Introducing Incumbents and Insurgents

Warner Thomas and Munjal Shah

In this episode of Incumbents and Insurgents, Eric Larsen hosts Warner Thomas (President and CEO, Sutter Health) and Munjal Shah (Co-Founder and CEO, Hippocratic AI) for a conversation on what it takes to move clinical AI from invention to installation. As an Incumbent and an Insurgent building on the same patient-facing terrain, they make the case that healthcare has been designed around clinical scarcity, and that AI now makes a kind of abundance possible for the first time.

Tom Mihaljevic and Elad Walach

In this episode of Incumbents and Insurgents, Eric Larsen hosts Tom Mihaljevic, M.D. (CEO and President, Cleveland Clinic) and Elad Walach (Co-Founder and CEO, Aidoc) for the series' first in-person pairing of an Incumbent and an Insurgent. They explore why AI applied to poorly structured health systems fails without standardization and manufacturing discipline; how 370,000 annual deaths from diagnostic errors could worsen as the standard of care accelerates beyond the system's capacity to implement it; and why Aidoc's recent clinical-grade foundation model for medical imaging may mark the beginning of comprehensive AI-driven disease detection. They also discuss what Cleveland Clinic learned building a world-class hospital in Abu Dhabi from scratch, why executive leadership is the single best predictor of AI implementation success, and whether U.S. healthcare's fragmentation is incompatible with the diffusion of transformational technology.

Dario Amodei

In this episode of Incumbents and Insurgents, Eric Larsen speaks with Dario Amodei, Co-Founder and CEO of Anthropic, about what happens when rapidly improving AI systems meet a healthcare sector built for stability and caution. They discuss the pace of model progress, why healthcare’s labor intensity and administrative burden make it especially exposed, and where AI is already acting as a clinical second opinion. The conversation spans physician workflows, biomedical discovery, and the gap between invention and diffusion, before turning to what increasingly capable machines mean for human judgment, creativity, and the role of the humanities in an age of abundant intelligence.

Vinod Khosla

In this episode of Incumbents and Insurgents, Eric Larsen sits down with Vinod Khosla - Founder of Khosla Ventures and one of the most prescient technologists of the past 50 years - for a wide-ranging conversation on how artificial intelligence will fundamentally rewire healthcare. They explore why healthcare has resisted disruption while other industries have not; how AI can reduce overhead while expanding clinical capacity; and how “free expertise” will upend primary care, specialty access, and mental health delivery. In addition, they cover labor economics, capitation, medical superintelligence, and regulation - before confronting the risks of the U.S. falling behind China and the Gulf states in healthcare AI.

Eugene Woods and Bret Taylor

In this episode of Incumbents and Insurgents, Eric Larsen hosts Bret Taylor (Co-Founder of Sierra, Chairman of OpenAI) and Eugene A. Woods (CEO of Advocate Health) for a conversation on how AI is driving transformation in healthcare. Topics include how health systems are deploying GenAI to reduce administrative overhead and prevent patient harm; how incumbents and insurgents can partner without talking past each other; and why real change depends as much on cultural alignment as technological capability.