Send us Fan Mail Meta and NVIDIA are turning up the heat in the open-weight AI race, while Anthropic is taking a very different approach by watermarking Claude-generated content. Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack what these moves mean for associations, from choosing models and inference providers to avoiding lock-in at the agent harness layer. They also explore why AI models are becoming increasingly commoditized, where proprietary models may still have an edge, and why Claude’s new w...
Aug 13
45 min
Send us Fan Mail In this interview episode, Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan sit down with Torey Carter-Conneen, CEO of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), to explore what it really looks like when AI becomes embedded in everyday work. Torey shares how ASLA moved beyond experimentation to fully operationalize AI across the organization—from internal, tiered training programs to AI-powered member service workflows that generate reports and respond to inquiries in minutes. Th...
Aug 6
56 min
Send us Fan Mail This week, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack a whirlwind of AI developments shaping the future of associations. From Anthropic’s release of a more efficient Claude Opus 5 with dynamic “effort dialing,” to a shocking autonomous AI cyberattack that breached Hugging Face, the conversation dives deep into what these moments mean for trust, safety, and strategy. They explore the growing divide over open vs. closed AI models, why major tech players are rallying around open ...
Jul 30
55 min
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack a rapidly shifting AI landscape where powerful, low-cost open-weight models from Chinese labs are challenging the dominance of major U.S. players. They explore Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 and Alibaba’s latest model announcements, breaking down what “open” AI really means and why it’s driving costs down while increasing competition. The conversation also dives into the growing geopolitical tension around AI, including potent...
Jul 23
46 min
Send us Fan Mail In this interview episode, Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan sit down with Vicki Deal-Williams, CEO of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), to explore how a century-old organization is thoughtfully embracing AI. Vicki shares how ASHA’s AI Innovation Day sparked a cultural shift across staff—from skeptics to the “suspenders group” eager to experiment—while reinforcing a people-first philosophy. The conversation dives into balancing governance with creativi...
Jul 16
57 min
Send us Fan Mail It’s been 130 episodes since Sidecar Sync last did a true deep dive on data—and a lot has changed. In this refreshed 2026 perspective, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack what “association data” really means today, from structured CRM records to the massive untapped world of unstructured data like emails, community posts, and content libraries. They explore how AI—especially vectors and reasoning models—has flipped the script, making previously unusable data suddenly ac...
Jul 9
45 min
Send us Fan Mail This week on Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias break down a whirlwind week in AI, from Anthropic’s rapid-fire Claude releases to OpenAI’s tightly controlled GPT 5.6 rollout. They unpack the surprising performance of mid-tier models like Sonnet 5, the implications of government intervention in frontier AI, and what it means when access to the most powerful tools is suddenly restricted. The conversation then shifts to a new study reshaping the AI jobs narrative, ...
Jul 2
42 min
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias explore one of the most provocative ideas in AI yet: companies owned and operated entirely by artificial intelligence. Sparked by a proposal out of Argentina, they unpack what “non-human corporations” could mean for accountability, governance, and the future of work. From there, they break down Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD), a new standard shaping how AI agents find and evaluate tools, and how it complemen...
Jun 25
54 min
Send us Fan Mail What if building a million-dollar business no longer required a team, funding rounds, or even technical expertise? In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Mallory Mejias sits down with AI strategist and GenAIPI CEO Jon Cheney to explore how artificial intelligence is radically changing the economics of innovation. Jon shares the story of launching a company in a single weekend for just $400—and scaling it to $1M in six months—using a concept known as “vibe coding.” The conversation ...
Jun 18
1 hr 2 min
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith and Mallory explore three major developments shaping the future of AI. First, they unpack how an OpenAI model independently solved a decades-old mathematical problem—challenging long-held assumptions and proving AI can generate truly novel insights. Then, they break down Microsoft Build 2026 and the shift toward an “agent-first” world, where AI systems take on real work across your organization. Finally, they dive into Anthropic’s powerf...
Jun 11
56 min
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