In the first episode of an "AI in the shadows" theme, Chris and Daniel explore the increasing concerning world of agentic misalignment. Starting out with a reminder about hallucinations and reasoning models, they break down how today’s models only mimic reasoning, which can lead to serious ethical considerations. They unpack a fascinating (and slightly terrifying) new study from Anthropic, where agentic AI models were caught simulating blackmail, deception, and even sabotage — all in the name of goal completion and self-preservation.

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Links:

• Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs could be insider threats
• Hugging Face Agents Course

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In this episode, we sit down with Joey Conway to explore NVIDIA's open source AI, from the reasoning-focused Nemotron models built on top of Llama, to the blazing-fast Parakeet speech model. We chat about what makes open foundation models so valuable, how enterprises can think about deploying multi-model strategies, and why reasoning is becoming the key differentiator in real-world AI applications.

Featuring:

• Joey Conway – LinkedIn
• Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X

Links:

• Llama Nemotron Ultra
• NVIDIA Llama Nemotron Ultra Open Model Delivers Groundbreaking Reasoning Accuracy
• Independent analysis of AI
• Parakeet Model
• Parakeet Leaderboard
• Try the Llama-3.1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1 model here and here

Can AI-driven autonomy reduce harm, or does it risk dehumanizing decision-making? In this “AI Hot Takes & Debates” series episode, Daniel and Chris dive deep into the ethical crossroads of AI, autonomy, and military applications. They trade perspectives on ethics, precision, responsibility, and whether machines should ever be trusted with life-or-death decisions. It’s a spirited back-and-forth that tackles the big questions behind real-world AI.

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Links:

• The Concept of "The Human" in the Critique of Autonomous Weapons
• On the Pitfalls of Technophilic Reason: A Commentary on Kevin Jon Heller’s “The Concept of ‘the Human’ in the Critique of Autonomous Weapons”

Sponsors:

• Outshift by Cisco: AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows.