How to win — or lose

This is Nick Statt, senior producer on Decoder. We last ran a mailbag episode during the holidays, and we decided it was a good idea to do that kind of thing more often. So we’re back with Nilay as the guest, answering questions and responding to feedback, criticism, and suggestions. We talk through some recent controversial episodes like our interviews with the CEOs of Superhuman and Puck, and we also discuss how we’re covering AI, thinking about the future of the show, and what it takes to win (and lose) Decoder. Links: Nilay answers your burning Decoder questions | Decoder Mailbag (2025) Answering your biggest Decoder questions | Decoder Mailbag (2024) Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me | Decoder Can Puck reinvent the news business for the influencer age? | Decoder The people do not yearn for automation | Decoder Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder! Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:28Speaker 01

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• 1:14Speaker 04

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• 1:51Speaker 02

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• 1:59Speaker 05

  Hello and welcome to Decoder, Neelai's show about big ideas and other problems. This is Nick Statt, senior producer, and I'm joined by host, very occasional guest, Neelai Patel. Neelai, welcome back to your own show.

• 2:12Speaker 06

  Hello. I hate being the guest.

• 2:14Speaker 05

  Now, you have said that in the past, but I feel like there's also a version of you that says that that is the ideal version of the show, where you just get to not do anything and show up and talk about stuff. So I feel like you're of two minds with how the show of like, what is the ideal version of Decoder?

• 2:31Speaker 06

  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. And 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're just in control. You're basically saying, can you be interesting over and over again for an hour? And then you see what happens.

• 2:52Speaker 05

  That is my job today. A few months ago, we did our annual Mailbag episode, which we were thinking of as like an annual thing that would happen around the holidays, where we respond to listener questions, feedback, criticism, suggestions. But recently, I think we thought we should just do this more often, because we get a ton of great feedback and we do read all of the emails. So we're here again. So I thought we would just jump into it. Neelai, you ready?

• 3:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 3:22Speaker 05

  So by far, our most popular episode of this year was also our most contentious. It was your interview, Neelai, with superhuman CEO Shere Mahotra, that focused heavily on Grammarly's expert review controversy. We got mounds and mounds of feedback about that episode. Most of it was overwhelmingly positive. There were a lot of interesting emails and comments and feedback we wanted to highlight here. Some of them were like, "Damn, Neelai's questions are making me nervous," was one of our top comments. Another said, "We need to make tech CEOs this uncomfortable more often." A Verge subscriber wrote in to say this episode was extremely uncomfortable to listen to. And absolutely the reason I became a subscriber less than a week ago.

• 4:04Speaker 05

  So I think to kick this all off, Neelai, 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?

• 4:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was a little surprised by some of the reaction. I can get into that. You know, as Nick alluded to, Shashir 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's on the board at Spotify. He was thinking about distributing AI through Grammarly and distributing AI is actually a really hard challenge. You're up against Google. You're up against Apple, which is going to integrate AI into iOS with Google's models over time. So, you know, there's just a lot to talk about there in the creator economy and where AI is supposed to go and how it's supposed to work. And then this thing happened and I give Shashir a lot of credit for coming on the show. He knew what he was going to get.

• 4:58Speaker 06

  It's not that we give people the questions. I think it was just obvious what I was going to ask about. And my feeling was that he could take the heat because he had these big roles at big companies. And I didn't, I don't like taking like young founders and putting them on trial for the whole industry, but given Shashir's 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. Because of who Shashir 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.

• 5:43Speaker 06

  And so the thing that surprised me was the reactions that kind of felt like, you don't understand AI. This is just how it's going to be. You don't understand what it's, what being a builder is like. And I kind of get it from one perspective, but I think my response is, A, this is what Decoder is about. What are the consequences of building these products? And how do these products actually work? And how should they actually work? And how should we all feel about them? And my sort of more important response, if we don't ask these questions, if we don't ask them sort of relentlessly, then we will never make the people building the products actually think about what the answer should be. And that was really my goal. I know Shashir is thoughtful. I know he came on because he can take the heat.

