Decoder with Nilay Patel

Hey, everyone, Nilay here. We’re off today, while the team and I are cooking on a lot of really great stuff in the coming weeks. We’ll be back with an all-new interview on Monday. 

In the meantime, we really wanted to highlight this episode we first aired in the fall, because it’s about a huge subject: AI in schools. The school year is starting to wrap up now around the country, and we’re no closer to figuring out how to thread the needle about generative AI in education than we were in September.

Links: 

A majority of high school students use gen AI for schoolwork | College Board

About a quarter of teens have used ChatGPT for schoolwork | Pew Research

Your brain on ChatGPT | MIT Media Lab

My students think it’s fine to cheat with AI. Maybe they’re on to something. | Vox

How children understand and learn from conversational AI | McGill University

‘File not Found’ | The Verge

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Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
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It’s become an annual tradition to have Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi join us in the studio when he comes to New York for Uber’s big Go-Get event every year. This year, the big news was that Uber's expanding into a much larger platform for travel, starting with hotel booking and services like personal shopping.

Uber is going so far as to call this an everything app, so I wanted to see how far Dara thinks everything actually goes — and whether he’s feeling pressure to own more of the user experience in a world where AI companies keep promising that their chatbots will book all the cars for you.

Links: 

Uber adds hotels to its app in big travel swing | The Verge

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is okay with reinventing the bus | Decoder

I have to be honest, AI will replace jobs at Uber | Diary of a CEO

The DoorDash problem | Decoder

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky wants to build the everything app | Decoder

Booking and Priceline chief wants you to yell at bots, not humans | Decoder

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Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt; this episode was edited by Xander Adams. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Nick Statt, senior producer on Decoder. We last ran a mailbag episode during the holidays, and we decided it was a good idea to do that kind of thing more often. So we’re back with Nilay as the guest, answering questions and responding to feedback, criticism, and suggestions.

We talk through some recent controversial episodes like our interviews with the CEOs of Superhuman and Puck, and we also discuss how we’re covering AI, thinking about the future of the show, and what it takes to win (and lose) Decoder. 

Links: 

Nilay answers your burning Decoder questions | Decoder Mailbag (2025)

Answering your biggest Decoder questions | Decoder Mailbag (2024)

Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me | Decoder

Can Puck reinvent the news business for the influencer age? | Decoder

The people do not yearn for automation | Decoder

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Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jennifer Scanlon is CEO of UL Solutions, one of those hidden-in-plain-sight companies we like to poke at here on Decoder. UL's been around for more than 100 years; it started as a way for insurance companies to standardize fire and safety testing as electricity was the new technology spreading into homes.

But now it's everywhere, and "safety" in tech doesn't just mean the hardware. UL is adapting quickly to the connected, AI-powered era... but do the companies making and distributing tech even care about standards anymore?

Links: 


How fake UL certifications led to Chinese ebike suit | Electrek


FCC IoT program loses UL after China probe | Cybersecurity Dive


FCC’s Carr probes IoT program lab over “ties to China” | PC Mag


The US router ban, explained | The Verge


More than 500,000 hoverboards recalled (2016) | The Verge


Brendan Carr is a dummy | The Vergecast

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Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Kabir Chopra. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on Decoder, I want to lay out an idea that's been banging around my head for weeks now as we've been reporting on AI and having conversations here on this show. I've been calling it software brain, and it's a particular way of seeing the world that fits everything into algorithms, databases and loops. 

Software brain is powerful stuff. It's a way of thinking that basically created our modern world. But software thinking has also been turbocharged by AI in a way that I think helps explain the enormous gap between how excited the tech industry is about the technology and how regular people are growing to dislike it more and more over time.

Links: 

Why software Is eating the world | Marc Andreessen

Gen Z’s love-hate relationship with AI | The Verge

The attacks on Sam Altman are a warning for the AI world | The Verge

Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want | The Verge

I saw something new in San Francisco | The New York Times

Anthropic CEO issues dire warning about white-collar work | The Street

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices