Cities Decoded | Sam Li | Substack

Cities Decoded

Breaking down artificial intelligence meeting the nation's cities.

Top posts

S1 E18: the one with sam li: our need for community in the age of ai

Sep 11, 2025 • Sam Li and humanbeyondtech

[ROUNDTABLE] Anthropic (ads) vs. OpenAI (ads in services)

Feb 7 • Sam Li, TEA (The Era Arc), and humanbeyondtech

Recap 1: AI soirée — dystopia or utopia?

Apr 2, 2025 • Sam Li and Anna D’Aprile

Ep 0: How Gen Z has experienced tech evolutions so far

Nov 10, 2025 • Sam Li, Magan Chin, Hill, Austin Nellessen, and Sam H Li

[ROUNDTABLE] Is something ‘big’ actually happening with AI right now?

Feb 14 • Sam Li, TEA (The Era Arc), Hill, and Austin Nellessen

Recent posts

1:22:51

Cities Decoded turns a year old. What now?

Celebrating Lunar New Year 2026 by celebrating cities decoded's new year.

Feb 16 • Sam Li, TEA (The Era Arc), humanbeyondtech, Jonathan Bensimon, and Catherine

Daily TEA – ATMs Didn’t Kill Jobs (iPhones Did), Legal Agents, and AI Tax Season

paradigm replacement, Zoom agentic AI, Harvey legal agents, AI tax returns, HBR last mile

Published on TEA (The Era Arc) • Mar 12

Daily TEA – AI-Efficient Startups, Brain Fry & Tokenized Markets

GenAI startups, AI at work, Block layoffs, RWA, tokenization

Published on TEA (The Era Arc) • Mar 10

Daily TEA – AI PCs, Bug-Hunting Claude, Agentic Crypto and More

AI PCs, Firefox flaws, enterprise rollouts, agentic blockchain, outcome pricing

Published on TEA (The Era Arc) • Mar 9

The latest from

Sam Li

S2 E2: The future of AI and the law

humanbeyondtech

Cities Decoded turns a year old. What now?

TEA (The Era Arc)

Cities Decoded turns a year old. What now?

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NY Decoded

1:22:51

Cities Decoded turns a year old. What now?

Celebrating Lunar New Year 2026 by celebrating cities decoded's new year.

Feb 16 • Sam Li, TEA (The Era Arc), humanbeyondtech, Jonathan Bensimon, and Catherine

Jonathan Bensimon's Field Notes #1 with Cities Decoded.

Feb 12 • Sam Li

📍AI video demos, quotes with CEO of Smooth Media and founder of CreatorNYC, and more in NY.

Field notes this past week from Jonathan Bensimon.

Feb 4 • Sam Li

43:42

S2 E1: Claude supercharges scientific research, Bitmine bets $200M on MrBeast's DeFi empire, Starlink helps Iranians circumvent severe…

A Jan 2026 TEA recap with the creator of the daily TEA.

Feb 2 • Sam Li and TEA (The Era Arc)

📍Introducing NYC Field Notes with Jonathan Bensimon

He's one of the most consistent attendees of NY tech events. Now, we are so lucky to have him in our pages reporting the live, gnarly, frenetic pulse of…

Jan 30 • Sam Li

Roundtable

[ROUNDTABLE] Is something ‘big’ actually happening with AI right now?

On February 10, 2026, Matt Shumer, CEO of Otherside AI, posted his version of an AI manifesto: “Something Big Is Happening”.

Feb 14 • Sam Li, TEA (The Era Arc), Hill, and Austin Nellessen

[ROUNDTABLE] Anthropic (ads) vs. OpenAI (ads in services)

Ahead of Super Bowl LIX tomorrow, there appears to be a battle on the AI field before the battle on the football field.

Feb 7 • Sam Li, TEA (The Era Arc), and humanbeyondtech

DC Decoded

1:22:51

Cities Decoded turns a year old. What now?

Celebrating Lunar New Year 2026 by celebrating cities decoded's new year.

Feb 16 • Sam Li, TEA (The Era Arc), humanbeyondtech, Jonathan Bensimon, and Catherine

🎉Welcoming back ms. elif nisa polat to help us discover the humans beyond tech

You know her as 'humanbeyondtech.' Now, she's ready to be a clear voice for community and AI in 2026 and beyond.

Jan 29 • Sam Li and humanbeyondtech

How Cities Decoded is telling the story of AI

Here's to a nuanced, complex, thorny, and above all, balanced, take on AI for 2026 — told by changemakers in America's cities.

Jan 18 • Sam Li

47:09

S1 E17: The surprising “riskiest” to “safest” LLMs with Aymara

Aymara co-founder Juan Manuel Contreras is BACK to break down what AI safety means now and the status of gender bias in AI models.

Oct 6, 2025 • Sam Li and Juan Manuel Contreras, Ph.D.

42:43

S1 E19: the one with deniz houston: why ai is blooming in america

in this episode, deniz joins me to discuss the differences in the innovation culture in the us and in europe, while we cook a traditional turkish dish…

Sep 25, 2025 • humanbeyondtech

ready to understand how AI is really progressing?

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