Practical AI
by Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson
Latest episode
Abundant Intelligence at the Midwest AI Summit Part 2
Abundant Intelligence at the Midwest AI Summit Part 2
About this podcast
Making artificial intelligence practical, productive & accessible to everyone. Practical AI is a show in which technology professionals, business people, students, enthusiasts, and expert guests engage in lively discussions about Artificial Intelligence and related topics (Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, GANs, MLOps, AIOps, LLMs & more).
The focus is on productive implementations and real-world scenarios that are accessible to everyone. If you want to keep up with the latest advances in AI, while keeping one foot in the real world, then this is the show for you!
Episodes
The newest 50 of 381 episodes
- Abundant Intelligence at the Midwest AI Summit Part 2 · 48 min · Episode 379How do organizations decide what AI should do, where to set boundaries, and when to keep humans in control? In this special episode, we bring you three more talks from the…
- Abundant Intelligence at the Midwest AI Summit · 54 min · Episode 378In this special episode, we bring you highlights from three talks at the Midwest AI Summit. Heidi Porter explores how to build reliable AI-augmented workflows using the right…
- Exploit Development, Agentic Vulnerability Discovery, and Fake PoCs · 45 min · Episode 377AI is changing cybersecurity, accelerating vulnerability research and exploit development while raising new questions about reliability, risk, and guardrails. Daniel and Chris…
- Is Education Failing our Students in this AI-Driven World? · 44 min · Episode 376Schools and universities are failing to adapt to our modern world, in which AI is becoming increasingly pervasive in all aspects of life and work. In fact, AI may be changing…
- Narrative intelligence and the human advantage · 44 min · Episode 375As AI reshapes how we work, create, and think about our roles, staying adaptable means understanding not just the technology, but our own stories and identities. Reed Frerichs…
- Open models and the future of Physical AI with NVIDIA · 47 min · Episode 374As AI moves beyond the cloud and into robots, vehicles, and other physical systems, new approaches to models, simulation, and inference are emerging. Daniel and Chris are joined…
- From AGENTS.md to Enterprise Deployment · 49 min · Episode 373AI agents are moving beyond laptops and prototypes and into enterprise environments where security, compliance, scalability, and reliability matter. Nick Kuhn from VMware Tanzu…
- How to get discovered in AI search · 55 min · Episode 372AI search is changing how people discover information and how brands need to think about visibility. Daniel and Chris talk with Liam Dunne and Ben Moore, co-founders of…
- Computer-Use Agents and the Future of the Agentic Internet · 56 min · Episode 371Longtime followers of Practical AI know that multi-repeat guest and friend Demetrios Brinkmann combines brilliant insight and playful banter into one fun-filled show, and this…
- Less about Models; More about Architecture · 46 min · Episode 370As AI moves from experimentation to enterprise deployment, are organizations thinking too much about models and not enough about architecture? In this episode, Daniel and Chris…
- Building the Foundation for the Agentic AI Era · 45 min · Episode 369How do we build an AI ecosystem where agents, tools, and systems can work together at scale? Angie Jones, VP of the Agentic AI Foundation, joins Chris to discuss the open…
- AI Proficiency: From Users to Builders · 56 min · Episode 368As AI continues to reshape how organizations work, companies are increasingly asking what AI proficiency should look like across their workforce, and how they can help employees…
- Models, Harnesses, and Multi-Agent Systems · 50 min · Episode 367AI has moved far beyond chatbots, but what exactly are AI models, agents, agent harnesses, and multi-agent systems, and why do they matter? In this episode, Daniel and Chris…
- Reconstructing how OpenAI agents attacked Hugging Face · 44 min · Episode 366What happens when AI agents driven by a top frontier model escape their secure sandbox? Join Daniel and Chris as they unpack the AI wonk's equivalent of a murder mystery! OpenAI…