• 6:29Speaker 06

  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. You know, and I, I think it was a service to the audience. Because that tension right now is reflected in every conversation about AI. Are these companies taking too much from us? Are they running roughshod over the laws we have to protect things like creativity and likeness? And, you know, large bodies of work that authors and creatives and other people should be compensated for when you use them again. And we're just racing forward without resolving the answers to any of those questions. So I think we, we accomplished what we wanted to that episode.

• 7:13Speaker 06

  I'm not surprised at the reaction it got. I think the thing that did surprise me is that's what we do here on Decoder. So coming to the store and being like, I don't like the product you're selling is, well, that's, that's what we're, that's what we make. I hope we continue to make it.

• 7:29Speaker 05

  One commenter, Brendan G actually wrote in about the Superhuman episode. He does media training professionally. And so he obviously hates listening to media trained executives. But he said either Shashir's media training was really good, or he was just smart enough to ignore it and decided to have a real conversation rather 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't know if that was a kind of performance that you were doing. And he said, from a media trainer's perspective, I would have loved that because it just makes Shashir, in this case, seem reasonable or calm. So the question for you, Neil, is how did you decide to approach that interview?

• 8:10Speaker 05

  And did you think of it as you having to kind of play a part on behalf of the people whose likeness as Superhuman had appropriated? Or were you just, you know, was your strategy just, oh, I'm going to just nail him on this one part around like how much he owes me? And then we're going to go from there.

• 8:25Speaker 06

  It's very rare that the story is actually about me. Just not a thing that occurs very often on Decoder or on The Verge 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 felt like I could make this story more human just from the beginning. I didn't have to explain how it would affect regular people. It was just very obvious how it was affecting me. My feeling was that by just letting the story naturally be about me, which I don't 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, right?

• 9:09Speaker 06

  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, how much are you going to pay me? And very few of us will ever get that opportunity, and this was just one of those opportunities. So I took it. I think the anger piece is really interesting, and I do think that is because it was me in first person talking about myself. I didn't feel angry during that interview. I certainly have a temper. It rarely comes out, but I didn't feel anger. What I felt was intensity. And I think those things are a little different, and I think 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

• 9:54Speaker 06

  the nuances of those emotions. But there's no anger here. Like, I'm aware that the tech industry is going to take all of my work and remix it on a thousand platforms every single day. It's been happening to me for 15 years, whatever. Like, that's just a thing that happens. I think the intensity is, hey, 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? I get the opportunity to do that. I'm very lucky that I get the opportunity to do that. I think a lot of people don't have that opportunity ever, and I was hoping to reflect that intensity in the questions.

• 10:26Speaker 05

  One commenter, I think, wrote something interesting about this, which is he said that, in reference to you asking Shashir how much they should pay you, he said, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they'll pay you $0. And in fact, they just did that. They got free publicity. And you didn't sue. To him, he won this round, which of course, you know, you don't, you're not part of the lawsuit yet, or we don't determine who's part of the lawsuit as journalists. But I think that relates to a question, Neel, that we get a lot of the time here on Decoder, which is, are we platforming people that don't deserve a platform? Are we giving them free publicity to hawk their product or push AI hype or whatever it is?

• 11:04Speaker 06

  I have a lot of complicated feelings about the platforming debate. We've run The Verge for 15 years. We've lived through a lot of different versions of who do you platform? Should you platform them? Are you just giving people free publicity? And I've arrived at the conclusion, and I know a lot of people disagree about this, and that's fine, that The Verge, the thing that we make, choosing not to platform people, effectively does not matter. You can just look around and be like, well, if you ignore things, they don't go away. So it is better for us to ask the questions and be direct and make people face the logical conclusions to the thoughts that they have started to have.

