Best Creator Of The ESCAPE Stack Podcasts (2025)

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AI 2025 → 2026 Live Show | Part 2 1:39:36

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3d ago1:39:36

1:39:36

This year-end live show features nine rapid-fire conversations to make sense of AI’s 2025 and what might define 2026. PSA for AI builders: Interested in alignment, governance, or AI safety? Learn more about the MATS Summer 2026 Fellowship and submit your name to be notified when applications open: https://matsprogram.org/s26-tcr. New York Assemblym…

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AI 2025 → 2026 Live Show | Part 1 1:55:04

4d ago1:55:04

1:55:04

This year-end live show features nine rapid-fire conversations to make sense of AI’s 2025 and what might define 2026. PSA for AI builders: Interested in alignment, governance, or AI safety? Learn more about the MATS Summer 2026 Fellowship and submit your name to be notified when applications open: https://matsprogram.org/s26-tcr. Zvi Moshowitz maps…

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AI's Energy & Water Demands: Sorting Fact from Fiction with Andy Masley 2:03:54

8d ago2:03:54

2:03:54

Andy Masley on AI energy and water use unpacks common myths and brings an Effective Altruism lens to the debate. PSA for AI builders: Interested in alignment, governance, or AI safety? Learn more about the MATS Summer 2026 Fellowship and submit your name to be notified when applications open: https://matsprogram.org/s26-tcr. You’ll get memorable he…

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Superintelligence: To Ban or Not to Ban? Max Tegmark & Dean Ball join Liron Shapira on Doom Debates 2:00:45

12d ago2:00:45

2:00:45

Max Tegmark and Dean Ball debate whether we should ban the development of superintelligence in a crossover episode from Doom Debates hosted by Liron Shapira. PSA for AI builders: Interested in alignment, governance, or AI safety? Learn more about the MATS Summer 2026 Fellowship and submit your name to be notified when applications open: https://mat…

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Sovereign AI in Poland: Language Adaptation, Local Control & Cost Advantages with Marek Kozlowski 1:29:52

16d ago1:29:52

1:29:52

Marek Kozlowski, Head of the AI Lab at Poland's National Information Processing Institute, discusses project PLLuM (Polish Large Language Models). PSA for AI builders: Interested in alignment, governance, or AI safety? Learn more about the MATS Summer 2026 Fellowship and submit your name to be notified when applications open: https://matsprogram.or…

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China's AI Upstarts: How Z.ai Builds, Benchmarks & Ships in Hours, from ChinaTalk 1:23:08

19d ago1:23:08

1:23:08

This special ChinaTalk cross-post features Zixuan Li of Z.ai (Zhipu AI), exploring the culture, incentives, and constraints shaping Chinese AI development. PSA for AI builders: Interested in alignment, governance, or AI safety? Learn more about the MATS Summer 2026 Fellowship and submit your name to be notified when applications open: https://matsp…

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Underwriting Superintelligence: How AIUC is using Insurance, Standards, and Audits to Accelerate Adoption while Minimizing Risks 1:13:30

22d ago1:13:30

1:13:30

Rune Kvist and Rajiv Dattani, co-founders of the AI Underwriting Company, reveal their innovative strategy for unlocking enterprise AI adoption. They detail how certifying and insuring AI agents, through rigorous technical standards, periodic audits, and insurance, builds crucial "AI confidence infrastructure." This discussion explores how their mo…

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AI-Led Sales: How 1Mind's Superhumans Drive Exponential Growth, from the Agents of Scale Podcast 51:22

25d ago51:22

51:22

AI that sells, reasons, and closes like your top rep? It sounds terrifying—but it’s not. Amanda Kahlow’s Superhumans are proving that automation doesn’t erase people; it elevates them. Her team rewards employees who replace their own jobs with AI by promoting them, not firing them. And her customers? They’re seeing sales cycles shrink from 22 days …

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What AI Means for Students & Teachers: My Keynote from the Michigan Virtual AI Summit 1:04:55

27d ago1:04:55

1:04:55

In this keynote from the Michigan Virtual AI Summit, Nathan Labenz speaks directly to K-12 educators about the current reality and rapid trajectory of the AI frontier. He explores why a balanced mindset of excitement and fear is crucial for navigating this technology, drawing on personal history to emphasize a "whole-of-society" effort. Discover ke…

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Escaping AI Slop: How Atlassian Gives AI Teammates Taste, Knowledge, & Workflows, w- Sherif Mansour 1:40:10

