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PODCAST

Eye On A.I.

Eye on A.I. is a biweekly podcast, hosted by longtime New York Times correspondent Craig S. Smith. In each episode, Craig will talk to people making a difference in artificial intelligence. The podcast aims to put incremental advances into a broader context and consider the global implications of the developing technology. AI is about to change your world, so pay attention.

technology

All Episodes

48:53

#342 Andrew Thangaraj: The $5,000 IIT Degree: Can...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/05/01

What if the most competitive exam in the world is also the most destructive? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Professor Andrew Thangaraj, faculty at the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Madras, to explore how one of India's most prestigious institutions is quietly dismantling the system it helped build. Andrew lays out the honest reality of higher education in India. Two and a half crore kids reach college age every year. Only 90 lakh make it to college. And the

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44:55

#341 Celia Merzbacher: Beyond the Buzzword: The Real...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/30

What does the quantum industry actually look like right now, beneath all the hype? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Celia Merzbacher, Executive Director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C), to break down the real state of quantum technology in 2025. From market growth and enterprise readiness to the growing intersection with AI, Celia brings a grounded insider perspective on where the industry stands and what comes next. Celia explains why the quantum

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46:25

#340 Steffen Cruz: Training AI Without Data Centres

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/29

What if you could train a frontier AI model without building a single data centre? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Steffen Cruz, co-founder and CTO of Macrocosmos, to explore a radical alternative to the way AI models are built today. Instead of billion-dollar GPU warehouses, Steffen is training large language models using idle compute from devices distributed around the world, coordinated through the Bittensor blockchain. Steffen breaks down why the centralised data centre

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45:30

#339 Eamonn Maguire: Your Child Has a Data Profile...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/28

What if your child already has a data profile, and they haven't even been born yet? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Eamonn Maguire, Director of Engineering for AI and ML at Proton, to explore one of the most urgent and underappreciated questions in the age of AI: who owns your data, who is building a profile on you, and what can actually be done about it? Eamonn brings a rare combination of depth and range to this conversation. With a PhD from Oxford, a postdoc at CERN, and

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46:54

#338 Amith Singhee: Can India Catch Up in AI? IBM's...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/24

What if the country that trains the world's engineers finally built the infrastructure to match its talent? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Amith Singhee, Director of IBM Research India and CTO of IBM India and South Asia, to explore where India actually stands in the global AI race and what it will take to close the gap. Amith gives an honest, ground-level assessment of why India has been slow to compete. The talent has always been there. But until recently, the investment,

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51:17

#337 Debdas Sen: Why AI Without ROI Will Die (Again)

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/23

What does it actually take to prove that AI delivers real value in the industries that keep the world running? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Debdas Sen, CEO of TCG Digital and Joint Managing Director of Lummus Digital, to explore what serious enterprise AI looks like when it is applied to some of the most complex, high-stakes problems on the planet. Problems like compressing years of catalyst research into weeks, predicting refinery failures before they happen, and

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01:00:05

#336 Professor Mausam: Why India Is Losing the AI...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/20

What if the country that produces the world's top AI talent finally figured out how to keep it? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Professor Mausam, one of India's leading AI researchers, AAAI Fellow, and founding head of the Yardi School of Artificial Intelligence at IIT Delhi, to get an honest and unflinching diagnosis of why India has fallen so far behind the US and China in artificial intelligence and what it will actually take to close that gap. Mausam breaks down the

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01:00:21

#335 Sriram Raghavan: Why IBM Is Betting Everything...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/19

Why IBM Is Betting Everything on Small AI Models In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Sriram Raghavan, Vice President of AI at IBM Research, to explore one of the most important debates in enterprise AI right now. Do you actually need a massive model to get world class results? IBM's answer is no, and Sriram breaks down exactly why. Sriram explains why IBM chose to train its Granite models directly using reinforcement learning rather than distilling from larger models like most

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34:45

#334 Abhishek Singh: The $1.2 Billion Plan to Turn...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/16

What if the country that trained the world's engineers finally decided to keep them? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Abhishek, the civil servant leading India's $1.2 billion national AI Mission, to explore how one of the world's largest and most diverse nations is mounting a serious challenge to US and Chinese dominance in artificial intelligence. Abhishek breaks down the honest story behind India's late start. World-class talent, but no research ecosystem to retain it

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58:05

#333 Adi Kuruganti: Why Your AI Pilot Is Failing and...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/15

Most enterprises are excited about agentic AI. But very few are actually deploying it in production. In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Adi Kuruganti, Chief AI and Development Officer at Automation Anywhere, to break down why agentic AI is so hard to get right in the enterprise and what it actually takes to move from a promising pilot to a mission-critical deployment. Adi explains why the future of enterprise automation is not agentic AI alone, but the combination of

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54:31

#332 Dan Faulkner: The Code Is Clean. The App Is...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/14