• 11:45Speaker 06

  But I don't think the people we have on the show are bad actors to the level where we should be having 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. There are people who are running complex organizations with lots and lots of multifaceted challenges. And it just seems better to have honest, sincere conversations about what all those things mean than to say, I hate every CEO in the world and we're never having them on the show. And that's just, you know, it's my position, it's our little show, but I'm just, I've become convinced over time that ignoring things does not make them go away. The major platform has all deplatformed Donald Trump, and now he is our president again.

• 12:26Speaker 06

  And he is creating a particular kind of chaos that is almost unimaginable. Deplatforming him simply did not work. I don't know what else to say about that. There are all kinds of ultra hard right, ultra nationalist figures who have been kicked off of platforms, come back on platforms. I don't think we're gonna have a bunch of ethno nationalists on our show anytime soon. I'm not suggesting that's where we need to go. I just think that this answer about platforming CEOs and giving them free publicity, it reflects a kind of nihilism that I'm trying actively 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'm gonna ask. At this point, the show has a reputation. I have a reputation.

• 13:11Speaker 06

  They come on because they want to show that they can take the heat. And then, you know, my job is to do a good job. And I think that balance, that dance, actually ideally hopes to make everybody more considerate. Again, I think you can disagree with all this. A lot of people have disagreed with all this. I've just, I personally have arrived at the conclusion that ignoring things doesn't make them go away.

• 13:32Speaker 05

  You need to pause here for a quick break. We'll be right back.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease, Myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 15:07Speaker 07

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• 16:14Speaker 05

  Welcome back. This is Decoder's senior producer Nick Stat, making Neelai answer all of your questions.

• 16:22Speaker 05

  So another episode that we got a ton of feedback about, Neelai, was, of course, our most recent, one of our most recent episodes with Puck CEO Sarah Personette. In particular, listeners almost universally picked up on Sarah's evasiveness. A lot of listeners were divided on whether this makes for a good podcast or not. One listener, Alejandro Tauber, sent us- So one line email saying the interview was majestic. Another listener said excellent, but we also got an almost equal amount of polar opposite feedback. One commenter wrote, when Eli has a CEO who comes on, who comes off as overly media trained or maybe overly prepared. I have a hard time getting through it. Another commenter said, honestly, I couldn't listen through this one because of all the sidestepping, zooming out, non answers.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  Somebody wrote, this interview almost feels combative, but only because of the squirming to avoid answering questions is truly out of this world. Uh, we get a lot of feedback about episodes like this where people are too overly prepared or they just kind of don't want to answer something. And some people can't handle it because it makes them too uncomfortable. It kind of sounds like a, like they're watching like a cringe comedy. We heard this about superhuman quite a bit. Some people said they couldn't listen to the whole thing because it made them too uncomfortable. The broader topic here, of course, is that we sometimes deal with challenging subjects that are either so trained or so boring or difficult to talk to. They're evasive or they're uninterested in straying from their talking points. And that creates a lot of unnecessary friction that is like plainly obvious to anyone who's listening to the, to the interview.

• 17:49Speaker 05

  How are you thinking about those kinds of situations, whether they're, you know, whether you would describe them as adversarial or challenging, whatever. Um, and have you been kind of tweaking your approach or your style in terms of how you get through these interviews or try to extract more insight out of them?

• 18:04Speaker 06

  The weirdest thing about doing an interview show is that the episodes are only good if the other person is good. I can't make Sarah Personette understand her business more than she does. I tried, man. I don't think she understands it at all, not even a little bit. And the questions I was asking her, I don't think were particularly adversarial. We got off that recording and I think it was Kevin McShane, our editorial director, who said, I don't think Sarah realized she's on the same side as you. Because she was in outer space. I'm not gonna back off on do you understand the basics of your business? That that seems like totally fair game to me, and I don't think she does.