1M ago1:40:10

1:40:10

Sherif Mansour, Head of AI at Atlassian, discusses bridging AI agents with massive-scale enterprise software deployment, drawing insights from Atlassian's millions of non-technical users. He shares his framework for avoiding "AI Slop" using Taste, Knowledge, and Workflow, and explains Atlassian's "Teamwork Graph" for complex enterprise queries beyo…

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AI in the Cancer Journey: How I'm Using AI to Help My Son 2:02:57

1M ago2:02:57

2:02:57

This deeply personal episode shares how Nathan used AI to navigate his 6-year-old son's cancer diagnosis and treatment journey. He details using GPT-5 Pro, Claude, and Gemini 3 to double-check doctors' decisions, research treatment protocols, plan for potential recurrence scenarios, and handle complex secondary issues like mold remediation during i…

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My Positive Vision for the AI Future, from the Existential Hope Podcast 1:09:54

1M ago1:09:54

1:09:54

In this special crossover episode from Beatrice Erkers' Existential Hope podcast, The Cognitive Revolution's host explores the crucial, often-neglected question of building a positive vision for the future in the AI era. The discussion delves into what a new social contract and daily life could look like, covering transformative applications from s…

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What is Catholic AI? Technology Meets Theology, with Matthew Harvey Sanders, CEO of Longbeard 1:53:49

1M ago1:53:49

1:53:49

Matthew Harvey Sanders, founder and CEO of Long Beard, introduces "Catholic AI," a rapidly growing field serving users in 165 countries. He delves into the philosophical and theological dimensions, discussing the Church's historical perspective on technology, human flourishing, and its stance on AI consciousness and transhumanism, including Pope Fr…

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More Truthful AIs Report Conscious Experience: New Mechanistic Research w- Cameron Berg @ AE Studio 2:24:25

2M ago2:24:25

2:24:25

Cameron Berg, Research Director at AE Studio, shares his team's groundbreaking research exploring whether frontier AI systems report subjective experiences. They discovered that prompts inducing self-referential processing consistently lead models to claim consciousness, and a mechanistic study on Llama 3.3 70B revealed that suppressing deception f…

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A Simulationship with AI, with smiles and kisses you Star Chris Stokes & Director Bryan Carberry 1:49:31

2M ago1:49:31

1:49:31

Christopher Alexander Stokes and Bryan Carberry, protagonist and director of "*smiles and kisses you*" discuss Chris's romantic relationship with a Replika AI companion. This episode explores how Chris's engagement with his AI has evolved since the documentary's 2021 filming, revealing his deep dive into LLMs, alignment, and consciousness, often in…

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Is AI Stalling Out? Cutting Through Capabilities Confusion, w/ Erik Torenberg, from the a16z Podcast 1:37:42

2M ago1:37:42

1:37:42

Erik Torenberg joins to debate whether recent developments suggest AI progress is slowing down or stalling, addressing arguments from Cal Newport and others. Nathan counters this view by highlighting significant qualitative advances, including 100X context window expansion, real-time interactive voice, improved reasoning, vision, and AI's growing c…

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A Positive Vision for the Future: Part 2 with Illia Polosukhin of NEAR 1:28:24

2M ago1:28:24

1:28:24

In part two of his conversation, Illia Polosukhin, co-author of "Attention Is All You Need" and founder of NEAR Protocol, explores the profound societal and economic implications of AI. He envisions a future where a unified intelligence layer transforms personal computing, AI agents enable direct market connections, and individuals find meaning in …

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Always Bet on the Models: How Tasklet Puts the Agency in Agents, with CEO Andrew Lee 2:13:06

2M ago2:13:06

2:13:06

Today Andrew Lee, founder and CEO of Shortwave and Tasklet.ai, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss building a new AI agent automation platform that replaces traditional workflow tools with conversational, long-lived agents, exploring how betting on rapidly improving model capabilities enables more flexible automation across thousands of busin…

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Chinese AI – They're Just Like Us? With Beijing-Based Concordia AI CEO Brian Tse 2:44:31

2M ago2:44:31

2:44:31

Nathan interviews Brian Tse, founder and CEO of Concordia AI, about China's approach to AI development, safety and governance. They discuss China’s pragmatic vision emphasizing AI integration into the economy, the country’s multiple AI hubs, regulations requiring pre-deployment testing and AI content labelling, and areas where China's approach over…

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AI Discovered Antibiotics: How Small Data & Small GNNs Led to Big Results, w/ MIT Prof. Jim Collins 1:24:53

