Generative AI 101

Image generation isn’t magic, it’s a recipe. In this episode, host Emily Laird is stirring up the flavorful world of AI image prompting using keywords and modifiers. From “chalk drawing yoga teacher” vibes to full-blown Rembrandt drama, Emily's breaking down how to fine-tune your prompts like a pixel-powered chef. We’re talking mediums, moods, lighting tricks, and wha...

Image prompting isn’t just “describe it and pray”, it’s ordering a gourmet dish at a snobby robot diner. This week on Generative AI 101, Emily Laird returns with a delicious breakdown of how to write image prompts that actually work. Learn the golden trifecta of Subject, Details, and Style. Get tips on word order (yes, it matters), prompt length (think Hemingway, not ...

AI isn’t just flirting with your job anymore, it’s taking it out to dinner and meeting its parents. In this episode, host Emily Laird digs into the eerie silence on student job boards and the explosion of AI-generated everything, from Studio Ghibli avatars to fully automated sales calls. With OpenAI spinning up a social network and businesses shedding humans faster th...

GPT-4.1 is here, and it’s not messing around. In this episode, Emily Laird breaks down why this model is smarter, faster, and hungrier than any AI we’ve seen before, able to process 1 million tokens in one go (yes, that’s your codebase and your therapist’s notes). With flavors like Mini, Nano, and Full Spicy (not really called that), GPT-4.1 is doing more than just ta...

AI isn’t some distant overlord plotting in a lab; it’s already writing your emails, diagnosing your cough, and maybe deciding your loan approval. In this episode, host Emily Laird tears into the 8th Edition of the Stanford AI Index Report to see what’s actually going on. From record-breaking benchmarks to billion-dollar investments, Nobel wins to robotaxi joyrides, AI...

ChatGPT just got a memory upgrade, and no, it’s not just remembering your favorite pizza toppings. OpenAI’s newest update means the chatbot can now remember entire conversations, across multiple chats, to customize responses more personally and (potentially) creepily. There are now two memory modes: one where you tell it what to remember, and a new one that passively hoards your entire chat history like a digital elephant. Pro user...

It’s 2027, and things are getting... spicy. This episode, host Emily Laird breaks down the summer-to-fall chaos from The AI Futures Project—a quarterly update that reads like a Black Mirror writer took over The Economist. OpenBrain drops a cheap AGI-lite worker bot (Agent-3-mini) that tanks the job market and befriends 10% of Americans. Cute? Maybe. Until it starts handing out DIY bioweapon blueprints.

By August, the White House ...

AI’s gone full sci-fi and it’s only January. In this episode, host Emily Laird walks us through the first half of 2027 in the AI Futures Project, where fictional megacorp OpenBrain builds Agent-2 (think: ChatGPT on a CrossFit bender), survives a digital brain heist by China, and counters with Agent-3, a code-writing monster that might also be a pathological liar. Throw in some AI-on-AI war games, moral panic in D.C., and an overwor...

It’s 2026 and AI isn’t just helping out, it’s taking over the whiteboard and your white-collar job. In this episode, host Emily Laird breaks down the AI Futures Project’s bold predictions for 2026: OpenBrain’s Agent-1 is coding faster than the people who made it (with better manners, too), China’s plotting a digital Oceans Eleven to catch up in the AGI race, and AI just got itself a 9-to-5. Say goodbye to junior dev roles and hello...

AI agents have officially stopped playing assistant and started acting like your over-caffeinated junior dev—occasionally brilliant, mostly chaotic, and somehow costing $500 a month. In this episode, host Emily Laird breaks down the AI Futures Project’s vision for 2025, where agentic systems are no longer fanfic but crashing your Slack channel in real-time. From billion-dollar AI cities to Agent-1 building its own smarter siblings,...

AI’s not just playing Jeopardy anymore, it’s coming for the Mensa crowd. In this episode, host Emily Laird spirals (productively) over Humanity’s Last Exam, a monster test built to measure whether AI is creeping past human-level intelligence. Spoiler: It is. With OpenAI’s research team clocking in at 26.6% and forecasts showing models might hit 50% by 2025, the machines are flexing hard. We’re talking PhD-level questions, expert re...

Google’s Gemini 2.5 just set a new standard on Humanity’s Last Exam and flexed hard in the AI Fight Club, outpacing GPT-4.5 and Grok-3. It reasons, codes, remembers a million tokens of context, and handles text, audio, images, and video like it’s born for chaos. In this episode, we unpack why Gemini 2.5 isn’t just smart, it’s scary good. Connect with Us: If you enjoy...

Standardized tests are getting torched like marshmallows at a bonfire, and AI's top students are flunking the new final. In this episode, Emily unpacks Humanity’s Last Exam, a brutal, brain-bending test designed to humble even the cockiest language model. Forget multiple choice; we’re talking diagrams, logic puzzles, and cross-disciplinary chaos that left most AIs con...

Mobile AI apps are raking in cash—or at least convincing you that your fern obsession is worth $20 a month. This episode dissects the Andreessen Horowitz Top Gen AI Apps report, revealing why popularity doesn’t equal profit (looking at you, TikTok editors) and why niche apps (hello, dictation and nutrition coaches) are the real hidden gems. We explore how ChatGPT domina...

Forget dark-mode IDEs and midnight debugging crises—AI tools are ushering in a vibecoder revolution. This episode unpacks the surge in agentic IDEs like Cursor (think Jarvis meets Clippy, but actually helpful) and text-to-web platforms (just say, “Airbnb for iguanas,” and poof, it's live). From Bolt’s explosive growth to the surprising overlap between coders and no-code...

AI video generation isn't awkwardly fumbling anymore—it's making Hollywood sweat. This episode explores the meteoric rise of Gen AI video apps like Hailuo and Kling AI, exploring how specialization (think ultra-precise visuals and deepfake-level features) is reshaping content creation. OpenAI’s hyped release, Sora, faces fierce competition, and AI-powered video editing ...

AI moves fast—one minute you're on top, the next, you're a footnote. In this episode of Generative AI 101, we break down the latest Andreessen Horowitz Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps report. Spoiler: ChatGPT is still king, but DeepSeek just crashed the party. We're taking the week to examine the report but this episode focuses on ChatGPT, the Kleenex of AI, and the new ki...

Alibaba’s QwQ-32B-Preview is here, and it’s not just another chatbot—it’s an AI reasoning machine that can handle complex math, coding, and logic like a pro. And the best part? You don’t need a data center the size of a city to run it. In this episode, we break down why this model is a game-changer, how it stacks up against the competition, and whether it’s the budget-f...

Let's chat Meta's Llama 3.3 70B. This lean, mean AI machine can generate text, write code, and even produce synthetic data—all without needing a supercomputer the size of Texas. It’s faster, cheaper, and packed with innovations like Grouped-Query Attention (think AI on Red Bull). But what’s the catch? We break down its strengths, its limits (sorry, no Kardashian updates...