Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for Core Memory
TechnologyScience

Core Memory

Ashlee Vance

Core Memory is a podcast about science and technology hosted by best-selling author and filmmaker Ashlee Vance. Vance has spent the past two decades chronicling advances in science and tech for publications like The Economist, The New York Times and Bloomberg Businessweek. Along with the stories, he's written best-selling books like Elon Musk’s biography, made an Emmy-nominated tech TV show watched by millions and produced films for HBO and Netflix. The goal has always been to bring the tales of complex technology and compelling people to the public and give them a path into exceptional and unusual worlds they would not normally have a chance to experience.

www.corememory.com
Play
Open in
  • 22 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 1 hr 26 min
  • English

Episodes 22

NewestOldestLongest
All2Unplayed2In progress0Played0
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • #67
    April 21 · 1 hr 22 min

    The Great Reset At OpenAI — EP 67 Sam Altman And Greg Brockman

    Sam Altman and Greg Brockman came on Core Memory together for a ten-year look back at OpenAI. It’s also the first time they’ve done a media podcast together. We juiced every second of our 90 minutes with the cofounders of OpenAI. We got into the company restructuring. Why Sora got cut. Why the social network is dead. The “personal AGI” that knows your calendar and your taste and books the concert ticket without asking. Sam said he’s worried Elon Musk will drop the lawsuit before it gets to court. Read that however you want. There’s new OpenAI tech on the horizon too — a model that “makes ridiculously great images,” another that’s allegedly better at writing. Ashlee pressed them on American manufacturing and whether we’re cooked. Sam says OpenAI will go so far as producing their own actuators for robots. We discussed the possibility of a real permanent underclass, the two futures Sam sees, and the third one Greg wants instead. Safety. Anthropic. The Mythos thing. Sam also talked, briefly, about the days after the attacks on his home. The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and tell your friends. This podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster. We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here. The podcast is also made possible by E1 Ventures, which backs the most ambitious founders and start-ups. Core Memory is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe

  • #66
    April 16 · 1 hr 10 min

    The $50,000 Underwater Drone - EP 66 Ulysses

    Guinness. Sharks. American manufacturing. These are a few of the interests I share with the founders of Ulysses, a San Francisco startup building autonomous underwater drones. The idea for Ulysses started when one of the four co-founders was on a surf trip and learned how much of humanity depends on a single marine plant: the humble seagrass. He spent a weekend designing a robot to plant it. Two years later, the group of Irishmen — and for diversity, a Scot — have moved well beyond ecological restoration. They’re providing services for the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and selling their drones to the U.S. Navy. The robots are called Mako. They’re two meters long, weigh about 400 pounds, and can dive 5,000 feet for up to 72 hours at a time. They’re also modular — payloads swap in and out like Legos, so the same vehicle that plants seagrass in Australia one week can inspect a submarine cable in the Baltic the next. A base Mako costs $50,000. Most legacy underwater drones built by big defense contractors can run between $1 million and $20 million each. On this episode of the Core Memory podcast, we’re joined by Will O’Brien and Akhil Voorakkara, co-founders of Ulysses. They build these drones out of an office in San Francisco — for conservation, for academia, for national defense. They just raised a $38 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz through its American Dynamism fund. We discuss what it actually takes to make robots for the most hostile environment on Earth, why the ocean is about to have its SpaceX moment, and the surprisingly thin line between planting seagrass and defending NATO. The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and tell your friends. This podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster. We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe

Showing 21–22 of 22 episodes