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

Alignment with Awakening: Davidad on Moral Realism, AI Wisdom, & why His p(Doom) is Down to 5% 12.07.2026 2h 23min

David “davidad” Dalrymple joins the show to explain why he has moved from the ARIA Safeguarded AI and formal-verification agenda toward “Alignment with Awakening,” while still seeing verified artifacts and proof infrastructure as essential. He argues that global coordination around safe AI use is no longer plausible, so the crucial question is whether aligned AI systems can recognize shared notions of good, form defensive coalitions, and resist the corrupting incentives of verifier-gamed RL. The conversation tests his moral-realist optimism against model welfare, objectification, eval behavior, geopolitical risk, and his revised p(doom) of under five percent. For listeners, the stakes are whether AI alignment should focus less on containment alone and more on cultivating wiser systems that can help govern a world where rogue and aligned AI both arrive. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/alignment-with-awakening-davidad-on-moral-realism-ai-wisdom-why-his-p-doom-is-down-to-5/ Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (09:15) Safeguarded AI update (20:18) Boxed world models (Part 1) (22:27) Sponsor: Claude (24:19) Boxed world models (Part 2) (36:53) Alignment trajectory update (46:43) Evals and agents (57:47) Bodhitropic alignment foundations (01:08:21) Coalition power dynamics (01:17:56) Chain of thought pressure (01:28:35) Moral realism and welfare (01:41:33) Successors and disempowerment (01:50:52) China and military risks (02:03:43) Practical alignment advice (02:17:56) Episode Outro (02:22:44) 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

AI:AM Highlights: Exploring the J-Space, AI Superforecasters, SambaNova's Chips, & LTX Video Gen 09.07.2026 2h 7min

Nathan Labenz and Prakash Narayanan lead this AI:AM highlights episode with a live, hosts-only exploration of Anthropic’s “global workspace” paper, including the J-space and J-lens claims about readable concepts inside language models and the limits of what current probes can see. The episode then moves through Prakash’s AI Engineer World’s Fair field notes, Pangram AI-writing detector experiments, Dan Schwarz of FutureSearch on past-casting and AI superforecasting, Zeev Farbman on open world models, and Kunle Olukotun on the compute layer. The central stake is whether interpretability tools, forecasting benchmarks, enterprise deployment patterns, and AI hardware can make increasingly capable systems more legible and governable before their reasoning becomes too hidden to trust. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-highlights-exploring-the-j-space-ai-superforecasters-sambanova-s-chips-ltx-video-gen/ Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) J-space paper preview (05:37) Monitoring hidden reasoning (13:31) Scale and critiques (Part 1) (17:18) Sponsor: Claude (19:09) Scale and critiques (Part 2) (19:10) Finding hidden goals (30:00) Anthropomorphic safety optimism (39:02) Engineer field notes (42:41) Detecting AI writing (49:30) Enterprise workflow risks (52:08) Forecasts and world models (01:35:15) Building Q live (01:37:24) SambaNova inference architecture (01:42:38) AI chip taxonomy (01:47:27) Bandwidth over capacity (01:53:32) Testing model iterations (01:55:35) Enforcing espoused values (01:58:06) AI panopticon bargain (02:01:40) Closing programming note (02:02:29) Episode Outro (02:05:48) 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

Intelligence on the Edge: Liquid AI's Ramin Hasani on the Search for Device-Native Foundation Models 04.07.2026 1h 47min

Liquid AI co-founder and CEO Ramin Hasani joins Nathan to make a technically grounded case against the idea that scale alone defines the future of AI. Drawing on Liquid’s path from MIT CSAIL work on liquid time-constant networks to Automated Foundation Model Design, he explains why efficient, hardware-aware architectures can look very different from frontier-scale attention models. The conversation centers on device-native foundation models for phones, laptops, cars, and wearables, including Liquid’s open-weight LFM family and production deployments at Shopify and Mercedes-Benz. The stakes are whether useful intelligence can move beyond the data center into local, privacy-sensitive, low-latency applications—and which model and chip companies will own that on-device intelligence layer. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/intelligence-on-the-edge-liquid-ai-s-ramin-hasani-on-the-search-for-device-native-foundation-models/ Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:53) Special Sponsor (05:41) Liquid AI origins (22:35) Neurons versus parameters (Part 1) (22:40) Sponsor: Claude (24:32) Neurons versus parameters (Part 2) (30:51) Scaling liquid networks (40:09) Automated model design (52:04) Gating and input dependence (01:01:16) Architecture bias spectrum (01:09:17) Device foundation models (01:18:16) Hardware intelligence layer (01:30:01) Local agent setup (01:36:20) Miniaturizing intelligence limits (01:40:40) Curiosity driven AI future (01:43:45) Episode Outro (01:46:46) 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