• 18:48Speaker 06

  I also feel like, you know, with Shashir is a good example. I knew that he was prepared. I knew he had the the experience and the history. He could do it. If you are the if you're the guy who runs product at YouTube, people have asked you a lot harder questions. You've faced a lot hotter fire than I can I can provide to you in a one hour conversation. So that there's a spectrum here. And I, you know, I I'm just gonna flat out say it. I thought Sarah blew it. I I thought that was one of the worst performances on the show we've ever had. And I think you could tell about halfway through that episode that I was just like, do you know anything? Maybe she does. She would. Maybe she just didn't know what show she was on, and she wanted to give her TED Talk, and she got derailed,

• 19:30Speaker 06

  and that's that. On the other hand, I feel like if I do think you know what you're saying, if I do think you have the depth of understanding and you're ready for it, then the pressure should only escalate. And so this is maybe it all feels the same in the end. But to me, just sitting in the room, it they feel like very different vibes. And that that's what I just want to do. Like I said, to make an interview show, the other person has to A, they have to want to show up. You know, we always say the decoder is a game you can win. They have to want to be here and participate honestly and openly. They have to think that they're gonna come out the other end, and they won't feel completely attacked. Because otherwise, we won't get guests like they have to. They can just hang up. They can

• 20:15Speaker 06

  just click the button and go. So the the show has to be an environment that reflects and respects the participation. At the same time, if it's a game you can win, it's also a game you can lose. And I think we're just seeing that dynamic. I think everyone is very used to very puffy influencer interviews. There's a lot of that going around lately and maybe everyone should just be one more turn more prepared.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  There's a real like hunger from the audience for what you might call accountability journalism, especially in podcast form and particularly with the current tech and AI industries. The joke that you've said before is that the audience wants you to end every episode by arresting a CEO. And we've even had some commenters now referencing that as an editorial strategy. They, some people are saying, you know, they want you to be tougher even. But this is running headlong into the idea that companies don't necessarily want to do these kinds of interviews all the time or even often. And that people don't like being put into unpredictable situations where they don't know the questions. They don't know what you're going to ask. And then audiences themselves are not really even all that interested sometimes in that kind of product.

• 21:22Speaker 05

  Like the end result of that, like Diary of a CEO is not hard hitting journalism, even though it's very engaging. Acquired TVPN is certainly not journalism and whatever monitoring the situation from Erwin Dreesen Horowitz is not journalism at all. But I think we saw a version of this kind of play out recently with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Dorkish Patel, right? Where he's not a traditional journalist, but he asked some challenging questions. And it kind of broke people's brains because they weren't used to seeing somebody kind of check. Somebody like Jensen, a rich tech guy, but also like head of the most profitable, head of the most valuable company in the world. And people kind of think he's unfallible. And this was a, this was a rare moment where people were kind of divided on what's the purpose of this interview? So Neel, the question for you is, how are you thinking about that tension?

• 22:08Speaker 05

  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, you know, why do you think people are coming on this show? When they're, you know, we're not paying them, we're not telling them what we're going to ask beforehand, even though they know what to expect. They are going kind of, they are, they are going in kind of blind.

• 22:25Speaker 06

  My favorite is when people show up and they're not ready to be asked what the structure of their company is or how they make decisions. I feel like those are gimmies at this point. And every now and again, it's just like, oh, you didn't know. You can always tell how things are gonna go when those questions seem like a surprise. I think journalism is critically important. Obviously, we make journalism here. All of us who are making the show right now are journalists. We're steeped in it. Maybe we're just high on our own supply and the platforms are gonna kill us all in the end. But I think it's important. And our audience, when we even, you can see it now that we like 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 to wherever they go, they're like, oh, I love this.

• 23:08Speaker 06

  Like, finally, someone's asking the questions and that is remarkable. It's refreshing. I don't know what it is, but there's not a lot of that that people see. So that's 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. I know why people come on the show. It has finally clicked for me. I've had a lot of conversations about it. You know, Nick and Kate, our producers, will tell you, we don't do a ton of outbound booking anymore. We have an incoming list that's a mile long. 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't gonna listen to the all hands. Like, their own teams aren't gonna read the emails.

