A Stanford study quantifies AI sycophancy. Sean coins "Open Assist" to name what's missing from the canonical Agent Assist stack. And Dave drops a stat that should be on every board deck this week: total enterprise AI adoption is smaller than Ozempic.

Plus: ChatGPT and Grok battle for Sean's moderator chair in the cold open. Scott unpacks LendingTree's Q1 — 37% revenue growth, 51% in insurance, a six-year EBITDA high — and the middle-of-funnel observation that AI guides but cannot complete. Jayme reflects on Daniel Schreiber's Lemonade earnings call and the integration-as-moat thesis arriving from two adjacent industries in the same week. The panel debates jobs in the AI trough, token maxing vs. value per token, and whether Avoca's billion-dollar home services raise is the unregulated greenfield template.

Lightning round: what each panelist will wish they'd said louder one month from today.

Recorded May 1, 2026.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold Open: Three Teasers

2:09 AI Battle Royale: ChatGPT vs. Grok for the Chair

11:15 Why AI Humor Is Almost There

14:49 LendingTree Q1: AI Guides, But Cannot Complete

20:20 Predicting the Stock Reaction

22:27 Lemonade's Moat: Schreiber on Integrations

25:37 Stanford Quantifies Sycophancy

32:09 Open Assist vs. Agent Assist

40:13 Jobs in the AI Trough

47:55 Token Maxing and Value Per Token

50:42 "Smaller Than Ozempic"

1:00:28 Avoca and the Unregulated Greenfield

1:07:19 AI Voice Evolution: From Pipeline to Real-Time

1:17:23 Celebrity Voices: Kathy Ireland to Taylor Swift

1:25:57 Lightning Round: One Month from Today

PANEL

Dave Blundin — Chairman, EverQuote (NASDAQ: EVER); GP, Link Ventures

Scott Peyree — CEO, LendingTree (NASDAQ: TREE)

Jayme Mendal — CEO, EverQuote (NASDAQ: EVER)

Sean Fenlon — Moderator; Founder/CEO, Symphony42

REFERENCES

Stanford sycophancy study — Cheng & Jurafsky, Science (March 2026)

LendingTree Q1 2026 earnings call

Lemonade Q1 2026 earnings call (Daniel Schreiber)

Avoca AI — $125M raise (General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins)

voicesofreason.ai