Episodit
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On July 12, Satya Nadella published a blog post in which he argued that you pay for AI twice. Once with money, and once with proprietary knowledge you have to feed it. His recommendation to every company: create your private evals.
But wait, do you know what an eval is? Could you define it in simple terms?Most people can't. And that’s the thing with the AI vocabulary that has seeped into our lives.
On today’s episode of Zero Shot, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar, Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Brady Ng put some common AI concepts and words to test in their own lives. They pick from the following options:
A. Never heard of itB. Heard of it, can't define it
C. Can define it
D. It changed how I work
Here are the words they unpack: Frontier models · Open weights · Tokens · Context window · Fine-tuning · Distillation · RAG · Prompt/context engineering · Context store · Prompt library · Context rot · Voice & style · Harness · Loops · Evals
Along the way, they discuss Fable, distillation, the hype around prompt engineering, the current push around taste, and the one AI leader missing from all of the action.
If this episode resonated with you, we’d love to hear from you and also see you at our sixth live event on how professionals, companies, and India keep their edge as AI gets more powerful.
It's on August 1 at the Bangalore International Centre in Indiranagar. Livestream tickets are available if you can't make it in person and prices go up soon. Here are all the details: https://the-ken.com/events/intelligence-independence/
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This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.
—Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.
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Write to us at [email protected]. We are all ears.
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Additional material:
https://snscratchpad.com/posts/looking-ahead-2026/
https://snscratchpad.com/posts/reverse-information-paradox/
https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/indias-ai-edge-is-that-it-has-no-ai-of-its-own/
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The US-China AI race typically gets looked at through three lenses: models, chips, and talent pool. But there's a little-known government document that might reveal more about China's AI boom than any of those. It’s a registry that companies building with AI must deal with to legally operate in the country. And the result is a public list of thousands of algorithms. This document answers a few important questions. Which tools are being built? Who's building them? Which sectors are gaining prominence?Kendra Schaefer is our guest on today’s episode of Zero Shot. She's the head of tech policy research at Trivium China, a strategic advisory firm, and leads Trivium Tech Daily, a brief read by global investors, companies and policymakers. She's spent close to 20 years living and working in China's tech sector and among her recent areas of focus is the registry.
When we ask Kendra about the registry though, she first takes through the history of the tech industry's relationship with the Chinese government. Kendra's biggest point is a macro one: Chinese tech almost invites over regulation. "They will find any crack in the cement whatsoever and they will dive through it with such gusto," she says, describing how companies race regulators to every loophole before rules can close them. It's a pattern that predates AI.
That's where the registry comes in. It was introduced as a website-registration system and has been repurposed for the AI boom.There is this data. Chinese LLMs are being deployed. They are hitting all benchmarks and are among the best in the world.
But here is the catch. As Kendra says: "The state always prioritizes security.” "It will put security first no matter what the ramifications are to competition, " she adds. What does that mean in the near future?
Tune in!—
This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.
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Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.—
Write to us at [email protected]. We are all ears. -
Puuttuva jakso?
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How many AI models can you name? Not how many you use… but how many you can actually name.
That question sets the ball rolling for this episode. In the next hour, Rohin puts Brady and Praveen—two people who use AI every single day for a living—through a cold read. There is no prep or script.What they couldn't answer is the whole point. Over the course of an hour, three daily AI users discover their stances on where their data goes, on the tools they default to, and their strategy with AI use.
The questions they had to answer:
What did you use AI for in the last 24 hours? Be specific.On a scale of one to ten, how AI proficient are you?Have you ever thought about where your conversations and data actually go?If you lost access tomorrow, what would you actually lose?Have you taught the AIs you use about yourself? Could you take that to a different tool?Does your company have an AI strategy, or does it just have AI users?Do you think using AI is making you sharper or duller?A year from now, do you want to be more valuable because of AI—or more replaceable?These questions around "intelligence independence" form the basis of The Ken's next live event on Saturday, 1 August, at the Bangalore International Centre.
Unlike prior waves of technology, the AI wave doesn't just impact all of us—be it as a country, a company, or a professional—it also extracts what is most valuable from us. Our knowledge. Our intelligence. It's the part of the AI equation we talk about the least. And we want to change that.
You can find the tickets here: https://the-ken.com/columns/zero-shot/the-best-time-to-think-about-intelligence-independence-was-four-years-ago-the-next-best-time-is-now/
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This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.
---
Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.
---Write to us at [email protected]. We are all ears.
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It’s the end of 2025, so we don’t have a full episode of Zero Shot for you today.
This podcast launched in September, and we’ve produced 14 episodes for you so far. We’ve covered a wide range of topics, and our conversations—between Praveen, Rohin, and Brady—only work because you’re willing to sit with the complexities we wade into.
We know artificial intelligence will move fast in 2026, so we’ll keep asking the questions that matter in this AI hype cycle. We’re glad you’re coming along with us.
So, thank you, and we’ll be back next week.
As always, if you’d like to get in touch with any or all of our hosts, please drop us a note at [email protected]. We respond to all messages.
The cover art of Zero Shot is generated by AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.
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Join Brady Ng, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, and Rohin Dharmakumar of The Ken as they discuss the big ideas in artificial intelligence. You’ll get the macro view, explore their experiments in practical applications, go deeper than the news coverage you’ve seen, and hear about the implications of the latest developments. Nothing is off the table.
