, and I think this is the reason the feedback is getting mixed, is that on Decoder, <\/em>particularly, we have a business audience, and there\u2019s real product-market fit for AI in the enterprise. You can see what Anthropic\u2019s revenues look like. You can see OpenAI basically sloughing off every consumer thing it was doing, including Sora, and trying to focus heavily on Codex and enterprise use of AI. And there\u2019s a lot to be said for that. I think a lot of business processes should be automated. I think having agents run around and do things inside your business so that real people can do actual tasks of higher value is great.<\/p>\n

I think the cutting edge of marketing is automation in some way. I think it\u2019s going to be really weird for a lot of people, but it\u2019s happening, and you can\u2019t deny that it\u2019s happening. You can\u2019t deny that AI has found uses here, and some of them will fall flat, some of them will succeed, and that will be really interesting to cover. So that\u2019s where I think the mixed opinions come from. If you\u2019re looking at one part of the market, you say, \u201cOh, AI has a lot of value to offer here.\u201d<\/p>\n

But then you kind of take the jump, and I think we\u2019ve recently heard Jensen Huang say AGI is already here<\/a>. Jason Calacanis has said AGI is already here. And what they are describing is that it can write software, it can automate some business processes, which means maybe you can run a company all by yourself. AGI is here.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s pure nonsense to me. I think the thing that I\u2019m looking at a lot is where is the product, the AI product that people love that actually changes their minds? And to me, that product doesn\u2019t exist. So I think we\u2019re going to hammer on that divide pretty hard in the years to come here.<\/p>\n

That relates to a comment we got from a reader, Chris. He says that \u201che thinks the \u2018AI polling is a bad shtick lately\u2019 on <\/strong>Decoder, <\/em><\/strong>and <\/strong>Vergecast <\/em><\/strong>is underrating how much, one, he cannot trust images or video anymore. Two, this is really bad right now. Three, it\u2019s easy to understand that it\u2019s genuinely apocalyptic in the near future, and apocalypse looms large in the American imagination. And four, those bad outcomes are the fault of <\/strong>gestures broadly toward AI<\/em>.\u201d<\/strong> So he\u2019s saying, not only is there no good consumer AI product, but that the consumer AI products that do exist are a threat to the social contract in real and immediately obvious ways.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obviously, you mentioned the AI polling around Gen Z. It\u2019s manifesting in some very dark ways. There have been attacks on politicians, attacks on Sam Altman\u2019s home<\/a>, a lot of pressure mounting against data centers<\/a>, pushing back on AI executives who claim that they\u2019re going to create more jobs, not destroy them. And then some AI executives, of course, just plainly say<\/a>, \u201cWe\u2019re going to destroy all jobs.\u201d How is this affecting how you think about talking to people about AI on Decoder<\/em>, particularly tech leaders and people who are working on this technology?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One, I think I want to make sure I keep asking them if the technology, as it\u2019s constituted today, can actually do all of the things they say it\u2019s going to do. I don\u2019t think that answer is clear at all. You can listen to Yann LeCun, who used to be the head of AI at Meta, who got pushed out of Meta for saying he didn\u2019t think LLMs could get to AGI. He\u2019s still out there saying it. The latest argument that I\u2019ve heard him make is that you can\u2019t have an agentic system that\u2019s taking action for itself when it can\u2019t know or predict the consequences of its actions. And that\u2019s just sort of the nature of the LLM, right? It\u2019s going to do stuff and see what happens, but true intelligence is going to take repeated actions in a way that is predictable. Just like you and I would take actions and know what\u2019s going to happen next. The LLMs are sort of reacting to the first impression all the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a big conversation you can have, and maybe you can build some affordances to get around that sort of inherent fact of an LLM. I think there\u2019s a bigger debate in this field than anyone wants to acknowledge because the market opportunity for the tools we have now is huge. So you have to say it\u2019s going to do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. I want to keep pushing on that. I don\u2019t think that is settled at all. And I think making people say out loud what they actually think the technology can do and what its limits are is important.<\/p>\n

