Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's prophesy that 50% of entry level work will disappear 2) Hype or true: Is mass AI-driven unemployment just marketing? 3) How Amodei's prediction could come true 4) How work might shift even before job loss, as in the case of Amazon's engineers 5) NVIDIA's business is booming 6) Are export restrictions on China working? 7) DeepSeek's updated R1 model is here 8) Meta's AI problems 9) Meta teams up with Anduril 10) Did Mark call Palmer? 11) Grammarly's unique funding model 12) Elon Musk gets out of DOGE 13) CEOs using AI avatars on earnings calls
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Episode overview:
In this conversation, South African strategist Wabo Majavu, executive strategy and business operations leader at Africa Data Centres, unpacks how technical expertise at organisations like MTN and Intelsat laid the foundation for her distinctive approach to strategic leadership and digital activism.
From building radar applications at the CSIR to optimising cellular networks through late-night, township-sourced sheep's head dinners with seasoned veteran technicians, Majavu's journey illustrates how hands-on technical experience and savvy adaptation becomes the bedrock of strategic thinking. She discusses navigating workplace discrimination, helping transform organisational culture at state-owned Sentech, and her prescient work in AI before it became a global phenomenon.
Andile Masuku explores with Majavu how strategists shape a company's future direction, the delicate balance between commercial viability and digital inclusion, and her current mission to democratise coding through native African languages.
Key topics:
- From radar systems at CSIR to RF optimisation at MTN: building the technical foundation for strategic leadership
- How experiences at Intelsat shaped her understanding of managed services and market transformation
- The Sentech years: leading digital transformation while learning that culture can eat even the best strategy for breakfast
- Studying AI and signal processing before the global AI boom, and formative educational experiences in Malaysia that shaped future vision
- Strategic stakeholder management: converting union leaders into product managers and building collaborative ecosystems
- Balancing commercial imperatives with digital inclusion through long-term strategic thinking
- Where to start learning AI: practical advice for breaking into the field
Notable points:
1. Majavu's radar applications work at CSIR and cellular network optimisation at MTN provided the technical depth that informs her strategic decision-making today
2. At MTN, she overcame racial barriers by building relationships with Network Operations Centre (NOC) technicians through after-hours learning sessions, bringing sheep's head delicacies from Mamelodi township to earn their trust and knowledge
3. At Sentech, she learned firsthand that "culture can eat strategy for breakfast," successfully converting a well-respected, highly influential union leader into a turnkey product manager spearheading the roll-out of new digital services
4. Majavu studied signal processing and then AI before it became mainstream, building web crawlers and predictive systems
5. Her approach to change management involves understanding each stakeholder's agenda and finding areas of alignment, demonstrated through her successful transformation of adversaries into collaborators
Listen for Majavu's insights on how strategists inform a company's trajectory, why patient capital and technical depth are essential for Africa's digital transformation, and how past experiences become the lens through which strategic leaders view future possibilities.
Image credit: Konecta
Arnab Deka lives in Vancouver and loves the Pacific Northwest. He was never formally educated in computer science or software engineering - in fact, while he was studying civil engineering, he fell in love with building things and eventually, building software. Outside of tech, he is a family man and loves to sup with them and his dog. He also enjoys astronomy, and is known to attend a star party or 2, with his telescope in hand.
Arnab took a sabbatical from work, and on this journey, he realized that he liked deep work and interacting with customers directly - as opposed to high level strategy and planning. He met with his now co-founder in 2022, walking then Seattle lake front, and realized what podcast junkies they both were - and they decided to build something for it.
Touches on the role, evolution, and adoption of AI agents, emphasizing their growing integration into systems, while addressing key safeguarding measures to ensure AI agents can accurately use data to reason effectively.
Explores how Abnormal AI utilizes AI to detect and protect against cybersecurity threats, and how Dan and his team are leveraging AI to drive compounding productivity within their organization.
Y-Lan Boureau is the founder & CEO of ThrivePal, an OpenAI-funded AI startup, and a former Meta AI researcher. Boureau joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss why the next frontier for AI should be science‑backed coaching that nudges us toward healthier habits and deeper real‑world relationships. Tune in to hear how large‑language models can push users to lift weights, regulate emotions, and support their friends’ growth.
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Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice.
Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b
Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com
In this episode of The BlueHat Podcast, host Nic Fillingham and Wendy Zenone share David Weston’s keynote from BlueHat India 2025. David explores the growing role of on-device AI in Windows, the security risks it introduces, and how Microsoft is rethinking architecture to defend against new threats like model tampering, data exfiltration, and AI-powered malware. He also shares insights on innovations like Windows Recall, biometric protection, and the future of secure, agentic operating systems.
In This Episode You Will Learn:
How AI integration in Windows (like Windows Recall and MS Paint) is evolving
Emerging threats from protocols like MCP and CUAs
What a “confused deputy” attack is, and how Microsoft is protecting users
Some Questions We Ask:
What are the biggest security threats in on-device AI—data, model, or runtime?
Can AI be used to accelerate post-compromise attacks?
What will it take to bring Azure-level confidential computing to the consumer device?
Rob Woollen lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He grew up with a Father in IT and management, and his Mother as an English teacher. He has been programming for a long time, since the early days on his Apple 2E (yes, the green screen one). Outside of tech, he is married with 3 boys, all teenagers. He also has a 1 year old golden retriever, and spends a lot of time ensuring he lives his best life. In addition to this, he and his wife enjoy hiking around the Marin area, as they have the best hiking trials.
Rob spent many years at Salesforce, and it struck him that many of the company operations were still done on spreadsheets. When he left the company, he started exploring how to create something to support large scale data sets, within the familiar UI of spreadsheets.
Andrew McClanahan, Senior Director at LexisNexis Risk Solutions for Government Relations rejoins for Part Two of the conversation around government program integrity and he unpacks the increasing state responsibilities for service delivery and the tough financial balancing acts agencies face while grappling with program reforms, fraud prevention, and privacy protection. We also discuss Medicaid work requirements, SNAP eligibility controversies and the politics of data sharing and we tackle the practical realities and policy debates shaping public assistance programs today.
