Synthetic musical artists, the Nifty Fifty and Magnificent 7, Big AI’s ‘zero f***s given’ era

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Zero Shot

The Ken

3 episodes

3 days ago

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.

All content for Zero Shot is the property of The Ken and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Technology

News,

Tech News

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Synthetic musical artists, the Nifty Fifty and Magnificent 7, Big AI’s ‘zero f***s given’ era

Zero Shot

43 minutes

5 days ago

Synthetic musical artists, the Nifty Fifty and Magnificent 7, Big AI’s ‘zero f***s given’ era

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.

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