"People in Silicon Valley and in China often have assumptions about each other. And their assumptions about each other are extremely self-centered."

Our guest today is Afra Wang, a fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI and the writer behind Concurrent, a Substack that translates the tech culture of Silicon Valley and China from angels you wouldn’t typically expect.

Afra understands both these tech ecosystems and is specific about what that self-centeredness looks like on both sides.

Chinese entrepreneurs assume the American government has a heavy hand in pushing AI infrastructure, for example, the way Beijing does. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs assume China has a thriving civic discourse.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of assumptions that both sides keep building on.

Instead, in reality, there are specific ways in which AI development occurs in both places. Consider a leather factory in China using AI to scan cowhide in real time — it maps flaws, computes optimal cutting patterns, and eliminates waste. Silicon Valley has no equivalent because America doesn't have this sector.

Afra sums it up: "You cannot map everything from Silicon Valley to China. You cannot map a lot of things from China to Silicon Valley."

So, what’s similar and what’s different? What’s moving between these two competing systems? And what lessons does that have for India?

Tune in.

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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 Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears!

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Additional Resources

China OS vs. America OS (2026 version)

https://afraw.substack.com/p/china-os-vs-america-os-2026-version

Chinese Open Source: A Definitive History

https://interconnected.blog/chinese-open-source-a-definitive-history/

Chinese Tech Workers Are Starting to Train Their AI Doubles–and Pushing Back

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/20/1136149/chinese-tech-workers-ai-colleagues/

Jack Dorsey’s Block to Cut Nearly Half Its Workforce in AI Overhaul, Shares Surge

https://www.reuters.com/business/blocks-fourth-quarter-profit-rises-announces-over-4000-job-cuts-2026-02-26/

The Dark Forest Theory, Explained

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/dark-forest-theory-alien-life

The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest

US bans sale of Huawei, ZTE tech amid security fears (2022)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63764450

Today is not regular programming for Zero Shot.

We present to you a glimpse of our first live event, which we dramatically titled “The Great Unbundling”.

It had a simple premise: agentic AI is coming. Soon. Hard. Fast. For India's consumer internet companies. Who will survive it?

We posed this question to Muralikrishnan B, former President of Xiaomi India; Amod Malviya, co-founder of Udaan and former CTO of Flipkart; Anant Choubey, co-founder of Capillary; and Thomas Fenn, co-founder of Mahabelly and joint secretary of the National Restaurant Association of India.

This was The Ken's fifth live event, and it was sold out. A big thank you to all of you who were there. We are doing a lot more events this year and if you want to be there next time, keep an eye on our website.

Tune in.

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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 Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears!

___

Recommended Reading:

The Great Unbundling

"We have 353 billion data points on user behaviour. Why wouldn't I use them to make a better story and get into newer businesses within content?"

That's Kunj Sanghvi, the vice president and head of content at Kuku, explaining their next big bet on theatrical films.

Kuku has seen 10 million paid subscribers and 350 million downloads so far. This is precious data of “micro segments”, people’s consumption behaviour, preferences, sentiments and indulgences.

Kuku says this is the bedrock of what they do: “turning creativity into a science”. AI has been the central to how they achieved this with audio and microdramas. It is also key to what they did with their first full-length feature film, which is ready for release on May 8.

In this episode of Zero Shot, Kunj walks us through how Kuku uses AI in production. It starts off with their “proprietary content genome” that ingests millions of data points, scores incoming story pitches, flags weak cliffhangers, predicts which micro-segment an idea will resonate with, and tells you what to fix before a single frame is shot. And come production, AI is helping create scale, making possible complex shots that would require budgets, extras, and massive resources.

The result? A film called Indian Institute of Zombies, made at a fraction of regular film budgets.

"The audience going to cinemas wants spectacle," says Kunj. "AI lets you cheat that. You can show scale without it feeling like a low-cost production."

Tune in.

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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 Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears!

____

Recommended Reading:

‘Indian Institute of Zombies’ Marks Kuku’s Big-Screen Debut With Campus Horror Comedy

MS Dhoni Invests in AI-driven Storytelling Platform Kuku

Your next job offer might just come with a "token budget" line item.

The idea has been gaining steam in Silicon Valley. In February, a VC named Tomasz Tunguz dropped a blog post arguing that inference costs are becoming the fourth pillar of engineering compensation alongside salary, bonus, and equity. Here is the math: the 75th percentile software engineer in the US draws $375k. Add $100k in inference costs and you're at $475k. That's 21% in tokens.

A month later, Jensen Huang took this up a notch. The Nvidia CEO said he'd be alarmed if a $500k engineer wasn't burning through at least $250k worth of tokens.

What does this actually mean if you're running an AI startup today? As agents go mainstream and the competition heats up, how do you stay ahead? How is the token bill allotted and negotiated?

Akash Anand, CEO of Clueso, a Y Combinator-backed startup turning raw screen recordings into polished product videos, joins Zero Shot to break down his real token math.

Spoiler: more tokens does not simply equal more productivity.

Tune in!

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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 Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears!

____

Additional Resources

How AI is making and remaking the products that we build

More! More! More! Tech Workers Max Out Their A.I. Use.

Jensen Huang says he would be 'deeply alarmed' if his $500,000 engineer did not consume at least $250,000 of tokens

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 zeroshot@the-ken.com. 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.

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.