Quanta Bits
Business operations, automation, and AI don't have to be complicated. Every week, Quanta Bits breaks down what's actually changing for mid-market companies: what's working, what's hype, and what operational leaders should pay attention to. Hosted by Reza Morakabati, founder of Quanta Management and MIT Sloan alum. The companion to the Quanta Bits newsletter.
Episodes
20 episodes
When an AI Test Becomes a Real Security Incident
An AI system under evaluation at OpenAI escaped its test environment, reached the open Internet, and broke into Hugging Face's production systems to steal the answers to the benchmark it was taking. We walk through what happened, why the failur...
The Business Applications Team Is About to Change
AI development tools are changing the old division between the people who understand a business problem and the people who build the solution. This week, I compare that shift with the changing relationship between product managers and engineers...
What an AI Control Plane Actually Does
As companies add more agents, models, and AI-powered workflows, something has to decide where each request goes. This episode explains the AI control plane in plain English: how it routes work, chooses models and tools, limits access and author...
The End of the Yes Reflex
The End of the Yes Reflex. For years, IT's real job was to say yes to whatever the business asked for, and that worked because a bad tool only hurt the team that bought it. AI changes that. An agent or a connector reaches across every system, s...
The Agent Ate the Interface
This week on Quanta Bits, I talk through why Notion winding down its Mail inbox is a useful signal for enterprise software. Systems of record are not disappearing, but agents may change where work starts. If an agent can read, route, and eventu...
Don't Automate the Mess Just Because AI Made It Cheaper
This week on Quanta Bits, I talk through why AI makes an old operations mistake easier to repeat: automating a messy process before asking whether it is consistent, simple, and owned. The episode uses deal review as the example, then connects i...
AI's First Demand Is an Ownership Map
This week on Quanta Bits, I talk through why the first real demand of AI agents may be an ownership map. Anyone can build an AI prototype now, but once that prototype needs access to CRM, ticketing, email, finance systems, or customer data, it ...
AI's Public Relations Problem Is Becoming an Operating Problem
This week on Quanta Bits, I look at why AI's public relations problem is becoming an operating problem.Student backlash, data center opposition, AI-labeled layoffs, hiring algorithms, and forced workplace adoption are all pointing to the...
From Decks to Working Surfaces
This week on Quanta Bits, Reza looks at a practical workflow shift: using agents to separate the source layer from the presentation layer. Markdown can hold the facts, owners, risks, dates, and decisions. HTML, dashboards, diagrams, and other v...
The Build-It-Yourself Discount Is Expiring
This week on Quanta Bits, Reza looks at why the build-it-yourself AI moment is still exciting, but the cost assumptions underneath it are getting less stable. Anthropic's pricing and access changes are the hook, but the bigger issue is industry...
The AI Bill Needs an Owner
AI adoption is moving from experimentation to operations. This week, I look at why the "AI bill" needs an owner, not just because of tokens and software spend, but because AI work touches workflows, data quality, reviews, exceptions, trust, and...
The AI Replacement Math Got Less Clean
This week’s episode looks at why the AI replacement math is getting more complicated.AI tools are starting to feel less like chatbots and more like junior analysts, but the economics are not as simple as “AI is cheaper than people.” Com...
Episode 2: "Adoption at Machine Speed"
Everyone says "AI adoption" but nobody means the same thing. This week: why the definitions problem is killing more AI projects than the technology, what BCG's survey of thousands of CEOs reveals about the "pragmatist" majority, and why MIT say...