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PODCAST

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

Erik Torenberg, Nathan Labenz

A biweekly podcast where hosts Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg interview the builders on the edge of AI and explore the dramatic shift it will unlock in the coming years. The Cognitive Revolution is part of the Turpentine podcast network. To learn more: turpentine.co

technology entrepreneurship

All Episodes

98:55

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

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

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" | AI Builders,... ·

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" | AI Builders,... ·

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" | AI Builders,... ·

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" | AI Builders,... ·

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" | AI Builders,... ·

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" | AI Builders,... ·

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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121:23

Universal Medical Intelligence: OpenAI's Plan to...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/02/25

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

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55:29

Intelligence with Everyone: RL @ MiniMax, with Olive...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/02/22

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

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91:14

Mathematical Superintelligence: Harmonic's Vlad Tenev...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/02/18

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

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142:59

Approaching the AI Event Horizon? Part 2, w/ Abhi...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/02/14

Abhi Mahajan (@owlposting) explains how AI is reshaping biology and medicine, including foundation models to predict cancer treatment response and why he’s both skeptical and optimistic about current results. Helen Toner unpacks CSET’s “When AI Builds AI” report and why automated AI R&D is a major source of strategic surprise. Jeremie Harris then explores our lack of control over superhuman AI systems, fragile US–China coordination, and how to maintain situational awareness in a rapidly shifting

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92:00

Approaching the AI Event Horizon? Part 1, w/ James...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/02/13

Part 1 of this live special dives into AI for Science, U.S. AI policy, and the behavior of AI agents in open-ended environments. James Zou explains how interpretability and virtual labs of AI agents can accelerate scientific discovery. Sam Hammond assesses the Biden administration’s AI policy, U.S.–Gulf AI deals, and the odds current AIs are conscious. Shoshannah Tekofsky shares insights from studying agent performance and emergent behavior in the AI Village.Use the Granola Recipe Nathan relies on

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76:07

AGI-Pilled Cyber Defense: Automating Digital...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/02/08

Alexis Carlier, founder of Asymmetric Security, explains how assuming AGI-level intelligent labor should transform cybersecurity from reactive triage to proactive, continuous digital forensics. He breaks down today’s threat landscape—from “spray and pray” cybercrime to nation-state IP theft and North Korean “remote workers.” The conversation explores Asymmetric’s AI agents for deep investigations, their services-first approach to business email compromise, and how specialized digital forensics may

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116:32

Infinite Code Context: AI Coding at Enterprise Scale...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/02/04

Blitzy founders Brian and Sid break down how their “infinite code context” system lets AI autonomously complete over 80% of major enterprise software projects in days. They dive into their dynamic agent architecture, how they choose and cross-check different models, and why they prioritize advances in AI memory over fine-tuning. The conversation also covers their 20¢/line pricing model, the path to 99%+ autonomous project completion, and what this all means for the future software engineering job

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62:12

The AI-Powered Biohub: Why Mark Zuckerberg &...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/02/01

This crossover episode from the Latent Space podcast features Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan on the 10-year anniversary of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and their expanded Biohub vision. They discuss how a “Frontier Biology Lab” working in sync with a “Frontier AI Lab” could enable breakthroughs like a Virtual Cell and true N-of-1 precision medicine. The conversation covers the acquisition of Evolutionary Scale and ESM3, new biological data collection at scale, and how AI-powered biology might

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96:37

AI & The Law: Changing Practice, Claude Constitution,...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/01/29

Kevin Frazier and Alan Rozenshtein explore how AI is reshaping the legal profession, from “secret cyborg” lawyers using tools like Harvey to the uncertain future of junior associates and access to legal services. They discuss maximalist legal services, AI-written “complete contingent contracts,” and where AI should fall between strict formalism and legal realism, including Claude’s virtue-ethics-inspired constitution. The conversation then turns to AI’s role in legislation and governance, including

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131:00

The Internet Computer: Caffeine.ai CEO Dominic...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/01/25

Dominic Williams, President & Chief Scientist of the DFINITY Foundation and CEO of Caffeine AI, explains the Internet Computer and his vision of a “sovereign cloud where AI builds the web.” He breaks down core innovations like the Network Nervous System, Motoko, and orthogonal persistence, and how AI coding could remove adoption barriers. The conversation explores unstoppable applications, real-world case studies like OpenChat, and the tension between control, security, and decentralization in AI

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143:38

AMA Part 2: Is Fine-Tuning Dead? How Am I Preparing...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/01/22

In this AMA-style episode, Nathan takes on listener questions about whether fine-tuning is really on the way out, what emergent misalignment and weird generalization results tell us, and how to think about continual learning. He talks candidly about how he’s personally preparing for AGI—from career choices and investing to what resilience steps he has and hasn’t taken. The discussion also covers timelines for job disruption, whether UBI becomes inevitable, how to talk to kids and “normal people”

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148:11

Pioneering PAI: How Daniel Miessler's Personal AI...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/01/18

Daniel Miessler shares his Personal AI Infrastructure (PAI) framework and vision for a future where single human owners are supported by armies of AI agents. He explains his TELOS system for defining purpose and goals, multi-layered memory design, and orchestration of multiple models and sub-agents. The conversation dives into cybersecurity impacts, from AI-accelerated testing to inevitable personalized spear-phishing and always-on defensive monitoring. Listeners will learn how scaffolding can turn

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99:20

Snowflake VP of AI Baris Gultekin on Bringing AI to...

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders,... ·

2026/01/14

Baris Gultekin, VP of AI at Snowflake, explains how “bringing AI to the data” is reshaping enterprise AI deployment under strict security and governance requirements. PSA for AI builders: Interested in alignment, governance, or AI safety? Learn more about the MATS Summer 2026 Fellowship and submit your name to be notified when applications open: https://matsprogram.org/s26-tcr. He shares the importance of bringing AI directly to governed enterprise data, advances in text-to-SQL and semantic

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332 results

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