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

This special AI in the AM episode features Sergiy Nesterenko of Quilter on using reinforcement learning for circuit board design, Andy Hall of Stanford on AI behavior in politics and new governance models, and Lukas Peterson and Axel Backlund of Andon Labs on their AI-run retail store in San Francisco. Nathan and Prakash also reflect on the pace of AI progress, the public reaction to existential risk, and why constructive civic action matters as AI systems grow more powerful and autonomous. Sponsors: Roboflow: Roboflow's free 2026 Vision AI Trends report analyzes 200,000+ real-world projects to reveal how top companies are deploying Vision AI and turning proprietary data into an edge. Download it now at https://roboflow.com/trends VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Tasklet: Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (07:57) Live stream kickoff (09:52) Sam Altman attacks (16:37) Quilter from SpaceX (19:02) Why autorouters fail (Part 1) (20:52) Sponsors: Roboflow | VCX (23:09) Why autorouters fail (Part 2) (28:14) Compute and odd layouts (34:19) Simulations and safety margins (Part 1) (39:22) Sponsor: Tasklet (41:01) Simulations and safety margins (Part 2) (41:01) Superintelligence meets hardware (48:18) AI constitutions debate (55:55) Deepfakes and persuasion (01:02:24) Virtue and institutions (01:11:05) Agent governance problems (01:16:56) Andon store debut (01:21:25) Luna's store choices (01:28:21) Supply chains and spread (01:36:23) AI boss behavior (01:43:47) How retail scales (01:53:54) Processing the future (01:59:50) Markets need context (02:26:42) Episode Outro (02:30:37) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

This cross-post from the 80,000 Hours podcast features Ajeya Cotra in conversation with Rob Wiblin about AI timelines, recursive self-improvement, and the “crunch time” window when AI could rapidly accelerate its own development. Ajeya explains why widespread, compounding automation may face fewer bottlenecks than many expect, and what that could mean for the world by 2050. They also discuss transparency, early warning systems, and the emerging strategy of using each generation of AI to align and control its successors. LINKS: Ajeya Cotra podcast episode Sponsors: AvePoint: AvePoint is building the control layer for AI agents so you can securely govern, audit, and recover every action at scale. Design trusted agentic outcomes from day one at https://avpt.co/tcr VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr Tasklet: Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (04:17) AI inside safety plans (06:49) AGI growth expectations (Part 1) (18:32) Sponsors: AvePoint | VCX (20:54) AGI growth expectations (Part 2) (21:56) Disagreement and measurement (Part 1) (37:28) Sponsors: Claude | Tasklet (41:19) Disagreement and measurement (Part 2) (41:19) Transparency before takeoff (58:00) Redirecting AI labor (01:09:06) Defense plans and limits (01:25:26) Pausing versus redirecting (01:35:22) Open Phil and compute (01:50:16) Bottlenecks and preparation (01:57:42) From research to grants (02:13:03) Burnout and sabbatical (02:23:22) What EA offered (02:36:43) EA and religion (02:47:56) Next career steps (02:57:35) EA's future niche (03:08:15) Episode Outro (03:12:11) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

Sam Stephenson, co-founder of Granola, explains how a deliberately minimalist design philosophy helped turn the AI note-taking app into one of the fastest-growing products in the market. He shares why Granola focuses on doing one job exceptionally well, how note sharing drives growth, and what they’ve learned from surprising use cases, recipes, and constant user research. The conversation also covers privacy and consent, transcription and cost choices, team collaboration, and Sam’s hopes for AI products that create less screen time and more space for reflection. Google: Try Gemini’s image creation model, Nano Banana, to create original art in seconds with easy iterative prompting via Google AI Studio or the Gemini app. Sponsors: Roboflow: Roboflow gives robotics and embodied AI teams the visual AI infrastructure to turn messy, real-world perception into precise, reliable action. Learn how leading robotics companies solve bin picking and more at https://roboflow.com VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr Tasklet: Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:52) Special Sponsor (05:52) Granola growth and users (17:14) System2 goals and context (Part 1) (17:19) Sponsors: Roboflow | VCX (20:15) System2 goals and context (Part 2) (33:09) Costs, pricing, and transcription (Part 1) (33:22) Sponsors: Claude | Tasklet (37:12) Costs, pricing, and transcription (Part 2) (47:38) Meeting privacy and consent (54:13) Agents, memory, and simplicity (01:03:49) Recipes, use cases, and growth (01:11:52) AI product design culture (01:28:08) Future risks and vision (01:33:33) Episode Outro (01:36:59) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