• 23:51Speaker 06

  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. Some of them do fake TED Talks, which is wild. We've moved on to fake podcasts. We've gotten pitches for me to do a fake podcast that will then be clipped into like fake podcast clips. And I'm like, I don't need to, I have a real podcast. But this is the market that we live in and 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, do a good job. It is actually good for those folks out in the world with our audience, our actual

• 24:34Speaker 06

  audience, which is big and growing, but it is also good for them inside of their companies. And like I said, you can win that game and you can lose that game. It's the fact that they're not in control that makes the thing valuable. And that external validation is so important. I look at TVPN and congratulations for selling a podcast with 70,000 YouTube subscribers, $200 million. Like, that's great. It is very engaging. I've watched a lot of it. They were inside the industry. They're unapologetic boosters of the industry, and now they're inside a company in the industry. They have no ability to provide external validation. They can't, you know, it's, they've lost the thing that might provide conflict, and conflict is what drives all great stories. Anderson Horowitz has started in failed 10

• 25:19Speaker 06

  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 is what drives stories. And you can't get that if you're inside. If you are working in 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. You can write engaging, like, here's how the factory works videos. But then we're going to come along and we're going to say, hey, your robot Apple that you said can recycle all the iPhones, there's only one of them and it's not recycling any iPhones. Like, you can see this pattern happen over and over again. So I know what role we play in the ecosystem at The Verge and on Decoder, and it is to be outside. You have to show

• 26:02Speaker 06

  up here on our terms and do a good job. And 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. And that is, that's hard to get. And, you know, we're also precious about all of the rest of it. We won't do brand deals and 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't need to overdo it now, but that's, to me, is, that's why everybody shows up. It's hard to find the thing that we make anymore. The producers and I will not give anyone the questions that they're going to face on Decoder in advance. We will not let them tell us what topics they want to cover. We will not accept

• 26:46Speaker 06

  edits afterwards or approvals on answers afterwards. You have to show up and you have to do a good job, and sometimes you can do a bad job, and everybody can see it. I also think a lot of people are very confused by influencer media, where those asks are tied to brand deals and integrations and money made down the line, and there are approvals, and we just don't do it. And sometimes people think they can pressure us, and our response to pressure is to turn it right back around.

• 27:20Speaker 05

  We have to take another short break. We'll be back in just a minute.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest, or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch Enbev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  Botox, anabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment.

• 28:18Speaker 04

  Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS-Lougaric's Disease, Myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 28:54Speaker 02

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• 29:01Speaker 08

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• 30:01Speaker 05

  Welcome back. I'm Decoder's senior producer, Nick Stat, making Neelai answer your questions about how Decoder and The Verge cover AI. The last time we did a Mailbag episode, we got a lot of feedback about AI, how The Verge covers it, how we cover it here on Decoder when we talk to CEOs, how we approach AI coverage in our explainer episodes with reporters like Hayden Field. The last time we got that feedback, a lot of it was like, oh, you're not hard enough on AI, you need to go harder. But we've noticed something interesting in the last, you know, three, four, five months, which is that we're starting to see a lot of mixed feedback around AI, especially people saying we're too critical or we're fixating on the wrong perspectives. You know, it's not a bubble, or, you know, people are actually using it now. Companies are token-maxing. There's Claude Code, there's Open Claw, there's all this stuff happening.

• 30:46Speaker 05

  AI is changing. Neelai, I know you're thinking about AI coverage is evolving all the time. How are you thinking about it right now, especially for Decoder? Are we fixating too much on questions like whether the industry is a bubble or whether there's mainstream appeal or product-market fit for this technology? How is that thinking evolving?

• 31:04Speaker 06

  I have really mixed feelings on how to cover AI, and it is really related to all of the polling we're constantly talking about, where regular people are encountering it more and more, and they're hating it more and more. And they're not being shy about it. And I really take to heart that Decoder is the business show that sits on top of a big consumer tech website. So The Verge is a publication is very much for consumers. That's what we cover here. We don't do a lot of enterprise tech coverage on The Verge. We focus relentlessly on technology and how it makes regular people feel. Decoder is a business show, right? I'm asking CEOs what their org charts look like. That is very far from anything any consumer cares about.

