"The Cognitive Revolution"

93:03

Three Kinds of Software Survive: Tasklet's Andrew Lee...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/05/15

Andrew Lee, CEO of Tasklet, returns for his fourth appearance to share how his team has once again rewritten their entire agent stack, now emphasizing file system context, agentic search, and multi-resolution summarization. The conversation digs into the strategic tension of competing with your own supplier, as Anthropic's Claude Max accounts offer direct customers far more tokens than API partners get at the same price. Andrew also lays out his framework for the only three types of software

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87:15

Milliseconds to Match: Criteo's AdTech AI & the...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/05/09

Diarmuid Gill and Liva Ralaivola of Criteo join Nathan Labenz to unpack how modern ad tech works, from millisecond-speed recommendation systems and realtime bidding to the role of deep learning, embeddings, and foundation models. They discuss why personalized advertising helps fund the open internet, how privacy and opt-out choices fit in, and what Criteo’s new partnership with OpenAI could mean for product discovery. The conversation also covers European AI talent, research publishing, and the

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83:00

"Descript Isn't a Slop Machine": Laura Burkhauser on...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/05/06

Laura Burkhauser, CEO of Descript, explains how the company is navigating the tension between powerful AI tools and creator backlash against “slop.” She shares how Descript chooses which models to use, why reliability and multimodal understanding matter, and how the team balances frontier models with in-house task-specific systems. The conversation also covers Underlord, agentic video editing, API design for coding agents, and what AI means for the future of creative work.LINKS: Laura Burkhauser

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106:35

The RL Fine-Tuning Playbook: CoreWeave's Kyle Corbitt...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/05/01

Kyle Corbitt, founder of OpenPipe, breaks down reinforcement learning and custom fine-tuning for modern AI models. He explains how RL differs from supervised fine-tuning, why GRPO and LLM-as-judge post-training matter, and how these techniques can improve performance, latency, and cost on open source models. The conversation also covers reward hacking, evaluation design, LoRA adapters, and how Chinese labs are using distillation to fast-follow frontier models. Sponsors: Sequence: Sequence handles

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158:01

AI in the AM: 99% off search, GPT-5.5 is "clean",...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/04/26

This edition of AI in the AM features Anna Patterson on Ceramic.ai’s pivot to low-cost enterprise search for LLMs, designed to combine public and private data with stronger fact-checking. Lukas Petersson returns with new Andon Labs results on Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5, including surprising differences in performance, behavior, and “ruthless” tactics. Zvi Mowshowitz unpacks model welfare and how to interpret troubling model behavior, while Naveen Verma explains EnCharge AI’s analog in-memory computing

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213:44

Does Learning Require Feeling? Cameron Berg on the...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/04/23

Cameron Berg returns to discuss the latest research on AI consciousness and model welfare. He breaks down new evidence for model introspection, including studies showing that systems can detect interventions on their own internal states and sometimes resist them. They also examine Anthropic's work on functional emotions, the implications of Claude's welfare reports, and Berg's new ideas about how reinforcement learning may shape positive and negative experience. The conversation makes the case for a

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129:52

Vibe-Coding an Attention Firewall, w/ Steve Newman,...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/04/19

Steve Newman, creator of Writely and founder of the Golden Gate Institute for AI, shares the personal AI toolkit and vibe-coding practices that have reshaped how he works. He walks through bespoke tools including an attention firewall, a reading app for surfacing new ideas, a coding-agent dashboard, workflow automations, and a universal logging system for debugging with Claude. They also discuss information security, mobile and voice workflows, Steve’s “anti-tokenmaxxing” philosophy, and his views

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150:47

Welcome to AI in the AM: RL for EE, Oversight w/out...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/04/15

This special AI in the AM episode features Sergiy Nesterenko of Quilter on using reinforcement learning for circuit board design, Andy Hall of Stanford on AI behavior in politics and new governance models, and Lukas Peterson and Axel Backlund of Andon Labs on their AI-run retail store in San Francisco. Nathan and Prakash also reflect on the pace of AI progress, the public reaction to existential risk, and why constructive civic action matters as AI systems grow more powerful and

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190:03

It's Crunch Time: Ajeya Cotra on RSI & AI-Powered AI...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/04/11

This cross-post from the 80,000 Hours podcast features Ajeya Cotra in conversation with Rob Wiblin about AI timelines, recursive self-improvement, and the “crunch time” window when AI could rapidly accelerate its own development. Ajeya explains why widespread, compounding automation may face fewer bottlenecks than many expect, and what that could mean for the world by 2050. They also discuss transparency, early warning systems, and the emerging strategy of using each generation of AI to align and

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94:16

Calm AI for Crazy Days: Inside Granola's Design...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/04/08

Sam Stephenson, co-founder of Granola, explains how a deliberately minimalist design philosophy helped turn the AI note-taking app into one of the fastest-growing products in the market. He shares why Granola focuses on doing one job exceptionally well, how note sharing drives growth, and what they’ve learned from surprising use cases, recipes, and constant user research. The conversation also covers privacy and consent, transcription and cost choices, team collaboration, and Sam’s hopes for AI

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115:38

Training the AIs' Eyes: How Roboflow is Making the...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/04/04

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

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104:42

Success without Dignity? Nathan finds Hope Amidst...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/04/01

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

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95:52

Scaling Intelligence Out: Cisco's Vision for the...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/03/25

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,

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98:55

Your Agent's Self-Improving Swiss Army Knife:...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/03/22

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

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206:43

Zvi's Mic Works! Recursive Self-Improvement, Live...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/03/19

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

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76:54

AI Scouting Report: the Good, Bad, & Weird @ the Law...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/03/16

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

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103:12

Bioinfohazards: Jassi Pannu on Controlling Dangerous...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/03/11

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

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126:04

Try this at Home: Jesse Genet on OpenClaw Agents for...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/03/08

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

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107:20

Don't Fight Backprop: Goodfire's Vision for...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/03/05

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

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138:32

Situational Awareness in Government, with UK AISI...

"The Cognitive Revolution" ·

2026/03/01

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

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