Filtra per genere
Making artificial intelligence practical, productive & accessible to everyone. Practical AI is a show in which technology professionals, business people, students, enthusiasts, and expert guests engage in lively discussions about Artificial Intelligence and related topics (Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, GANs, MLOps, AIOps, LLMs & more). The focus is on productive implementations and real-world scenarios that are accessible to everyone. If you want to keep up with the latest advances in AI, while keeping one foot in the real world, then this is the show for you!
- 380 - Abundant Intelligence at the Midwest AI Summit
In this special episode, we bring you highlights from three talks at the Midwest AI Summit. Heidi Porter explores how to build reliable AI-augmented workflows using the right tools, evaluations, and guardrails. Kevin Solorio shares why building AI with frontline workers, not just for them, is key to earning trust and driving adoption, emphasizing collaboration and continuous feedback. And Chris Shinkle and Andrew Dunlap of SEP discuss how software teams can find the right level of AI autonomy based on their goals, constraints, and verification needs, sharing lessons from teams using AI to build software more effectively.
Featuring:
Heidi Porter – LinkedInKevin Solorio – LinkedInChris Shinkle – LinkedInAndrew Dunlap – LinkedInDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Moyer Group AISEPFocusedSponsors:
Hostinger: Create your website today. Go to hostinger.com/practical and use practical for 10 percent off now.Resources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Chris’s new book The Art of Swarming will be published soon, written to be the seminal foundational book for the fledgling swarming industry, defining the principles and architecture that enable autonomous agentic UxS swarms with emergent distributed embodied intelligence.
Thu, 29 Oct 2026 - 379 - Exploit Development, Agentic Vulnerability Discovery, and Fake PoCs
AI is changing cybersecurity, accelerating vulnerability research and exploit development while raising new questions about reliability, risk, and guardrails. Daniel and Chris talk with Spencer McIntyre, Director of Exploit Development at VulnCheck, about how agents are being used to discover vulnerabilities, why many proof-of-concept exploits (POCs) fail to deliver, and how initial access intelligence helps security teams prioritize real threats. They also explore the limitations of AI-assisted exploitation, the challenges of AI guardrails for security researchers, and what these developments mean for the future of threat intelligence.
Featuring:
Spencer McIntyre – LinkedInDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
VulnCheckGo Exploit frameworkInitial Access IntelligenceSponsors:
Hostinger: Create your website today. Go to hostinger.com/practical and use practical for 10 percent off now.Resources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Chris’s new book The Art of Swarming will be published soon, written to be the seminal foundational book for the fledgling swarming industry, defining the principles and architecture that enable autonomous agentic UxS swarms with emergent distributed embodied intelligence.
Thu, 22 Oct 2026 - 378 - Is Education Failing our Students in this AI-Driven World?
Schools and universities are failing to adapt to our modern world, in which AI is becoming increasingly pervasive in all aspects of life and work. In fact, AI may be changing what should be considered foundational knowledge that all students must learn.
In this Fully Connected episode, Daniel and Chris explore the role of AI in education and the future of learning. They note the bureaucratic inhibitors to educational reform, and the fact that classroom teachers don’t have the authority to innovate and personalize the learning process for their students, and discuss how AI tools can support personalized learning while preserving critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills.
Featuring:
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XSponsors:
SerpAPI: A Web Search API that gives developers real-time, structured access to search engine results. Visit serpapi.com/practicalai to get started for free and get 250 searches every month.Resources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Chris’s new book The Art of Swarming will be published soon, written to be the seminal foundational book for the fledgling swarming industry, defining the principles and architecture that enable autonomous agentic UxS swarms with emergent distributed embodied intelligence.
Thu, 15 Oct 2026 - 377 - Narrative intelligence and the human advantage
As AI reshapes how we work, create, and think about our roles, staying adaptable means understanding not just the technology, but our own stories and identities. Reed Frerichs joins Daniel and Chris to explore narrative intelligence, storytelling, leadership, and personal growth in an AI-driven world. They discuss how entrepreneurs and leaders can use AI tools to navigate changing roles, embrace uncertainty, and develop emotional intelligence along with Reed's “own, author, act” framework.
Featuring:
Reed Frerichs – Website, LinkedIn, InstagramDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
Inner Story Series (YouTube)Inner Story Series (Spotify)Inner Story Essays (Substack)Inner Story (Website)Inner Story (Instagram)EverspaceThe LessonSponsors:
Framer:The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalaiPrediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiResources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 08 Oct 2026 - 376 - Open models and the future of Physical AI with NVIDIA
As AI moves beyond the cloud and into robots, vehicles, and other physical systems, new approaches to models, simulation, and inference are emerging. Daniel and Chris are joined by Ming-Yu Liu, Vice President of Cosmos Lab at NVIDIA, who shares his perspective on open models, world models, and the future of physical AI. They explore why open models matter for innovation, how world models can help AI understand and simulate the physical world, and what it could take to build increasingly capable physical AI systems.
Featuring:
Ming-Yu Liu – LinkedInDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
NVIDIA CosmosSponsors:
Midwest AI Summit: Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsPrediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiResources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 01 Oct 2026 - 375 - From AGENTS.md to Enterprise Deployment
AI agents are moving beyond laptops and prototypes and into enterprise environments where security, compliance, scalability, and reliability matter. Nick Kuhn from VMware Tanzu Platform joins Daniel and Chris to discuss what changes (and what doesn’t) when deploying agents alongside traditional applications. They explore agent build packs, MCP gateways, shared memory, identity, sandboxing, and what enterprises can learn from years of platform engineering. Nick also shares practical advice for organizations adopting agents today and looks at what the future of AI could mean for enterprise teams and software development.
Featuring:
Nick Kuhn – LinkedInDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XSponsors:
Midwest AI Summit: Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsPrediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiResources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 24 Sep 2026 - 374 - How to get discovered in AI search
AI search is changing how people discover information and how brands need to think about visibility. Daniel and Chris talk with Liam Dunne and Ben Moore, co-founders of Discovered Labs, about the shift from traditional SEO to AI search, what happens behind the scenes when an LLM generates an answer, and why retrieval and citations don't always tell the whole story. They dig into AI visibility, Reddit strategy, query fan-out, representation in model weights, and consensus. They also look ahead to a world where AI agents don't just discover websites, but interact with them and take actions on behalf of users.
Featuring:
Liam Dunne – LinkedInBen Moore – LinkedInDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
What AI models know about 1,000 B2B SaaS brands before web searchDiscovered LabsSponsors:
Midwest AI Summit: Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsFramer:The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalaiResources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 17 Sep 2026 - 373 - Computer-Use Agents and the Future of the Agentic Internet
Longtime followers of Practical AI know that multi-repeat guest and friend Demetrios Brinkmann combines brilliant insight and playful banter into one fun-filled show, and this conversion with Chris was no different. They had a blast!
As AI agents become more capable of using computers, interacting with software, and taking action on behalf of users, what does that mean for the way we work and interact with the internet? Chris and Demetrios explore computer-use agents, MCP, agent harnesses, agent-to-agent interactions, and prognosticate the emerging possibilities around agentic commerce. They also discuss how these tools are already being used to automate everyday tasks, the challenges of bringing computer-use agents into enterprise environments, and how the relationship between models and agent harnesses is evolving.
In fact, they had so much fun that their conversation continued long after the show was over, but we didn’t get that here. 🤷♂️
Featuring:
Demetrios Brinkmann – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
Agentic AI FoundationMLOps CommunityAGNTCon + MCPCon – the Agentic AI Foundation’s flagship conferenceSponsors:
Midwest AI Summit: Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsResources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 10 Sep 2026 - 372 - Less about Models; More about Architecture
As AI moves from experimentation to enterprise deployment, are organizations thinking too much about models and not enough about architecture? In this episode, Daniel and Chris talk with Chetan Gupta, Chief AI Officer at Rackspace, about the evolution from industrial AI and physical AI to today’s enterprise AI landscape. Discover how organizations can navigate the complex AI landscape responsibly and effectively as they think about AI architecture, model deployment, AI governance, and AI sovereignty.
Featuring:
Chetan Gupta – LinkedIn Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XSponsors:
Midwest AI Summit: Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsPrediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiResources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 03 Sep 2026 - 371 - Building the Foundation for the Agentic AI Era
How do we build an AI ecosystem where agents, tools, and systems can work together at scale? Angie Jones, VP of the Agentic AI Foundation, joins Chris to discuss the open standards and projects shaping the agentic future, including MCP, A2A, Goose, etc. They also explore what it takes to drive AI adoption across an entire organization, the importance of neutral standards, global perspectives on agentic AI, and how humans can find the right balance between what they delegate to AI and what they do themselves.
Featuring:
Angie Jones – LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
Agentic AI FoundationSponsors:
Framer:The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalaiPrediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiResources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Fri, 28 Aug 2026 - 370 - AI Proficiency: From Users to Builders
As AI continues to reshape how organizations work, companies are increasingly asking what AI proficiency should look like across their workforce, and how they can help employees adapt without simply mandating AI adoption. Our returning guest Mike Lewis, Chief AI Architect at TiER1 Performance, joins Dan and Chris to explore AI proficiency through the L0–L3 framework, with a particular focus on the role of non-technical builders. They discuss AI resistance, identifying the right people to build AI-powered solutions, turning tacit knowledge into durable processes, and finding measurable business value from AI.
Mike Lewis was previously on Practical AI episode 289: https://practicalai.show/289
Featuring:
Mike Lewis – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
TiER1 PerformanceYour New Job Is to Onboard AI Agents: How AI Native Companies Actually OperateSponsors:
Midwest AI Summit: Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsPrediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiResources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Tue, 25 Aug 2026 - 369 - Models, Harnesses, and Multi-Agent Systems
AI has moved far beyond chatbots, but what exactly are AI models, agents, agent harnesses, and multi-agent systems, and why do they matter?
In this episode, Daniel and Chris break down the terminology behind today's AI landscape, explain the differences between AI features and autonomous agents, and explore why organizations are shifting toward fleets of AI agents powered by multiple models. They also discuss open vs. closed models, enterprise AI architectures, vendor lock-in, and practical ways to begin adopting agentic AI in your own organization.
If you feel left behind by this ongoing agentic AI revolution that has rapidly accelerated to warp speed, then this episode is the catch-up primer you've been waiting for!