• 31:48Speaker 06

  And I think understanding how the companies and the people think really helps you understand the products, so that 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's reflected in the products. And then I can come back around, and you hear me do it on Decoder all the time, and say, also, we run a giant reviews program. We use your products, and I think your products are bad. And that is... It's hard to find that dynamic anywhere else. I think that's honestly what makes the Verge unique and what makes the relationship between Decoder and the Verge unique. Specifically, as applied to AI, I think for a long time, we were using the products, and they just couldn't do the things the company said they could do. You can use free ChatGPT all day and all night, and if you have an ounce of like self-reflection, you

• 32:32Speaker 06

  will say to yourself, this is not alive. It's just prompting me to ask it another question at the end of every response. And I don't see how you get from here to this thing can run an entire business, to this thing will attain sentience, to this thing will be AGI. Like, you can just look at the product and see it doesn't work. David Pearce recently just reviewed the Starbucks integration in ChatGPT, and the thing is a miserable failure. Okay, 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 can do. I think that is very much why consumers are turning on AI. They're

• 33:16Speaker 06

  not getting the value, but they're getting all the demands. The thing that has changed, and I think this is the reason the feedback is getting mixed, is on Decoder particularly, we have a business audience. It's a business show, it has a business audience, and there's a real product-market fit for AI in the enterprise. You can see what Anthropic's 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's 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 people can, real people can do actual tasks of higher value is, that's great. I think the cutting edge

• 34:01Speaker 06

  of marketing is automation in some way. I think it's going to be really weird for a lot of people, but it's happening, and you can't deny that it's happening. You can't deny that.

• 34:10Speaker 06

  AI has found uses here and some of them will fall flat and some of them will succeed. And that will be really interesting to cover. So that's where I think the mixed opinions come from is that if you're looking at one part of the market, you say, oh, AI has a lot of value to offer here. But then you kind of take the jump. And I think we've recently heard Jensen Wong say AGI is already here. Jason Calcanis has said AGI is already here. And what they are describing is it can write software. It can automate some business process, which means maybe you can run a company all by yourself. AGI is here. I don't, that's pure nonsense to me. And I think the, the thing that I'm looking at a lot is where is the product, the AI product that people love that actually changes their minds?

• 34:54Speaker 06

  And to me, that product doesn't exist. So I think we're going to hammer on that divide pretty hard in the, in the years to come here.

• 35:01Speaker 05

  That relates to a comment we got from a reader, Chris. He says he thinks the AI polling is bad shtick lately on Decoder and Vergecast is underrating how much, one, he cannot trust images or video anymore. Two, it's, this is really bad right now. Three, it's easy to understand that it's genuinely apocalyptic in the near future and apocalypse looms large in American imagination. And four, those bad outcomes are the fault of gestures broadly toward AI. So he's 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. Obviously, you know, you mentioned the, the AI polling around Gen Z. It's manifesting in some very dark ways. There have been attacks on politicians, attacks on Sam Altman's home, a lot of pressure mounting

• 35:44Speaker 05

  against data centers, pushing back on AI executives claiming that they're going to create more jobs, not destroy them. And then some AI executives, of course, just plainly saying, we're going to destroy all jobs. How is this affecting how you think about talking to people about AI on Decoder, particularly tech leaders and people who are working on this technology?

• 36:04Speaker 06

  One, I think I want to make sure I keep asking them if the technology as it's constituted today can actually do all of the things they say it's going to do. I don't think that answer is clear at all. You can listen to Yan Le Cun, who used to be the head of AI at Meta, who got pushed out of Meta for saying he didn't think LLMs could get to AGI. He's still out there saying it. The latest argument that I've heard him make is you can't have an agentic system that's taking action for itself when it can't know or predict the consequences of its actions. And that's just sort of the nature of the LLM, right? It's gonna do stuff and see what happens. But like, true intelligence is gonna take repeated actions in a way that is predictable.

