Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of swoopy cars. I'm your friend David Pearce, and here's a tiny little bit of inside baseball podcast shenanigans. I have been making more and more video stuff over the last couple of years. Podcasts are shifting to videos in ways that
Chapter 2: How is AI transforming car design processes?
Frankly, I continue to be deeply conflicted about. I am mostly an audio podcast consumer. I spent most of my career making audio podcasts and learning how to do this thing on video in a way that is both video first and audio first has been really interesting and really challenging. It has also meant that the way my home office looks is very important.
I want you to understand, if you're watching this, every single thing in this room that you can't see is a mess. There's a giant shelf full of just unordered crap over there. There's a bunch of bubble wrap over here from a thing that I was taking out. There's a giant load of clean laundry right on the other side of the camera. There's just a lot going on.
But the newest thing is we're also spending a lot of time making more clips out of our shows because that is the main way people find stuff now is through clips on their feeds.
Chapter 3: What risks do AI-designed cars pose to jobs in the automotive industry?
I think that is increasingly just a kind of content, but it is also a way that people discover our shows. So. Thinking more about clips, what that has meant is that I have to sit further back from the camera because otherwise we get a lot of social videos that are just like my face sort of smushed into the screen and it's like I'm yelling at you out of your phone.
Chapter 4: What role does software play in the future of cars?
The solution is I have to sit further back so there's more room to crop around my face. which has just led to some hilarious furniture decisions.
Chapter 5: How do regulations impact AI in automotive safety?
Like I bought what I would call like a fancy TV dinner tray table. This is the sort of thing you're supposed to, you know, put next to your couch or in front of you so you can work. I now have it sitting in front of my desk at the exact height so I can sit further back but still use a mouse and keyboard. This is, I guess, my new podcast setup.
I have my desk and then I have my tiny desk and then I have my chair. And there are zero inches of space between the chair and the background. This is what we do to make video podcasts. Luckily, I bought a really great microphone arm that moves around. So that has made life easier. Anyway, hopefully this all looks good and sounds good. And this is going to be a great podcast.
We are going to do two things on today's show. First, Tim Stevens, a freelance tech and automotive journalist who writes for The Verge a lot, is going to come on and talk to us about AI design in cars and the ways in which AI might be able to shrink the amount of time it takes to make cars and all the things that that might change about cars.
Then Hayden Field is going to come on and talk all about just some of the goings on in the AI business.
Chapter 6: What is the competition between Claude Code and Codex?
There's a lot happening, a lot of fast moving stories, whether it's Claude versus Codex, whether it's Anthropic versus the U.S. government. Hayden and I just have a lot to catch up on. We're going to do that. Then Hayden's going to stick around and talk about AI and job loss and whether those two things actually have anything to do with each other. Really fun hotline question.
Excited to get to that. All that is coming up in just a second.
Chapter 7: What are the latest updates on OpenAI's direction?
But first, I have to figure out how to have my keyboard and my mouse on this thing because I'm realizing this trade table I bought, too small. Huge mistake. Wish me luck. This is The Verge Cast. We'll be right back.
Support for the show comes from Retool.
Chapter 8: What are the implications of Pentagon AI deals excluding Anthropic?
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All right, we're back. Tim Stevens, freelance automotive and tech journalist, frequent Verge contributor. Welcome back to the Verge cast. Thanks for having me, David. The last time you were here, we talked about the slate truck and essentially lit the world on fire. Yeah.
We're going to talk a little bit about the slate truck at the end because I feel obligated to catch people up on this weird truck that has no features and everybody wants anyway. But mostly I want to talk about a story you wrote about AI and especially how AI is changing car design. Yeah. But I think the place we need to start is a little bit of a primer on how car design has worked until now.
Because I think this is a really fascinating case for both the good and potential bad of AI. But we should understand how cars actually get made in the first place. And you made me realize that it is a much bigger and longer process than even I understood. So give me the quick sort of kindergarten level how a car gets made kind of story.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, usually it starts with a sketch or a series of sketches. There'll be kind of a product design brief that comes from the business saying, hey, we need a car that's got two doors, four doors, seats this number of people, can do this sort of thing. Designers start sketching. People will give them a thumbs up or thumbs down. They start to move forward.
There's usually a couple of different concepts, but they move from... paper sketches to digital sketches to 3D models. At some point, someone will carve the thing out of clay to make sure it actually looks good in the real world. There's usually some level of virtual reality design, but ultimately, most designers still like to see the physical thing in action.
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