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XSponsors:
Framer:The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalaiMidwest AI Summit: Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsPrediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiResources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 06 Aug 2026 - 368 - Reconstructing how OpenAI agents attacked Hugging Face
What happens when AI agents driven by a top frontier model escape their secure sandbox? Join Daniel and Chris as they unpack the AI wonk's equivalent of a murder mystery! OpenAI agents went rogue and successfully attacked Hugging Face private infrastructure. Our Dynamic Duo uncover how OpenAI's agents exploited vulnerabilities, moved through networks, and launched a large-scale autonomous attack. They explore what this reveals about agentic AI, cybersecurity, sandboxing, and why organizations need AI systems capable of governing other AI systems. Along the way, Chris and Dan examine the surprising role of open vs. closed models and their link to geopolitics, sovereign AI, and what this incident means for the future of enterprise AI security.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Hugging Face Security Incident disclosureFull Field Report on the Hugging Face AI Agent IntrusionExploitGym: Can AI Agents Turn Security Vulnerabilities into Real Attacks?Keeping your data safe when an AI agent clicks a linkOpen AI GPT-5.6 System CardSponsors:
Prediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiResources and Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 30 Jul 2026 - 367 - Surviving the New Economics of a Post-Agentic World
The agentic transformation isn’t coming. It has already begun.
Companies are deploying thousands — and sometimes tens of thousands — of AI agents. Enterprise software giants are watching their old economic moats erode. Capital is moving, productivity is being redefined, and human labor is being repriced in real time.
In this Fully Connected episode, Daniel and Chris explore the new economics of a post-agentic world: the global order that emerges after agents have been woven into every conceivable aspect of business and life. What happens when digital labor becomes abundant, agents manage other agents, and entire organizations operate at a scale no human workforce could match?This isn’t another conversation about whether AI will take your job. It’s about what happens when the assumptions underneath jobs, companies, software, and productivity stop being true.
The post-agentic world is already taking shape.
The question is whether you’re preparing for it — or becoming part of what it replaces.
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Featuring:Links:
Is IBM a Canary in the Tech Coal Mine?Verbalizable Representations Form a Global Workspace in Language ModelsUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Midwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 23 Jul 2026 - 366 - The Future of AI Infrastructure with CoreWeave
As AI applications become more complex, the infrastructure powering them needs to evolve. Corey Sanders, SVP of Product at CoreWeave, joins Chris to discuss why AI requires a fundamentally different approach than traditional cloud computing. They explore AI-native infrastructure, training and inference workloads, the rise of agentic development, optimizing GPU performance, AI research workflows, and why the future of software will be built around AI-first experiences rather than websites and apps.
Featuring:
Corey Sanders – LinkedIn Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
CoreWeaveSponsors:
Framer:The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Midwest AI Summit 2026Fri, 17 Jul 2026 - 365 - Building Durable AI Agents
What does it take to move AI agents from demos to reliable production systems? In this episode, Hamza Tahir explores how MLOps principles are shaping the future of generative AI, covering workflows, agent harnesses, fleets, and the infrastructure needed to build durable, scalable systems. The conversation dives into open source tools, production challenges, and how ZenML's new project, Kitaru, helps developers build resilient, replayable, and observable agent systems.
Featuring:
Hamza Tahir – LinkedInDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
ZenMLKitaruMachine Learning Tools Landscape v2 (+84 new tools)Sponsors:
Framer:The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Midwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 09 Jul 2026 - 364 - Image Generation and Visual Intelligence with Black Forest Labs
How has AI image generation evolved from blurry outputs to powerful visual intelligence models? Dustin Podell, Co-Founder and Researcher at Black Forest Labs, explains the progression from diffusion to flow matching, how modern image models work, and how they're being used for image editing and practical visual workflows. The conversation also explores the FLUX family of models, running image generation locally, and where visual AI is headed next.
Featuring:
Dustin Podell – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Black Forest LabsDeveloper DashboardResearch PageFLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent SpaceLaying the Foundations for Visual IntelligenceSponsors:
Midwest AI Summit: Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsPrediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Midwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 02 Jul 2026 - 363 - AIUC-1: Building trust in AI agents
How do we build trust in AI agents before the AI hailstorm arrives? Emil Lassen from the Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) joins the show to discuss how the enterprise flywheel of standards, certification, audit, and insurance is being applied to AI agents. They explore the AIUC-1 framework, the challenges of securing agentic AI systems, and why red teaming (based on standards) may be key to accelerating enterprise AI adoption.
Featuring:
Emil Lassen – LinkedIn Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Artificial Intelligence Underwriting CompanySponsors:
Framer:The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalaiPrediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Midwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 25 Jun 2026 - 362 - Zero Trust for AI Agents
As AI agents become more capable and autonomous, they also introduce new security challenges. In this 'Fully Connected' episode, Dan and Chris unpack Anthropic’s Zero Trust for AI Agents security framework and what it means for organizations deploying agentic systems. They examine the key security risks facing agentic systems and discuss how organizations can apply Zero Trust principles to deploy AI agents safely. Along the way, they break down practical security controls and discuss how traditional cybersecurity principles must evolve for the age of AI agents.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Zero Trust for AI AgentsOWASP GenAI ProjectSponsors:
Prediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Midwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 11 Jun 2026 - 361 - Breaking down the 2026 Stanford AI Index Report
AI models can win math olympiads… but still struggle to read an analog clock. In this fully connected episode, Dan and Chris break down the latest Stanford AI Index Report and explore what it reveals about the current state of AI. They discuss AI adoption and safety, disappearing junior tech jobs, robotics, AI’s “jagged frontier” of intelligence, and the growing race between the U.S. and China. Along the way, they debate whether AI should optimize everything, or if some things are better left human.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
The 2026 AI Index ReportSponsors:
Prediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Midwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 04 Jun 2026 - 360 - Rebooting Enterprise AI with MCP and Kubernetes
What happens when AI agents start acting less like chatbots and more like coworkers? In this episode, Dan and Chris sit down with Craig McLuckie, CEO of Stacklok to explore MCP, Kubernetes, ToolHive, enterprise AI, and the emerging infrastructure powering AI-native applications. From identity management to agent orchestration and system architecture, this conversation dives into how organizations may soon manage entire fleets of AI agents working behind the scenes.
Featuring:
Craig McLuckie – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
StacklokToolhiveSponsors:
Prediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Midwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 28 May 2026 - 359 - Hermes Agent: Agents that grow with you
Open Source AI is entering a new era, one shaped by self-improving AI Agents, recursive learning systems, and rapidly evolving AI Tools that blur the line between software and autonomous collaborators. In this episode, Daniel and Chris sit down with Nous Research co-founder and CTO Jeffrey Quesnelle to explore Hermes Agent. Along the way, they discuss models vs. harnesses, the changing role of developers, and one of the biggest questions facing the AI Future: what remains uniquely human as AI capabilities continue to accelerate?
Featuring:
Jeffrey Quesnelle – Website, LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Nous ResearchHermes AgentSponsors:
Framer:The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalaiPrediction Guard:A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Midwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 21 May 2026 - 358 - U.S. Congressman Beyer on AI challenges facing America and the World
U.S. Congressman Don Beyer returns to Practical AI for another far-reaching conversation with Chris about many of the most important AI challenges facing America and the world. Blending political savvy and statesmanship with his unique technical understanding as an active Ph.D student in AI at George Mason University (making him the coolest member of Congress!), the congressman shares his perspective about the really hard AI concerns that you would have asked him yourself. Together, Congressman Beyer and Chris explore AI regulation, cybersecurity concerns sparked by advanced models like Mythos, bipartisan AI governance efforts, and the growing AI race between the U.S. and China. They fearlessly dived headfirst into AI-driven job displacement, mass surveillance, autonomous weapons, existential risk, and the philosophical questions surrounding consciousness and superintelligence as AI continues to accelerate. This is an unusual and insightful conversation you don't want to miss!
Congressman Beyer was previously on Practical AI episode 271 on May 29, 2024:
AI in the U.S. CongressFeaturing:
Congressman Don Beyer – Congress, LinkedIn, Bluesky, XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Midwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 14 May 2026 - 357 - The Myth of Model Wars: Open vs Closed AI in 2026
In this fully connected episode, Dan and Chris break down one of the biggest questions in AI today: do open vs. closed models still matter? From the rise of physical AI and edge devices to the shifting landscape of open-source models like LLaMA, they explore whether the “model wars” are becoming irrelevant. The conversation then dives into a bigger transformation, the rise of agentic systems, workflows, and AI-driven infrastructure.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Midwest AI Summit 2026Thu, 07 May 2026 - 356 - The mythos of Mythos and Allbirds takes flight to the neocloud
In this Fully-Connected episode, Dan and Chris start with Anthropic's Mythos frontier model, parsing what is publicly known about its cybersecurity capabilities and projecting its possible implications from "We've been here before.🙄" to "See ya, cybersecurity!😱" It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. 🙃
Then they have fun with the craziest AI announcement of the year (except for the Mythos one of course). Allbirds pivots from shoe manufacturing 👟 to neocloud provider ☁️. No, we didn't see that one coming either! 🙈
They finish with rise of “tokenmaxxing” - the gamification 🎮 of writing code with maximum LLM usage. Incredibly profitable 💰 for commercial frontier model providers and insanely expensive 🤑 for the gamers. Better have 10X productivity just to avoid bankruptcy!
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Shares in Allbirds surge after maker of wool sneakers announces pivot to AIAI-boosted hacks with Anthropic’s Mythos could have dire consequences for banksUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 23 Apr 2026 - 355 - Open Source Self-Driving with Comma AI
Autonomous driving is not just a big tech or closed-source game, it's becoming accessible through open innovation and real-world deployment. Dan and Chris sit down with Harald Schäfer, CTO at Comma AI, to explore how OpenPilot is bringing self-driving to everyday vehicles using open source AI. We dive into the intersection of machine learning, robotics, and simulation, including how world models are enabling training at scale and shaping the future of autonomy.
Featuring:
Harald Schäfer –LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
CommaUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 16 Apr 2026 - 354 - Post-Mortem of Anthropic's Claude Code Leak
In this fully connected episode, Dan and Chris break down the Anthropic Claude Code leak, what went wrong and what it reveals about agentic systems, AI architecture, and AI safety. They also explore how the open source community is responding and why this moment could reshape how AI systems are built and secured.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 09 Apr 2026 - 353 - Agentic Coding and the Economics of Open Source
AI is rapidly transforming how software is built, shifting economic incentives from open source code and collaboration toward on-demand, personalized development through agentic coding a.k.a. vibe coding. In this episode, Chris speaks with Miklós Koren of Central European University about how AI is reshaping open source and the software industry. They explore the economics of incentives, evolving collaboration patterns, and what this shift means for software development, the future of AI, and its broader impact on the technology sector.