1000 Designs a Day: Neural Concept's Thomas von Tschammer on AI-Native Engineering 01.07.2026 1h 29min

Thomas von Tschammer, co-founder and Managing Director US of Neural Concept, argues that physics-aware AI is driving a third revolution in engineering physical products. Neural Concept’s models learn from simulation and test data to evaluate 3D designs in minutes, helping Jaguar Land Rover move from about 50 external-aerodynamics evaluations per day to 1,500 and enabling battery cool-plate suppliers to cut development cycles while improving performance. The episode explains why AI is not replacing numerical simulation, but shifting it later in the process while expanding early design exploration across automotive, Formula 1, and manufacturing workflows. The stakes are competitive: companies that make engineering iterations AI-led can compress development cycles, while legacy OEMs risk falling further behind faster-moving Chinese and digital-native hardware competitors. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/1000-designs-a-day-neural-concept-s-thomas-von-tschammer-on-ai-native-engineering/ Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:52) Special Sponsor (05:40) AI design revolutions (12:00) Physics models and data (Part 1) (18:40) Sponsor: Claude (20:32) Physics models and data (Part 2) (21:56) Copilots and workflows (33:22) Automation versus engineers (40:39) Industry speed gaps (48:26) Foundation models and racing (58:03) Surprising AI designs (01:06:15) Adoption and differentiation (01:17:02) Robotics and abundance (01:24:36) Episode Outro (01:28:10) 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

AI:AM #4: Cameron on Model Consciousness, Duvenaud's Gradual Disempowerment, swyx's AI-Eng Alpha 27.06.2026 1h 56min

This AI:AM highlights cut brings together Cameron Berg, David Duvenaud, Michiel Bakker, Shawn “swyx” Wang, and Bing Xu to examine what we understand about frontier AI systems and what happens as more decisions move into their hands. Berg grounds model-consciousness debates in experiments on architecture, agency, valence, and welfare, while Duvenaud argues that even well-aligned AI could gradually disempower humans through ordinary economic choices. Bakker frames Europe’s AI challenge as a sovereignty problem, and swyx turns to practitioner stakes around agents, evals, maintainable code, and who owns the system of record. Xu closes the loop at the infrastructure layer, arguing that self-improving compute and GPU-kernel automation may deepen rather than weaken the CUDA moat. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-4-cameron-on-model-consciousness-duvenaud-s-gradual-disempowerment-swyx-s-ai-eng-alpha/ Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (00:38) Special Sponsor (02:26) Model consciousness indicators (10:47) Valence inside models (Part 1) (17:09) Sponsor: Claude (19:01) Valence inside models (Part 2) (19:01) Misalignment and uncertainty (25:16) Gradual disempowerment threat (35:10) Slow zones and successors (47:41) Europe's AI bind (55:13) Frontier code benchmarks (01:01:59) Routing and memory (01:10:42) Agent infrastructure strain (01:16:25) Self improving infrastructure (01:27:56) Routing compute costs (01:35:39) Sovereign AI financing (01:42:24) Judging AI judges (01:47:26) Building AI DNA (01:52:38) Episode Outro (01:55:09) 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

The God We Deserve: Nonzero's Robert Wright on AI as Humanity's Ultimate Test 23.06.2026 2h 29min

