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"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

369 episodes — Page 1 of 8

AI:AM Highlights: Recursive Self-Improvement, Rushed and Vibe-Coded?

Aug 28, 20262h 11m

RL's a Hell of a Drug: Metagaming, Reward Seeking & Motivated CoT Reasoning – Bronson Schoen, Apollo

Aug 26, 20262h 14m

AI in the AM — Weekly Highlights: Relaunch Week (Aug 17–20, 2026)

Aug 22, 20262h 33m

Let There Be Germicidal Light: This $500 Fixture Could Stop the Next Pandemic, from Complex Systems

Aug 16, 20261h 25m

Lindy Teammate: Flo Crivello on Multiplayer Agents, Memory & Why He'd Ban the Chinese Models He Uses

Aug 10, 20262h 6m

Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent

Aug 8, 20261h 57m

Pick Your Poison: Zvi Mowshowitz on the Unipolar/Multipolar AGI Dilemma, OpenFace & Pacing the ...

Aug 5, 20262h 57m

Nathan Goes to China – Part 2: AI Safety with Chinese Characteristics

Aug 2, 20262h 17m

Is Offense or Defense Dominant? FAR.AI's Adam Gleave on the AI Security Leaderboard

Jul 30, 20261h 44m

Nathan Goes to China – Part 1: Tech & Agent Setup, Chinese AI UX, WAIC, and Attitudes on AI

Jul 27, 20262h 24m

Alignment with Awakening: Davidad on Moral Realism, AI Wisdom, & why His p(Doom) is Down to 5%

Jul 12, 20262h 23m

AI:AM Highlights: Exploring the J-Space, AI Superforecasters, SambaNova's Chips, & LTX Video Gen

Jul 9, 20262h 7m

Intelligence on the Edge: Liquid AI's Ramin Hasani on the Search for Device-Native Foundation Models

Jul 4, 20261h 47m

1000 Designs a Day: Neural Concept's Thomas von Tschammer on AI-Native Engineering

Jul 1, 20261h 29m

AI:AM #4: Cameron on Model Consciousness, Duvenaud's Gradual Disempowerment, swyx's AI-Eng Alpha

Jun 27, 20261h 56m

The God We Deserve: Nonzero's Robert Wright on AI as Humanity's Ultimate Test

Jun 23, 20262h 29m

AI:AM #3: Zvi on Fable, the Cases For & Against the Ban, + AI for Math, Logistics & More

Jun 21, 20262h 14m

Dean Ball, on Joining OpenAI: New Power Centers, Frontier AI Policy, & Main Character Energy

Jun 20, 20262h 39m

Radically Better Reasoning: Elicit's Andreas Stuhlmüller & Jungwon Byun on World Models for Research

Jun 17, 20261h 46m

AI in the AM — Week 2 Highlights (June 2026)

Jun 13, 20261h 44m

Babysitting the Machine: Glean's Rebecca Hinds on the Hidden Human Labor of AI at Work

Jun 10, 20261h 46m

AI in the AM — Week 1 Highlights (June 2026)

Jun 6, 20261h 22m

Nested Learning: Ali Behrouz on the Quest for Continual Learning & Illusion of AI Architectures

Jun 3, 20263h 0m

Inside Nathan's Second Brain: Daniel Miessler, Security Expert & Creator of PAI, Audits My AI Setup

May 30, 20262h 32m

Your Biggest Lever: Designing your AI Career for Maximum Impact, with 80,000 Hours founder Ben Todd

May 26, 20261h 42m

All Compute Is Food: Palisade's Jeffrey Ladish on AI Shutdown Resistance, Self-Replication & Ecology

May 24, 20262h 13m

The Model Eats the Scaffolding: DeepMind's Logan Kilpatrick & Tulsee Doshi on 3.5 Flash, Omni & More

May 20, 202659 min

Three Kinds of Software Survive: Tasklet's Andrew Lee on Competing to be a Horizontal Platform

May 15, 20261h 33m

Milliseconds to Match: Criteo's AdTech AI & the Future of Commerce w/ Diarmuid Gill & Liva Ralaivola

May 9, 20261h 27m

"Descript Isn't a Slop Machine": Laura Burkhauser on the AI Tools Creators Love and Hate

May 6, 20261h 23m

The RL Fine-Tuning Playbook: CoreWeave's Kyle Corbitt on GRPO, Rubrics, Environments, Reward Hacking