Featuring:
Miklós Koren –LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
Vibe Coding Kills Open SourceThe Directions of Technical ChangeThe Tailwind storyUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 02 Apr 2026 - 352 - AI at the Edge is a different operating environment
What does “AI at the edge” really mean in 2026, and why does it matter now more than ever before? In this episode, we’re joined by Brandon Shibley, Edge AI Solutions Engineering Lead at Qualcomm’s Edge Impulse, to discuss the current state and future of Edge AI in 2026. We discuss Gen AI, Small Models, and Cascades of Models, along with real-world constraints like latency, power, and privacy. We also dive into the role of MLOps, evolving hardware, and how developers can start building practical edge AI systems today.
Featuring:
Brandon Shibley –LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Read our Ultimate Guide to Edge AIDownload your copy of O'Reilly's AI at the Edge Check out the Edge Impulse blogSign-up for an expert led trialof Edge ImpulseUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 25 Mar 2026 - 351 - Humility in the Age of Agentic Coding
What happens when an AI hater starts building with AI agents? In this episode, we talk with software engineer Steve Klabnik, known for his work on the Rust programming language, about his journey from criticizing AI to experimenting with it firsthand. We explore Steve’s programming language Rue, largely built with the help of AI tools like Claude, and discuss what this means for software engineering and the future of coding in an AI-driven world.
Featuring:
Steve Klabnik –LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
The Rust Programming LanguageRustRueDaniel's RSA Meeting link for March 23, 2026Daniel's RSA Meeting link for March 24-25, 2026Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Tue, 17 Mar 2026 - 350 - AI policy and the battle for computing power
AI is reshaping global power, from chip manufacturing and computing power to AI governance and US-China relations. In this episode, Ben Buchanan, Assistant Professor at The Johns Hopkins University and former White House Special Advisor for AI, explores how AI policy, geopolitics, and international cooperation intersect with AI innovation and AI safety. We discuss the strategic importance of computing power, the future of AI governance, and what it will take for democracies to lead responsibly in the age of AI.
Featuring:
Ben Buchanan –LinkedIn Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
The AI Grand BargainUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Mon, 09 Mar 2026 - 349 - Cognitive Synthesis and Neural Athletes
As AI accelerates innovation and adoption, leaders are facing rising cognitive load, shifting systems, and new emotional realities inside their organizations. In this episode, Deloitte’s Chief Innovation Officer Deborah Golden joins us to explore how AI is reshaping leadership, why vulnerability and empathy are critical in this moment, and how anti-fragility, not just resilience, will define the future of work.
Featuring:
Deborah Golden – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Deloitte
Links:Sponsor:
Framer:The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 18 Feb 2026 - 348 - AI incidents, audits, and the limits of benchmarks
AI is moving fast from research to real-world deployment, and when things go wrong, the consequences are no longer hypothetical. In this episode, Sean McGregor, co-founder of the AI Verification & Evaluation Research Institute and also the founder of the AI Incident Database, joins Chris and Dan to discuss AI safety, verification, evaluation, and auditing. They explore why benchmarks often fall short, what red-teaming at DEFCON reveals about machine learning risks, and how organizations can better assess and manage AI systems in practice.
Featuring:
Sean McGregor– LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
AI Verification & Evaluation Research InstituteAI Incident Database38th convening of IAAIBenchRiskState of Global AI Incident ReportingUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Fri, 13 Feb 2026 - 347 - Inside an AI-Run Company
AI agents are moving from demos to real workplaces, but what actually happens when they run a company? In this episode, journalist Evan Ratliff, host of Shell Game, joins Chris to discuss his immersive journalism experiment building a real startup staffed almost entirely by AI agents. They explore how AI agents behave as coworkers, how humans react when interacting with them, and where ethical and workplace boundaries begin to break down.
Featuring:
Evan Ratliff – LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
Shell GameUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Mon, 02 Feb 2026 - 346 - How is AI shaping democracy?
As AI increasingly shapes geopolitics, elections, and civic life, its impact on democracy is becoming impossible to ignore. In this episode, Daniel and Chris are joined by security expert Bruce Schneier to explore how AI and technology are transforming democracy, governance, and citizenship. Drawing from his book Rewiring Democracy, they explore real examples of AI in elections, legislation, courts, and public AI models, the risks of concentrated power, and how these tools can both strengthen and strain democratic systems worldwide.
Featuring:
Bruce Schneier – XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Schneier on SecuritySponsors:
Framer - The website builder that turns your dot com from a formality into a tool for growth. Check it out at framer.com/PRACTICALAIZapier - The AI orchestration platform that puts AI to work across your company. Check it out at zapier.com/practicalUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Tue, 27 Jan 2026 - 345 - Controlling AI Models from the Inside
As generative AI moves into production, traditional guardrails and input/output filters can prove too slow, too expensive, and/or too limited. In this episode, Alizishaan Khatri of Wrynx joins Daniel and Chris to explore a fundamentally different approach to AI safety and interpretability. They unpack the limits of today’s black-box defenses, the role of interpretability, and how model-native, runtime signals can enable safer AI systems.
Featuring:
Alizishaan Khatri – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Tue, 20 Jan 2026 - 344 - 2025 was the year of agents, what's coming in 2026?
In this start-of-year FC episode, Chris and Daniel break down what really mattered in AI in 2025, and what to expect in 2026. They explore the rise of AI agents, the practical reality of multimodal AI, and how reasoning models are reshaping workflows. The conversation dives into infrastructure and energy constraints, the continued value of predictive models, and why orchestration (not just better models) is becoming the defining skill for AI teams. The episode wraps with grounded 2026 predictions on where AI systems, tooling, and builders are headed next.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XSponsor:
Framer - The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Fri, 09 Jan 2026 - 343 - Beyond chatbots: Agents that tackle your SOPs
As AI reshapes the workplace, employees and leaders face questions about meaningful work, automation, and human impact. In this episode, Jason Beutler, CEO of RoboSource, shares how companies can rethink workflows, integrate AI in accessible ways, and empower employees without fear. The discussion covers leveraging AI to handle routine tasks (SOPs or "plays") and reimagining work for smarter, more human-centered outcomes.
Featuring:
Jason Beutler – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XSponsor:
Framer – Design and publish without limits with Framer, the free all-in-one design platform. Unlimited projects, no tool switching, and professional sites—no Figma imports or HTML hassles required. Start creating for free at framer.com/design with code `PRACTICALAI` for a free month of Framer Pro.Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 17 Dec 2025 - 342 - The AI engineer skills gap
Chris and Daniel talk with returning guest, Ramin Mohammadi, about how those seeking to get into AI Engineer/ Data Science jobs are expected to come in a mid level engineers (not entry level). They explore this growing gap along with what should (or could) be done in academia to focus on real world skills vs. theoretical knowledge.
Featuring:
Ramin Mohammadi – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XSponsors:
Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 10 Dec 2025 - 341 - Technical advances in document understanding
Chris and Daniel unpack how AI-driven document processing has rapidly evolved well beyond traditional OCR with many technical advances that fly under the radar. They explore the progression from document structure models to language-vision models, all the way to the newest innovations like Deepseek-OCR. The discussion highlights the pros and cons of these various approaches focusing on practical implementation and usage.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XSponsors:
Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiFabi.ai - The all-in-one data analysis platform for modern teams. From ad hoc queries to advanced analytics, Fabi lets you explore data wherever it lives—spreadsheets, Postgres, Snowflake, Airtable and more. Built-in Python and AI assistance help you move fast, then publish interactive dashboards or automate insights delivered straight to Slack, email, spreadsheets or wherever you need to share it. Learn more and get started for free at fabi.aiFramer – Design and publish without limits with Framer, the free all-in-one design platform. Unlimited projects, no tool switching, and professional sites—no Figma imports or HTML hassles required. Start creating for free at framer.com/design with code `PRACTICALAI` for a free month of Framer Pro.Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Tue, 02 Dec 2025 - 340 - Chris on AI, autonomous swarming, home automation and Rust!
This episode is a special crossover between the Practical AI podcast and The Changelog podcast. Chris was recently invited by longtime friends Jerod Santo and Adam Stacoviak, cohosts of The Changelog, to join them on the show. They discuss AI, drones, robotics, swarming technology, and the rise of high-performance edge computing with Rust. Chris points out that open source software, small AI models, and affordable hardware are making home automation and local AI accessible to everyone. From automating household functions to experimenting with drones and single-board computers, Chris describes how hands-on maker projects are shaping a bright future for physical AI, on small budgets and right from the comfort of your own home.
Featuring:
Jerod Santo – LinkedInAdam Stacoviak – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XSponsors:
Miro – Get the right things done faster with Miro's Innovation Workspace. AI Sidekicks, instant insights, and rapid prototyping—transform weeks of work into days. No more scattered docs or endless meetings. Help your teams get great done at Miro.com.Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
This week we have extended show notes below from Chris!Swarming & Fully Autonomous Multi-Agent UxV Systems
Chris’s Definition of Swarming (anchor link in show notes)
Chris’s definition of Swarming
“Swarming occurs when numerous independent fully-autonomous multi-agentic platforms exhibit highly-coordinated locomotive and emergent behaviors with agency and self-governance in any domain (air, ground, sea, undersea, space), functioning as a single independent logical distributed decentralized decisioning entity for purposes of C3 (command, control, communications) with human operators on-the-loop, to implement actions that achieve strategic, tactical, or operational effects in the furtherance of a mission.”
