Eye On A.I. cover art

Eye On A.I.

Eye On A.I.

By: Craig S. Smith
Listen for free

Season's Savings | £0.99/mo for 3 months

£5.99/mo after 3 months - terms apply. Cancel monthly
Eye on A.I. is a biweekly podcast, hosted by longtime New York Times correspondent Craig S. Smith. In each episode, Craig will talk to people making a difference in artificial intelligence. The podcast aims to put incremental advances into a broader context and consider the global implications of the developing technology. AI is about to change your world, so pay attention.Eye On A.I.
Episodes
  • AI Agents Will Take 50% of Your Traffic — Is Your Data Ready? | Jeff Lunsford, CEO of Tealium
    Oct 30 2026

    20% of enterprise website traffic is already coming from AI agents rather than humans, and that traffic converts at 38% more revenue per session than human visits. Within a year, Jeff Lunsford expects that number to reach 50%. Jeff, CEO of Tealium, joins Craig Smith to explain what this shift actually means for every business with a digital presence, and why the companies that will win are the ones whose data layer speaks fluently to agents, not just human browsers. Tealium operates as a neutral, real-time collection and distribution layer that sits underneath all of a company's customer-facing systems, capturing every interaction as it happens and distributing enriched identity-resolved profiles to whichever downstream system needs them - from personalization engines to fraud models - without storing the data itself.

    The most important argument Lunsford makes is one that Craig sets up precisely: agents need current state, consented context on demand, and a data warehouse offering yesterday's picture doesn't just underperform, it actively produces bad recommendations that erode trust in the AI system. He uses the pilot analogy he's carried for fifteen years: you don't want to fly knowing your altitude from yesterday, and for the same reason you don't want your customer-facing agent making decisions on stale data. The episode also covers the pattern that governs every channel transition in business history, brick-and-mortar didn't disappear when phones arrived, the internet didn't disappear when mobile arrived, and human website traffic won't disappear when agents arrive. Total session volume goes up because agents make it easier to initiate interactions. The businesses that prepared for each transition early captured disproportionate value. The businesses preparing their data layer for agentic consumption now are doing the same thing.

    Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

    Show More Show Less
    56 mins
  • How Zip's AI Superagents Automate Procurement End-to-End | Rujul Zaparde
    Oct 23 2026

    Every business in the world has to procure things, and for most of them, that process is slow, manual, and full of money left on the table. Rujul Zaparde, co-founder of Zip, joins Craig to explain how his company is using AI Superagents to change that: from autonomously redlining contracts and running supplier RFPs, to pushing approved data directly into enterprise systems like SAP and Oracle. With over $1.2 trillion in cumulative spend processed - and Anthropic and OpenAI as customers - Zip isn't just experimenting with AI. It's building the governance infrastructure that makes agentic AI safe to deploy where the stakes are highest.

    The conversation goes well beyond procurement software. Craig and Rujul explore why the gap between "piloting AI" and truly deploying it is costing enterprises billions in unrealized ROI, what it means for the economy when AI starts making pricing ruthlessly efficient, and where the real limits of automation actually lie. A rare episode that takes an overlooked corner of business - one that touches every company on earth - and shows just how much is about to change.

    Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

    Show More Show Less
    51 mins
  • Is This the Cheapest Way to Use AI in 2026? (65+ Models Tested) | Iskander Malikov, Trioma
    Oct 16 2026

    What if you didn't have to choose between ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and instead, the platform chose for you?

    That's the core idea behind Trioma, a vertically integrated AI ecosystem built by Iskander and his team in the UAE. Craig Smith sits down with Iskander Malikov, Co-founder & CEO of Trioma, to unpack how Trioma's orchestration engine routes prompts across 65 models, why token price is a misleading metric, and how their GPU network lets users participate in AI infrastructure build-out to offset their own compute costs.

    The conversation goes deep on the economics of AI subscriptions, the coming collapse of traditional SaaS, and why Trioma believes AI should be sovereign, accessible, and community-driven, not locked behind a single company's walled garden. If you're thinking about where AI access, cost, and infrastructure are heading, this one is essential listening.

    Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

    Show More Show Less
    55 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet