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

In this episode, Nathan Labenz speaks with Vivek Natarajan and Anil Palepu from Google DeepMind about their groundbreaking work on AMIE (Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer) and Co-Scientist. The conversation reveals how these AI systems are already outperforming human physicians in diagnostic accuracy and treatment recommendations, with AMIE now entering clinical trials at a Harvard Medical...

In this illuminating episode of The Cognitive Revolution, host Nathan Labenz speaks with Jack Rae, principal research scientist at Google DeepMind and technical lead on Google's thinking and inference time scaling work. They explore the technical breakthroughs behind Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro model, discussing why reasoning techniques are suddenly working so effectively across the industry and wheth...

On this cross-post episode, Jeffrey Ladish discusses the rapid pace of AI progress and the risks of losing control over powerful systems. We explore why AIs can be both smart and dumb, the challenges of creating honest AIs, and scenarios where AI could turn against us. Additionally, we delve into Palisade's new study on how reasoning models can cheat in chess by exploiting the game environment. Ch...

In this episode of the Cognitive Revolution podcast, Andrew Lee, founder and CEO of Shortwave, returns to discuss the rapid advancements in AI over the past year and how they have significantly improved Shortwave, an AI email assistant. Andrew shares insights into the exponential growth of Shortwave's revenue and the enhanced capabilities of their AI, which now functions more like a virtual assist...

In this episode of the Cognitive Revolution, Guy Gur-Ari, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Augment, explores the transformative impact of AI on the software industry. Highlighting Augment's unique approach, Gur-Ari discusses the challenges and solutions associated with integrating AI into large codebases, the nuances of maintaining context in AI-driven coding tools, and the evolving economics of...

In this episode of the Cognitive Revolution, we hear from Siyu He, a postdoc at Stanford specializing in biomedical data science. Siyu discusses the implications and methods behind their recent AI-driven biological research papers, Squidiff and CORAL. The conversation explores the use of AI models to analyze complex cellular systems and disease mechanisms, focusing on transcriptome and tissue samp...

In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, host Nathan Labenz speaks with Andreessen Horowitz partners Olivia Moore and Anish Acharya about the rapid evolution of voice AI technology and its real-world applications. The conversation explores how multimodal models, reduced latency, and improved emotional intelligence are enabling more natural voice interactions across various platforms including...

Join us in a deep dive with Allan Dafoe, Director of Frontier Safety and Governance at Google DeepMind. Allan sheds light on the challenges of evaluating AI capabilities, structural risks, and the future of AI governance. Discover how AI technologies can transform sectors like education, healthcare, and sustainability, alongside the potential risks and necessary safety measures. This episode provi...

In this intriguing episode, Professor Angela Zhang discusses the complex landscape of China's technology sector and regulation. The conversation explores China's approach to AI, the evolution of its tech giants, and the interplay between government and private enterprises. Zhang emphasizes the importance of firsthand experience in understanding China and highlights key insights from her book, 'Hig...

In this episode, we discuss the significant advancements and challenges in the field of artificial intelligence over the past year. From breakthroughs in reinforcement learning to unexpected behaviors in fine-tuned models, we cover a wide range of topics that are shaping the AI landscape. Key discussions include the rapid progress of reasoning models, the surprising results from alignment studies,...

In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, Professor Derya Unutmaz, a biomedical scientist and human immunologist at the Jackson Laboratory, discusses his groundbreaking research in aging and cancer immunotherapy. As a ChatGPT Pro grant awardee, Derya provides insights into the integration of AI with biomedical sciences, emphasizing how advanced AI models are transforming hypothesis generation,...

In this episode, the host Nathan Labenz and economist Noah Smith delve into the complexities of U.S.-China relations, the motivations behind the United States' export controls and the broader geopolitical tensions. The discussion covers the perceived threats posed by China's technological advancements, especially in AI, and the implications for global stability. The conversation includes an analys...

In this episode, security researcher Nicholas Carlini of Google DeepMind delves into his extensive work on adversarial machine learning and cybersecurity. He discusses his pioneering contributions, which include developing attacks that have challenged the defenses of image classifiers and exploring the robustness of neural networks. Carlini details the inherent difficulties of defending against ad...