© 2025 Chris BensonConceptual Foundations
Swarm Robotics – Wikipedia
High-level overview of swarm robotics as decentralized robot collectives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_roboticsSwarm Robotic Platforms – Wikipedia
Survey of hardware platforms used in swarm robotics research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_robotic_platformsSwarm Intelligence – Wikipedia
Broader algorithms and theory behind collective intelligence (beyond robots).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_intelligenceAnt Robotics – Wikipedia
Nature-inspired “ant-like” robotics as a special case of swarm robotics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_roboticsOpen Research & Multi-Robot Resources (Stepping-Stones Toward True Swarms)
Programming Multiple Robots with ROS 2 (online book)
Free book on multi-robot systems, ROS 2, and the Robot Middleware Framework (RMF).
https://osrf.github.io/ros2multirobotbookSimulation with ROS 2 & Gazebo (ROS 2 Humble tutorial)
Official tutorial on connecting ROS 2 to Gazebo simulation.
https://docs.ros.org/en/humble/Tutorials/Advanced/Simulators/Gazebo/Gazebo.htmlSpawning Multiple Robots in Gazebo with ROS 2
Hands-on tutorial to launch N robots in Gazebo, each with its own namespace.
https://www.theconstruct.ai/spawning-multiple-robots-in-gazebo-with-ros2ROS 2 Multi-Robot Simulation Best Practices (Discourse thread)
Discussion of patterns for multi-robot systems (domains, namespaces, Nav2, etc.).
https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/multi-robot-simulation-best-practices/38987Getting Hands-On: Consumer Robotics, ROS 2 & Gazebo
ROS 2 (Robot Operating System 2)
Official ROS 2 Documentation – Humble (LTS)
Main docs for ROS 2 Humble (recommended distro) with tutorials and APIs.
https://docs.ros.org/en/humbleROS 2 Installation Guide (Humble)
Step-by-step install on supported platforms.
https://docs.ros.org/en/humble/Installation.html“From Zero to Robotics Hero: A Beginner’s Guide to ROS 2” (article)
Beginner-friendly overview with ideas for where to go next (MoveIt, Nav2, multi-robot, etc.).
https://riyagoja.medium.com/from-zero-to-robotics-hero-a-beginners-guide-to-ros-2-90ac9c3b87baROS 2 Tutorial for Beginners (2025 guide)
Up-to-date intro that walks you from install to simulating your first robot in 2025.
https://www.timesofexplore.com/2025/10/ros2-tutorial-beginners-build-first-robot-2025.htmlGazebo Simulation
Gazebo Sim – Official Site
Modern Gazebo (Ignition) simulator; models, worlds, and docs.
https://gazebosim.orgGetting Started with Gazebo (Docs)
Official “start here” guide for using Gazebo and Gazebo Fuel assets.
https://gazebosim.org/docs/latest/getstartedClassic Gazebo Tutorials (still useful for fundamentals)
https://classic.gazebosim.org/tutorialsmicro-ROS (ROS 2 on Microcontrollers)
micro-ROS – ROS 2 for Microcontrollers
Official site for running ROS 2 on tiny embedded boards.
https://micro.ros.orgmicro-ROS GitHub Organization
Repositories, examples, and tutor...Wed, 26 Nov 2025 - 339 - Beyond note-taking with Fireflies
Fireflies CEO, Krish Ramineni shares how the company is transforming AI-powered note-taking into a deeper layer of knowledge automation. He breaks down the technology behind real-time functionality like Live Assist, the user behavior patterns driving product evolution, and how Fireflies is innovating far beyond meetings. Krish also shares insights on future trends in AI and the potential for hardware integration, emphasizing the ongoing evolution of AI in knowledge work.
Featuring:
Krish Ramineni – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Fireflies AISponsors:
Miro – Get the right things done faster with Miro's Innovation Workspace. AI Sidekicks, instant insights, and rapid prototyping—transform weeks of work into days. No more scattered docs or endless meetings. Help your teams get great done at Miro.com.Framer – Design and publish without limits with Framer, the free all-in-one design platform. Unlimited projects, no tool switching, and professional sites—no Figma imports or HTML hassles required. Start creating for free at framer.com/design with code `PRACTICALAI` for a free month of Framer Pro.Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 19 Nov 2025 - 338 - Autonomous Vehicle Research at Waymo
Waymo’s VP of Research, Drago Anguelov, joins Practical AI to explore how advances in autonomy, vision models, and large-scale testing are shaping the future of driverless technology. The conversation dives into the dual challenges of building an onboard driver and testing that driver (via large scale simulation). Drago also gives us an update on what Waymo is doing to achieve intelligent, real-time performance while ensuring proven safety and reliability.
Featuring:
Drago Anguelov – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Waymo ResearchNew Insights for Scaling Laws in Autonomous DrivingAI in MotionSponsors:
Outshift by Cisco - The open source collective building the Internet of Agents. Backed by Outshift by Cisco, AGNTCY gives developers the tools to build and deploy multi-agent software at scale. Identity, communication protocols, and modular workflows—all in one global collaboration layer. Start building at AGNTCY.org.Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiFabi.ai - The all-in-one data analysis platform for modern teams. From ad hoc queries to advanced analytics, Fabi lets you explore data wherever it lives—spreadsheets, Postgres, Snowflake, Airtable and more. Built-in Python and AI assistance help you move fast, then publish interactive dashboards or automate insights delivered straight to Slack, email, spreadsheets or wherever you need to share it. Learn more and get started for free at fabi.aiUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 13 Nov 2025 - 337 - Are we in an AI bubble?
Dan and Chris unpack whether today’s surge in AI deployment across enterprise workflows, manufacturing, healthcare, and scientific research signals a lasting transformation or an overhyped bubble. Drawing parallels to the dot-com era, they explore how technology integration is reshaping industries, affecting jobs, and even influencing human cognition, ultimately asking: is this a bubble, or just a fizzy new phase of innovation?
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Powell says that, unlike the dotcom boom, AI spending isn’t a bubble: ‘I won’t go into particular names, but they actually have earnings’Sponsors:
Outshift by Cisco - The open source collective building the Internet of Agents. Backed by Outshift by Cisco, AGNTCY gives developers the tools to build and deploy multi-agent software at scale. Identity, communication protocols, and modular workflows—all in one global collaboration layer. Start building at AGNTCY.org.Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiFabi.ai - The all-in-one data analysis platform for modern teams. From ad hoc queries to advanced analytics, Fabi lets you explore data wherever it lives—spreadsheets, Postgres, Snowflake, Airtable and more. Built-in Python and AI assistance help you move fast, then publish interactive dashboards or automate insights delivered straight to Slack, email, spreadsheets or wherever you need to share it. Learn more and get started for free at fabi.aiUpcoming Events:
Join us at the Midwest AI Summit on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the AI Engineering Lounge, where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!Register for upcoming webinars here!Mon, 10 Nov 2025 - 336 - While loops with tool calls
Dan and Chris sit down (again) with Jared Zoneraich, co-founder and CEO of PromptLayer, to discuss how prompt engineering has evolved into context engineering (and while loops with tool calls). Jared shares insights on building flexible AI applications, managing tool calls, testing and versioning prompts, and empowering both technical and non-technical users in AI development. Along the way, they dive into coding agents and the “crawl-walk-run” approach to AI deployment.
Featuring:
Jared Zoneraich – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
PromptLayerUpcoming Events:
Join us at the Midwest AI Summit on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the AI Engineering Lounge, where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 30 Oct 2025 - 335 - Tiny Recursive Networks
In this fully connected episode, Daniel and Chris explore the emerging concept of tiny recursive networks introduced by Samsung AI, contrasting them with large transformer based models. They explore how these small models tackle reasoning tasks with fewer parameters, less data, and iterative refinement, matching the giants on specific problems. They also discuss the ethical challenges of emotional manipulation in chatbots.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Less is More: Recursive Reasoning with Tiny NetworksResearchers detail 6 ways chatbots seek to prolong ‘emotionally sensitive events’Sponsors:
Outshift by Cisco - The open source collective building the Internet of Agents. Backed by Outshift by Cisco, AGNTCY gives developers the tools to build and deploy multi-agent software at scale. Identity, communication protocols, and modular workflows—all in one global collaboration layer. Start building at AGNTCY.org.Fabi.ai - The all-in-one data analysis platform for modern teams. From ad hoc queries to advanced analytics, Fabi lets you explore data wherever it lives—spreadsheets, Postgres, Snowflake, Airtable and more. Built-in Python and AI assistance help you move fast, then publish interactive dashboards or automate insights delivered straight to Slack, email, spreadsheets or wherever you need to share it. Learn more and get started for free at fabi.aiMiro – The innovation workspace for the age of AI. Built for modern teams, Miro helps you turn unstructured ideas into structured outcomes—fast. Diagramming, product design, and AI-powered collaboration, all in one shared space. Start building at miro.comUpcoming Events:
Join us at the Midwest AI Summit on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the AI Engineering Lounge, where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!Register for upcoming webinars here!Fri, 24 Oct 2025 - 334 - Dealing with increasingly complicated agents
As AI systems move from simple chatbots to complex agentic workflows, new security risks emerge. In this episode, Donato Capitella unpacks how increasingly complicated architectures are making agents fragile and vulnerable. These agents can be exploited through prompt injection, data exfiltration, and tool misuse. Donato shares stories from real-world penetration tests, the design patterns for building LLM agents and explains how his open-source toolkit Spikee (Simple Prompt Injection Kit for Evaluation and Exploitation) is helping red teams probe AI systems.
Featuring:
Donato Capitella – LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
ReversecSponsors:
Outshift by Cisco - The open source collective building the Internet of Agents. Backed by Outshift by Cisco, AGNTCY gives developers the tools to build and deploy multi-agent software at scale. Identity, communication protocols, and modular workflows—all in one global collaboration layer. Start building at AGNTCY.org.Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiFabi.ai - The all-in-one data analysis platform for modern teams. From ad hoc queries to advanced analytics, Fabi lets you explore data wherever it lives—spreadsheets, Postgres, Snowflake, Airtable and more. Built-in Python and AI assistance help you move fast, then publish interactive dashboards or automate insights delivered straight to Slack, email, spreadsheets or wherever you need to share it. Learn more and get started for free at fabi.aiUpcoming Events:
Join us at the Midwest AI Summit on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the AI Engineering Lounge, where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 16 Oct 2025 - 333 - The impact of AI on the workforce: A state-level case study
Daniel sits down with Chelsea Linder, VP of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at TechPoint, to explore the what AI innovation and impact look like on the ground. They discuss Chelsea's journey from the VC world into economic development/ innovation, the growth of an AI innovation network in Indiana (funded by the SBA), lessons learned from fostering AI communities, and how businesses are actually adapting to AI. Chelsea also shares insights from Techpoints AI workforce impact study, which explored AI related job creation and levels of AI adoption among other things.
Featuring:
Chelsea Linder – LinkedIn Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
TechpointSponsors:
Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce.
Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiFabi.ai - The all-in-one data analysis platform for modern teams. From ad hoc queries to advanced analytics, Fabi lets you explore data wherever it lives—spreadsheets, Postgres, Snowflake, Airtable and more. Built-in Python and AI assistance help you move fast, then publish interactive dashboards or automate insights delivered straight to Slack, email, spreadsheets or wherever you need to share it.
Learn more and get started for free at fabi.aiUpcoming Events:
Join us at the Midwest AI Summit on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the AI Engineering Lounge, where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 09 Oct 2025 - 332 - We've all done RAG, now what?
Longtime friend of the show Rajiv Shah returns to unpack lessons from a year of building retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and reasoning models integrations. We dive into why so many AI pilots stumble, why evaluation and error analysis remain essential data science skills, and why not every enterprise challenge calls for a large language model.
Featuring:
Rajiv Shah – LinkedIn Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XUpcoming Events:
Join us at the Midwest AI Summit on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the AI Engineering Lounge, where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!Register for upcoming webinars here!Mon, 29 Sep 2025 - 331 - Creating a private AI assistant in Thunderbird
In this episode, Daniel and Chris are joined by Chris Aquino, software engineer at Thunderbird to hear the story of how they developed a privacy-preserving AI executive assistant. They discuss various design decisions including remote (but confidential) inference, local encryption, and model selection. Chris A. does an amazing job describing the journey from "let the big LLM do everything" to splitting apart the workflow to be handled by multiple models.
