Affirm CEO, PayPal co-founder, original member of the 'PayPal Mafia' Max Levchin joins Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott to talk about moral moneylending, Elon Musk, mega-IPOs and why there are so many tech bosses in Washington. As he puts it – “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

Meanwhile, Anthropic has announced that Claude Fable 5 will be released again globally after the Trump administration's ban. Plus, Danny and Katie discuss the latest trend in Silicon Valley - the rise of voice AI and the death of the keyboard. Is it hot air or if we are really in a new era of "yapping, rather than tapping"? On that note, Norman, Katie's AI agent, finally (and terrifyingly), has a voice.

Would you swap your keyboard for voice-to-text software? Get in touch: techpod@thetimes.co.uk

Read more: Is it time to say goodbye to the keyboard?

Producer: Marnie Duke

Executive Producer: Priyanka Deladia

Video Producer: Bronwen Latham

Image: Getty

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who really controls the future of AI? A rare warning from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance says powerful AI models capable of devastating cyberattacks on governments and businesses could be just months away. At the same time, the Trump administration’s decision to block foreign access to Anthropic’s most advanced AI models has intensified fears that Europe and the UK are dangerously dependent on Silicon Valley.

Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott ask what an AI “kill switch” could mean for Europe – and whether the race for AI sovereignty is now impossible to ignore.

And as the race towards Artificial General Intelligence intensifies, so too has the talent war between AI labs, after two leading Google DeepMind researchers – Noam Shazeer and John Jumper – left for OpenAI and Anthropic.

Plus, Judith Dada, AI adviser to the German government and Senior Partner at Visionaries, joins them to discuss Europe’s AI future, tech sovereignty, and what losing the AI race could mean.

Producer: Marnie Duke

Executive Producer: Priyanka Deladia

Image: Getty

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a ban on social media for under-16s, due to come into effect next year. But questions remain over how it will be enforced, and whether it will actually work. Mark Sellman joins Katie Prescott to answer the key questions.

In the US, the Trump administration has banned two of Anthropic’s most powerful AI models which include the controversial 'Mythos', intensifying calls for Europe to build sovereign AI systems of its own. If America can restrict access to critical AI technology at short notice, what does that mean for the rest of the world? Plus, Katie has been at Founders Forum, where she interviewed Katie King, the founder and CEO of BioOrbit, a company building a pharmaceutical lab in space to transform the way we treat cancer.

Do you agree with the social media ban? Get in touch: techpod@thetimes.co.uk

Producers: Marnie Duke & Ethan Sills

Executive Producer: Priyanka Deladia

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.