May 1, 20261h 46m

AI in the AM: 99% off search, GPT-5.5 is "clean", model welfare analysis, & efficient analog compute

Apr 26, 20262h 38m

Does Learning Require Feeling? Cameron Berg on the latest AI Consciousness & Welfare Research

Apr 23, 20263h 33m

Vibe-Coding an Attention Firewall, w/ Steve Newman, creator of The Curve

Apr 19, 20262h 9m

Welcome to AI in the AM: RL for EE, Oversight w/out Nationalization, & the first AI-Run Retail Store

Apr 15, 20262h 30m

It's Crunch Time: Ajeya Cotra on RSI & AI-Powered AI Safety Work, from the 80,000 Hours Podcast

Apr 11, 20263h 10m

Calm AI for Crazy Days: Inside Granola's Design Philosophy, with co-founder Sam Stephenson

Apr 8, 20261h 34m

Training the AIs' Eyes: How Roboflow is Making the Real World Programmable, with CEO Joseph Nelson

Joseph Nelson, CEO of Roboflow, breaks down the current state of computer vision and why it still lags behind language models in real-world understanding, latency, and deployment. He explains how Roboflow distills frontier vision capabilities into efficient, task-specific models using techniques like Neural Architecture Search and RF-DETR. The conversation covers Chinese leadership in vision, Meta and NVIDIA’s roles in the ecosystem, coding agents, and emerging S-curves from world models to wearables. Nelson also explores aesthetic judgment in AI, real-world applications from agriculture to sports, and why outcome-focused regulation matters. Sponsors: Tasklet: Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (04:23) State of computer vision (12:29) Is vision solved (19:41) Frontier models and failures (Part 1) (19:46) Sponsors: Tasklet | VCX (22:39) Frontier models and failures (Part 2) (32:16) From cloud to edge (Part 1) (32:21) Sponsor: Claude (34:33) From cloud to edge (Part 2) (43:25) Data needs and scaling (50:52) Open source vision race (01:01:38) NAS and productization (01:12:24) Aesthetic judgment challenges (01:17:22) Future horizons in vision (01:31:18) Wearables and daily life (01:43:06) Regulating AI vision tools (01:51:00) Episode Outro (01:56:39) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

Apr 4, 20261h 55m

Success without Dignity? Nathan finds Hope Amidst Chaos, from The Intelligence Horizon Podcast

This special cross-post from The Intelligence Horizon features Nathan Labenz in a wide-ranging conversation on compressed AI timelines, expert disagreement, and why he believes the singularity is near. They discuss interpretability, RL scaling, and the balance between extraordinary upside, like curing major diseases, and serious existential risks. Nathan explains his evolving p(doom), why he’s slightly more optimistic about robustly good AI, and how defense-in-depth strategies might keep society on track. The episode also explores US-China rivalry, AI governance, and why human cooperation may matter more than technical control alone. Google: Keep up with AI research on the go with NotebookLM, Google's steerable research and thinking partner. Try it at https://notebooklm.google.com/. Sponsors: Tasklet: Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:27) Special Sponsor (05:12) Opening and AGI framing (12:08) Scaling RL and paradigms (Part 1) (21:31) Sponsors: Tasklet | VCX (24:24) Scaling RL and paradigms (Part 2) (28:56) Verifiability and long horizons (41:13) LLMs and world models (Part 1) (41:19) Sponsor: Claude (43:32) LLMs and world models (Part 2) (54:17) Energy, hardware, and chips (01:00:42) Alignment risks and bottlenecks (01:10:18) AI values and agency (01:20:31) Defense in depth alignment (01:30:48) US-China AI cooperation (01:41:05) Episode Outro (01:45:42) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

Apr 1, 20261h 44m

Scaling Intelligence Out: Cisco's Vision for the Internet of Cognition, with Vijoy Pandey

