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

Register for upcoming webinars here!

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.

It seems like we are bombarded by news about millions of dollars pouring into AI startups, which have crazy valuations. In this episode, Chris and Dan dive deep into the highs, lows, and hard choices behind funding an AI startup. They explore early bootstrapping, the transition to venture capital, and what it’s like to trade in code commits for investor decks.

Featuring:

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

Links:

• Builder.ai Collapses: $1.5bn 'AI' Startup Exposed as 'Actually Indians' Pretending to Be Bots

Sponsors:

• Miro: Feeling overwhelmed by AI? Miro brings clarity by combining human creativity with intelligent tools to help teams get great work done. Learn more at miro.com.

An recent article in Variety was titled: "Sylvester Stallone-Backed Largo.ai Teams With Brilliant Pictures for ‘World’s First Fully AI-Automated Film Company’". Obviously this caught our attention! We sit down with Sami Arpa, CEO of Largo.ai, to unpack how films are developed, funded, and brought to life using AI. We discover how tools like script analysis, financial forecasting, and digital twins are helping creators and studios make smarter decisions.

Featuring:

• Sami Arpa – LinkedIn
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Links:

• Largo AI
• Sylvester Stallone-Backed Largo.ai Teams With Brilliant Pictures for ‘World’s First Fully AI-Automated Film Company’

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.

Chong Shen from Flower Labs joins us to discuss what it really takes to build production-ready federated learning systems that work across data silos. We talk about the Flower framework and it's architecture (supernodes, superlinks, etc.), and what makes it both "friendly" and ready for real enterprise environments. We also explore how the generative Generative AI boom is reshaping Flower’s roadmap.

Featuring:

• Chong Shen Ng – LinkedIn
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Episode links:

• The future of AI training is federated
• DeepLearning.ai short course on Federated Learning with Flower
• Flower Monthly
• Federated Learning in Automotive
• Federated AI in Finance
• Federated Learning in Healthcare
• Federated AI on IoT Systems
• FlowerTune LLM Leaderboard
• Flower Intelligence
• GitHub
• Slack
• Flower Discuss

Check out upcoming webinars!

Sponsors:

• NordLayer is toggle-ready network security built for modern businesses—combining VPN, access control, and threat protection in one platform that deploys in under 10 minutes with no hardware required. It's built on Zero Trust architecture with granular access controls, so only the right people access the right resources, and it scales effortlessly as your team grows. Get up to 32% off yearly plans with code practically-10 at nordlayer.com/practicalai - 14-day money-back guarantee included.

In this first of a two part series of episodes on federated learning, we dive into the evolving world of federated learning and distributed AI frameworks with Patrick Foley from Intel. We explore how frameworks like OpenFL and Flower are enabling secure, collaborative model training across silos, especially in sensitive fields like healthcare. The conversation touches on real-world use cases, the challenges of distributed ML/AI experiments, and why privacy-preserving techniques may become essential for deploying AI to production.

Featuring:

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

Links:

• Intel
• OpenFL

Sponsors:

• NordLayer is a toggle-ready network security platform built for modern businesses. It combines VPN, access control, and threat protection in one easy-to-use platform. No hardware. No complex setup. Just secure connection and full control—in less than 10 minutes. Up to 22% off NordLayer yearly plans plus 10% on top with the coupon code practically-10.

Loïc Houssier, Head of Engineering at Superhuman, joins us to discuss how AI and LLMs are reshaping the email experience. He highlights challenges related to the variability of user prompts and infrastructure optimization. Loïc emphasizes that a deep focus on user experience and real human workflows is key to building AI tools people actually love to use.

Featuring:

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

Links:

• Superhuman
• Referral Code for a Free month

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.