Welcome back to Zero Shot, The Ken’s weekly podcast where Brady, Praveen, and Rohin riff off each other’s commentary about the big ideas and latest developments in artificial intelligence.
This week, Praveen covers the accomplishments of Xania Monet, the first AI-powered artist to debut on an airplay chart. Xania is among at least six AI artists to be included on Billboard rankings, and she’s the creation of a real-life songwriter who used Suno (and human assistance) to create her songs. Find out what this means for the streaming business and creative expression.
Brady explains how the dominance of the Magnificent 7—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla—in the current stock market echoes the Nifty Fifty on the New York Stock Exchange in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Spoiler alert: it didn’t end well for those firms half a century ago. Whether you believe there’s currently an AI bubble, it’s still worth knowing what happened before.
Finally, Rohin posits that Big AI is in its “zero f***s given” era. Investment in private AI companies is now being framed as “play or lose”. Opting out is stigmatised. The consequences could be severe.
Plus: Send us your setup for a long/short strategy as a skeptical investor who is hedging against the AI bubble popping. We’ll feature the interesting, unexpected, counterintuitive ideas in the next episode.
The content of this podcast is not investment advice. Always do your own research.
Share your critiques, suggestions, and ideas, or just say hi by dropping a note at zeroshot@the-ken.com. If you’d like to sponsor Zero Shot, let’s talk.
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Additional Reading & Listening
How many AI artists have debuted on Billboard’s charts?
https://www.billboard.com/lists/ai-artists-on-billboard-charts/
“How Was I Supposed to Know?” by Xania Monet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opuDZYJuAz0
Ways of Seeing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ways_of_Seeing
What is “involution”, China's race-to-the-bottom competition trend?
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/what-is-involution-chinas-race-to-the-bottom-competition-trend-2025-09-14/
Sam Altman shuts down question about how OpenAI can commit to spending $1.4 trillion while earning billions: 'Enough'
https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-defends-openai-trillion-spending-2025-11
How OpenAI uses complex and circular deals to fuels its multibillion-dollar rise
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/31/technology/openai-fundraising-deals.html
Welcome to Zero Shot, where Brady, Praveen, and Rohin tackle the big ideas and latest developments in artificial intelligence for The Ken.
This week, Brady conjectures that AI adoption by enterprises hasn’t been a failure, even though many billions of dollars have been spent on generative AI pilot projects with zero return. Instead of thinking of AI as a productivity multiplier or “virtual colleague”, it can also be viewed as a forcing function for company leadership to clear out rot and settle organisational debt.
Next, guess whose salaries are falling because of AI? Praveen contrasts how paycheques are shrinking by as much as 40% in India for engineering and data roles, while their counterparts in the US are getting pay bumps. He makes the point that this remedies one type of distortion, but also that value capture in AI is tough at the application level (for now).
Finally, Rohin expresses his fondness for NotebookLM, which has transformed the way he and some other members of The Ken work.
This episode of Zero Shot was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, The Ken’s resident sound engineer.
Send us your critiques, suggestions, and ideas, or just say hi by dropping a note at zeroshot@the-ken.com. If you’d like to sponsor Zero Shot, let’s talk.
Additional Reading:
The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025
https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf
Median tech pay in India declines sharply, US hits new highs
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/median-tech-pay-in-india-declines-sharply-us-hits-new-highs-report/articleshow/124856820.cms
India’s startup workplaces confront the rise of the ‘unhireables’
https://the-ken.com/story/indias-startup-workplaces-confront-the-rise-of-the-unhireables/
The YouTube Tip of the Google Spear
https://stratechery.com/2025/the-youtube-tip-of-the-google-spear/
Youtube just ate TV. It’s only getting started
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/youtube-impact-tv-sports-late-night-comedy-shows-1236400353/
Polish top-performing language for complex AI tasks
https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/10/26/polish-top-performing-language-for-complex-ai-language-tasks-finds-study/
NotebookLM
https://notebooklm.google
Join Brady Ng, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, and Rohin Dharmakumar of The Ken as they discuss the big ideas in artificial intelligence. You’ll get the macro view, explore their experiments in practical applications, go deeper than the news coverage you’ve seen, and hear about the implications of the latest developments. Nothing is off the table.