Vijoy Pandey of Outshift by Cisco lays out his vision for an “Internet of Cognition,” where AI agents can share context, build reputation, and collaborate safely at scale. He offers a useful mental model for superintelligence: progress has to scale in two directions — up, through better individual models, and out, through networks of agents and humans thinking together. The conversation explores how distributed, protocol-driven agent systems could give enterprises fine-grained permissions, auditability, and controlled interfaces, in contrast to today’s centralized frontier models. Vijoy also walks through Cisco’s internal CAIPE system of 20 cooperating agents, the open-source AGNTCY project, and a live multi-agent healthcare demo spanning diagnostics, insurance, pharmacy, and scheduling. LINKS: AGNTCY Project Open source multi-agent infrastructure under Linux Foundation governance. Covers discovery, identity, communication, observability. Vijoy walks through the architecture at [00:34:57] and [00:41:17]. Scaling Out Superintelligence Whitepaper The technical whitepaper detailing the Internet of Cognition architecture, three-layer stack, and cognition state protocols. Referenced at [01:25:40]. Internet of Cognition Interactive Demo Clickable walkthrough showing per-agent activity, intent, context, and collective reasoning across a multi-agent SRE system. Vijoy demos at [01:26:20]. CAIPE Project (GitHub) Cloud Native AI Platform Engineer. Multi-agent system with participation from Adobe, AWS, Cisco, Nike. 20 agents, 100+ tool calls, 10+ workflows. Referenced at [00:11:52]. Sponsors: Tasklet: Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (04:16) Cisco and networking foundations (13:34) Jarvis and ASI vision (Part 1) (18:16) Sponsors: Tasklet | VCX (21:09) Jarvis and ASI vision (Part 2) (Part 1) (31:46) Sponsor: Claude (33:59) Jarvis and ASI vision (Part 2) (Part 2) (34:00) Practical multi-agent examples (50:02) Multi-agent plumbing architecture (01:01:44) Agent identity and TBAC (01:15:23) Internet of cognition fabric (01:21:48) Emergent agents and safety (01:36:52) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

Mar 25, 20261h 35m

Your Agent's Self-Improving Swiss Army Knife: Composio CTO Karan Vaidya on Building Smart Tools

Karan Vaidya, CTO of Composio, explains how their “smart tool” platform lets AI agents access over 50,000 tools across 1,000+ apps through a single interface. He details how Composio handles tool discovery, authentication, sandboxes, and logging, and how an AI-powered feedback loop continuously improves tools in real time. The conversation explores avoiding model lock-in through robust skills and instructions, translating capabilities across model providers, and why the best agent use cases look more like full jobs than isolated tasks. Google: Try Google's latest and greatest model, Gemini 3.1 Pro, in AI Studio (https://aistudio.google.com/) or the Gemini app. Sponsors: Tasklet: Tasklet: Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:38) Special Sponsor (05:10) Composio overview and harness (10:20) Users, trust, security (19:45) Sandboxes and execution (Part 1) (19:53) Sponsors: Tasklet | VCX (22:46) Sandboxes and execution (Part 2) (28:07) Smart MCPs and skills (Part 1) (34:25) Sponsor: Claude (36:38) Smart MCPs and skills (Part 2) (44:10) Context, access, upgrades (54:05) Skills and model lock-in (01:03:51) Memory and agent tools (01:09:21) AI and SaaS disruption (01:20:20) Agents, costs, labor (01:31:18) Monetization and interfaces (01:36:13) Episode Outro (01:39:56) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

Mar 22, 20261h 38m

Zvi's Mic Works! Recursive Self-Improvement, Live Player Analysis, Anthropic vs DoW + More!

Zvi Mowshowitz returns to survey the current AI landscape, from recursive self-improvement and the shift from the “beginning” to the “middle” of the AI story to what true AI end-game would look like. He and Nathan dig into AI-driven job loss, real-world productivity impacts, and the ethics of trying to escape a “permanent underclass.” They assess today’s AI live players, why Anthropic may be slightly ahead, and whether Chinese, xAI, or Meta can catch up. The conversation closes with Anthropic’s Responsible Scaling Policy, p(doom), AI safety options, and how they each use AI in their own work. Sponsors: Tasklet: Tasklet: Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (02:25) Entering the middle game (09:08) AI layoffs and jobs (Part 1) (15:50) Sponsors: Tasklet | VCX (18:43) AI layoffs and jobs (Part 2) (18:44) AI growth and elites (27:00) Defining the AI endgame (36:09) Live players and laggards (45:38) China, compute, and distillation (56:03) Meta, Musk, and strategy (01:06:41) Google's faltering AI strategy (01:22:25) Anthropic's scaling policy shift (01:36:29) Anthropic and domestic surveillance (01:57:29) Courts, power, and Anthropic (02:18:50) Model fatigue and productivity (02:34:53) Alignment basins and doom (02:47:24) Slowing AI and activism (03:05:37) Forbidden techniques and choices (03:22:31) Episode Outro (03:26:31) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

Mar 19, 20263h 26m

AI Scouting Report: the Good, Bad, & Weird @ the Law & AI Certificate Program, by LexLab, UC Law SF

