Is Anthropic a Cult? AI Beats ER Doctors & Recursive Self-Improvement | This Week in AI E12
Shownotes
This week, JCal sits down with two builders working on opposite ends of the AI stack: Naveen Rao, co-founder and CEO of Unconventional AI (his $4.5B startup rethinking the computer from first principles), and Trey Holterman, co-founder and CEO of Tennr, the platform automating the messy paperwork that decides whether millions of patients ever get the care they need.
They break down why AI already beats ER doctors at diagnosis, why Epic is the most hated company in healthcare, what it takes to disrupt healthcare's $5 trillion incumbents, and whether $1.1 trillion in hyperscaler CapEx will pay off before the energy runs out.
Mentioned in the show:
- Unconventional AI: https://unconv.ai
- Tennr: https://tennr.com
- Abridge: https://abridge.com
- Ambience Healthcare: https://ambiencehealthcare.com
- Epic: https://epic.com
- Plaud (NotePin): https://plaud.ai
- Whoop: https://whoop.com
- Function Health: https://functionhealth.com
- Oura: https://ouraring.com
- Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com
- Perplexity: https://perplexity.ai
- Databricks: https://databricks.com
- Harvard / Beth Israel ER study: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/ai/ai-outperforms-doctors-diagnosis-harvard-study
- Jack Clark on recursive self-improvement: https://jack-clark.net
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Timestamps:
00:00 Cold open
00:51 Welcome & intro to Naveen Rao (Unconventional AI) and Trey Holterman (Tennr)
05:43 Tennr's mission: fixing the U.S. healthcare "black hole"
06:23 Why primary care is changing in the AI era
09:09 The radiologist that wasn't replaced & what AI got right in 2015
15:31 Harvard study: AI beats ER doctors 67% to 55%
20:16 Plaud Pin & the always-on AI in the exam room
22:29 AI scribes, EMR privacy & how Abridge actually works
24:01 Whoop, Aura & when wearable data finally meets the clinic
25:20 Epic, FHIR & the 800-pound gorilla of healthcare
34:21 Disrupting Epic with an open-source EMR play
37:20 The Abridge vs Ambience scribe wars
42:06 Jack Clark's 60% odds on recursive self-improvement by 2028
53:41 Morgan Stanley's $1.1 trillion hyperscaler CapEx forecast
1:04:53 Anthropic's marketing machine & the AI religion thesis
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