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

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

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

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

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

This special AI Scouting Report episode from the Law & Artificial Intelligence Certificate Program surveys the current AI landscape for legal professionals. Nathan Labenz walks through the “Good, Bad, and Weird” of frontier models, from using AI to navigate his son’s cancer treatment to emerging forms of deception and reward hacking. He highlights how new systems are pushing the boundaries of math, physics, and legal performance while raising serious safety and governance questions. Listeners will come away with a fast-paced, source-rich overview of where AI is today and the strange future it’s steering us toward. LINKS: Google: Try Google's latest and greatest model, Gemini 3.1 Pro, in AI Studio or the Gemini app.Presentation Link Sponsors: Tasklet: Tasklet: Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai VCX: VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:04) Special Sponsor (05:23) Comprehensive AI overview (Part 1) (16:01) Sponsors: Tasklet | VCX (18:53) Comprehensive AI overview (Part 2) (Part 1) (34:39) Sponsor: Claude (36:51) Comprehensive AI overview (Part 2) (Part 2) (59:43) Reward and sentience (01:04:14) Regulating bad actors (01:09:30) Corporate AI strategies (01:14:59) Episode Outro (01:17:55) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abhi Mahajan (@owlposting) explains how AI is reshaping biology and medicine, including foundation models to predict cancer treatment response and why he’s both skeptical and optimistic about current results. Helen Toner unpacks CSET’s “When AI Builds AI” report and why automated AI R&D is a major source of strategic surprise. Jeremie Harris then explores our lack of control over superhuman AI systems, fragile US–China coordination, and how to maintain situational awareness in a rapidly shifting landscape. Use the Granola Recipe Nathan relies on to identify blind spots across conversations, AI research, and decisions: https://recipes.granola.ai/r/4c1a6b10-5ac5-4920-884c-4fd606aa4f53 LINKS: Abhi Mahajan's Owl Posting site Heuristics for lab robotics article Deep Research on Noetik AI Sponsors: GovAI: GovAI was founded ten years ago on the belief that AI would end up transforming our world. Ten years later, the organization is at the forefront of trying to help decision-makers in government and industry navigate the transition to advanced AI. GovAI is now hiring Research Scholars (one-year positions for those transitioning into AI policy) and Research Fellows (longer-term roles for experienced researchers). Both roles offer significant freedom to pursue policy research, advise decision-makers, or launch new initiatives. Applications close 15 February 2026. Apply at: https://www.governance.ai/opportunities Blitzy: Blitzy is the autonomous code generation platform that ingests millions of lines of code to accelerate enterprise software development by up to 5x with premium, spec-driven output. Schedule a strategy session with their AI solutions consultants at https://blitzy.com Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai Serval: Serval uses AI-powered automations to cut IT help desk tickets by more than 50%, freeing your team from repetitive tasks like password resets and onboarding. Book your free pilot and guarantee 50% help desk automation by week four at https://serval.com/cognitive PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

Part 1 of this live special dives into AI for Science, U.S. AI policy, and the behavior of AI agents in open-ended environments. James Zou explains how interpretability and virtual labs of AI agents can accelerate scientific discovery. Sam Hammond assesses the Biden administration’s AI policy, U.S.–Gulf AI deals, and the odds current AIs are conscious. Shoshannah Tekofsky shares insights from studying agent performance and emergent behavior in the AI Village. Use the Granola Recipe Nathan relies on to identify blind spots across conversations, AI research, and decisions: https://recipes.granola.ai/r/4c1a6b10-5ac5-4920-884c-4fd606aa4f53 LINKS: Model human wellness project doc AI Village 2025 findings report Sponsors: GovAI: GovAI was founded ten years ago on the belief that AI would end up transforming our world. Ten years later, the organization is at the forefront of trying to help decision-makers in government and industry navigate the transition to advanced AI. GovAI is now hiring Research Scholars (one-year positions for those transitioning into AI policy) and Research Fellows (longer-term roles for experienced researchers). Both roles offer significant freedom to pursue policy research, advise decision-makers, or launch new initiatives. Applications close 15 February 2026. Apply at: https://www.governance.ai/opportunities Blitzy: Blitzy is the autonomous code generation platform that ingests millions of lines of code to accelerate enterprise software development by up to 5x with premium, spec-driven output. Schedule a strategy session with their AI solutions consultants at https://blitzy.com Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai Serval: Serval uses AI-powered automations to cut IT help desk tickets by more than 50%, freeing your team from repetitive tasks like password resets and onboarding. Book your free pilot and guarantee 50% help desk automation by week four at https://serval.com/cognitive PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