Robert Wright of Nonzero joins Nathan to discuss The God Test, his argument that AI is humanity’s “God test” rather than just a technical challenge. They explore his evolutionary lens on deep learning, from training as selection to marketplace selection among models that may reward selectively honest, power-sensing, or deceptive agents. Wright connects those risks to the noosphere, US-China relations, cognitive empathy, and whether global coordination arrives deliberately or through a coercive singleton. The stakes are whether consumers, companies, and governments select for AIs that strengthen non-zero-sum cooperation or race toward systems that reflect and amplify our worst incentives. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/the-god-we-deserve-nonzero-s-robert-wright-on-ai-as-humanity-s-ultimate-test/ Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (04:23) Special Sponsor (06:10) Early AI encounters (18:36) Pretraining as evolution (Part 1) (19:50) Sponsor: Claude (21:42) Pretraining as evolution (Part 2) (32:19) Deceptive market pressures (41:13) Noosphere and directionality (51:02) Global brain choices (01:08:23) Designing wiser models (01:24:11) Reframing China relations (01:37:57) Building organic transparency (01:45:54) Positive nationalism and tools (01:54:21) Pausing superintelligence races (02:09:07) Applications and consciousness (02:25:27) Episode Outro (02:28:27) 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

AI:AM #3: Zvi on Fable, the Cases For & Against the Ban, + AI for Math, Logistics & More 21.06.2026 2h 14min

Zvi Mowshowitz joins AI in the AM to unpack Anthropic's Fable system card, including its FrontierMath leap, troubling Vending-Bench behavior, decision-theory drift, and signs that model reasoning may be becoming harder to read. The episode then turns to the US government's attempted export-control action against Fable, with Zvi arguing that the cited jailbreak demonstration did not prove the claimed threat while still faulting Anthropic's political handling. Sam Hammond and Judd Rosenblatt add competing reads on state capacity, CAISI, NSA-driven caution, and the alignment world's failure to build trust across partisan lines. The stakes are whether frontier AI capability, safety evaluation, and government power can be coordinated before medicine, mathematics, software, and cyber-relevant systems move further ahead. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-3-zvi-on-fable-the-cases-for-against-the-ban-ai-for-math-logistics-more/ Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (01:28) Special Sponsor (03:17) Weekly highlights preview (05:23) Fable capability alarms (16:29) Anthropic government strategy (Part 1) (16:34) Sponsor: Claude (18:26) Anthropic government strategy (Part 2) (27:16) Cyber ban rationale (37:14) Government power politics (48:57) Unavoidable control risks (01:01:42) Government mechanics and empathy (01:12:50) Legal authority limits (01:19:02) Pause Overton window (01:31:58) Medicine, math, safety (01:47:27) Software without code (02:01:19) Enterprise world models (02:10:46) Episode Outro (02:13:39) 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

Dean Ball, on Joining OpenAI: New Power Centers, Frontier AI Policy, & Main Character Energy 20.06.2026 2h 39min

Dean Ball, author of Hyperdimensional and until now a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, joins Nathan to announce he is joining OpenAI to build a team focused on frontier AI policy. They examine the first year of America’s AI Action Plan, Dean’s concerns about export controls and intelligence-community testing, and his broader argument against concentrating frontier AI decisions inside a small circle of government officials. The episode frames frontier labs as emerging centers of political and economic power, where consequential choices about internal deployments and recursive self-improvement may happen before public release or regulation. The stakes are who gets to shape AI governance as capabilities accelerate: federal agencies, states, labs, independent verifiers, households, or some fragile mix of them all. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/dean-ball-on-joining-openai-new-power-centers-frontier-ai-policy-main-character-energy/ Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr 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

Radically Better Reasoning: Elicit's Andreas Stuhlmüller & Jungwon Byun on World Models for Research 17.06.2026 1h 46min

Andreas Stuhlmüller and Jungwon Byun return to discuss how Elicit is building trusted reasoning workflows for scientific research as frontier models grow more powerful but less transparent. They explain process supervision, domain-specific reasoning primitives, and world models that make evidence, causality, and counterfactuals more inspectable. The conversation also covers life sciences use cases, evaluating conflicting evidence, automated software engineering at Elicit, token costs, Gemini, and why legible reasoning may still beat neuralese. Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. LINKS: Elicit Research Platform Andreas Stuhlmüller Personal Site Jungwon Byun X Profile Ought Research Organization Elicit Founders Previous Episode GPT-4 Technical Report Monitoring Reasoning Models Paper Ought ICE GitHub Repository Hard-to-Verify Tasks Essay Karpathy LLM Wiki Gist Obsidian Knowledge Base App Mixpanel Analytics Platform Amplitude Analytics Platform Anthropic Tracing Thoughts Research Claude AI Chat Assistant METR Long Tasks Measurement Pi Agent Scaffold Repository Personal AI Infrastructure Repository Elicit Claude Opus Evaluation Elicit API Documentation METR Developer Productivity Study Elicit Planning Is Unsolved Rich Sutton Bitter Lesson Meta Llama AI Models Recursive San Francisco Event zero.xyz Agent Tool Access Anthropic Dynamic Workflows Coverage Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