• 36:47Speaker 06

  Just like you and I would take actions and know what's gonna happen next. The LLMs are sort of reacting on first impression all the time. That's a big conversation you can go have. And maybe you can build some affordances to get around that sort of inherent fact of an LLM. But I think there's 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's gonna do the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. I want to keep pushing on that. I don't 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. The second thing I want to make sure we keep doing is talking about the polling.

• 37:30Speaker 06

  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. For what? It really cannot be we've automated marketing. It just can't. 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 like blink at a Google product. Claude is famous now for a lot of people because it is now also a political story. Everybody has seen slop on their Facebook feeds. People are aware of this technology. They have made up their minds. You cannot market your way out of this problem.

• 38:14Speaker 06

  You cannot advertise people out of their honest reactions to what you're putting in front of them. And unless you have a product that can overcome it, I don't think you're gonna change the hearts and minds. And there is not a product that regular people are using every day that they feel. Like love for that overcomes this. You know, 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.

• 38:58Speaker 06

  As Uber will tell you over and over and over again. Some drivers don't 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 in a way that AI is a product that is anti compelling enough to make people take anti political action. And I, there's a long list of products like this. You can overcome the policy objections, the societal objections, if your product is compelling. And I just do not think there is a consumer AI product that people feel good about at the level that rises to the, the kinds of demands this industry is making.

• 39:43Speaker 06

  And you can't be like, this is great for business. I don't think that's going to do it.

• 39:47Speaker 05

  Okay, we've got a few questions left, Neelai. We'll do these in more of like a lightning round style about the current structure of the show and what to expect in the future. One question here from Joe Rodriks is that he really enjoys the occasional episode where Neelai is really fired up. He says, I would love for you to consider a periodic debate style podcast where two people's views are pitted against each other. I know you've joked about starting a YouTube debate show at some points. Do you think this format works? How are you thinking about formats and, and the structure of Decoder itself?

• 40:24Speaker 06

  We did one debate on Decoder at the very beginning. It was a Bitcoin debate. I was a very pro Bitcoin executive, obviously, and then a very anti Bitcoin professor. And I was, they weren't 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. I think the pure debate shows, I think I sort of side with Jon Stewart on this. I think they're bad for society. I just, I'm thinking about Jon Stewart talking to Tucker Carlson and Alan Combs and being like, you're hurting America. Like, stop it. Those shows rely on performance. They do not rely on substance. And so, you know, you can watch any random Jubilee episode, and it all comes down to how compelling is

• 41:09Speaker 06

  the person in the chair, not are they saying smarter things than the other person. And I like that people think that I'm interesting enough to like, hold one side of a debate. My job is not to like, advocate positions in that way. I think we have some clear values, which in America in 2026 feels like I'm advocating for stuff, because we live in a crazy time. But I'm just trying to ask questions and learn what people are doing and how they're doing it. Sometimes what I'm saying is, hey, have you thought about making your platform less racist? And that feels like I'm advocating like, really hard and being really fired up. Have you thought about not stealing everything from everyone all the time? That is like, table stakes for me. Maybe we should do more debates where I'm the moderator, but I think it gets weird if I'm the one taking a position. And I, I

• 41:54Speaker 06

  really have watched a lot of those debate shows show up on YouTube. And it feels like what people are getting out of it is performance, not substance.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  That segues perfectly into a question here at the end that I just personally wrote myself, because I'm curious what your answer is. You have a Decoder book in the works. You recently announced it. It's called How to Get What You Want. Why is that the title of the forthcoming Decoder book?