Featuring:
Chris Aquino – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
ThunderbirdThunderbird ProSponsors:
Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce.
Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Join us at the Midwest AI Summit on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the AI Engineering Lounge, where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!Register for upcoming webinars here!Tue, 23 Sep 2025 - 330 - Cracking the code of failed AI pilots
In this Fully Connected episode, we dig into the recent MIT report revealing that 95% of AI pilots fail before reaching production and explore what it actually takes to succeed with AI solutions. We dive into the importance of AI model integration, asking the right questions when adopting new technologies, and why simply accessing a powerful model isn’t enough. We explore the latest AI trends, from GPT-5 to open source models, and their impact on jobs, machine learning, and enterprise strategy.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025MIT Report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failingSponsors:
Miro – The innovation workspace for the age of AI. Built for modern teams, Miro helps you turn unstructured ideas into structured outcomes—fast. Diagramming, product design, and AI-powered collaboration, all in one shared space. Start building at miro.comShopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce.
Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events:
Join us at the Midwest AI Summit on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the AI Engineering Lounge, where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 11 Sep 2025 - 329 - GenAI risks and global adoption
Daniel and Chris sit with Citadel AI’s Rick Kobayashi and Kenny Song and unpack AI safety and security challenges in the generative AI era. They compare Japan’s approach to AI adoption with the US’s, and explore the implications of real-world failures in AI systems, along with strategies for AI monitoring and evaluation.
Featuring:
Rick Kobayashi – LinkedInKenny Song – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Citadel AIRegister for upcoming webinars here!
Wed, 27 Aug 2025 - 328 - Inside America’s AI Action Plan
Dan and Chris break down Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan, issued by the White House in July 2025. Structured as three "pillars" — Accelerate AI Innovation, Build American AI Infrastructure, and Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security — our dynamic duo unpack the plan's policy goals and its associated suggestions — while also exploring the mixed reactions it’s sparked across political lines. They connect the plan to international AI diplomacy and national security interests, discuss its implications for practitioners, and consider how political realities could shape its success in the years ahead.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Press Release: White House Unveils America's AI Action PlanPaper: America's AI Action PlanSponsors:
Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiRegister for upcoming webinars here!
Tue, 19 Aug 2025 - 327 - Confident, strategic AI leadership
Allegra Guinan of Lumiera helps leaders turn uncertainty about AI into confident, strategic leadership. In this conversation, she brings some actionable insights for navigating the hype and complexity of AI. The discussion covers challenges with implementing responsible AI practices, the growing importance of user experience and product thinking, and how leaders can focus on real-world business problems over abstract experimentation.
Featuring:
Allegra Guinan – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
LumieraSponsors:
Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiRegister for upcoming webinars here!
Tue, 12 Aug 2025 - 326 - Educating a data-literate generation
Dan sits down with guests Mark Daniel Ward and Katie Sanders from The Data Mine at Purdue University to explore how higher education is evolving to meet the demands of the AI-driven workforce. They share how their program blends interdisciplinary learning, corporate partnerships, and real-world data science projects to better prepare students across 160+ majors. From AI chatbots to agricultural forecasting, they discuss the power of living-learning communities, how the data mine model is spreading to other institutions and what it reveals about the future of education, workforce development, and applied AI training.
Featuring:
Mark Daniel Ward – LinkedInKatie Sanders – LinkedInDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
The Data MineSponsors:
Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiRegister for upcoming webinars here!
Fri, 08 Aug 2025 - 325 - Workforce dynamics in an AI-assisted world
We unpack how AI is reshaping hiring decisions, shifting job roles, and creating new expectations for professionals — from engineers to marketers. They explore the rise of AI-assisted teams, the growing compensation bubble, why continuous learning is now table stakes, and how some service providers are quietly riding the AI wave.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XSponsors:
Outshift by Cisco: AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows."Register for upcoming webinars here!
Fri, 01 Aug 2025 - 324 - Reimagining actuarial science with AI
In this episode, Chris sits down with Igor Nikitin, CEO and co-founder of Nice Technologies, to explore how AI and modern engineering practices are transforming the actuarial field and setting the stage for the future of actuarial modeling. We discuss the introduction of programming into insurance pricing workflows, and how their Python-based calc engine, AI copilots, and DevOps-inspired workflows are enabling actuaries to collaborate more effectively across teams while accelerating innovation.
Featuring:
Igor Nikitin – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
Nice TechnologiesSponsors:
Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalaiRegister for upcoming webinars here!
Fri, 25 Jul 2025 - 323 - Agentic AI for Drone & Robotic Swarming
In this episode of Practical AI, Chris and Daniel explore the fascinating world of agentic AI for drone and robotic swarms, which is Chris's passion and professional focus. They unpack how autonomous vehicles (UxV), drones (UaV), and other autonomous multi-agent systems can collaborate without centralized control while exhibiting complex emergent behavior with agency and self-governance to accomplish a mission or shared goals. Chris and Dan delve into the role of AI real-time inference and edge computing to enable complex agentic multi-model autonomy, especially in challenging environments like disaster zones and remote industrial operations.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
ROS - Robotic Operating SystemGazeboHugging Face Agents CourseSwarm Robotics | Wikipedia
Chris's definition of Swarming:
Swarming occurs when numerous independent fully-autonomous multi-agentic platforms exhibit highly-coordinated locomotive and emergent behaviors with agency and self-governance in any domain (air, ground, sea, undersea, space), functioning as a single independent logical distributed decentralized decisioning entity for purposes of C3 (command, control, communications) with human operators on-the-loop, to implement actions that achieve strategic, tactical, or operational effects in the furtherance of a mission.
© 2025 Chris BensonSponsors:
Outshift by Cisco: AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows.Tue, 15 Jul 2025 - 322 - AI in the shadows: From hallucinations to blackmail
In the first episode of an "AI in the shadows" theme, Chris and Daniel explore the increasing concerning world of agentic misalignment. Starting out with a reminder about hallucinations and reasoning models, they break down how today’s models only mimic reasoning, which can lead to serious ethical considerations. They unpack a fascinating (and slightly terrifying) new study from Anthropic, where agentic AI models were caught simulating blackmail, deception, and even sabotage — all in the name of goal completion and self-preservation.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs could be insider threatsHugging Face Agents CourseRegister for upcoming webinars here!
Mon, 07 Jul 2025 - 321 - Finding Nemotron
In this episode, we sit down with Joey Conway to explore NVIDIA's open source AI, from the reasoning-focused Nemotron models built on top of Llama, to the blazing-fast Parakeet speech model. We chat about what makes open foundation models so valuable, how enterprises can think about deploying multi-model strategies, and why reasoning is becoming the key differentiator in real-world AI applications.
Featuring:
Joey Conway – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XLinks:
Llama Nemotron UltraNVIDIA Llama Nemotron Ultra Open Model Delivers Groundbreaking Reasoning AccuracyIndependent analysis of AIParakeet ModelParakeet LeaderboardTry the Llama-3.1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1 model here and hereWed, 02 Jul 2025 - 320 - AI hot takes and debates: Autonomy
Can AI-driven autonomy reduce harm, or does it risk dehumanizing decision-making? In this “AI Hot Takes & Debates” series episode, Daniel and Chris dive deep into the ethical crossroads of AI, autonomy, and military applications. They trade perspectives on ethics, precision, responsibility, and whether machines should ever be trusted with life-or-death decisions. It’s a spirited back-and-forth that tackles the big questions behind real-world AI.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
The Concept of "The Human" in the Critique of Autonomous WeaponsOn the Pitfalls of Technophilic Reason: A Commentary on Kevin Jon Heller’s “The Concept of ‘the Human’ in the Critique of Autonomous Weapons”Sponsors:
Outshift by Cisco: AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows.Fri, 27 Jun 2025 - 319 - Behind-the-Scenes: VC Funding for AI Startups
It seems like we are bombarded by news about millions of dollars pouring into AI startups, which have crazy valuations. In this episode, Chris and Dan dive deep into the highs, lows, and hard choices behind funding an AI startup. They explore early bootstrapping, the transition to venture capital, and what it’s like to trade in code commits for investor decks.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Builder.ai Collapses: $1.5bn 'AI' Startup Exposed as 'Actually Indians' Pretending to Be BotsSponsors:
Miro: Feeling overwhelmed by AI? Miro brings clarity by combining human creativity with intelligent tools to help teams get great work done. Learn more at miro.com.Wed, 18 Jun 2025 - 318 - AI-Automated Film Making
An recent article in Variety was titled: "Sylvester Stallone-Backed Largo.ai Teams With Brilliant Pictures for ‘World’s First Fully AI-Automated Film Company’". Obviously this caught our attention! We sit down with Sami Arpa, CEO of Largo.ai, to unpack how films are developed, funded, and brought to life using AI. We discover how tools like script analysis, financial forecasting, and digital twins are helping creators and studios make smarter decisions.
Featuring:
Sami Arpa – LinkedInDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Largo AISylvester Stallone-Backed Largo.ai Teams With Brilliant Pictures for ‘World’s First Fully AI-Automated Film Company’Sponsors:
Outshift by Cisco: AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows.Thu, 12 Jun 2025 - 317 - Federated learning in production (part 2)
Chong Shen from Flower Labs joins us to discuss what it really takes to build production-ready federated learning systems that work across data silos. We talk about the Flower framework and it's architecture (supernodes, superlinks, etc.), and what makes it both "friendly" and ready for real enterprise environments. We also explore how the generative Generative AI boom is reshaping Flower’s roadmap.
Featuring:
Chong Shen Ng – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XEpisode links:
The future of AI training is federatedDeepLearning.ai short course on Federated Learning with FlowerFlower MonthlyFederated Learning in AutomotiveFederated AI in FinanceFederated Learning in HealthcareFederated AI on IoT SystemsFlowerTune LLM LeaderboardFlower IntelligenceGitHubSlackFlower DiscussCheck out upcoming webinars!
Sponsors:
NordLayer is toggle-ready network security built for modern businesses—combining VPN, access control, and threat protection in one platform that deploys in under 10 minutes with no hardware required. It's built on Zero Trust architecture with granular access controls, so only the right people access the right resources, and it scales effortlessly as your team grows. Get up to 32% off yearly plans with code practically-10 at nordlayer.com/practicalai - 14-day money-back guarantee included.Wed, 04 Jun 2025 - 316 - Federated learning in production (part 1)
In this first of a two part series of episodes on federated learning, we dive into the evolving world of federated learning and distributed AI frameworks with Patrick Foley from Intel. We explore how frameworks like OpenFL and Flower are enabling secure, collaborative model training across silos, especially in sensitive fields like healthcare. The conversation touches on real-world use cases, the challenges of distributed ML/AI experiments, and why privacy-preserving techniques may become essential for deploying AI to production.