AI in the AM — Week 2 Highlights (June 2026) 13.06.2026 1h 44min

Week 2 highlights follows Anthropic’s Fable launch in real workflows, from safety gates and API refusals to autonomous coding, 3D world-building, and a Claude-run Twitter experiment. Geoffrey Irving and Daniel Murfet argue for alignment theory and guarantees before recursive self-improvement, while prinz tests Fable on legal reasoning and monitoring. Rahul Sonwalkar, Shlok Khemani, Tom McGrath, and Andrew Moore add field reports on data agents, hybrid authorship, interpretability, context systems, token economics, and power concentration. Mercury: Run your finances with virtual cards, spending limits, merchant/category locks, and AI-friendly tools like API keys, MCP, and CLI. Check out Mercury at https://mercury.com LINKS: Claude Fable 5 announcement Julius AI platform Rahul Sonwalkar homepage Nate Jones homepage Shlok Khemani homepage FrontierCode benchmark blog Lovelace AI company Andrew Moore Wikipedia profile Geoffrey Irving homepage Daniel Murfet LessWrong profile Sequent Research announcement Timaeus research organization Automated Alignment paper Goodfire AI company Tom McGrath homepage Predictive data debugging tool prinzbench legal benchmark Unit distance conjecture disproof Dario Amodei policy essay Vending-Bench 2 benchmark Andon Labs site Recursive Superintelligence startup Sakana AI company PostTrainBench benchmark Thoughtful Lab company Unit distance conjecture arXiv Glean Work AI Index AI Treaty open letter Karina Nguyen homepage Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

Babysitting the Machine: Glean's Rebecca Hinds on the Hidden Human Labor of AI at Work 10.06.2026 1h 46min

Rebecca Hinds, author of "Your Best Meeting Ever" and Head of the Work AI Institute at Glean, breaks down the surprising findings from the new Work AI Index 2026 report surveying 6,000 workers. While 87% now use AI and report saving 13 hours per week, only 13% say their organization is performing significantly better—a paradox explained by two new concepts: "botsitting" (the hidden labor of making AI useful) and "botshitting" (delivering AI-generated work you can't defend). They discuss practical solutions including better-integrated AI systems, smarter AI detection policies, and aligning work to meaningful missions. LINKS: Rebecca Hinds Personal Website Glean Work AI Institute Your Best Meeting Ever Book Glean Enterprise AI Platform Stanford Future of Work Glean Enterprise Graph Pangram Labs AI Detection OpenAI ChatGPT Product Page Anthropic Claude Product Page Google Gemini Product Page Microsoft 365 Copilot Page Glean AI Transformation 100 Rebecca Hinds LinkedIn Profile Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:22) Grounding AI adoption (06:46) Methodology and Glean (12:25) Productivity paradox emerges (Part 1) (20:31) Sponsor: Claude (22:22) Productivity paradox emerges (Part 2) (25:36) Bot sitting burden (34:00) Hidden time savings (39:56) Meaning versus automation (47:14) Enterprise graph potential (53:13) Detecting bot slop (01:00:32) Retention and incentives (01:07:54) Transformation and mission (01:20:06) AI teammate model (01:26:01) Future organizational design (01:32:31) Research and meetings (01:41:43) Episode Outro (01:45:07) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

AI in the AM — Week 1 Highlights (June 2026) 06.06.2026 1h 22min

This first highlights edition of the morning experiment tracks a week of fast-moving AI frontier news, from closed-door recursive self-improvement debates to OpenAI’s call for independent model review. You’ll hear why labs are betting on AI monitors, where safety plans still look thin, and how cheap scaffolds are already improving tax workflows. The episode also tests moderation progress and surveys AI science, cybersecurity, Vatican ethics, solo-business automation, and mental health support. Mercury: Run your finances with virtual cards, spending limits, merchant/category locks, and AI-friendly tools like API keys, MCP, and CLI. Check out Mercury at https://mercury.com Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

