Welcome to Zero Shot, where Brady, Praveen, and Rohin tackle the big ideas and latest developments in artificial intelligence for The Ken.

This week, Brady conjectures that AI adoption by enterprises hasn’t been a failure, even though many billions of dollars have been spent on generative AI pilot projects with zero return. Instead of thinking of AI as a productivity multiplier or “virtual colleague”, it can also be viewed as a forcing function for company leadership to clear out rot and settle organisational debt. 

Next, guess whose salaries are falling because of AI? Praveen contrasts how paycheques are shrinking by as much as 40% in India for engineering and data roles, while their counterparts in the US are getting pay bumps. He makes the point that this remedies one type of distortion, but also that value capture in AI is tough at the application level (for now).

Finally, Rohin expresses his fondness for NotebookLM, which has transformed the way he and some other members of The Ken work. 

This episode of Zero Shot was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, The Ken’s resident sound engineer.

Send us your critiques, suggestions, and ideas, or just say hi by dropping a note at [email protected]. If you’d like to sponsor Zero Shot, let’s talk.

Additional Reading:

The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025
https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf 

Median tech pay in India declines sharply, US hits new highs
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/median-tech-pay-in-india-declines-sharply-us-hits-new-highs-report/articleshow/124856820.cms

India’s startup workplaces confront the rise of the ‘unhireables’
https://the-ken.com/story/indias-startup-workplaces-confront-the-rise-of-the-unhireables/ 

The YouTube Tip of the Google Spear
https://stratechery.com/2025/the-youtube-tip-of-the-google-spear/ 

​​Youtube just ate TV. It’s only getting started
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/youtube-impact-tv-sports-late-night-comedy-shows-1236400353/ 

Polish top-performing language for complex AI tasks
https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/10/26/polish-top-performing-language-for-complex-ai-language-tasks-finds-study/

NotebookLM
https://notebooklm.google