ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Brett Hurt began programming at seven and eventually founded Coremetrics, co-founded Bazaarvoice, took it public, and founded data.world. He made the money, bought the Lamborghini, and achieved the freedom he had imagined since childhood.
Then he tried retirement.
“It was so empty,” he says. “It was so empty.”
Success forced Brett to confront a question failure had allowed him to postpone: What is all this capability for?
His search led inward through mystical experiences, psychedelics, meditation, and the writing of Love Conquers Fear. It also changed how he understood the responsibilities of technologists as artificial intelligence expands humanity’s power.
In this conversation, we explore success and emptiness, the uneven development of powerful people, love as an expansion of who counts, the structural dangers surrounding AI, and why inner work matters even though it cannot replace regulation, accountability, or distributed ownership.
We have moved from “revenge of the nerds” to “responsibility of the nerds.”
The AI alignment problem begins within.
