Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence runs through every ToTheMoon episode, yet the hosts rarely discuss it in the abstract. They ask where the technology has already become a business, an infrastructure or part of someone's job, where it is still an expensive demo, and who is accountable when a system reasons, advises or decides about people.

In 2024 and 2025 the channel looked at AI through money and data. Episode 016 went through twenty-eight start-ups with rounds above a hundred million dollars and concluded that the market is far wider than OpenAI and NVIDIA, with the most interesting companies in infrastructure and industry workflows. Episode 041 warned that quality data is running out and synthetic examples risk a closed loop of mistakes, and episode 054 rejected “agents instead of people” marketing: half a trillion dollars of compute does not fix the shortage of people who can turn a model into a product.

From 2026 the conversation increasingly centers on the person inside the system. In episode 144 Anna Volchek showed that AI takes precisely the entry-level tasks on which specialists used to learn, so without a first step there will be no next senior; in episode 151 she explained why saved time is quickly absorbed by new expectations, and in episode 158 argued that the human-plus-AI system grows faster than the human capital inside it. Episode 157 mapped where AI strengthens a professional and where it adds errors and false confidence, and episode 159 concluded that the technology rewards those already established in the market, so the only honest advice is to use it in your own work. Episode 165 added the numbers: 116,175 US job cuts “because of AI” are seven positions in ten thousand jobs, and vacancies ask people not to use AI but to rebuild their work with it.