• 42:21Speaker 06

  That title is a little bit of a joke. I think it's 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, how are you gonna get what you want? Like, what's your plan? So that's the title. The book I've been thinking about since we started Decoder, and I've said this before, but You know, when you, when you start a podcast and the premise is I'm going to interview a CEO every week, that is just a forever project. There's no end date to that project. You can't mark any sort of success or failure. It just goes on forever as long as people are listening. And that's a weird way to do things. So I wanted to have some kind of marker, some goal. And that's why we structured the decoder questions as they are. That's why I ask everybody how to

• 43:03Speaker 06

  make decisions. It's why I ask everybody how their companies are structured, because my feeling was that if I could get enough of those answers, I could find enough commonalities. And then, when my niece and nephew graduate from college, which they're going to do next year, I could tell them how businesses work, because they're 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't know what that job market looks like, especially now with AI. And none of these companies hold on to anyone for longer than 25 minutes. Like, no one's going to get trained. And I was like, I should just make an instruction manual. And so the, you know, the, one of the chapters of the book is, is just a decoder trip. If you tell me how your company is structured, I can tell you 80% of its problems.

• 43:48Speaker 06

  I know that. I've, I've proven that, I think, on the show. I think decoder listeners know that, yeah, that last 20% is really important. That's the nest, that's the rest of the hour. But if you just say, what is the org chart? Like, you can get a pretty basic understanding of where the priorities and the tensions of a company are. I've talked to a lot of CEOs. I've asked a lot of very similar questions. We have tropes inside of our show. Can I package that up and hand it to people and have them feel a sense of agency about what they're doing in their professional lives? And so it's called How to Get What You Want, 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

• 44:31Speaker 06

  of running anything. So can I just hand people a cheat code? Right? Like, here's, here's how it goes. It's all the companies are the same. Like, they're all, they're all functional or divisional. If you listen to Decoder, you know these answers. If you have a boss and they don't know the answer to the question, how do you make decisions? You should quit your job. It's just like as flat out as I can tell you, like there are answers to that question. We've heard a lot of them. So that's the idea of the book, but how to get what you want is very much just me saying to my eight year old daughter, how are you going to get what you want? What's your plan?

• 45:01Speaker 05

  So for the final question today, Neelai, who are your moonshot guests this year for Decoder? Is it Apple's John Turnus? Is it Sam Altman and Dario Amade still? Palantir CEO Alex Karp? Who do you most want on the show?

• 45:16Speaker 06

  We're working on Sam. We're working on Dario. I hope they come through. Like I said, it's a game you can win. It's also a game you can lose. I think everyone's very aware of that. And they're cruising towards IPOs. So I think they're 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. I've joked for years that I've never even asked for Tim Cook, because he, I don't think I can win media training. I really don't. I've met John Turnus. He is pretty relaxed. He likes making products. He's talking about products. Maybe, maybe once he actually becomes a CEO later in the year, we can, we can make that ask. That'd be great. Alex Karp, I think would be just the funniest episode of the show. We should

• 45:58Speaker 06

  ask for that. But I'm also looking very much for guests who are using AI tools in particular in ways to actually run their businesses. I think we've heard a lot from the model companies. We have not heard a lot from a new generation of, of business leaders who are actually using these tools in interesting ways that aren't just replacing jobs. I know they're out there. I'm 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've found product market fit.

• 46:30Speaker 05

  So I think that's a great place to end it. Neelai, thank you for coming back on Decoder.

• 46:36Speaker 06

  You're very welcome. I should hang up in a rage, just so people could see what it's like. That's the, it's the danger of every episode.

• 46:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're allowed to walk out whenever you want.

• 46:48Speaker 05

  I'd like to thank Nilay for taking the time to make his own show and thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like to let us know what you thought about this show or what else you'd like us to cover, drop us a line. You can email us at Decoder@TheVerge. The team really does read every email. Or you can hit up Nilay directly on Threads or Blue Sky. We're also on YouTube. You can watch full episodes at @DecoderPod. We also have a TikTok and an Instagram. They're at @DecoderPod too, and they're a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Kay Cox and myself, Nick Statt, and it's edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. See you next time.

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