What happens when AI writes code faster than anyone can test it? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Dan Faulkner, CEO of SmartBear, to explore one of the most underappreciated risks of the AI coding boom. As tools like Claude Code and Codex push software development to unprecedented speed, the systems built to validate that software are being left behind. Dan makes a distinction that every engineering leader needs to hear: clean code passing unit tests is not the same as an

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58:48

#331 Sergey Levine: The Robot Revolution Nobody Is...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/12

This episode is sponsored by Modulate. Most voice AI focuses on transcription. Velma takes it further by actually understanding conversations, analyzing tone, timing, stress, and intent using its Ensemble Listening Model architecture. Explore the live preview: https://preview.modulate.ai/ What does it actually mean to build a foundation model for robots? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Sergey Levine, co-founder of Physical Intelligence and professor at UC Berkeley, to

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01:00:43

#330 Sebastian Risi: Why AI Should Be Grown, Not Trained

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/06

AI has been trained like software. But what if it should be grown like life? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Sebastian Risi, professor and leading researcher in neuroevolution and artificial life, to explore a fundamentally different approach to building intelligence, one inspired by how nature evolves, grows, and adapts. Sebastian explains why traditional AI systems are limited by fixed architectures and one-time training, and how evolutionary algorithms can create systems

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59:00

#330 Sebastian Risi: Why AI Should Be Grown, Not Trained

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/04/02

AI has been trained like software. But what if it should be grown like life? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Sebastian Risi, professor and leading researcher in neuroevolution and artificial life, to explore a fundamentally different approach to building intelligence, one inspired by how nature evolves, grows, and adapts. Sebastian explains why traditional AI systems are limited by fixed architectures and one-time training, and how evolutionary algorithms can create systems

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01:01:11

#329 Izhar Medalsy: How AI Solves Quantum Computing's...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/03/31

Quantum computing has been "5 years away" for decades. So what's actually holding it back? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Izhar Medalsy, Co-founder & CEO of Quantum Elements, to break down the real bottleneck in quantum computing today and why the future of the industry may depend more on classical systems and AI than quantum hardware itself. Izhar explains how digital twins of quantum systems are being used to simulate real hardware, generate massive amounts of training

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48:17

#328 Kevin Tian: Exploring Doppel's AI-Native Social...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/03/27

AI is changing more than just productivity. It's changing what we can trust. In this episode, Kevin Tian, Co-founder and CEO of Doppel, breaks down how AI is enabling a new wave of social engineering attacks—from deepfake phone calls to impersonation across LinkedIn, YouTube, and search engines. The reality is this:Deepfakes are just one part of a much bigger problem. Attackers are now operating across multiple channels at once, using AI to manipulate people, not just systems. And as these attacks

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42:27

#327 Baris Gultekin: The Next Phase of AI - Agents...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/03/19

This episode is sponsored by Modulate. Meet Velma, voice AI that detects tone, intent, and stress:http://preview.modulate.ai Baris Gultekin, Head of AI at Snowflake, breaks down how enterprise AI is actually being built, deployed, and scaled today. From running AI directly inside governed data environments to enabling natural language access across entire organizations, this conversation explores the shift from experimentation to real-world impact. You'll learn why Snowflake's core philosophy

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01:07:52

#326 Zuzanna Stamirowska: Inside Pathway's AI Systems...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/03/11

This episode is sponsored by tastytrade. Trade stocks, options, futures, and crypto in one platform with low commissions and zero commission on stocks and crypto. Built for traders who think in probabilities, tastytrade offers advanced analytics, risk tools, and an AI-powered Search feature. Learn more at https://tastytrade.com/ In this episode of the Eye on AI, Craig Smith speaks with Zuzanna Stamirowska about how Pathway is enabling AI systems to work with live, continuously updating data.

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47:16

#325 Phelim Brady: Why AI's Future Depends on Human...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/03/09

AI often looks fully automated. But behind the scenes, a huge amount of human judgment is shaping how these systems actually work. In this episode, Craig Smith speaks with Phelim Bradley, co-founder and CEO of Prolific, a platform that connects millions of real people with researchers and AI labs to evaluate and improve AI systems. They explore the hidden human layer behind modern AI, why traditional benchmarks are becoming less reliable, and why AI companies increasingly rely on real human

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46:26

#324 Sharon Zhou: Inside AMD's Plan to Build...

Eye On A.I. ·

2026/02/27

AI is not just getting smarter. It is getting faster by learning how to optimize the hardware it runs on. In this episode, Sharon Zhou, VP of AI at AMD and former Stanford AI researcher, explains how language models are beginning to write and optimize their own GPU kernel code. We explore what self improving AI actually means, how reinforcement learning is used in post training, and why kernel optimization could be one of the most overlooked scaling levers in modern AI. Sharon breaks down how

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344 results

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