I rarely cover mainstream media, but this one is tea so I had to serve it hot:

Ronan Farrow at The New Yorker published an exposé on Sam Altman, questioning whether he can be trusted with this level of power.

My question back: can anyone?

Look, I’m sure the reporting is accurate and that Sam Altman has bent rules and stretched the truth to push forward his product and business (who in tech hasn’t).

But what exactly is the takeaway here?

That powerful people are flawed? We know that.
That tech leaders should not be trusted blindly? Absolutely.

But if Sam Altman were replaced tomorrow, would the world actually be safer?

That feels lazy.

In my opinion, the bigger issue is that AI is moving faster than our ability to judge it, regulate it, or even understand it.

It’s easier to print this story in black and white, flatten it into heroes and villains, than to admit that society still has no real framework for evaluating this level and speed of technological progress.

One day, Sam will be replaced. So will Dario. How will we then judge the next set of leaders, and the technologies & organizations that they shepherd?

That framework, that measurement, that responsibility lies with us. And it means we as a society needs to catch up to the pace of innovation, so that we can build real standards for accountability, regulation, and, yes, leadership.

Something to brew on ☕️

1. The New Yorker drops a major exposé on Sam Altman, questioning his trustworthiness

My Tea: Breaking news, man in power is not worthy of our blind faith. (see First Pour, above.)

2. Anthropic unveils frontier model Mythos, then says it’s too powerful to release broadly

My Tea: Why build and announce your new breakthrough model, only to keep it locked up? The tea ain’t tea’ing.

3. Meta releases Muse Spark, its most powerful AI model yet

My Tea: It’s an incredible multimodal model, but let’s be honest. Llama set a low bar.

4. xAI sues Colorado over a new AI law targeting discrimination and bias

My Tea: xAI says the law pressures AI systems to shape how they answer sensitive questions. This will be an early battleground for AI regulation.

5. Amazon says its AWS AI business has reached $15B+ in annualized revenue

My Tea: In a week full of hype, Amazon gave the market actual receipts.

This week, I launched a new 12-part series, Innovation in Action, in partnership with LinkedIn and IBM on the future of work and AI.

I’m really excited about this one because it’s pushed me to focus more deeply on B2B applications for AI. And while researching it, I came across a story I wanted to share.

When the personal computer first came out, people thought it would wipe out jobs and upend the economy as we knew it (sound familiar?).

Steve Jobs had a line about it that I love. He called the personal computer “a bicycle for the mind.”

That’s how I think about AI too. As a vehicle; a tool that helps get us from point A to point B, more efficiently.

At its best, AI doesn’t replace human judgment, creativity, or taste. It amplifies it.

That’s the frame I want to start with. Not fear. Not hype. But instead, optimism about how we can use this technology to make people better at what they do. Maybe even better at what they love to do.

Full episode below:

Seeing the Tea in Tech come to life at Linkedin last week still has me buzzing.

Here are some clips from our Tech Tea party where I spoke to 100+ Linkedin employees about using AI effectively at work.

Peak Silicon Valley: build a dating app where your AI agent dates other AI agents so you don’t have to.

(Romance, but make it scalable, and venture-backed)

Now here’s the real Tea: I actually considered signing up. Which either means I’ve completely lost the plot, I’m wildly ahead of the curve, or just really really sick of the apps.

(plus it’d make for great content).

Gonna need to brew on that one 🫖
Meghana