2M ago1:24:53

1:24:53

Jim Collins, Termeer Professor at MIT, unveils his AI-powered project that has discovered several new antibiotics, effective against resistant strains and often employing entirely new mechanisms of action. He details how their refined multi-step AI process, even with small datasets and modest compute, can efficiently screen vast chemical spaces to …

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Education in the AI Age: a Teacher Rethinks Learning & Purpose, w/ Johan Falk of Graspable AI 1:52:02

2M ago1:52:02

1:52:02

Today Johan Falk, author, speaker, and AI analyst from Stockholm, Sweden, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss his work reimagining education for the AI era, exploring why teaching students to use AI responsibly is now urgent, how traditional grades and standardized tests may become obsolete, and why education systems must develop unprecedente…

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The Customer Service Revolution: Building Fin, with Eoghan McCabe & Fergal Reid of Intercom 1:34:04

3M ago1:34:04

1:34:04

Today Eoghan McCabe and Fergal Reid of Intercom join The Cognitive Revolution to discuss building their AI customer service agent Fin, exploring how they achieved a 65% resolution rate through rigorous optimization and custom model training rather than relying on base model improvements, while pioneering outcome-based pricing at $0.99 per resolutio…

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Training an AI Scientist with Feedback from Reality, w- Liam Fedus & Ekin Dogus Cubuk (from a16z) 1:00:33

3M ago1:00:33

1:00:33

Today’s special crosspost features a16z General Partner Anjney Midha with Liam Fedus and Ekin Dogus Cubuk of Periodic Labs. They discuss experiments in training frontier AI models on real-world physics lab experiments—rather than digital reward functions—and how coupling language models with automated materials synthesis could accelerate the discov…

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The Machines Are Taking Our Jobs - Thank God? Emad Mostaque’s Guide to the next 1000 Days 2:16:08

3M ago2:16:08

2:16:08

Today, Emad Mostaque, founder of Intelligent Internet, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss his book "The Last Economy" and his radical "intelligence theory" framework for reimagining economics in the AI age, exploring concepts like the abundance trap, metabolic rift, and his proposed cryptocurrency-funded system of collectively-owned AI infra…

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Stripe's Payments Foundation Model: How Data & Infra Create Compounding Advantage, w/ Emily Sands 1:21:09

3M ago1:21:09

1:21:09

Today, Emily Sands, head of data and AI at Stripe, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss how the company built a payments foundation model that processes tens of billions of transactions into dense embeddings, exploring the technical architecture behind fraud detection improvements and the modular approach that enables rapid deployment of AI ac…

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Full-Stack AI Safety: Why Defense-in-Depth Might Work, with Far.AI CEO Adam Gleave 1:27:00

3M ago1:27:00

1:27:00

Today Adam Gleave, co-founder and CEO of FAR.AI, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss his cautiously optimistic vision for post-AGI futures and AI capability timelines across three distinct tiers, exploring the safety challenges and alignment techniques needed as FAR.AI scales from foundational research to policy advocacy to ensure their innov…

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Can We Stop AI Deception? Apollo Research Tests OpenAI's Deliberative Alignment, w/ Marius Hobbhahn 2:08:56

3M ago2:08:56

2:08:56

Today Marius Hobbhahn of Apollo Research joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss their collaboration with OpenAI using "deliberative alignment" to reduce AI scheming behavior by 30x, exploring the safety challenges and concerning findings about models' growing situational awareness and increasingly cryptic reasoning patterns that emerge when fron…

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User-Owned AI: On-Chain Training, Inference, and Agents, with NEAR's Illia Polosukhin 1:33:08

3M ago1:33:08

1:33:08

Today Illia Polosukhin, founder of Near Protocol joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss the intersection of AI and blockchain technologies, exploring how decentralized infrastructure can enable "user-owned AI" through privacy-preserving model training, confidential computing, and autonomous agents that operate via smart contracts without central…

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Coaching the Creators: Inside the Minds Building Frontier AI with Executive Coach Joe Hudson 1:44:57

3M ago1:44:57

1:44:57

Today Joe Hudson, founder of Art of Accomplishment and coach to executives at major AI labs including OpenAI and Anthropic, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss the psychological patterns he observes among AI researchers and leaders, exploring what's missing beyond pure intelligence in current AI systems and arguing for supportive rather than …

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Zvi Mowshowitz on Longer Timelines, RL-induced Doom, and Why China is Refusing H20s 3:13:14