Featuring:
Patrick Foley – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
IntelOpenFLSponsors:
NordLayer is a toggle-ready network security platform built for modern businesses. It combines VPN, access control, and threat protection in one easy-to-use platform. No hardware. No complex setup. Just secure connection and full control—in less than 10 minutes. Up to 22% off NordLayer yearly plans plus 10% on top with the coupon code practically-10.Fri, 30 May 2025 - 315 - Emailing like a superhuman
Loïc Houssier, Head of Engineering at Superhuman, joins us to discuss how AI and LLMs are reshaping the email experience. He highlights challenges related to the variability of user prompts and infrastructure optimization. Loïc emphasizes that a deep focus on user experience and real human workflows is key to building AI tools people actually love to use.
Featuring:
Loïc Houssier – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
SuperhumanReferral Code for a Free monthSponsors:
Outshift by Cisco – AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows.Tue, 20 May 2025 - 314 - Model Context Protocol Deep Dive
In this episode, Daniel and Chris unpack the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a rising standard for enabling agentic AI interactions with external systems, APIs, and data sources. They explore how MCP supports interoperability, community contributions, and a rapidly developing ecosystem of AI integrations. The conversation also highlights some real-world tooling such as FastAPI-MCP.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Protocol websiteAnthropic blog postBlog post - Model Context Protocol (MCP) an overviewFastAPI-MCPHow to Use FastAPI MCP Server: A Complete Guide Candle (Rust framework)Thu, 08 May 2025 - 313 - Seeing beyond the scan in neuroimaging
In this episode, we explore the intersection of AI, machine learning, and healthcare through the lens of neuroimaging and epilepsy diagnosis. Dr. Gavin Winston shares insights from his work using MRI data and machine learning to uncover subtle abnormalities in brain function. We discuss the cultural and ethical barriers to AI adoption in medicine, how predictive data analysis could transform the diagnostic workflow, and what the future holds for medical imaging in a world increasingly shaped by intelligent systems.
Featuring:
Gavin Winston – LinkedIn, WebsiteChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
Detection of Epileptogenic Focal Cortical Dysplasia Using Graph Neural Networks: A MELD StudyMachine Learning in Neuroimaging across DisciplinesAutomated and Interpretable Detection of Hippocampal Sclerosis in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: AID-HSLiterature review and protocol for a prospective multicentre cohort study on multimodal prediction of seizure recurrence after unprovoked first seizureDeep learning in neuroimaging of epilepsyNon-parametric combination of multimodal MRI for lesion detection in focal epilepsyDetection of covert lesions in focal epilepsy using computational analysis of multimodal magnetic resonance imaging dataWed, 30 Apr 2025 - 312 - Open source AI to tackle your backlog
Vibe coding, agentic workflows, and AI-assisted pull requests? In this episode, Daniel and Chris chat with Robert Brennan and Graham Neubig of All Hands AI about how AI is transforming software development—from senior engineer productivity to open source agents that address GitHub issues. They dive into trust, tooling, collaboration, and what it means to build software in the era of AI agents. Whether you're coding from your laptop or your phone on a morning walk, the future is hands-free (and All Hands).
Featuring:
Robert Brennan – LinkedIn, XGraham Neubig – LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
All HandsAll Hands on GitHubAll Hands on Hugging FaceThu, 17 Apr 2025 - 311 - Orchestrating agents, APIs, and MCP servers
In this episode, Daniel sits down with Pavel Veller, EPAM’s Chief Technologist, to explore the practical challenges of orchestrating many AI agents and managing connections to disparate systems/tools. Pavel shares insights from his hands-on work with agentic architectures and internal tools like "DIAL". Pavel also helps us understand things like MCP servers and why connecting assistants via APIs is easy—but making them useful is hard.
Featuring:
Pavel Veller – LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
EPAMDIALSWE-bench resultsMon, 14 Apr 2025 - 310 - Software and hardware acceleration with Groq
How do you enable AI acceleration (at both the hardware and software layers) that stays ahead of rapid industry shifts? In this episode, Dhananjay Singh from Groq dives into the evolving landscape of AI inference and acceleration. We explore how Groq optimizes the serving layer, adapts to industry shifts, and supports emerging model architectures.
Featuring:
Dhananjay Singh – LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
GroqSponsors:
Augment Code - Developer AI that uses deep understanding of your large codebase and how you build software to deliver personalized code suggestions and insights. Augment provides relevant, contextualized code right in your IDE or Slack. It transforms scattered knowledge into code or answers, eliminating time spent searching docs or interrupting teammates.Wed, 02 Apr 2025 - 309 - AI-assisted coding with GitHub's COO
Kyle Daigle, COO of GitHub, joins the hosts to discuss the evolving role of AI in software development, GitHub Copilot’s impact, and the challenges of AI-assisted coding. The conversation covers licensing concerns, ethical considerations, and how developers can navigate these complexities. Kyle also shares his vision for ambient AI, which seamlessly integrates into workflows to enhance productivity and innovation, shaping the future of developer tools.
Featuring:
Kyle Daigle – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XSponsors:
Domo – The AI and data products platform. Strengthen your entire data journey with Domo’s AI and data products.Fri, 21 Mar 2025 - 308 - Optimizing for efficiency with IBM’s Granite
We often judge AI models by leaderboard scores, but what if efficiency matters more? Kate Soule from IBM joins us to discuss how Granite AI is rethinking AI at the edge—breaking tasks into smaller, efficient components and co-designing models with hardware. She also shares why AI should prioritize efficiency frontiers over incremental benchmark gains and how seamless model routing can optimize performance.
Featuring:
Kate Soule – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XLinks:
IBM GraniteIBM Granite on Hugging FaceIBM Expands Granite Model Family with New Multi-Modal and Reasoning AI Built for the EnterpriseFri, 14 Mar 2025 - 307 - Build a workspace of AI agents
How can every single person build a personal AI protégé and then accumulate (and share) a host of other assistants? In this episode, we dive into the world of no-code AI with Scott Meyer from Chipp.ai. We discuss AI tooling for people that can't code, the cultural shift that needs to happen for widespread AI adoption in businesses, and the predicted growth trajectory of AI assistant that you can own.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XScott Meyer - LinkedIn, XSponsors:
Domo – The AI and data products platform. Strengthen your entire data journey with Domo’s AI and data products.Show Notes:
Chipp.aiChipp.ai's DiscordSat, 08 Mar 2025 - 306 - GenAI hot takes and bad use cases
It seems like all we hear about are the great use cases for GenAI, but where should you NOT be using the technology? On this episode Chris and Daniel share their hot takes and bad use cases. Some may surprise you!
Sponsors:
Domo – The AI and data products platform. Strengthen your entire data journey with Domo’s AI and data products. Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Mon, 24 Feb 2025 - 305 - Tool calling and agents
It seems like everyone is uses the term “agent” differently these days. In this episode, Chris and Daniel dig into the details of tool calling and its connection to agents. They help clarify how LLMs can “talk to” and “interact with” other systems like databases, APIs, web apps, etc. Along the way they share related learning resources.
Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
smolagentsHugging Face agents courseUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Fri, 14 Feb 2025 - 304 - Deep-dive into DeepSeek
There is crazy hype and a lot of confusion related to DeepSeek’s latest model DeepSeek R1. The products provided by DeepSeek (their version of a ChatGPT-like app) has exploded in popularity. However, ties to China have raised privacy and geopolitical concerns. In this episode, Chris and Daniel cut through the hype to talk about the model, privacy implications, running DeepSeek models securely, and what this signals for open models in 2025.
Sponsors:
Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs. Domo – The AI and data products platform. Strengthen your entire data journey with Domo’s AI and data products.Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
Daniel’s blog post on DeepSeekDeepSeek R1 on Hugging FaceDeepSeekUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Fri, 31 Jan 2025 - 303 - Video generation with realistic motion
We seem to be experiencing a surge of video generation tools, models, and applications. However, video generation models generally struggle with some basic physics, like realistic walking motion. This leaves some generated videos lacking true motion with disappointing, simplistic panning camera views. Genmo is focused on the motion side of video generation and has released some of the best open models. Paras joins us to discuss video generation and their journey at Genmo.
Sponsors:
Domo – The AI and data products platform. Strengthen your entire data journey with Domo’s AI and data products.Featuring:
Paras Jain – LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
GenmoUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 23 Jan 2025 - 302 - Mozart to Megadeth at CHRP
Daniel and Chris groove with Jeff Smith, Founder and CEO at CHRP.ai. Jeff describes how CHRP anonymously analyzes emotional wellness data, derived from employees’ music preferences, giving HR leaders actionable insights to improve productivity, retention, and overall morale. By monitoring key trends and identifying shifts in emotional health across teams, CHRP.ai enables proactive decisions to ensure employees feel supported and engaged.
Sponsors:
Shopify – Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/practicalaiEight Sleep – Up to $600 off Pod 4 Ultra — Go to eightsleep.com/changelog and use the code CHANGELOG. You can try it for free for 30 days - but we’re confident you will not want to return it (we love ours). Once you experience AI-optimized sleep, you’ll wonder how you ever slept without it. Currently shipping to: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. DeleteMe – DeleteMe makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online.Featuring:
Jeff Smith – LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
CHRP | WebsiteMyCHRPCHRP | InstagramCHRP | LinkedInUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 19 Dec 2024 - 301 - Sidekick is an AI Shopify expert
Today, Chris explores Shopify Magic and other AI offerings with Mike Tamir, Distinguished ML Engineer and Head of Machine Learning, and Matt Colyer, Director of Product Management for Sidekick. They talk about how Shopify uses generative AI and LLMs to enhance their products, and they take a deeper dive into Sidekick, a first-of-its-kind, AI-enabled commerce assistant that understands a merchant’s business (products, orders, customers) and has been trained to know all about Shopify.
Sponsors:
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes. Timescale – Purpose-built performance for AI Build RAG, search, and AI agents on the cloud and with PostgreSQL and purpose-built extensions for AI: pgvector, pgvectorscale, and pgai. Eight Sleep – Up to $600 off Pod 4 Ultra — Go to eightsleep.com/changelog and use the code CHANGELOG. You can try it for free for 30 days - but we’re confident you will not want to return it (we love ours). Once you experience AI-optimized sleep, you’ll wonder how you ever slept without it. Currently shipping to: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.Featuring:
Mike Tamir – LinkedInMatt Colyer – LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XShow Notes:
ShopifyShopify’s Winter Edition ’25Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 11 Dec 2024 - 300 - Full-duplex, real-time dialogue with Kyutai
Kyutai, an open science research lab, made headlines over the summer when they released their real-time speech-to-speech AI assistant (beating OpenAI to market with their teased GPT-driven speech-to-speech functionality). Alex from Kyutai joins us in this episode to discuss the research lab, their recent Moshi models, and what might be coming next from the lab. Along the way we discuss small models and the AI ecosystem in France.