The second thing I want to make sure we keep doing is talking about the polling, talking about the fact that this industry is demanding so much from everyone. All of the power, all of the land, every stick of RAM in history\u2026 for what? And it really cannot be that we\u2019ve automated marketing. It just can\u2019t. It has to be something better than that. And I keep saying it, and I know people argue with me a million ways about this, but ChatGPT has what, 900 million weekly users? Gemini is everywhere if you just blink at a Google product. Claude is famous now to a lot of people because it is also a political story. Everybody has seen slop on their Facebook feeds.<\/p>\n

People are aware of this technology. They have made up their minds. You cannot market your way out of this problem. You cannot advertise people out of their honest reactions to what you\u2019re putting in front of them. And unless you have a product that can overcome it, I don\u2019t think you\u2019re going to change hearts and minds. And there is not an AI product that regular people are using every day that they feel love for that overcomes this.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I can give a lot of examples here. Uber. You can list all of the policy criticisms people have had with Uber for years and years. There are labor concerns with Uber. There are safety concerns with Uber. At one point, Uber was getting banned in various cities. People really liked the product. They were able to overcome it because the product was compelling. And drivers like the product, as Uber will tell you over and over and over again. Some drivers don\u2019t want to be full-time employees; they like the flexibility. To the point when Uber had regulatory problems, they were putting ads in the app, asking people to lobby their local politicians. This is a product that was compelling enough to make people take political action; AI is a product that is anti-compelling enough to make people take anti-political action. And there\u2019s a long list of products like this.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You can overcome the policy objections and the societal objections if your product is compelling. I do not think there is a consumer AI product that people feel good about at the level that rises to the kinds of demands this industry is making. And you can\u2019t be like, \u201cThis is great for business.\u201d I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to do it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve got a few questions left, Nilay. We\u2019ll do these in more of a lightning round style about the current structure of the show and what to expect in the future. One question here from Joe Rodericks is that he really enjoys the occasional episode where Nilay is really fired up. He says, \u201cI would love for you to consider a periodic debate-style podcast where two people\u2019s views are pitted against each other.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

What do you think of this topic, Nilay? I know you\u2019ve joked about starting a YouTube debate show at some points. Do you think this format works? How are you thinking about formats and the structure of Decoder <\/em>itself?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We did one debate on Decoder <\/em>at the very beginning; it was a very pro-Bitcoin executive, obviously, and then a very anti-Bitcoin professor. And they weren\u2019t in the same room. I was sort of moderating them by asking the same questions to each, and then we edited it all together, and it was fairly interesting. Maybe we should do that more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I think the pure debate shows, and I think I sort of side with Jon Stewart on this, are bad for society. I\u2019m thinking about Jon Stewart talking to Tucker Carlson and Alan Colmes and being like, \u201cYou\u2019re hurting America. Stop it.\u201d Those shows rely on performance. They do not rely on substance. And so you can watch any random Jubilee episode, and it all comes down to how compelling the person in the chair is, not whether they are saying smarter things than the other person.<\/p>\n

I like that people think that I\u2019m interesting enough to hold one side of a debate. My job is not to advocate positions in that way. I think we have some clear values, which in America, in 2026, may feel like I\u2019m advocating for stuff because we live in a crazy time. I\u2019m just trying to ask questions and learn what people are doing and how they\u2019re doing it. Sometimes what I\u2019m saying is, \u201cHey, have you thought about making your platform less racist?\u201d And that feels like I\u2019m advocating really hard and being really fired up. \u201cHave you thought about not stealing everything from everyone all the time?\u201d That is like table stakes for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe we should do more debates where I\u2019m the moderator, but I think it gets weird if I\u2019m the one taking a position. And I really have watched a lot of those debate shows on YouTube, and it feels like what people are getting out of it is performance, not substance.<\/p>\n

That segues perfectly into a question here at the end that I wrote myself because I\u2019m curious what your answer is. You have a <\/strong>Decoder <\/em><\/strong>book in the works. You recently announced it. It\u2019s called <\/strong>How to Get What You Want<\/em><\/strong>. Why is that the title of the forthcoming <\/strong>Decoder <\/em><\/strong>book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That title is a little bit of a joke. I think it\u2019s a fun title. It is just what I say to my eight-year-old daughter all the time. She asks me for something, and I say, \u201cHow are you going to get what you want? What\u2019s your plan?\u201d So that\u2019s the title. The book I\u2019ve been thinking about since we started Decoder<\/em>. I\u2019ve said this before, but when you start a podcast and the premise is, I\u2019m going to interview a CEO every week, that is just a forever project. There\u2019s no end date to that project. You can\u2019t mark any sort of success or failure. It just goes on forever as long as people are listening. And that\u2019s a weird way to do things.<\/p>\n