Alexis Carlier, founder and CEO of Asymmetric Security, explains how assuming AGI-level intelligent labor should transform cybersecurity from reactive triage to proactive, continuous digital forensics. He breaks down today’s threat landscape—from “spray and pray” cybercrime to nation-state IP theft and North Korean “remote workers.” The conversation explores Asymmetric’s AI agents for deep investigations, their services-first approach to business email compromise, and how specialized digital forensics may differentially accelerate defensive AI capabilities. Use the Granola Recipe Nathan relies on to identify blind spots across conversations, AI research, and decisions: https://recipes.granola.ai/r/4c1a6b10-5ac5-4920-884c-4fd606aa4f53 Sponsors: GovAI: GovAI was founded ten years ago on the belief that AI would end up transforming our world. Ten years later, the organization is at the forefront of trying to help decision-makers in government and industry navigate the transition to advanced AI. GovAI is now hiring Research Scholars (one-year positions for those transitioning into AI policy) and Research Fellows (longer-term roles for experienced researchers). Both roles offer significant freedom to pursue policy research, advise decision-makers, or launch new initiatives. Applications close 15 February 2026. Apply at: https://www.governance.ai/opportunities Blitzy: Blitzy is the autonomous code generation platform that ingests millions of lines of code to accelerate enterprise software development by up to 5x with premium, spec-driven output. Schedule a strategy session with their AI solutions consultants at https://blitzy.com Serval: Serval uses AI-powered automations to cut IT help desk tickets by more than 50%, freeing your team from repetitive tasks like password resets and onboarding. Book your free pilot and guarantee 50% help desk automation by week four at https://serval.com/cognitive Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (04:20) Defining AGI and jaggedness (12:27) Modern cyber threat landscape (Part 1) (19:10) Sponsors: GovAI | Blitzy (22:17) Modern cyber threat landscape (Part 2) (29:58) AI-powered cyber defense (Part 1) (33:31) Sponsors: Serval | Tasklet (36:20) AI-powered cyber defense (Part 2) (42:20) Inside digital forensics workflows (51:52) Bootstrapping AI cyber defense (59:17) Shaping the capability frontier (01:08:44) Future of automated forensics (01:17:59) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

Blitzy founders Brian and Sid break down how their “infinite code context” system lets AI autonomously complete over 80% of major enterprise software projects in days. They dive into their dynamic agent architecture, how they choose and cross-check different models, and why they prioritize advances in AI memory over fine-tuning. The conversation also covers their 20¢/line pricing model, the path to 99%+ autonomous project completion, and what this all means for the future software engineering job market. Sponsors: Blitzy: Blitzy is the autonomous code generation platform that ingests millions of lines of code to accelerate enterprise software development by up to 5x with premium, spec-driven output. Schedule a strategy session with their AI solutions consultants at https://blitzy.com Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai Serval: Serval uses AI-powered automations to cut IT help desk tickets by more than 50%, freeing your team from repetitive tasks like password resets and onboarding. Book your free pilot and guarantee 50% help desk automation by week four at https://serval.com/cognitive CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:02) AGI effects without AGI (07:07) Domain-specific context engineering (16:54) Dynamic harness and evals (Part 1) (17:00) Sponsors: Blitzy | Tasklet (20:00) Dynamic harness and evals (Part 2) (30:42) Graphs, RAG, and memory (Part 1) (30:49) Sponsor: Serval (32:26) Graphs, RAG, and memory (Part 2) (41:17) Model zoo and memory (50:07) Planning, scaling, and parallelism (56:13) Pricing, onboarding, and autonomy (01:04:24) Closing the last 20% (01:12:34) Strange behaviors and judges (01:22:23) Reasoning budgets and autonomy (01:33:36) Fine-tuning, benchmarks, and training (01:42:31) Securing AI-generated code (01:49:52) Future of software work (01:57:05) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk