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The Brave Technologist

The Brave Technologist

Brave Software 204 Episodes Jul 1, 2026

The Brave Technologist examines how emerging technologies like AI, machine learning, and Web3 are reshaping society, with a focus on user impact. The podcast features conversations with founders, builders, policymakers, and researchers who are working to ensure that innovation serves the public interest. Topics include privacy, digital rights, algorithmic accountability, and the intersection of technology with daily life.

Episodes

LIVE FROM THE AI SUMMIT LDN: Inside Sony AI's Bet on Open Research Jul 1, 2026 22:55 Fred Gifford, Strategy Lead and Sr. Product Manager at Sony AI, shares how his team is building knowledge graphs from academic literature to predict new biomedical relationships and accelerate drug discovery. He explains why Sony AI publishes so much of its research openly, what he got wrong about AI therapy when writing his novel and why he believes accountability for AI's ethical failures still
Pandora: How Much Freedom Should a Shopping Agent Have? (AI Summit LDN) Jun 24, 2026 22:02 Riccardo Arnaldi, Agentic AI Product Manager at Pandora, shares what it actually looks like to build and scale a brand-facing LLM shopping agent live with millions of customers. He explains why too much autonomy is a liability, how a deterministic routing layer keeps the AI from going off-script, and why traditional QA teams had to rebuild their processes from scratch. He also breaks down a real c
AI Is Now Buying Cars and Negotiating Better Than You Jun 17, 2026 30:07  Zach Shefska, Founder & CEO of CarEdge, shares how he and his father (a 43-year auto industry veteran) turned a broken, opaque car buying process into a transparency-first business powered by AI agents that now negotiate deals on behalf of consumers. He also explains how data collected from over 100,000 agent driven negotiations is reshaping what buyers can know before they even walk into a deale
Why Your VPN Isn't Actually Keeping You Anonymous Jun 10, 2026 42:23 Harry Halpin, CEO of Nym Technologies, shares why the surveillance Web is more dangerous than most people realize, and why most privacy tools aren't enough. He explains how traditional VPNs still leave you exposed, why metadata is more revealing than the content of your messages, and how Nym's decentralized mixnet offers unique protection. Key Takeaways: Why encrypting your data isn't enough and
AI Agents Need Names, And Nobody Owns Them Yet Jun 3, 2026 42:16 Balazs Nemethi, CEO of the Agent Community, explains why AI agents need identities and why the window to decide who controls that infrastructure is closing fast. He breaks down how a community-governed effort is working to secure .agent as a top-level domain, and why domains are a smart foundation for agent identity. Key Takeaways: Why agents need identities, including personalized names and dom
Why One AI Agent Will Never Be Enough May 27, 2026 33:13 João Moura, CEO of crewAI, shares why single AI agents fall short and what changes when you give them a crew. He explains how multi-agent systems are already running inside Fortune 500 companies; why accountability and human oversight still matter as agents grow more autonomous; and what it looks like when an AI agent negotiates on your behalf (and wins). Key Takeaways: How multi-agent systems a
How U.S. Policy on Bitcoin Is Changing Fast May 20, 2026 40:38 Sam Lyman, Head of Research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute and former Senior Advisor and Chief Speechwriter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, shares what it looks like inside the U.S. Treasury when Bitcoin, stablecoins, and AI are being treated as strategic national assets. He explains why the current administration's approach marks a fundamental break from the Gensler era; how freedom tech is
Your AI Chats Aren't Private (And How "Unlinkable Inference" Can Help) May 13, 2026 30:07 Ken Liu (Computer Science PhD at the Stanford AI Lab) and Erik Chi (CS PhD at UMich) are the Creators of the Open Anonymity Project, which lets people prove things about themselves online without revealing their identity. In this episode we explore what it means for AI systems to "know" you; why today's so-called privacy modes fall short; and how the next generation of AI systems could be built wi
Why Cyberattacks Are Now a Matter of Life and Death May 6, 2026 35:24 Ed Gaudet, CEO and founder of Censinet, shares how cybersecurity threats have evolved from data breaches to full-scale operational disruptions, and why modern resilience strategies must go beyond prevention. He explains why ransomware has fundamentally changed the stakes, how AI is rapidly expanding the attack surface, and what organizations are getting wrong about risk. He also highlights the hum
General Assembly: The Skills That Actually Matter Now Apr 29, 2026 40:43 Jourdan Hathaway, Chief Business Officer at General Assembly, discusses her experience integrating AI agents into her admissions team, including stories of real-world complexities, edge cases, and unexpected messiness of the implementation. We also explore the evolving AI skills gap and how companies have now shifted from expecting basic AI literacy to prioritizing skills like AI workflow design,
Inside MCP: How AI Agents Are Learning to Talk to Each Other Apr 22, 2026 33:04 Andy Maskin, Director of AI Creative Technology at Publicis Sapient, explains why brands are shifting from SEO to "AI visibility," where success is no longer about ranking on search engines but instead showing up in tools like ChatGPT. He also explains how agentic AI fails without clean data and modernized systems. How MCP (Model Context Protocol) enables AI agents to communicate and coordinate
AI Anxiety: The Occupational Identity Crisis Apr 15, 2026 23:17 Dr. Maha Hosain Aziz, an international relations professor at NYU and Global Foresight Advisor at the World Economic Forum, highlights the often-overlooked societal, economic, and psychological impacts of AI adoption. She explores the growing anxiety around job displacement and the emerging "occupational identity crisis" occurring as AI reshapes industries and how people define purpose and stabili

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