Alex and Ellis talk about Alex’s visit to Anthropic’s headquarters as Claude downloads surge and the company faces growing scrutiny over its stance on government AI use. They discuss AI culture inside the labs, image generation experiments with Claude, and why some companies are betting that coding—not multimodal—is the fastest path to AGI.
Then they’re joined by Daniel Kuntz, the creator of Starboy, a tiny AI-powered creature designed to hang off your bag like a charm. They talk about why he chose to build a toy instead of another productivity tool, the idea of “hardware as art,” and why he thinks Silicon Valley has forgotten how to make fun products. They also discuss designing Starboy with former Disney animators, why it doesn’t connect to your phone, the influence of fashion and collectibles, and his belief that AI companions and productivity gadgets are heading in the wrong direction.
Chapters:
00:00 Toy, not Terminator
01:02 Sick day remedies
03:04 Inside Anthropic HQ
08:25 Values and surveillance fears
11:17 Claude image generation fail
13:46 Claudius vending machine experiment
15:45 Anthropic’s culture interviews
19:26 Meet Starboy creator Daniel Kuntz
23:47 Bag charms and design inspiration
34:05 What Starboy actually does
37:34 Curio and AI toy culture
38:47 Tamagotchi to ambient pets
39:23 How Starboy reacts to the world
39:47 Adults, kids, and artificial scarcity
42:56 Why Starboy isn’t an AI therapist
45:56 No LLMs and alien culture
47:25 Designing Starboy’s eyes
51:52 Shipping real hardware
01:04:12 Show-and-tell finale
