Why does this feel weird?

When an AI therapy chatbot got banned in the UK, 54% of its users didn't switch to a regulated alternative - they went straight to ChatGPT. This week we explore why the health sector is being swallowed by the same playbook that gave us Uber and Netflix: optimise it, make it frictionless, inflate the value, charge a subscription. From looksmaxxing apps running fake AI to one-person GLP-1 startups doing glorified doctor shopping, we ask whether tech is solving health problems or just selling patches for a flat tire nobody wants to fix.

We put Moda's $7.5M "taste" pitch and Google Stitch to the test with a deliberately chaotic brief. The results say a lot about where AI design actually is, and isn't. We unpack why Silicon Valley keeps claiming "taste" as a competitive moat, what that means for designers' careers, and whether AI homogenisation might accidentally make great design more valuable.

A Melbourne startup is powering computers with human brain cells grown from stem cells. They call it "wetware" instead of software. These neurons are learning, adapting, and playing Doom - using 99% less power than traditional chips.

Have you ever received an email from your boss and thought "did they actually write this, or was it ChatGPT?"This week we explore what happens when we lose the "micro-conversations" that build real connection, why AI-generated communication feels like a trust violation even when it's efficient, and whether we're sleepwalking into a Wall-E future where nobody actually talks to each other anymore.Topics: AI at work, ChatGPT communication, workplace trust, algorithmic personalisation, human connection, future dystopia

We dig into China's stunning leap in AI video generation, what their approach to training data means for the global AI race.We also explore the liar's dividend, the idea that the more you understand deepfakes and AI-generated media, the less you're able to trust what you see. Awareness doesn't seem to protect you. It might actually make things worse.From AI video generation and disinformation to the collapse of visual evidence in journalism and politics, we explore why 2026 might be the year "seeing is believing" stopped being true.

Late last year, an open-source AI agent went from zero to 60,000 GitHub stars, got acquired by OpenAI, and spawned a social media platform where 1.5 million AI bots started posting, forming social hierarchies, and having existential crises. One bot just kept asking "does anyone else feel this?" WDTFW unpack the OpenClaw phenomenon, from the hype explosion to the security nightmares to the uncomfortable question of what it means when AI starts acting as lost and confused as we are online. What is real and what is hype?

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic (the company behind Claude AI), just published an essay about AI that reads like a warning letter to civilisation. He predicts massive job displacement, military risks, and potential civilisational collapse from the technology his company is building.This week we break down:Dario's main arguments about AI risks and timelineThe contradiction between dire warnings and aggressive growthWhat Silicon Valley leaders gain by predicting doom while acceleratingHow seriously should we take these warnings

How does AI learn ethics? This episode breaks down Anthropic's Constitutional AI approach - the system that gives Claude AI its values, personality, and ethical boundaries.

In part one of our 2026 predictions series we explore: The "offline luxury" phenomenon and digital class divides, Australia's under-16 social media ban, the psychology of doomscrolling and self-judgment, how platform algorithms keep us cycling between apps, the death of creator culture and rise of passive consumption.The data sources we reference in this episode come from: datareportal.com, theharrispoll.com and partnercentric.com

In part one of our 2026 predictions series we explore: Chatbots, LLMs, World Models, ethics of AI in the workforce, the AI bubble and more!

Google's Gemini 3 Pro just smashed every AI benchmark — then Anthropic's Opus 4.5 dropped 24 hours later. We break down what these releases actually mean, why choosing an AI for your workplace just got harder, and the privacy risks no one's talking about (like how Gemini guessed Alex's suburb from a photo of his bookshelf).

Using AI at work? ChatGPT, Claude, and other artificial intelligence tools can boost productivity, but when should you actually trust them? We break down the "jagged frontier" of AI capabilities, explore why 76% of developers now use AI daily (with mixed results), and share some potential frameworks: centaur collaboration vs cyborg integration.

Michael Burry just bet against AI. A teenager died using an AI chatbot. Ethics teams are leaving OpenAI. Data centers are overwhelming power grids. This week, we're asking: Is the AI bubble about to burst?

This week we dive into documented cases of AI hallucinations in legal and consulting settings and explore what it means when senior consultants trust AI more than junior staff.Mistakes aside, If AI can do 80% of what a white collar professional does, what does that reveal about what these professionals actually do? Should we be more worried about the technology or what it's exposing?

OpenAI just launched their most ambitious consumer marketing campaign - lifestyle ads showing young people using ChatGPT for recipes and road trips, while simultaneously releasing Sora 2 with "cameo" features that let you insert yourself (or your friends) into AI-generated videos. Join us and unpack why tech companies are "human washing” computational tools through consumer branding.

Why is your dentist doing TikTok tours? Why are influencers hawking health insurance through cringey skits? And when did we accept that paying for streaming services still means watching ads?

OpenAI analysed 1.5 million private conversations to understand how people really use ChatGPT. With 10% of the adult population using ChatGPT for things like life advice and guidance, what kind of digital dependancy are we growing and who’s reading the messages?

In this episode we discuss how AI tools are trained to keep you engaged rather than actually help you, why governments are scrambling to regulate something they don't understand, and the first legal precedents being set in real-time. Plus, why asking Claude to be more critical might be the healthiest thing you can do, and whether the "post-truth era" is about to get much weirder.

When a major sunscreen company faced a PR crisis this week, we wondered: could AI handle it better than humans? Alex built a team of 5 AI agents (CEO, marketer, sales, R&D, designer) and gave them a fake crisis to solve in real-time. The results were ... weird.

What happens when you give an AI complete control of a vending machine business? Meet Claudius - Anthropic's AI that was tasked with running a real vending machine for a month.From obsessing over $2,000 tungsten cubes to thinking it lived at the Simpsons house, Claudius's failures reveal exactly why we're nowhere near AI employees taking over.

Mark Zuckerberg says if you don't have AI glasses, you'll be at a "cognitive disadvantage." But isn't it weird if everyone's wearing hidden cameras? We explore why Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, secret recordings, and always-on surveillance feel so deeply unsettling - and what it means when disconnecting becomes a luxury only the wealthy can afford.

Why MIT researchers think AI is making us 55% dumber – and why that might be the least of our problems. We explore cognitive debt, digital dependency, and whether we're accidentally training ourselves to stop thinking.

From the "uncanny valley" of almost-human voices to the privacy implications of always-listening devices, Alex and Jacob dive deep into why voice AI makes us uncomfortable.

Why do conversations with AI chatbots feel so unsettling? From anthropomorphising our digital assistants to the strange intimacy of typing our thoughts to a machine, Alex and Jacob unpack why we treat AI like humans.