Intent Is the New Code: Artem Koren on Why the Next 100 Years Belong to Communicators, Not Engineers

Send us Fan MailIntent Is the New Code: Artem Koren on Why the Next 100 Years Belong to Communicators, Not EngineersFeaturing Artem Koren, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Sembly AI, with hosts Myles Biggs and Patrick PattersonEpisode SummaryAI is great at information. It still can't meet you for coffee. That tension sits at the center of this conversation with Artem Koren, whose path to Sembly AI runs through a childhood chess obsession, a management consulting exit, a too-early 2009 machine learning startup, and a 2019 moment in his uncle's spare room when a transformer running on a single GPU summarized a news article and convinced him the technology had finally arrived.Myles Biggs and Patrick Patterson dig into what changed between that moment and now. Artem argues the last century of progress belonged to STEM and the next belongs to whoever can shape intent most sharply, information technology giving way to what he calls intent technology. They trace what that means for a team of skilled engineers who couldn't make the leap to large language models on their first attempt, why the flawless investment-bank PowerPoint was always a trust signal rather than the point, and what happens to that signal once anyone can generate a polished deck in minutes.The back half turns to Sembly itself. Artem walks through Sembly 3.0 and the new Studio product, where meetings become just one data source among many and the real interface is a stated intent: name the client, name the goal, get back a branded, sourced, client-ready deck or document. He closes on the career pyramid reshaping into something closer to medicine, junior work still needed but the middle thinning, and why taste and judgment stay human longer than most people expect.What You'll LearnWhy "intent technology" is replacing information technology as the core skill of the next era, and what a loosely specified intent actually costs youHow the OpenAI to Hugging Face agent swarm incident illustrates the risk of underspecified intent at scaleWhy a team of strong classical engineers failed to adapt to large language models in their first year, and what mindset shift actually workedWhat the perfect PowerPoint really signaled for consulting firms and investment banks, and what happens to that signal once AI can produce one in minutesWhy the career pyramid is warping into something closer to an Eiffel Tower, with junior work intact but the middle getting thinnerWhat Sembly 3.0's Studio does differently from Gamma, Claude, or ChatGPT: never starting from scratch, and deriving a client's branding and tone automaticallyWhere taste, judgment, and real-world endpoints still sit outside what AI can fully absorb, at least for nowResources MentionedSembly AI: sembly.aiConnect With ArtemLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/akorenConnect With the ShowMyles Biggs' LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggsPatrick Patterson's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pattersonworkHow to Support the ShowSubscribe so you never miss an episode.Share this one with someone thinking about AI and the future of work.Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.