- Surviving the New Economics of a Post-Agentic World · 36 min · Episode 365The agentic transformation isn’t coming. It has already begun. Companies are deploying thousands — and sometimes tens of thousands — of AI agents. Enterprise software giants are…
- The Future of AI Infrastructure with CoreWeave · 50 min · Episode 364As AI applications become more complex, the infrastructure powering them needs to evolve. Corey Sanders, SVP of Product at CoreWeave, joins Chris to discuss why AI requires a…
- Building Durable AI Agents · 47 min · Episode 363What does it take to move AI agents from demos to reliable production systems? In this episode, Hamza Tahir explores how MLOps principles are shaping the future of generative AI…
- Image Generation and Visual Intelligence with Black Forest Labs · 48 min · Episode 362How has AI image generation evolved from blurry outputs to powerful visual intelligence models? Dustin Podell, Co-Founder and Researcher at Black Forest Labs, explains the…
- AIUC-1: Building trust in AI agents · 45 min · Episode 361How do we build trust in AI agents before the AI hailstorm arrives? Emil Lassen from the Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) joins the show to discuss how the…
- Zero Trust for AI Agents · 47 min · Episode 360As AI agents become more capable and autonomous, they also introduce new security challenges. In this 'Fully Connected' episode, Dan and Chris unpack Anthropic’s Zero Trust for…
- Breaking down the 2026 Stanford AI Index Report · 47 min · Episode 359AI models can win math olympiads… but still struggle to read an analog clock. In this fully connected episode, Dan and Chris break down the latest Stanford AI Index Report and…
- Rebooting Enterprise AI with MCP and Kubernetes · 48 min · Episode 358What happens when AI agents start acting less like chatbots and more like coworkers? In this episode, Dan and Chris sit down with Craig McLuckie, CEO of Stacklok to explore MCP…
- Hermes Agent: Agents that grow with you · 52 min · Episode 357Open Source AI is entering a new era, one shaped by self-improving AI Agents, recursive learning systems, and rapidly evolving AI Tools that blur the line between software and…
- U.S. Congressman Beyer on AI challenges facing America and the World · 45 min · Episode 356U.S. Congressman Don Beyer returns to Practical AI for another far-reaching conversation with Chris about many of the most important AI challenges facing America and the world…
- The Myth of Model Wars: Open vs Closed AI in 2026 · 42 min · Episode 355In this fully connected episode, Dan and Chris break down one of the biggest questions in AI today: do open vs. closed models still matter? From the rise of physical AI and edge…
- The mythos of Mythos and Allbirds takes flight to the neocloud · 45 min · Episode 354In this Fully-Connected episode, Dan and Chris start with Anthropic's Mythos frontier model, parsing what is publicly known about its cybersecurity capabilities and projecting…
- Open Source Self-Driving with Comma AI · 46 min · Episode 353Autonomous driving is not just a big tech or closed-source game, it's becoming accessible through open innovation and real-world deployment. Dan and Chris sit down with Harald…
- Post-Mortem of Anthropic's Claude Code Leak · 45 min · Episode 352In this fully connected episode, Dan and Chris break down the Anthropic Claude Code leak, what went wrong and what it reveals about agentic systems, AI architecture, and AI…
- Agentic Coding and the Economics of Open Source · 49 min · Episode 351AI is rapidly transforming how software is built, shifting economic incentives from open source code and collaboration toward on-demand, personalized development through agentic…
- AI at the Edge is a different operating environment · 47 min · Episode 350What does “AI at the edge” really mean in 2026, and why does it matter now more than ever before? In this episode, we’re joined by Brandon Shibley, Edge AI Solutions Engineering…
- Humility in the Age of Agentic Coding · 55 min · Episode 349What happens when an AI hater starts building with AI agents? In this episode, we talk with software engineer Steve Klabnik, known for his work on the Rust programming language…
- AI policy and the battle for computing power · 49 min · Episode 348AI is reshaping global power, from chip manufacturing and computing power to AI governance and US-China relations. In this episode, Ben Buchanan, Assistant Professor at The Johns…