I wanted to have some kind of marker, some goal, and that\u2019s why we structured the Decoder <\/em>questions as they are. That\u2019s why I ask everybody how to make decisions. It\u2019s why I ask everybody how their companies are structured, because my feeling was that if I could get enough of those answers, if I could find enough commonalities, then when my niece and my nephew graduate from college \u2014 which they\u2019re going to do next year \u2014 I could tell them how businesses work.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re going to graduate from college in a really weird time, and all of these kids are going to go off into their first jobs, and I don\u2019t know what that job market looks like, especially now with AI. And none of these companies hold onto anyone for longer than 25 minutes. No one\u2019s going to get trained. And I was like, \u201cI should just make an instruction manual.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so one of the chapters of the book is just a Decoder <\/em>trip. If you tell me how your company is structured, I can tell you 80 percent of its problems. I know that. I\u2019ve proven that, I think, on the show. I think Decoder <\/em>listeners know that the last 20 percent is really important. That\u2019s the rest of the hour. But if you just say, \u201cWhat is the org chart?\u201d You can get a pretty basic understanding of where the priorities and the tensions of a company are.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve talked to a lot of CEOs. I\u2019ve asked a lot of very similar questions. We have tropes inside our show. Can I package that up and hand it to people and have them feel a sense of agency about what they\u2019re doing in their professional lives? And so it\u2019s called How to Get What You Want<\/em> because I want people to feel empowered. I think a lot of institutions are going to be torn down by the time this book comes out. And a lot of young people with idealism and ideas are not going to have had the experiences of running anything. So can I just hand people a cheat code? Here\u2019s how it goes. All the companies are the same. They\u2019re all functional or divisional.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you listen to Decoder<\/em>, you know these answers. If you have a boss and they don\u2019t know the answer to the question \u201cHow do you make decisions?\u201d you should quit your job. It\u2019s as flat out as I can tell you. There are answers to that question. We\u2019ve heard a lot of them. So that\u2019s the idea of the book, but How to Get What You Want<\/em> is very much, it\u2019s just me saying to my eight-year-old daughter, \u201cHow are you going to get what you want? What\u2019s your plan?\u201d<\/p>\n

For the final question today, Nilay, who are your moonshot guests this year for <\/strong>Decoder<\/em><\/strong>? Is it Apple\u2019s John Ternus? Is it still Sam Altman and Dario Amodei? Palantir CEO Alex Karp? Who do you most want on the show?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019re working on Sam, we\u2019re working on Dario. I hope they come through. As I said, it\u2019s a game you can win; it\u2019s also a game you can lose. I think everyone\u2019s very aware of that, and they\u2019re cruising towards IPOs. So I think they\u2019re pretty risk-averse. They also love being on podcasts. So if you know these guys, tell them this is the most fun one to be on.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve joked for years that I\u2019ve never even asked for Tim Cook because I don\u2019t think I can win media training. I really don\u2019t. I\u2019ve met John Ternus. He is pretty relaxed. He likes making products, and he likes talking about products. Maybe once he actually becomes the CEO later in the year, we can make that ask. That\u2019d be great. Alex Karp, I think, would be just the funniest episode of the show. We should ask for that. But I\u2019m also looking very much for guests who are using AI tools, in particular, in ways to actually run their businesses.<\/p>\n

I think we\u2019ve heard a lot from the model companies. We have not heard a lot from a new generation of business leaders who are actually using these tools in interesting ways that aren\u2019t just replacing jobs. I know they\u2019re out there. I\u2019m just very curious to talk about them and talk about what it really means to use these tools in the enterprise setting, where I think they\u2019ve found product-market fit.<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s a great place to end it. Nilay, thank you for coming back on <\/strong>Decoder<\/em><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019re very welcome. I should hang up in a rage just so people can see what it\u2019s like. It\u2019s the danger of every episode.<\/p>\n

Yeah, you\u2019re allowed to walk out whenever you want.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Laughs] Yep.<\/p>\n

Questions or comments? Hit us up at decoder@theverge.com. We really do read every email!<\/sub><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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