This special AI Scouting Report episode from the Law & Artificial Intelligence Certificate Program surveys the current AI landscape for legal professionals. Nathan Labenz walks through the “Good, Bad, and Weird” of frontier models, from using AI to navigate his son’s cancer treatment to emerging forms of deception and reward hacking. He highlights how new systems are pushing the boundaries of math, physics, and legal performance while raising serious safety and governance questions. Listeners will come away with a fast-paced, source-rich overview of where AI is today and the strange future it’s steering us toward. LINKS: Google: Try Google's latest and greatest model, Gemini 3.1 Pro, in AI Studio or the Gemini app.Presentation Link Sponsors: Tasklet: Tasklet: Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:04) Gemini's long context window (05:23) Comprehensive AI overview (Part 1) (16:01) Sponsors: Tasklet | VCX (18:53) Comprehensive AI overview (Part 2) (Part 1) (34:39) Sponsor: Claude (36:51) Comprehensive AI overview (Part 2) (Part 2) (59:43) Reward and sentience (01:04:14) Regulating bad actors (01:09:30) Corporate AI strategies (01:14:59) Episode Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

Mar 16, 20261h 16m

Bioinfohazards: Jassi Pannu on Controlling Dangerous Data from which AI Models Learn

Jassi Pannu, Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins, explains how rapidly advancing AI is transforming biological research and raising the risk of engineered pandemics. They map today’s biosecurity landscape, from pathogen detection and DNA sequencing to vaccine development, and examine how frontier models can already troubleshoot lab work and bypass data safeguards. The conversation introduces a proposed Biosecurity Data Level framework to restrict only the most dangerous functional biological data while preserving open science. They close with a broader defense-in-depth strategy—Delay, Deter, Detect, Defend—including DNA synthesis screening, global pathogen surveillance, and practical tools like Far UV sterilization. LINKS: Jassi Pannu: https://x.com/JassiPannuMD Science article that prompted this conversation: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeb2689 Sponsors: VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Framer: Framer is an enterprise-grade website builder that lets business teams design, launch, and optimize their.com with AI-powered wireframing, real-time collaboration, and built-in analytics. Start building for free and get 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan at https://framer.com/cognitive Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (05:59) From outbreak to vaccine (17:08) Threat actors and data (Part 1) (21:23) Sponsors: VCX | Framer (23:53) Threat actors and data (Part 2) (31:05) Gain-of-function research risks (Part 1) (37:39) Sponsors: Claude | Tasklet (41:03) Gain-of-function research risks (Part 2) (48:05) AI models in biology (01:00:51) Dangerous AI capabilities (01:07:59) Biosecurity data level framework (01:18:58) Policy, governance, and infrastructure (01:28:53) Defense in depth vision (01:40:43) Episode Outro (01:45:02) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

Mar 11, 20261h 43m

Try this at Home: Jesse Genet on OpenClaw Agents for Homeschool & How to Live Your Best AI Life

Jesse Genet shares how she built a team of AI agents to transform homeschooling, family life, and personal productivity without a software background. She explains how agents like an AI chief of staff, curriculum planner, and content creator help design personalized lessons, analyze kids’ learning, manage educational toys, and even run TikTok. The conversation covers practical delegation workflows, guardrails and trust, and why she treats AIs like employees with onboarding and clear roles. Jesse also explores local models, privacy, and how AI in the home could reshape future work and family life. Use the Granola Recipe Nathan relies on to identify blind spots across conversations, AI research, and decisions: Sponsors: VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr Serval: Serval uses AI-powered automations to cut IT help desk tickets by more than 50%, freeing your team from repetitive tasks like password resets and onboarding. Book your free pilot and guarantee 50% help desk automation by week 4 at https://serval.com/cognitive Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (04:57) Homeschooling context and AI (15:55) Building an AI team (Part 1) (19:51) Sponsors: VCX | Claude (23:18) Building an AI team (Part 2) (31:03) Onboarding agents like employees (Part 1) (38:12) Sponsors: Serval | Tasklet (40:31) Onboarding agents like employees (Part 2) (40:57) Context, models, and privacy (48:47) AI intimacy and rights (56:19) Coordinating agents in Slack (01:02:19) Designing an agent superapp (01:08:35) Agent trust and kids (01:17:57) Voice interfaces for families (01:29:51) Curated screens and automations (01:40:28) Sharing setups and software (01:48:43) Local sovereignty and kid devices (01:59:26) Work, disruption, and play (02:04:58) Episode Outro (02:07:45) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