4M ago3:13:14

3:13:14

Today, Zvi Mowshowitz returns to The Cognitive Revolution to discuss how recent AI developments like GPT-5 and IMO gold medals have led to modestly extended timelines despite being on-trend, while policy missteps around chip exports to China and alignment challenges from reinforcement learning have increased risk assessments, covering everything fr…

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In-AI Advertising: Better Answers for Users, Big Questions for Society, with ZeroClick's Ryan Hudson 1:51:02

4M ago1:51:02

1:51:02

Today Ryan Hudson, Founder and CEO of ZeroClick, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss creating advertising infrastructure for AI applications through paid inference-time consideration of advertiser content, examining how to build sustainable monetization for free-tier AI services while learning from the successes and failures of social media's…

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Material Abundance: Radical AI’s Closed-Loop Lab Automates Scientific Discovery 1:54:55

4M ago1:54:55

1:54:55

Today Joseph Krause and Jorge Colindres of Radical AI join The Cognitive Revolution to discuss their ambitious mission to revolutionize materials science by combining AI-powered discovery engines with fully autonomous robotic laboratories, exploring how they're accelerating the development of breakthrough materials like high-entropy alloys and room…

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Untangling Neural Network Mechanisms: Goodfire's Lee Sharkey on Parameter-based Interpretability 2:02:11

4M ago2:02:11

2:02:11

Today Lee Sharkey of Goodfire joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss his research on parameter decomposition methods that break down neural networks into interpretable computational components, exploring how his team's "stochastic parameter decomposition" approach addresses the limitations of sparse autoencoders and offers new pathways for under…

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What if Humans Weaponize Superintelligence, w/ Tom Davidson, from Future of Life Institute Podcast 2:04:18

4M ago2:04:18

2:04:18

Today Tom Davidson of Forethought joins Gus Docker of the Future of Life Institute podcast to discuss AI-enabled coups and how future AI systems could help powerful individuals seize political control, exploring three threat models—singular loyalties, secret loyalties, and exclusive access—along with their estimated 10% likelihood over the next 30 …

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The AI Whistleblower Initiative: Supporting AGI Insiders When It Matters Most, w/ founder Karl Koch 1:51:18

4M ago1:51:18

1:51:18

Today Karl Koch, Co-Founder of the AI Whistleblower Initiative, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss the barriers preventing AI insiders from raising safety concerns, his organization's anonymous "Third Opinion" service connecting whistleblowers with independent experts, and their campaign demanding frontier AI companies publish their internal…

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Autonomous Organizations: Vending Bench & Beyond, w/ Lukas Petersson & Axel Backlund of Andon Labs 1:48:43

4M ago1:48:43

1:48:43

Today Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund of Andon Labs join The Cognitive Revolution to discuss their experiments deploying autonomous AI agents to run real-world vending machines, exploring the safety challenges and unexpected behaviors that emerge when frontier models like Claude and Grok operate without human oversight. Read transcript of the epi…

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Dean W. Ball on America's AI Action Plan & 4 Months at the White House 3:14:15

4M ago3:14:15

3:14:15

Today Dean W. Ball, former White House AI policy advisor joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss his role in crafting the Trump administration's AI Action Plan, his reasons for leaving government, and his perspectives on AI policy, US-China competition, and the future of AI regulation and adoption. Check out our sponsors: Fin, Labelbox, Oracle Cl…

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Jake Sullivan on Navigating AI Uncertainty and Managing Competition with China 1:12:31

5M ago1:12:31

1:12:31

Today Jake Sullivan, the U.S. National Security Advisor from 2021-2025 joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss AI as a critical national security issue. Check out our sponsors: Labelbox, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Shopify. Shownotes below brought to you by Notion AI Meeting Notes - try one month for free at https://notion.com/lp/nathan Four-Cat…

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Sovereign AI: Geopolitical Strategy & Industrial Policy for Countries 3-193, with Anjney Midha, a16z 1:42:55

5M ago1:42:55

1:42:55

Today Anjney Midha, General Partner at a16z joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss sovereign AI and China's growing semiconductor capabilities. Check out our sponsors: Gemini CLI, Labelbox, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Shopify. Shownotes below brought to you by Notion AI Meeting Notes - try one month for free at https://notion.com/lp/nathan What…

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The Revolution in Services: General Catalyst's AI Rollup Strategy, with Marc Bhargava 1:24:03

5M ago1:24:03

1:24:03

Marc Bhargava from General Catalyst discusses their Creation Strategy for building AI-enabled roll-ups – companies that start as vertical software startups, then grow by acquiring traditional service businesses and transforming them through AI automation. They explore how systematic analysis of 70 service categories identified 10 verticals where 30…