- Cognitive Synthesis and Neural Athletes · 52 min · Episode 347As AI accelerates innovation and adoption, leaders are facing rising cognitive load, shifting systems, and new emotional realities inside their organizations. In this episode…
- AI incidents, audits, and the limits of benchmarks · 43 min · Episode 346AI is moving fast from research to real-world deployment, and when things go wrong, the consequences are no longer hypothetical. In this episode, Sean McGregor, co-founder of the…
- Inside an AI-Run Company · 49 min · Episode 345AI agents are moving from demos to real workplaces, but what actually happens when they run a company? In this episode, journalist Evan Ratliff, host of Shell Game, joins Chris…
- How is AI shaping democracy? · 48 min · Episode 344As AI increasingly shapes geopolitics, elections, and civic life, its impact on democracy is becoming impossible to ignore. In this episode, Daniel and Chris are joined by…
- Controlling AI Models from the Inside · 44 min · Episode 343As generative AI moves into production, traditional guardrails and input/output filters can prove too slow, too expensive, and/or too limited. In this episode, Alizishaan Khatri…
- 2025 was the year of agents, what's coming in 2026? · 51 min · Episode 342In this start-of-year FC episode, Chris and Daniel break down what really mattered in AI in 2025, and what to expect in 2026. They explore the rise of AI agents, the practical…
- Beyond chatbots: Agents that tackle your SOPs · 46 min · Episode 341As AI reshapes the workplace, employees and leaders face questions about meaningful work, automation, and human impact. In this episode, Jason Beutler, CEO of RoboSource, shares…
- The AI engineer skills gap · 46 min · Episode 340Chris and Daniel talk with returning guest, Ramin Mohammadi, about how those seeking to get into AI Engineer/ Data Science jobs are expected to come in a mid level engineers (not…
- Technical advances in document understanding · 49 min · Episode 339Chris and Daniel unpack how AI-driven document processing has rapidly evolved well beyond traditional OCR with many technical advances that fly under the radar. They explore the…
- Chris on AI, autonomous swarming, home automation and Rust! · 1 h 37 min · Episode 338This episode is a special crossover between the Practical AI podcast and The Changelog podcast. Chris was recently invited by longtime friends Jerod Santo and Adam Stacoviak…
- Beyond note-taking with Fireflies · 49 min · Episode 337Fireflies CEO, Krish Ramineni shares how the company is transforming AI-powered note-taking into a deeper layer of knowledge automation. He breaks down the technology behind…
- Autonomous Vehicle Research at Waymo · 52 min · Episode 336Waymo’s VP of Research, Drago Anguelov, joins Practical AI to explore how advances in autonomy, vision models, and large-scale testing are shaping the future of driverless…
- Are we in an AI bubble? · 50 min · Episode 335Dan and Chris unpack whether today’s surge in AI deployment across enterprise workflows, manufacturing, healthcare, and scientific research signals a lasting transformation or an…
- While loops with tool calls · 45 min · Episode 334Dan and Chris sit down (again) with Jared Zoneraich, co-founder and CEO of PromptLayer, to discuss how prompt engineering has evolved into context engineering (and while loops…
- Tiny Recursive Networks · 48 min · Episode 333In this fully connected episode, Daniel and Chris explore the emerging concept of tiny recursive networks introduced by Samsung AI, contrasting them with large transformer based…
- Dealing with increasingly complicated agents · 55 min · Episode 332As AI systems move from simple chatbots to complex agentic workflows, new security risks emerge. In this episode, Donato Capitella unpacks how increasingly complicated…
- The impact of AI on the workforce: A state-level case study · 44 min · Episode 331Daniel sits down with Chelsea Linder, VP of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at TechPoint, to explore the what AI innovation and impact look like on the ground. They discuss…
- We've all done RAG, now what? · 44 min · Episode 330Longtime friend of the show Rajiv Shah returns to unpack lessons from a year of building retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and reasoning models integrations. We dive…
