This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we catch up on the latest twist in the New York Times' lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft over the alleged use of its reporting to train GPT-4 and other large language models. The NYT is fighting OpenAI’s request to turn over reporters’ notes, interview memos, and other materials used to produce stories, to prove they were worthy of copyright.

On a related topic, we take a closer listen to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's comments about AI and fair use at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which were more nuanced than some of the coverage might have made them appear. Watch Suleyman's full conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin here.

Turning to the Seattle startup scene, an entrepreneurial supergroup has quietly formed a new electric vehicle charging startup, Juicer Energy, that appears poised to create a marketplace connecting homeowners and others with personal EV charging stations to EV owners in need of places to charge up their vehicles.

In the return of our "My AI" segment, we explore the concept of using AI to turn email into a database that can be intelligently mined, in this case with Google Gemini in Gmail and Google Workspace.

We also talk about using Microsoft Copilot in the Edge browser for domain-specific queries, and discuss the importance of treating AI not as an authoritative oracle but rather as a partner in the quest for insight.

On a related note, we suggest an episode of the "Think Fast, Talk Smart" podcast, called "How to Chat with Bots." (Thanks to Mark Briggs for the recommendation.)

With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop.

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Greg Fyke is president and CEO of ecobee, the Toronto-based smart home company known for its pioneering smart thermostat and a growing ecosystem of devices, including security systems and smart doorbells.

A former Amazon Alexa executive, he’s personally based in Seattle, exemplifying how remote work has transformed the geography of the tech industry. Fyke succeeded ecobee founder Stuart Lombard as the company's CEO last fall upon Lombard's retirement.

On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Fyke discusses the emerging "golden age" of smart home technology; ecobee's focus on simplicity, long-term functionality, and integration across ecosystems; its competition with Amazon and Google; and its approach to automation and artificial intelligence.

Other topics include ecobee's November 2021 acquisition by Generac, and their broader focus on energy management solutions, leveraging components like home batteries, solar energy, and intelligent control systems.

• The Verge: How Ecobee is becoming the smart home company Nest should have been
• Greg Fyke on the HomeKit Insider podcast.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Audio editing and production by Curt Milton.

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we get a deeper understanding of ADHD and neurodivergence in the tech industry and the workplace. Our guest is Brett Greene, a tech community leader in the Pacific Northwest who specializes in this field in his work with companies and individuals as an executive coach.

Related links

• Find a list of ADHD Resources on Brett Greene's website, brettgreenecoaching.com.
• Upcoming event: ADHD Strategies for Tech Founders and Investors: Understanding and Leveraging Neurodivergent Team Members for Maximum Success, July 18 in Bellevue, Wash.
• Brett Greene is founder and CEO of New Tech Northwest.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton.

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As the creator and host of the "Startup Project" podcast, Seattle-area tech senior product manager Nataraj Sindam talks with a wide range of investors and entrepreneurs, contributing to his broad perspective on the future of artificial intelligence, investing, startups, and business technology. He's also author of the Above Average email newsletter, and venture partner with Incisive Ventures.

Our topics this week include:

• The opportunity to apply the power of large language models and generative AI to the larger world of business-to-business applications, including services tailored to workflows in specific industry verticals.
• How AI will drive a massive increase in data centers in the next 5-10 years to meet increased demand for compute and storage, and will require new "intelligence layers" in cloud infrastructure.
• The opportunities and challenges for startups to compete with large tech companies in developing foundational AI technologies, and where tech investors are focusing when it comes to AI startups.
• The different incentives in a traditional startup approach (focusing on getting to a minimum viable product) vs. long-term AI moonshots, exemplified by former OpenAI leader Ilya Sutskever's new venture.
• Apple's efforts to integrate AI into its applications and operating systems, and the tradeoffs between the Apple ecosystem and the more wide-ranging Windows/Android platform approach.
• In the return of our "My AI" segment, we discuss a useful way to quickly get a summary of YouTube videos using the Copilot sidebar in the Microsoft Edge browser.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Audio editing and production by Curt Milton.

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It was a big week for cybersecurity for Seattle's tech giants. Microsoft President Brad Smith was in Washington D.C., testifying before the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee about the Redmond company's security challenges. Listen for highlights at the end of the show.

Meanwhile, Amazon held its annual AWS re:Inforce cloud security conference in Philadelphia.The rise of AI has added some big new wrinkles to the issue of cybersecurity, and AI was one of the main topics in a conversation that I had a few weeks ago with one of the people who keynoted the AWS event this week, Steve Schmidt, Amazon's chief security officer.

Hosted by Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.

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Our guest this week on the GeekWire Podcast is Léonard Boussioux, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business, and adjunct assistant professor at the UW Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering.

Boussioux received his doctorate in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research combines areas including machine learning and AI with a focus on healthcare and sustainability. Last year he launched a class called "Generative AI in the Era of Cloud Computing" at the Foster School.

• Foster School: A New Era Of AI And Human Ingenuity In The Classroom
• Boussioux's website, including photography and AI art: www.leobix.us
• TEDxMIT Salon presentation: Let Art Be Your Superpower
• TEDxBoston: How to Solve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals in 5 mins.

Related Story: How a photo of OpenAI’s Sam Altman, enhanced by AI, sparked a journalistic debate at GeekWire

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we explore the frontier of crowd-augmented cognition, the concept of humans working together with the help of technology, including new ways that artificial intelligence is changing the field.

Our guest is Aniket (Niki) Kittur, a professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where his research focuses on new methods of augmenting human intellect using crowds and computation.

We also talk about a related project that Kittur and his colleagues developed called Skeema, a browser tab manager that helped users organize their work, projects, and ultimately their brains in the process.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.

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Microsoft and major PC makers this week announced a plan to incorporate artificial intelligence directly into personal computers, adding on-board neural processing units (NPUs) as part of a new architecture that promises better performance, longer battery life, and local AI processing that unlocks new capabilities and features.

We discuss the new Copilot+ PCs with our guest on this week's GeekWire Podcast, Stefan Weitz, an investor and entrepreneur who worked at Microsoft for 18 years in groups including Microsoft Bing and MSN. He is the founder of the new HumanX conference on AI taking place in March 2025 in Las Vegas.

Weitz is bullish on the potential for Copilot+ PCs to improve the overall computing experience and motivate Windows PC users to upgrade their machines, a long-awaited milestone for Microsoft's flagship operating system.

The new Copilot+ PCs have also raised security and privacy concerns, focused primarily on the "Recall" feature that takes regular screenshots of user activity on the machine, creating an index that can be queried using AI. The company released an FAQ that emphasized the underlying security and privacy controls for users, but also made it clear that the feature will be activated if users accept the defaults during initial bootup of a new machine.

Weitz also shares some of his favorite AI apps and tools, including Cleft Notes and Read AI.

Audio editing by Curt Milton.

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