AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser

Here’s a concise Apple Podcasts/Buzzsprout-ready version based on the Ari Peskoe transcript and its timestamps.
Are ordinary people helping pay for Big Tech’s AI build-out?
In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, about the growing fight over AI data centers, electricity demand, and who should pay for the infrastructure behind the AI boom.
As AI usage grows from simple chatbot prompts to more compute-heavy agentic workflows, data centers are becoming one of the most visible and controversial parts of the AI economy. We explore why these facilities require so much power, how they can strain local grids, and why the costs of new power plants, transmission lines, and utility upgrades may end up being spread across ordinary ratepayers.
Ari helps us unpack the utility business model, the role of public utility commissions, the PJM electricity market, and the strange economics of marginal cost, where the last and most expensive electron can affect prices for everyone. We also discuss whether data centers are paying their fair share, how communities are reacting, and what policy changes could help make sure the costs of AI infrastructure are more transparent and fairly allocated.
We also get into the local environmental concerns around data centers, including water use, diesel backup generators, noise, construction impacts, greenhouse gas emissions, and the tension between clean energy pledges and the speed of AI-driven demand growth.
Guest
Ari Peskoe — Director, Electricity Law Initiative, Harvard Law School
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For anyone interested in Jeff’s AI Workshops for their company:
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What does it really mean for a company to become AI-first?
In this episode of AI-Curious, we welcome futurist and keynote speaker Kevin Surace back to the show to explore how AI has changed since our last conversation two years ago. The conversation moves beyond the question of “what is AI?” and into a more urgent business reality: how companies, workers, creators, and leaders should actually use it.
We talk about why Kevin believes companies are falling behind when they treat AI as a procurement decision instead of a new operating model. He argues that employees should be using AI constantly as a collaborator, sparring partner, analyst, presentation builder, spreadsheet assistant, and productivity engine. We also explore why small AI-first startups may have a major advantage over large companies, and what enterprise leaders can do to respond.
We also discuss the rise of AI agents, the need for guardrails and biometric approval gates, the power of generative AI to unlock unstructured data, and the growing importance of agentic workflows. Kevin also shares his outlook on humanoid robots, AI data centers, energy and water concerns, creative work, copyright, fair use, and what the future of jobs and productivity could look like.
This is a wide-ranging, practical, and optimistic conversation about how AI is reshaping work, creativity, robotics, infrastructure, and the economy.
Guest
Kevin Surace — Futurist, Keynote Speaker
Check out his book:
The Joy–Success Cycle: The Science-Backed Path to Fulfillment and Peak Performance
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For anyone interested in Jeff’s AI Workshops for their company:
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What happens when artificial intelligence enters the most dangerous decision-making systems humans have ever built?
In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Ankit Panda and Andrew Reddie about the real risks of AI and nuclear weapons. Ankit is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of The New Nuclear Age. Andrew is a professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and faculty director of the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab.
This is not a conversation about Skynet or killer robots. Instead, we explore the more grounded, near-term ways AI is already intersecting with nuclear strategy, military decision-making, cyber risk, early warning systems, targeting, and command and control. We look at the full spectrum of risk, from AI helping edit policy memos to AI systems advising leaders during a possible nuclear crisis.
We also discuss why cybersecurity may be the most urgent near-term concern, how AI could affect nuclear deterrence and crisis stability, and why explainability, testing, and human judgment matter so much in high-stakes environments. Along the way, we revisit the famous Stanislav Petrov incident, explore dead hand systems and automation bias, and ask what it really means to keep humans in the loop when AI is moving faster than institutions can adapt.
Guests:
Ankit Panda — Stanton Senior Fellow, Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Andrew Reddie — Professor, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley; Faculty Director, Berkeley Risk and Security Lab
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For anyone interested in Jeff’s AI Workshops for their company:
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Can a 23-year-old video game help train the next generation of AI agents?
In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Hilmar Pétursson, CEO of Fenris Creations, the studio behind EVE Online, about why Google DeepMind has invested in the company and why EVE may be one of the hardest tests for artificial intelligence.
EVE Online is not just a space game. It is a persistent virtual civilization with player-run economies, alliances, corporations, spies, propaganda, logistics, years-long wars, and decades-old rivalries. That makes it a fascinating training ground for some of the biggest unsolved problems in AI: long-horizon planning, memory, continual learning, imperfect information, coordination, and agents that can operate inside messy real-world systems.
We explore why EVE is so much more complex than games like chess, Go, or StarCraft, and why Hilmar sees it as a possible “final boss” for AI in games. We also discuss how DeepMind could use EVE as a research environment, what an “AlphaEve” might eventually mean, and why virtual worlds may help AI systems learn in ways that resemble how humans and animals learn through play.
Along the way, we get into the business implications of AI agents, the parallels between EVE alliances and real-world companies, the idea of AI chief-of-staff agents, and the possibility of giving frontier AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, and xAI their own territories in EVE Frontier to see which AI best helps humans thrive. Hilmar also shares the story behind his conversations with Elon Musk, how EVE players are already using AI, and why he believes AI could help us unlock new versions of ourselves.
Guest:
Hilmar Pétursson — CEO, Fenris Creations
Check out:
Fenris Creations: https://fenris.com/
EVE Online: https://www.eveonline.com/
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For anyone interested in Jeff’s AI Workshops for their company:
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What happens when AI stops being just a software story and starts showing up in towns, power grids, zoning fights, data centers, and business workflows?
In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Sharon Goldman, longtime AI journalist (most recently senior reporter at Fortune) who’s now the founder of Ground Level AI, which focuses on the real-world impact of the AI boom: infrastructure, data centers, cybersecurity, enterprise adoption, policy, geopolitics, and the communities affected by it all.
We dig into Sharon’s reporting on AI data centers across the United States, including communities in Arizona, Louisiana, Michigan, and Texas that are grappling with new development, construction chaos, zoning disputes, water and electricity concerns, noise, jobs, tax revenue, and a larger sense that AI is arriving faster than people expected. We also talk about why data centers have become a proxy for broader AI anxiety, and why the conversation often gets more complicated than a simple pro-AI or anti-AI split.
Then we turn to the fast-moving world of frontier models, cybersecurity, and enterprise AI. We discuss the Mythos and Fable saga, the tension between open and closed models, why companies are rethinking model lock-in, and why business leaders increasingly want choice, redundancy, and model-agnostic AI strategies. Sharon also shares how she thinks about covering AI as a journalist, what stories she believes are still underreported, and how she uses AI herself as a solo creator building a new media business.
Guest
Sharon Goldman — Journalist and Founder, Ground Level AI
Check out Sharon’s work
Ground Level AI: https://www.groundlevel-ai.com/
Sharon’s reporting on data centers in Texas: https://fortune.com/2026/06/16/ai-data-center-texas-lacy-lakeview-ross/
Follow AI-Curious on your favorite podcast platform:
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For anyone interested in Jeff’s AI Workshops for their company:
Reach out directly at jeff@jeffwilser.com