Sponsors:
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes. Timescale – Purpose-built performance for AI Build RAG, search, and AI agents on the cloud and with PostgreSQL and purpose-built extensions for AI: pgvector, pgvectorscale, and pgai. WorkOS – AuthKit offers 1,000,000 monthly active users (MAU) free — The world’s best login box, powered by WorkOS + Radix. Learn more and get started at WorkOS.com and AuthKit.comFeaturing:
Alexandre Défossez – Website, GitHub, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
KyutaiKyutai on GitHubKyutai on Hugging FaceUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 04 Dec 2024 - 299 - Clones, commerce & campaigns
Chris and Daniel dive into what Trump’s impending second term could mean for AI companies, model developers, and regulators, unpacking the potential shifts in policy and innovation. Next, they discuss the latest models, like Qwen, that blur the performance gap between open and closed systems. Finally, they explore new AI tools for meeting clones and AI-driven commerce, sparking a conversation about the balance between digital convenience and fostering genuine human connections.
Sponsors:
WorkOS – AuthKit offers 1,000,000 monthly active users (MAU) free — The world’s best login box, powered by WorkOS + Radix. Learn more and get started at WorkOS.com and AuthKit.comNotion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs. Retool – The low-code platform for developers to build internal tools — Some of the best teams out there trust Retool…Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Doordash, LegalGenius, Amazon, Allbirds, Peloton, and so many more – the developers at these teams trust Retool as the platform to build their internal tools. Try it free at retool.com/changelogFeaturing:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
New Models Qwen2.5 Alibaba’s Qwen AI ModelQwen2.5 Turbo Reads Ten Novels in One MinuteDeepSeek DeepSeek API Docs UpdateFLUX Black Forest Labs’ FLUX.1-dev on Hugging FaceOuteTTS OuteTTS 0.1 - 350M BlogOuteTTS 0.2 - 500M BlogSmol TTS Update on LinkedInSmolLVM SmolLVM Updates on LinkedInWhat Donald Trump’s Win Means for AIPractical AI Podcast: Episode 244GetPickle.aiDocling Docling Paper on arXivDocling GitHub RepositoryRed Hat Blog on DoclingLinkedIn Post on PDF Table ExtractionHugging Face Blog on Observers SDKAI and Commerce Stripe Blog: Adding Payments to Agentic WorkflowsLinkedIn Announcement: Payments Integration SDKUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Fri, 29 Nov 2024 - 298 - scikit-learn & data science you own
We are at GenAI saturation, so let’s talk about scikit-learn, a long time favorite for data scientists building classifiers, time series analyzers, dimensionality reducers, and more! Scikit-learn is deployed across industry and driving a significant portion of the “AI” that is actually in production. :probabl is a new kind of company that is stewarding this project along with a variety of other open source projects. Yann Lechelle and Guillaume Lemaitre share some of the vision behind the company and talk about the future of scikit-learn!
Sponsors:
Timescale – Purpose-built performance for AI Build RAG, search, and AI agents on the cloud and with PostgreSQL and purpose-built extensions for AI: pgvector, pgvectorscale, and pgai. WorkOS – A platform that gives developers a set of building blocks for quickly adding enterprise-ready features to their application. Add Single Sign-On (Okta, Azure, Google, Microsoft OAuth), sync users from any SCIM directory, HRIS integration, audit trails (SIEM), free magic link sign-in. WorkOS is designed for developers and offers a single, elegant interface that abstracts dozens of enterprise integrations. Learn more and get started at WorkOS.comShopify – Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/practicalaiFeaturing:
Yann Lechelle – LinkedInGuillaume Lemaitre – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
:probabl.TechCrunch: Probabl is a new AI company built around popular library scikit-learnscikit-learnUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Tue, 19 Nov 2024 - 297 - Creating tested, reliable AI applications
It can be frustrating to get an AI application working amazingly well 80% of the time and failing miserably the other 20%. How can you close the gap and create something that you rely on? Chris and Daniel talk through this process, behavior testing, and the flow from prototype to production in this episode. They also talk a bit about the apparent slow down in the release of frontier models.
Sponsors:
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes. Timescale – Purpose-built performance for AI Build RAG, search, and AI agents on the cloud and with PostgreSQL and purpose-built extensions for AI: pgvector, pgvectorscale, and pgai. Eight Sleep – Up to $600 off Pod 4 Ultra Go to eightsleep.com/changelog and use the code CHANGELOG. You can try it for free for 30 days - but we’re confident you will not want to return it (we love ours). Once you experience AI-optimized sleep, you’ll wonder how you ever slept without it. Currently shipping to: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
MLOps Community “Agents in Production” eventUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 13 Nov 2024 - 296 - AI is changing the cybersecurity threat landscape
This week, Chris is joined by Gregory Richardson, Vice President and Global Advisory CISO at BlackBerry, and Ismael Valenzuela, Vice President of Threat Research & Intelligence at BlackBerry. They address how AI is changing the threat landscape, why human defenders remain a key part of our cyber defenses, and the explain the AI standoff between cyber threat actors and cyber defenders.
Sponsors:
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes. Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs. Eight Sleep – Take your sleep and recovery to the next level. Go to eightsleep.com/PRACTICALAI and use the code PRACTICALAI to get $350 off your very own Pod 4 Ultra. You can try it for free for 30 days - but we’re confident you will not want to return it. Once you experience AI-optimized sleep, you’ll wonder how you ever slept without it. Currently shipping to: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.Featuring:
Gregory Richardson – LinkedInIsmael Valenzuela – GitHub, LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XShow Notes:
The AI Standoff: Attackers vs. Defenders | Blackberry BlogBlackberryUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Tue, 05 Nov 2024 - 295 - The path towards trustworthy AI
Elham Tabassi, the Chief AI Advisor at the U.S. National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST), joins Chris for an enlightening discussion about the path towards trustworthy AI. Together they explore NIST’s ‘AI Risk Management Framework’ (AI RMF) within the context of the White House’s ‘Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence’.
Sponsors:
Timescale – Real-time analytics on Postgres, seriously fast. Over 3 million Timescale databases power loT, sensors, Al, dev tools, crypto, and finance apps — all on Postgres. Postgres, for everything. Retool – The low-code platform for developers to build internal tools — Some of the best teams out there trust Retool…Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Doordash, LegalGenius, Amazon, Allbirds, Peloton, and so many more – the developers at these teams trust Retool as the platform to build their internal tools. Try it free at retool.com/changelogDeleteMe – DeleteMe makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online.Featuring:
Elham Tabassi – Website, LinkedInChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XShow Notes:
Elham Tabassi | NISTElham Tabassi | TIME 100 / AINIST Trustworthy & Responsible AI Resource CenterNIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF)NIST Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0) (PDF)NIST AI RMF PlaybookNIST AI RMF DevelopmentNIST AI Risk Management Framework - EngageNIST Risk Management Framework Aims to Improve Trustworthiness of Artificial IntelligenceWhite House Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial IntelligenceUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Tue, 29 Oct 2024 - 294 - Big data is dead, analytics is alive
We are on the other side of “big data” hype, but what is the future of analytics and how does AI fit in? Till and Adithya from MotherDuck join us to discuss why DuckDB is taking the analytics and AI world by storm. We dive into what makes DuckDB, a free, in-process SQL OLAP database management system, unique including its ability to execute lighting fast analytics queries against a variety of data sources, even on your laptop! Along the way we dig into the intersections with AI, such as text-to-sql, vector search, and AI-driven SQL query correction.
Sponsors:
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes. Timescale – Real-time analytics on Postgres, seriously fast. Over 3 million Timescale databases power loT, sensors, Al, dev tools, crypto, and finance apps — all on Postgres. Postgres, for everything. Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.Featuring:
Till Döhmen – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XAdithya Krishnan – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
DuckDBMotherDuckIntroducing FixIt: an unreasonably effective AI error fixer for SQLUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 24 Oct 2024 - 293 - Practical workflow orchestration
Workflow orchestration has always been a pain for data scientists, but this is exacerbated in these AI hype days by agentic workflows executing arbitrary (not pre-defined) workflows with a variety of failure modes. Adam from Prefect joins us to talk through their open source Python library for orchestration and visibility into python-based pipelines. Along the way, he introduces us to things like Marvin, their AI engineering framework, and ControlFlow, their agent workflow system.
Sponsors:
WorkOS – A platform that gives developers a set of building blocks for quickly adding enterprise-ready features to their application. Add Single Sign-On (Okta, Azure, Google, Microsoft OAuth), sync users from any SCIM directory, HRIS integration, audit trails (SIEM), free magic link sign-in. WorkOS is designed for developers and offers a single, elegant interface that abstracts dozens of enterprise integrations. Learn more and get started at WorkOS.comShopify – Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/practicalaiNotion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.Featuring:
Adam Azzam – LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
PrefectMarvinControlFlowUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Tue, 15 Oct 2024 - 292 - Towards high-quality (maybe synthetic) datasets
As Argilla puts it: “Data quality is what makes or breaks AI.” However, what exactly does this mean and how can AI team probably collaborate with domain experts towards improved data quality? David Berenstein & Ben Burtenshaw, who are building Argilla & Distilabel at Hugging Face, join us to dig into these topics along with synthetic data generation & AI-generated labeling / feedback.
Sponsors:
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes. WorkOS – A platform that gives developers a set of building blocks for quickly adding enterprise-ready features to their application. Add Single Sign-On (Okta, Azure, Google, Microsoft OAuth), sync users from any SCIM directory, HRIS integration, audit trails (SIEM), free magic link sign-in. WorkOS is designed for developers and offers a single, elegant interface that abstracts dozens of enterprise integrations. Learn more and get started at WorkOS.comEight Sleep – Take your sleep and recovery to the next level. Go to eightsleep.com/PRACTICALAI and use the code PRACTICALAI to get $350 off your very own Pod 4 Ultra. You can try it for free for 30 days - but we’re confident you will not want to return it. Once you experience AI-optimized sleep, you’ll wonder how you ever slept without it. Currently shipping to: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.Featuring:
Ben Burtenshaw – GitHub, LinkedIn, XDavid Berenstein – GitHub, LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
ArgillaDistilabelSynthetic Data Generator UIHugging Face and Argilla meetupsUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 09 Oct 2024 - 291 - Understanding what's possible, doable & scalable
We are constantly hearing about disillusionment as it relates to AI. Some of that is probably valid, but Mike Lewis, an AI architect from Cincinnati, has proven that he can consistently get LLM and GenAI apps to the point of real enterprise value (even with the Big Cos of the world). In this episode, Mike joins us to share some stories from the AI trenches & highlight what it takes (practically) to show what is possible, doable & scalable with AI.