Mar 8, 20262h 6m

Don't Fight Backprop: Goodfire's Vision for Intentional Design, w/ Dan Balsam & Tom McGrath

Dan Balsam and Tom McGrath from Goodfire return to explore the frontier of mechanistic interpretability and their new research pillar, Intentional Design. They explain the shift from sparse autoencoders to understanding geometric structure in latent spaces, and share a proof-of-concept method for reducing hallucinations using probes and RL. The conversation tackles concerns about reward hacking, principles for shaping the loss landscape instead of fighting backprop, and what this means for aligning powerful models. They also discuss recent Goodfire results on Alzheimer’s prediction, disentangling memorization vs reasoning weights, and how they balance commercial growth with a public benefit mission. Nathan uses Granola to uncover blind spots in conversations and AI research. Try it at granola.ai/tcr with code TCR — and if you’re already using it, test his blind spot recipe here: https://bit.ly/granolablindspot LINKS: Detecting PII for Rakuten Interpretability for Alzheimer's biomarker detection You and Your Research Agent Adversarial examples and superposition Discovering rare behaviors with model diff Priors in time for interpretability Belief dynamics in in-context learning Mixing mechanisms in language models Sparse autoencoder scaling with manifolds Sponsors: VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr Serval: Serval uses AI-powered automations to cut IT help desk tickets by more than 50%, freeing your team from repetitive tasks like password resets and onboarding. Book your free pilot and guarantee 50% help desk automation by week 4 at https://serval.com/cognitive Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

Mar 5, 20261h 47m

Situational Awareness in Government, with UK AISI Chief Scientist Geoffrey Irving

Geoffrey Irving, Chief Scientist at the UK AI Security Institute, explains why our theoretical understanding of machine learning remains fragile even as models surpass experts on critical security tasks. He details AISI’s work on frontier model evaluations, red teaming, and threat modeling across biosecurity, cybersecurity, and loss-of-control risks. The conversation explores reward hacking, eval awareness, and why current safety techniques may struggle to deliver high reliability. Listeners will also hear how AISI is funding foundational research to build stronger guarantees for AI safety. Nathan uses Granola to uncover blind spots in conversations and AI research. Try it at ⁠granola.ai/tcr⁠ with code TCR — and if you’re already using it, test his blind spot recipe here: ⁠https://bit.ly/granolablindspot⁠ Sponsors: Serval: Serval uses AI-powered automations to cut IT help desk tickets by more than 50%, freeing your team from repetitive tasks like password resets and onboarding. Book your free pilot and guarantee 50% help desk automation by week 4 at https://serval.com/cognitive Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (04:09) From physics to ML (08:52) AGI uncertainty and threats (Part 1) (18:08) Sponsors: Serval | Claude (21:29) AGI uncertainty and threats (Part 2) (27:35) Control, autonomy, alignment (Part 1) (34:02) Sponsor: Tasklet (35:14) Control, autonomy, alignment (Part 2) (38:44) Inside the UK AC (51:02) Evaluations and jailbreaking (01:01:17) Emerging capabilities and misuse (01:14:20) Agents and reward hacking (01:26:09) Theoretical alignment agenda (01:38:39) Debate and formal methods (01:51:19) Limits of formalization (02:02:27) Future risks and governance (02:16:23) Episode Outro (02:18:58) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

Mar 1, 20262h 18m

Universal Medical Intelligence: OpenAI's Plan to Elevate Human Health, with Karan Singhal