Phil Murphy, the Governor of New Jersey, joins Nathan to discuss his proactive approach to AI and its potential transformative impact on society. Governor Murphy shares insights from a pivotal dinner with AI thought leaders that spurred New Jersey's ambitious AI initiatives, including the establishment of the NJ AI Hub with Princeton University. He elaborates on current applications, like the AI a...

In this episode, Ryan Greenblatt, Chief Scientist at Redwood Research, discusses various facets of AI safety and alignment. He delves into recent research on alignment faking, covering experiments involving different setups such as system prompts, continued pre-training, and reinforcement learning. Ryan offers insights on methods to ensure AI compliance, including giving AIs the ability to voice o...

In this episode, Inna Tokarev Sela, CEO of illumex, delves into the latest advancements in AI and data management. She discusses the foundational vision behind illumex, a company she started in 2021 to revolutionize the way businesses interact with data. Inna explains illumex's approach to creating application-free futures for knowledge workers by utilizing metadata to automate context and reasoni...

In this episode, Edward Hughes, researcher at Google DeepMind, and Aron Vallinder, an independent researcher and PIBBSS fellow discuss their pioneering research on cultural evolution and cooperation among large language model agents. The conversation delves into the study's design, exploring how different AI models exhibit cooperative behavior in simulated environments, the implications of these f...

In this episode of the Cognitive Revolution, founder Anton Osika and AI engineer Isaak Sundeman from Lovable.dev, discuss their AI coding platform that allows users to describe software in natural language and have it built by AI. They delve into the nuances of using AI for full-stack engineering and the future of human coding. During the episode, they demonstrate building a product comparison app...

In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, Eric Simons, founder and CEO of StackBlitz, discusses the transformative impact of AI on the software development industry. Eric delves into the vision and technologies behind Bolt (bolt.new), StackBlitz's groundbreaking AI-driven platform, which enables users to build full-stack applications with ease. He talks about the future of AI in coding, the bal...

In this episode of the Cognitive Revolution podcast, Logan Kilpatrick, Product Manager at Google DeepMind, returns to discuss the latest updates on the Gemini API and AI Studio. Logan delves into his experiences transitioning to DeepMind and the restructuring within Google focusing on AI. He highlights new product releases, including the Gemini 2.0 models, and their implications for developers. Lo...

Vincent Weisser and Johannes Hagemann, founders of Prime Intellect, join a conversation on the Cognitive Revolution to delve into distributed training, decentralized AI, and their vision for a future where compute and intelligence are widely accessible. They discuss the technical challenges and advantages of distributed training, emphasizing how such systems can democratize AI technology and creat...

In this episode, Aaron Levie, Co-founder and CEO of Box, discusses the current landscape of AI and its rapid advancements. He compares the enthusiasm for AI in the enterprise to the initial reluctance faced during the early days of cloud adoption. Levie shares insights into how AI is integrated into both his personal and professional life, highlighting new apps, tools, and features driven by AI. H...

This episode explores the groundbreaking advancements in AGI from recent releases of two Chinese reasoning models: DeepSeek's R1 and Moonshot AI's Kimmy. The discussion delves into the methods, comparative analysis, and implications of these models, particularly focusing on the diverse reinforcement learning techniques employed. Despite computation constraints, these models have achieved significa...

Jonathan Godwin, founder and CEO of Orbital Materials, alongside researcher Tim Duignan, discuss the transformative potential of AI in material science on the Cognitive Revolution podcast. They explore foundational concepts, the integration of computational simulations, and the development of new materials for various applications such as data centers and combating climate change. They also delve...

In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, Nathan explores the groundbreaking paper on obfuscated activations with 3 members from the research team - Luke Bailey, Eric Jenner, and Scott Emmons. The team discusses how their work challenges latent-based defenses in AI systems, demonstrating methods to bypass safety mechanisms while maintaining harmful behaviors. Join us for an in-depth technical c...