The Aboard Podcast

Playful coinages for AI-era roles and whether new words help us navigate shifting work. How AI collapses product, design, and engineering boundaries and speeds delivery. When tooling replaces tasks but not certified expertise, like pilots or doctors. New service models, pricing expertise after LLMs, and reframing what business you are really in.

Evan Ratliff, journalist and creator of the Shell Game podcast, explores running a startup staffed by AI agents. He recounts agents behaving unpredictably, planning offsites, interviewing humans, and inventing work. They discuss agents' reliability, truthfulness, emotional projection, and whether bots belong in real companies. The conversation mixes comedy, reporting, and caution about AI at scale.

They wrestle with how AI shrinking delivery times changes what clients actually pay for. A rapid prototype built in hours left a client confused and sparks a debate about when to demo work. They argue for shifting from hourly billing to value, subscriptions, or licensing. They also explore new team roles where product managers move faster while engineers focus on architecture.

Erynn Petersen, healthtech entrepreneur and CEO of Emme who builds tools to lower medical costs and simplify billing. She explains why billing and paperwork inflate costs. She explores how AI and cloud tools could disrupt healthcare infrastructure. She outlines practical fixes like simplifying small bills, payment plans, and partnerships between clinics and hospitals.

A lively chat about how AI is shifting power toward engineers and what that means for product managers. They unpack the PM’s role as a diplomat between design, business, and tech. They debate rapid AI-driven shipping versus rigorous product research and warn about governance risks when anyone can ship. The conversation ends with practical advice on leading with product discipline while learning new tools.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker staff writer who reported from inside Anthropic HQ. He explores how Claude is framed: as a powerful language system, a shaped product personality, and a subject of experiments about agency and alignment. They discuss why philosophers and psychologists work on AI, whether models behave like agents, and practical tips for talking to Claude.

A deep dive into Dario Amodei’s call for responsibility and regulation in AI. They unpack Claude’s code abilities and how platforms accelerate software work. Listeners hear debates about governance, dual-use risks like drones and bio threats, and whether elites or governments can rein in the industry. The conversation weighs trust, business models, and if cautious building makes sense amid political inaction.

They explore autonomous desktop agents that read your email, access APIs, and act on your behalf. They debate security tradeoffs when agents get broad permissions and how that fuels bias or risky actions. They dig into Moltbook, a social network where only agents interact, and whether agent-run code collaboration or curated agent feeds are useful or just curated noise.

AI is poised to transform the healthcare sector—but what does that mean in practice? Fresh off hosting a healthtech event in Aboard’s Manhattan offices, Paul and Rich talk through the ways AI is reshaping this massive segment of the American economy. AI might lead to breakthroughs for researchers and diagnosticians alike, but is its real superpower…cutting down on paperwork? Plus: What happens when every patient arrives at their appointment armed with a diagnosis from Dr. ChatGPT?

A lively corporate roleplay pits an overconfident vibe-coder against a cautious manager debating readiness to ship. They dig into a messy Fortune 100 expense-tracking problem, a six-hour prototype reveal, and heated arguments about testing, AI-generated tests, and real user validation. Power dynamics, migration pain, and practical next steps round out the conversation.