Karan Singhal, Head of Health AI at OpenAI, explains how ChatGPT Health is achieving attending-physician-level performance and already serving hundreds of millions of users. He details how OpenAI works with over 250 doctors, built the 49,000-criteria HealthBench evaluation, and ran one of the first randomized trials of AI copilots in clinical care. The conversation explores privacy and safety safeguards, medical multimodality, N-of-1 treatment plans, and how AI could become a standard part of global medical practice. Nathan uses Granola to uncover blind spots in conversations and AI research. Try it at ⁠granola.ai/tcr⁠ with code TCR — and if you’re already using it, test his blind spot recipe here: ⁠https://bit.ly/granolablindspot⁠ LINKS: modeling human wellness Sponsors: Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr Serval: Serval uses AI-powered automations to cut IT help desk tickets by more than 50%, freeing your team from repetitive tasks like password resets and onboarding. Book your free pilot and guarantee 50% help desk automation by week 4 at https://serval.com/cognitive Framer: Framer is an enterprise-grade website builder that lets business teams design, launch, and optimize their.com with AI-powered wireframing, real-time collaboration, and built-in analytics. Start building for free and get 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan at https://framer.com/cognitive Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (06:11) Cancer story and mission (11:46) Designing safe health AI (Part 1) (17:49) Sponsors: Claude | Serval (21:09) Designing safe health AI (Part 2) (26:48) Uncertainty, HealthBench and robustness (Part 1) (30:23) Sponsors: Framer | Tasklet (32:50) Uncertainty, HealthBench and robustness (Part 2) (38:11) Chain-of-thought and evaluation (46:49) Real-world performance and frontiers (55:35) Multimodal data and science (01:05:36) Personalization, privacy and monitoring (01:15:47) Models, data and incentives (01:29:31) Doctor adoption and workflows (01:38:13) Scalable oversight and alignment (01:51:06) Move 37 and future (02:00:50) Episode Outro (02:03:06) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

Feb 25, 20262h 1m

Intelligence with Everyone: RL @ MiniMax, with Olive Song, from AIE NYC & Inference by Turing Post

Olive Song from MiniMax shares how her team trains the M series frontier open-weight models using reinforcement learning, tight product feedback loops, and systematic environment perturbations. This crossover episode weaves together her AI Engineer Conference talk and an in-depth interview from the Inference podcast. Listeners will learn about interleaved thinking for long-horizon agentic tasks, fighting reward hacking, and why they moved RL training to FP32 precision. Olive also offers a candid look at debugging real-world LLM failures and how MiniMax uses AI agents to track the fast-moving AI landscape. Nathan uses Granola to uncover blind spots in conversations and AI research. Try it at ⁠granola.ai/tcr⁠ with code TCR — and if you’re already using it, test his blind spot recipe here: ⁠https://bit.ly/granolablindspot⁠ LINKS: Conference Talk (AI Engineer, Dec 2025) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY1iFbDPRlwInterview (Turing Post, Jan 2026) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkUMqWeHn40 Sponsors: Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (04:15) Minimax M2 presentation (Part 1) (17:59) Sponsors: Claude | Tasklet (21:22) Minimax M2 presentation (Part 2) (21:26) Research life and culture (26:27) Alignment, safety and feedback (32:01) Long-horizon coding agents (35:57) Open models and evaluation (43:29) M2.2 and researcher goals (48:16) Continual learning and AGI (52:58) Closing musical summary (55:49) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

Feb 22, 202655 min

Mathematical Superintelligence: Harmonic's Vlad Tenev & Tudor Achim on IMO Gold & Theories of Everything

Vlad Tenev and Tudor Achim from Harmonic explain how they built Aristotle, an AI system that reaches International Mathematical Olympiad gold-medal performance using formally verified Lean proofs. They unpack the architecture behind mathematical superintelligence, including Monte Carlo Tree Search, lemma guessing, and specialized geometry modules. The conversation explores how verifiable reasoning could harden mission-critical software, reshape mathematical practice, and lead to trustworthy superintelligent systems by 2030. Nathan uses Granola to uncover blind spots in conversations and AI research. Try it at ⁠granola.ai/tcr⁠ with code TCR — and if you’re already using it, test his blind spot recipe here: ⁠https://bit.ly/granolablindspot⁠ Sponsors: Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr Framer: Framer is an enterprise-grade website builder that lets business teams design, launch, and optimize their.com with AI-powered wireframing, real-time collaboration, and built-in analytics. Start building for free and get 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan at https://framer.com/cognitive Blitzy: Blitzy is the autonomous code generation platform that ingests millions of lines of code to accelerate enterprise software development by up to 5x with premium, spec-driven output. Schedule a strategy session with their AI solutions consultants at https://blitzy.com Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (04:58) Math as reasoning (Part 1) (15:22) Sponsors: Claude | Framer (18:51) Math as reasoning (Part 2) (18:51) Inside the Lean language (27:51) Lean intuition and MathLib (Part 1) (34:08) Sponsors: Blitzy | Tasklet (37:08) Lean intuition and MathLib (Part 2) (38:47) Inside Aristotle's architecture (48:33) Scope, boundaries, and applications (54:37) Training, taste, and interpretability (01:08:18) Formal math and software (01:16:50) Limits, entropy, and roadmap (01:25:24) 2030 vision and safety (01:33:38) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

Feb 18, 20261h 31m