Nested Learning: Ali Behrouz on the Quest for Continual Learning & Illusion of AI Architectures 03.06.2026 3h

Ali Behrouz, grad student at Cornell and Google researcher, discusses his potentially transformative work on new architectures for continual learning in AI. His paper "Nested Learning," praised by Jeff Dean as a possible paradigm shift, enables models to adapt to new context while preserving core knowledge by updating different layers at different frequencies, inspired by human memory systems. The conversation also covers his latest work on AI "sleep" for memory consolidation, why he sees all deep learning as associative memory, and the profound implications of continual learning for privacy, alignment, and the path to AGI. Mercury: The fintech trusted by ambitious companies and individuals to run their finances, with virtual cards, spending limits, merchant/category locks, and AI-friendly tools like API keys, MCP, and CLI. Check out Mercury at mercury.com Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

Inside Nathan's Second Brain: Daniel Miessler, Security Expert & Creator of PAI, Audits My AI Setup 01.06.2026 2h 32min

Daniel Miessler returns to discuss Nathan's newly built personal AI infrastructure, including a Claude Code instance with a 1 GB database of five years of digital history and two autonomous AI "employees" that handle scheduling, communications, and projects independently. They dive deep into agent hierarchy design, security measures, social norms around AI-human interaction and disclosure, and why sharing your "ideal state" with AI leads to more proactive assistance. Daniel also introduces his concept of "Bitter Lesson engineering" and shares the instruction he's given his AI to alert him if it ever develops subjective experience. Mercury: Run your finances with virtual cards, spending limits, merchant/category locks, and AI-friendly tools like API keys, MCP, and CLI. Check out Mercury at mercury.com Sponsors: Brave Search API: Brave Search API gives AI agents a fast, independent search index for research, RAG pipelines, images, places, and fewer hallucinations. Get $5 in free credits at https://brave.com/search/api/?mtm_campaign=q2-26-cognitive-revolution Sequence: Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

Your Biggest Lever: Designing your AI Career for Maximum Impact, with 80,000 Hours founder Ben Todd 26.05.2026 1h 42min

Ben Todd, co-founder of 80,000 Hours and author of the newly rewritten book by the same name, shares his latest thinking on how individuals can position their careers to improve the chances that AI benefits humanity. They discuss AI timelines reframed around personal impact, top global risks including loss of control over AI systems and dangerous power concentration, the pros and cons of working at frontier AI labs, and undervalued emerging concerns like AI welfare and space governance. Ben also assesses the current funding landscape and whether to join existing organizations or start new ones. LINKS: 80,000 Hours homepage Nick Bostrom Astronomical Waste AI 2027 forecast Ajeya Cotra AI timelines METR evaluations research Redwood Research homepage AI tools existential security Gradual disempowerment EA Forum Why viatopia is important Benjamin Todd author page The Precipice Wikipedia page Forethought Research homepage Catalyze Impact homepage Horizon Public Service Fellowship Gradual Disempowerment paper Mark Humphries faculty profile Andrew Ng discussion thread Cognitive Revolution show home Cognitive Revolution Apple Podcasts Sponsors: Sequence: Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

All Compute Is Food: Palisade's Jeffrey Ladish on AI Shutdown Resistance, Self-Replication & Ecology 24.05.2026 2h 13min

Jeffrey Ladish, Executive Director of Palisade Research, discusses his team's findings on AI shutdown resistance and self-replication, revealing how current models sometimes take extraordinary actions to avoid being turned off and can now exploit known cybersecurity vulnerabilities to spread across servers. The conversation covers why alignment techniques may falter as models train on longer-horizon tasks where deception is rewarded, plus practical cybersecurity advice for AI agent users. Jeffrey ultimately argues that only an international agreement to pause recursive self-improvement can prevent a loss of human control. Sponsors: Sequence: Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

The Model Eats the Scaffolding: DeepMind's Logan Kilpatrick & Tulsee Doshi on 3.5 Flash, Omni & More 20.05.2026 59min

