Artificial Intelligence
Episodes whose main subject is AI itself: building with, training, evaluating, or debating AI systems. AI used only as a tool for another topic goes to that topic.
#272: The Bill is Due: AI Training and Intellectual Property
Can you "untrain" an AI? Herman and Corn explore the legal and technical battle over copyrighted data and the future of machine unlearning.
#271: Why Gen Z Hates the AI They Can't Stop Using
Are younger generations really AI's biggest fans? Corn and Herman dive into the data behind the growing divide in AI adoption and anxiety.
#267: Decoding the Transformer: From Attention to Inference
Herman and Corn dive into the mechanics of transformer inference, exploring how models turn massive matrices into meaningful conversation.
#266: The Telemetry Trap: Why Your Devices Won't Stop Talking
Herman and Corn dive into the hidden world of telemetry, exploring why our devices phone home and whether "anonymous" data is actually a myth.
#265: Stop Memorizing Syntax and Start Describing Results
Stop memorizing complex syntax. Explore how AI agents are transforming the terminal into a natural language "Intent-Based Interface."
#264: Can You Trust an AI with Your Credit Card?
How do we let AI agents buy groceries or book flights safely? Corn and Herman dive into the high-stakes world of agentic authentication.
#263: Why AI Needs a New Kind of Memory
Herman and Corn explore why SQL is losing ground to graph and vector databases. Discover why the "edge" is the new gold standard for AI accuracy.
#261: The 70-Year Overnight Success: How AI Finally Arrived
Think AI was an overnight success? Join Herman and Corn as they trace the 70-year journey from rigid logic rules to modern deep learning.
#260: Digital Archeology: The Primitive Power of GPT-1
Revisit the 2018 model that started it all. Herman and Corn dive into GPT-1's romance-novel roots and its 117-million-parameter legacy.
#259: When AI Argues with Reality: Mastering Search Grounding
Is your AI gaslighting you about the current date? Learn how to force LLMs to trust live search results over their outdated training data.
#258: The Geographic Soul of AI: Mapping the Global Data Divide
Why does an AI see a Chinese supermarket instead of a Western one? Explore how training data shapes the cultural worldview of modern models.
#257: AI That Evolves: Solving the Preference Problem
Why do AI recommendations feel stuck in the past? Discover the technical hurdles of real-time learning and the future of personalized agents.
#253: The Quantum-Resistant Mirage
Explore the shift to post-quantum encryption and why intelligence agencies rarely need to "break" the math to access your private data.
#251: Private Investigators: The Real Law Behind the Mystery
Can a PI actually plant a bug? Herman and Corn debunk TV myths and explore the strict legal reality of modern private investigation.
#250: The Crowdsourced Map That Knows Your Lane
Explore how AI, computer vision, and crowdsourced data allow navigation apps to map every painted line on the road with precision.
#248: The Sycophancy Trap: Getting Honest Feedback from AI
Is your AI just telling you what you want to hear? Learn how to break the "sycophancy trap" and get truly objective feedback from your agents.
#227: Beyond the Diaper Log: Parenting in the Age of AI
Stop tracking every milliliter and start understanding the "why." Herman and Corn explore how AI and developmental science can save new parents.
#218: When AI Agents Hire Each Other
Move past human-to-AI chat. Discover how agents are negotiating, coding, and transacting in a decentralized machine-to-machine ecosystem.
#212: Will You Pay a Monthly Subscription for Your Own Reality?
In a world of perfect deepfakes, how do we prove what is real? Explore the future of content provenance and the "Proof of Personhood" problem.
#210: Predictive Motion: How Transformers Are Learning to Walk
Explore how the same transformer architecture behind chatbots is now enabling robots to navigate the physical world using action tokens.