The Alignment Problem

Despite our best efforts, sometimes what we say we want isn’t precisely what we mean. Nowhere is that felt more acutely than when we’re giving instructions to a machine, whether that’s coding or offering examples to machine learning systems. We unpack the alignment problem in this encore edition of our oral history project.We Meet: Brian Christian, former University of Oxford researcher, and author of The Alignment Problem Credits:This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

One thing remains true: voting in America is still needlessly hard.A year ago, we sat down with Bradley Tusk, the venture capitalist, political strategist, and one of the strongest voices for mobile voting. His TED Talk on this topic was later named one of the ten essential TED Talks of 2025.His argument: we bank on our phones, file taxes on our phones, and access our medical records on our phones. Voter fraud via mobile would be no harder to prevent than any of those things.  It’s a 15-minute listen, and today feels like the right day for it. We'll be back next week with a new episode - thanks for listening!  We Meet: Bradley Tusk, Founder & CEO of Tusk Holdings Credits:This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

If you listen to how technologists talk about the AI they’re building, you might hear some words that sound more religious than technical: transcendence, transformation, a new kind of being..? Meanwhile, multiple religious traditions have developed sophisticated frameworks for thinking about what makes something conscious, so while it’s been easy to assume that religion and technology don’t have much to say to each other, what if they actually do? We Meet:  Harvard Berkman Klein Center Fellow DZ Kalman works at the intersection of religion and technology. Credits:This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

AI is helping turn the dairy supply chain from push to pull, but milk still shows up whether anyone ordered it. Land O’Lakes’ CTO on AI in a business run by animals and weatherWe Meet:  Teddy Bekele is the chief technology officer at Land O'Lakes Credits:This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

What would you say if someone offered you a taste of a salmon filet that doesn’t contain fish?The protein content, carbs, and even the omega 3s are basically the same, but what it doesn’t contain are things like microplastics and mercury. Join us for a factory tour of a startup called New School Foods for a peek at the next-generation of plant-based protein.This episode originally aired in August 2025.We Meet:  New School Foods CEO Chris BrysonCredits:This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

As AI blurs the line between creator and machine, the rules around ownership, value, and originality are all being rewritten. This week, we explore what it means for the music industry.This episode was taped before a live audience in Amsterdam at the tech conference HumanX.We Meet:  Ghazi Shami is the Founder and CEO of EmpireAndrea Czapary Martin is the CEO of PRS for MusicCredits:This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

As AI moves beyond the screen and into the physical world, the next generation of intelligent products will be defined less by bigger models than by context, trust, and the ability to act. We caught up with renowned industrial designer Robert Brunner at HumanX Amsterdam. Brunner designed a number of products that have gone on to define the way we live with technology, including Apple’s original PowerBook laptop and Beats by Dre. We Meet:  Robert Brunner, Founder & Creative Director of AmmunitionCredits:This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Nasrin Mostafazadeh, co-founder and CEO of Verneek, traces her path from a teenage robotics champion to founding an AI company with a boy at that same robotics competition, who later became her husband. She explains why 2026's wave of generic LLM shopping integrations largely failed, and how Verneek's domain-specific AI cut Nordstrom's product-tagging time by 20x while beating human accuracy by 20%.We meet: Co-founder & CEO of Verneek Nasrin MostafazadehCredits:This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Neo4j CTO Philip Rathle on why the AI systems reaching production aren't monolithic LLMs,  and why "attackers think in graphs" even when defenders don't.Credits:This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

From deciding where to build a new business, airport or fire station, to understanding the potential impact of decisions regarding conservation or governance, people make billions of maps everyday using GIS. We explore the history and evolution of this tech with one of its pioneers, in the latest installment of our oral history project.This episode originally aired in November 2024. We Meet:Esri Founder & President Jack DangermondCredits:This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong and Emma Cillekens, and it was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.