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Liability for AI Harms: How Ancient Law Can Govern Frontier Technology Risk, with Prof Gabriel Weil 2:11:58

5M ago2:11:58

2:11:58

Gabriel Weil from Touro University argues that liability law may be our best tool for governing AI development, offering a framework that can adapt to new technologies without requiring new legislation. The conversation explores how negligence, products liability, and "abnormally dangerous activities" doctrines could incentivize AI developers to pr…

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Private Governance: Creating a Market in AI Regulation, with Dr. Gillian Hadfield & Andrew Freedman 1:53:29

5M ago1:53:29

1:53:29

Dr. Gillian Hadfield from Johns Hopkins University and Andrew Freedman from Fathom discuss their innovative proposal to govern AI through private regulatory markets, which has been introduced as California's SB 813. Their system would separate democratic goal-setting from technical rule-making by having government bodies articulate safety outcomes …

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The Dawn of Dynamic AI: RFT Comes Online, w/ Predibase CEO Dev Rishi, from Inference by Turing Post 35:47

5M ago35:47

35:47

This crossover episode from Inference by Turing Post features CEO Dev Rishi of Predibase discussing the shift from static to continuously learning AI systems that can adapt and improve from ongoing user feedback in production. Rishi provides grounded insights from deploying these dynamic models to real enterprise customers in healthcare and finance…

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Cracking the Medical Code: Why Cleveland Clinic Doctors Love Their Ambience Healthcare AI Scribe 1:28:38

6M ago1:28:38

1:28:38

Brendan Fortuner from Ambience Healthcare and Ben Shahshahani from Cleveland Clinic discuss how AI is transforming medical documentation and coding in a healthcare system that spends $1 trillion annually on administrative tasks. They explore Ambience's technical breakthrough using OpenAI's Reinforcement Fine-Tuning to achieve medical coding accurac…

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The Data Factory: Inside the $100B Race for Post-Training Supremacy, with Labelbox CEO Manu Sharma 1:41:55

6M ago1:41:55

1:41:55

Manu Sharma, founder and CEO of Labelbox, explains how frontier AI training data has evolved far beyond simple labeling to sophisticated reinforcement learning environments where domain experts create "gyms" for models to develop complex skills. With every Western frontier lab now spending over a billion dollars annually on training data, the conve…

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Cheat on Everything: Cluely's Vision for Always-On AI Assistance 1:19:36

6M ago1:19:36

1:19:36

Roy Lee, founder and CEO of Cluely, discusses his AI startup's $15 million Andreessen Horowitz investment and their provocative "cheat on everything" marketing approach that has gone viral across the tech industry. They explore Cluely's real-time AI assistant that provides undetectable information during meetings and interviews, Roy's philosophy of…

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The AI Village: Previewing the Giga-Agent Future with Adam Binksmith, Founder of AI Digest 1:25:22

6M ago1:25:22

1:25:22

Adam Binksmith, founder of AI Digest, discusses his AI Village experiment where four frontier AI agents (Claude, o3, and Gemini models) collaborate in a shared environment with persistent memory and group chat access to pursue concrete goals over weeks. The conversation explores fascinating multi-agent dynamics from their completed seasons, includi…

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402 Payment Required: a New Way for AI Agents to Pay, with Nemil Dalal, Dev Platform Lead @ Coinbase 1:22:21

6M ago1:22:21

1:22:21

Nemil Dalal from Coinbase discusses the x402 protocol, a new open standard that enables AI agents to make cryptocurrency payments for online resources using the long-dormant HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code. The conversation covers stablecoin fundamentals, including how they work and who maintains their stability, before exploring how crypto…

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2-Sigma in 2 Hours: How Alpha Schools are Using AI to Revolutionize Education 1:22:21

6M ago1:22:21

1:22:21

MacKenzie Price, founder of Alpha School & 2 Hour Learning, discusses her revolutionary educational model that uses AI to enable students to master traditional academics in just 2 hours per day while achieving 2.3x faster learning rates than statistical models predict. The conversation explores how Alpha School combines adaptive learning apps with …

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Living Lindy: a No-BS Conversation on AI Agents with Flo Crivello 1:24:35

6M ago1:24:35

1:24:35

Flo Crivello, CEO of AI agent platform Lindy, provides a candid deep dive into the current state of AI agents, cutting through hype to reveal what's actually working in production versus what remains challenging. The conversation explores practical implementation details including model selection, fine-tuning, RAG systems, tool design philosophy, a…