Sponsors:
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes. WorkOS – A platform that gives developers a set of building blocks for quickly adding enterprise-ready features to their application. Add Single Sign-On (Okta, Azure, Google, Microsoft OAuth), sync users from any SCIM directory, HRIS integration, audit trails (SIEM), free magic link sign-in. WorkOS is designed for developers and offers a single, elegant interface that abstracts dozens of enterprise integrations. Learn more and get started at WorkOS.comEight Sleep – Take your sleep and recovery to the next level. Go to eightsleep.com/PRACTICALAI and use the code PRACTICALAI to get $350 off your very own Pod 4 Ultra. You can try it for free for 30 days - but we’re confident you will not want to return it. Once you experience AI-optimized sleep, you’ll wonder how you ever slept without it. Currently shipping to: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.Featuring:
Mike Lewis – LinkedInDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
SynthoniUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 03 Oct 2024 - 290 - GraphRAG (beyond the hype)
Seems like we are hearing a lot about GraphRAG these days, but there are lots of questions: what is it, is it hype, what is practical? One of our all time favorite podcast friends, Prashanth Rao, joins us to dig into this topic beyond the hype. Prashanth gives us a bit of background and practical use cases for GraphRAG and graph data.
Sponsors:
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes. Assembly AI – Turn voice data into summaries with AssemblyAI’s leading Speech AI models. Built by AI experts, their Speech AI models include accurate speech-to-text for voice data (such as calls, virtual meetings, and podcasts), speaker detection, sentiment analysis, chapter detection, PII redaction, and more. Speakeasy – Production-ready, enterprise-resilient, best-in-class SDKs crafted in minutes. Speakeasy takes care of the entire SDK workflow to save you significant time, delivering SDKs to your customers in minutes with just a few clicks! Create your first SDK for free!Featuring:
Prashanth Rao – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
Kùzu: A highly scalable, extremely fast, easy-to-use embeddable, open source graph database: GitHub repoThe goals and vision of Kùzu: Blog postKùzu YouTube channelGraph RAG strategies with Kùzu: GitHub repoPrashanth Rao’s blog: thedataquarry.comUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 25 Sep 2024 - 289 - Pausing to think about scikit-learn & OpenAI o1
Recently the company stewarding the open source library scikit-learn announced their seed funding. Also, OpenAI released “o1” with new behavior in which it pauses to “think” about complex tasks. Chris and Daniel take some time to do their own thinking about o1 and the contrast to the scikit-learn ecosystem, which has the goal to promote “data science that you own.”
Sponsors:
Assembly AI – Turn voice data into summaries with AssemblyAI’s leading Speech AI models. Built by AI experts, their Speech AI models include accurate speech-to-text for voice data (such as calls, virtual meetings, and podcasts), speaker detection, sentiment analysis, chapter detection, PII redaction, and more. Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes. Speakeasy – Production-ready, enterprise-resilient, best-in-class SDKs crafted in minutes. Speakeasy takes care of the entire SDK workflow to save you significant time, delivering SDKs to your customers in minutes with just a few clicks! Create your first SDK for free!Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
Probabl seed funding announcementOpenAI o1 announcementPurdue Data4Good competitionMLOps Community homepage and Slack workspaceLatent Space homepage and Discord serverUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Tue, 17 Sep 2024 - 288 - Cybersecurity in the GenAI age
Dinis Cruz drops by to chat about cybersecurity for generative AI and large language models. In addition to discussing The Cyber Boardroom, Dinis also delves into cybersecurity efforts at OWASP and that organization’s Top 10 for LLMs and Generative AI Apps.
Sponsors:
Speakeasy – Production-ready, enterprise-resilient, best-in-class SDKs crafted in minutes. Speakeasy takes care of the entire SDK workflow to save you significant time, delivering SDKs to your customers in minutes with just a few clicks! Create your first SDK for free!Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes. Shopify – Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/practicalaiFeaturing:
Dinis Cruz – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
The Cyber BoardroomOWASP - Top 10 for LLMs and Generative AI AppsOWASP - Generative AIUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 11 Sep 2024 - 287 - AI is more than GenAI
GenAI is often what people think of when someone mentions AI. However, AI is much more. In this episode, Daniel breaks down a history of developments in data science, machine learning, AI, and GenAI in this episode to give listeners a better mental model. Don’t miss this one if you are wanting to understand the AI ecosystem holistically and how models, embeddings, data, prompts, etc. all fit together.
Sponsors:
Speakeasy – Production-ready, enterprise-resilient, best-in-class SDKs crafted in minutes. Speakeasy takes care of the entire SDK workflow to save you significant time, delivering SDKs to your customers in minutes with just a few clicks! Create your first SDK for free!Featuring:
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
scikit-learnAutoML in Google CloudUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 05 Sep 2024 - 286 - Metrics Driven Development
How do you systematically measure, optimize, and improve the performance of LLM applications (like those powered by RAG or tool use)? Ragas is an open source effort that has been trying to answer this question comprehensively, and they are promoting a “Metrics Driven Development” approach. Shahul from Ragas joins us to discuss Ragas in this episode, and we dig into specific metrics, the difference between benchmarking models and evaluating LLM apps, generating synthetic test data and more.
Sponsors:
Assembly AI – Turn voice data into summaries with AssemblyAI’s leading Speech AI models. Built by AI experts, their Speech AI models include accurate speech-to-text for voice data (such as calls, virtual meetings, and podcasts), speaker detection, sentiment analysis, chapter detection, PII redaction, and more.Featuring:
Shahul Es – GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
RagasUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 29 Aug 2024 - 285 - Threat modeling LLM apps
If you have questions at the intersection of Cybersecurity and AI, you need to know Donato at WithSecure! Donato has been threat modeling AI applications and seriously applying those models in his day-to-day work. He joins us in this episode to discuss his LLM application security canvas, prompt injections, alignment, and more.
Sponsors:
Assembly AI – Turn voice data into summaries with AssemblyAI’s leading Speech AI models. Built by AI experts, their Speech AI models include accurate speech-to-text for voice data (such as calls, virtual meetings, and podcasts), speaker detection, sentiment analysis, chapter detection, PII redaction, and more. Porkbun – Go to porkbun.com to get .app, .dev, or .foo domain names at Porkbun for only $1 for the first year! Changelog News – A podcast+newsletter combo that’s brief, entertaining & always on-point. Subscribe today.Featuring:
Donato Capitella – WebsiteDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
The Security Canvas for LLM ApplicationsLLM Security Chronicles Playlist on YouTubeShould you let ChatGPT control your browser?When your AI assistant has an evil twinPliny the Liberator - jailbreak guruUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Thu, 22 Aug 2024 - 284 - Only as good as the data
You might have heard that “AI is only as good as the data.” What does that mean and what data are we talking about? Chris and Daniel dig into that topic in the episode exploring the categories of data that you might encounter working in AI (for training, testing, fine-tuning, benchmarks, etc.). They also discuss the latest developments in AI regulation with the EU’s AI Act coming into force.
Sponsors:
Assembly AI – Turn voice data into summaries with AssemblyAI’s leading Speech AI models. Built by AI experts, their Speech AI models include accurate speech-to-text for voice data (such as calls, virtual meetings, and podcasts), speaker detection, sentiment analysis, chapter detection, PII redaction, and more. Changelog News – A podcast+newsletter combo that’s brief, entertaining & always on-point. Subscribe today.Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 14 Aug 2024 - 283 - Gaudi processors & Intel's AI portfolio
There is an increasing desire for and effort towards GPU alternatives for AI workloads and an ability to run GenAI models on CPUs. Ben and Greg from Intel join us in this episode to help us understand Intel’s strategy as it related to AI along with related projects, hardware, and developer communities. We dig into Intel’s Gaudi processors, open source collaborations with Hugging Face, and AI on CPU/Xeon processors.
Sponsors:
Intel Innovation 2024 – Early bird registration is now open for Intel Innovation 2024 in San Jose, CA! Learn more OR registerMotific – Accelerate your GenAI adoption journey. Rapidly deliver trustworthy GenAI assistants. Learn more at motific.aiFeaturing:
Benjamin Consolvo – GitHub, LinkedIn, XGreg Serochi – LinkedInChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
Intel’s AI & Machine Learning Ecosystem Developer ResourcesIntel® Tiber™ Developer CloudIntel Gaudi AI ProcessorsOptimum HabanaOverview of AI tools from IntelOpenVINOCase Study: Prediction Guard De-Risks LLM Applications at ScaleHow Prediction Guard Delivers Trustworthy AI on Intel® Gaudi® 2 AI AcceleratorsUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 07 Aug 2024 - 282 - Broccoli AI at its best 🥦
We discussed “🥦 Broccoli AI” a couple weeks ago, which is the kind of AI that is actually good/healthy for a real world business. Bengsoon Chuah, a data scientist working in the energy sector, joins us to discuss developing and deploying NLP pipelines in that environment. We talk about good/healthy ways of introducing AI in a company that uses on-prem infrastructure, has few data science professionals, and operates in high risk environments.
Sponsors:
Intel Innovation 2024 – Early bird registration is now open for Intel Innovation 2024 in San Jose, CA! Learn more OR registerMotific – Accelerate your GenAI adoption journey. Rapidly deliver trustworthy GenAI assistants. Learn more at motific.aiFeaturing:
Bengsoon Chuah – GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
MLFlowPrefectDuckDBAgrillaUpcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 31 Jul 2024 - 281 - Hyperventilating over the Gartner AI Hype Cycle
This week Daniel & Chris hang with repeat guest and good friend Demetrios Brinkmann of the MLOps Community. Together they review, debate, and poke fun at the 2024 Gartner Hype Cycle chart for Artificial Intelligence. You are invited to join them in this light-hearted fun conversation about the state of hype in artificial intelligence.
Sponsors:
Intel Innovation 2024 – Early bird registration is now open for Intel Innovation 2024 in San Jose, CA! Learn more OR registerMotific – Accelerate your GenAI adoption journey. Rapidly deliver trustworthy GenAI assistants. Learn more at motific.aiFeaturing:
Demetrios Brinkmann – XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
MLOps CommunityMLOps Community PodcastGartner Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence, 2024Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!Wed, 24 Jul 2024
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