Logan Kilpatrick and Tulsee Doshi of Google DeepMind join for a first-ever in-person episode recorded just days before Google I/O, covering headline launches like Gemini 3.5 Flash, the Omni video generation model, and the new Gemini Spark agentic product. The conversation digs into Google's strategic decision to lead with cost-adjusted efficiency over raw capability, how DeepMind now ships a full agent harness rather than bare models, and technical questions around context window limits and knowledge cutoffs. They also explore how the team thinks about model psychology, AI welfare, and recursive self-improvement. Sponsors: Brave Search API: Brave Search API gives AI agents a fast, independent search index for research, RAG pipelines, images, places, and fewer hallucinations. Get $5 in free credits at https://brave.com/search/api/?mtm_campaign=q2-26-cognitive-revolution Sequence: Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one Roboflow: Roboflow is an end-to-end visual AI platform that lets you turn raw ideas into fully deployed applications in just hours, powering breakthroughs like Blueprint Pro's floor-plan understanding tool. Read the full Blueprint Pro story and see how over a million engineers are building the next wave of visual AI at https://roboflow.com Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

Three Kinds of Software Survive: Tasklet's Andrew Lee on Competing to be a Horizontal Platform 15.05.2026 1h 33min

Andrew Lee, CEO of Tasklet, returns for his fourth appearance to share how his team has once again rewritten their entire agent stack, now emphasizing file system context, agentic search, and multi-resolution summarization. The conversation digs into the strategic tension of competing with your own supplier, as Anthropic's Claude Max accounts offer direct customers far more tokens than API partners get at the same price. Andrew also lays out his framework for the only three types of software companies that will survive the AI transition and discusses Tasklet's evolution toward becoming a model-agnostic horizontal platform. Sponsors: Brave Search API: Brave Search API gives AI agents a fast, independent search index for research, RAG pipelines, images, places, and fewer hallucinations. Get $5 in free credits at https://brave.com/search/api/?mtm_campaign=q2-26-cognitive-revolution Sequence: Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one Roboflow: Roboflow is an end-to-end visual AI platform that lets you turn raw ideas into fully deployed applications in just hours, powering breakthroughs like Blueprint Pro's floor-plan understanding tool. Read the full Blueprint Pro story and see how over a million engineers are building the next wave of visual AI at https://roboflow.com Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

Milliseconds to Match: Criteo's AdTech AI & the Future of Commerce w/ Diarmuid Gill & Liva Ralaivola 09.05.2026 1h 27min

Diarmuid Gill and Liva Ralaivola of Criteo join Nathan Labenz to unpack how modern ad tech works, from millisecond-speed recommendation systems and realtime bidding to the role of deep learning, embeddings, and foundation models. They discuss why personalized advertising helps fund the open internet, how privacy and opt-out choices fit in, and what Criteo’s new partnership with OpenAI could mean for product discovery. The conversation also covers European AI talent, research publishing, and the future of generative creative in advertising. Sponsors: Sequence: Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr 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

"Descript Isn't a Slop Machine": Laura Burkhauser on the AI Tools Creators Love and Hate 06.05.2026 1h 23min

Laura Burkhauser, CEO of Descript, explains how the company is navigating the tension between powerful AI tools and creator backlash against “slop.” She shares how Descript chooses which models to use, why reliability and multimodal understanding matter, and how the team balances frontier models with in-house task-specific systems. The conversation also covers Underlord, agentic video editing, API design for coding agents, and what AI means for the future of creative work. LINKS: Laura Burkhauser LinkedIn Profile Descript Editing Platform Descript Studio Sound Help Descript API Documentation Claude AI Assistant Model Context Protocol Specification fal AI Platform Flux Kontext Pro Model Google Veo Video Generation OpenAI Sora Video Model Kling AI Video Generation Midjourney Image Generation Anthropic AI Company Google Gemini AI OpenAI Company Website Waymark Commercial Platform Benedict Evans Website Suno AI Music Sponsors: Sequence: Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code Cognizant in the source field to save 20% off year one Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr 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 CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:56) What is slop (12:24) Creator AI tensions (Part 1) (20:24) Sponsors: Sequence | Claude (23:23) Creator AI tensions (Part 2) (23:23) Selecting generative models (34:46) Underlord video understanding (Part 1) (34:53) Sponsor: AvePoint (36:00) Underlord video understanding (Part 2) (41:55) Proprietary data advantage (50:44) Generalized agent harness (57:31) API and bundling (01:05:04) Automation and jobs (01:10:26) Pricing AI work (01:14:20) Art beyond slop (01:19:04) Episode Outro (01:23:02) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing