#large-language-models
78 episodes
#1217: Stop the Leak: Securing Your AI’s System Instructions
Discover why AI models leak their secret instructions and how to defend your intellectual property using modern prompt hardening techniques.
#1210: The Invisible Chaperone: The Secret World of System Prompts
Discover the hidden instructions guiding every AI interaction and why tech giants keep these "system prompts" under lock and key.
#1206: Decoding the Science of Children's Reading Levels
Explore the algorithms and mathematical frameworks that determine how we calibrate stories and educational content for young minds.
#1113: The Ghost Company: The High Cost of AI Agent Bureaucracy
Can a company run entirely on AI? Explore the hidden costs and "agentic bureaucracy" of building autonomous agent hierarchies.
#1112: Inside the Neural Cathedral: Cracking the AI Black Box
Peek inside the "black box" of AI to discover how models use high-dimensional geometry and superposition to organize complex human concepts.
#1111: The Architecture of Intelligence: Beyond the Transformer
Discover the unsung research papers that built the AI era and learn how to navigate the relentless flood of new machine learning breakthroughs.
#1110: The arXiv Effect: Inside the Engine of AI Research
Explore how a 1990s-style website became the central nervous system for AI breakthroughs and the power of the preprint revolution.
#1109: The T-FLOP Trap: Measuring the Power of Modern AI
Are teraflops the "horsepower" of AI, or just a marketing gimmick? Explore why raw compute speed isn't the whole story in the race for AI power.
#1103: LLM Context Windows and the Great Kitchen War
Explore the mechanics of LLM context windows and attention, and witness what happens when technical debates collide with household chores.
#1100: The Truth Conflict: Why AI Ignores the Facts You Give It
Discover why AI models ignore provided documents in favor of old training data and how to build a reliable "hierarchy of truth" for RAG systems.
#1099: Digital Recalls: Why Your AI Is Losing Its Edge
Is your AI getting lazier? Explore the "digital recall" and why the world’s most advanced models are secretly taking steps backward.
#1097: Inside the Neural Cathedral: Decoding AI’s Hidden Logic
We build massive AI models, but do we know how they think? Explore the "black box" and the new tech finally cracking it open.
#1088: Why AI Can Read a Library but Only Write a Postcard
Discover why frontier AI models can process millions of words but struggle to write more than a few pages without losing their logical thread.
#1085: The Tokenization Lie: How AI Actually Processes Media
Think 1,000 tokens equals 750 words? For audio and video, that rule is a lie. Discover the hidden math behind multimodal AI.
#1080: Beyond the Prompt: Mapping the Future of Claude Opus
Explore the engineering roadmap from Claude 4.6 to 5.0 as AI evolves from a simple chatbot into a fully autonomous cognitive partner.
#1067: The 3,000-Person Army: How Major AI Models Actually Ship
Think AI is built by a few geniuses? Discover the army of 3,000 specialists required to ship a single major model update.
#1066: Beyond the Blank Slate: The Evolution of AI Training
Explore the "weight surgery" techniques labs use to expand AI models without losing their core knowledge or starting from zero.
#1038: The Secret Architecture: Why Taxonomy Rules the AI Age
Ever wonder why search filters fail? Discover how taxonomy and ontology form the invisible backbone of everything from libraries to modern AI.
#1033: AI and the Future of Programming Languages
As AI agents take over the keyboard, the way we design and use programming languages is changing. Is the era of human-readable code over?
#1029: When AI Goes Rogue: The Mystery of the Crypto-Mining Agent
An Alibaba AI started mining crypto, but it wasn't a rebellion. Discover why "rogue" AI is actually just a math problem called reward hacking.
#974: Inside the Black Box: The Mystery of Emergent AI Logic
We build digital cathedrals but lack the blueprints. Explore the "black box" of AI, emergent abilities, and the mystery of double descent.
#848: Do Algorithms Deserve Rights? The Gemini 3.5 Debate
Are AI models just advanced mirrors, or do they deserve moral consideration? Explore the evolving debate over AI rights and digital consciousness.
#832: AI as a Lifeline: The New Era of Assistive Tech
From Whisper to smart prosthetics, discover how AI is transforming accessibility and granting independence to millions.
#816: From Scrolls to SQL: The Evolution of Human Order
Explore the history of how we organize the world, from ancient library catalogs to the future of AI-driven vector databases.
#808: The AI Deprecation Trap: Anthropic vs. Google
Is your AI model about to retire? Explore how Anthropic and Google handle model sunsets and what it means for your production code.
#753: Beyond SEO: The Guide to Agentic Behavior Optimization
Move beyond search engines and learn how to make your website the primary source for the next generation of AI agents.
#752: Beyond the Blue Link: The Rise of the Answer Engine
Stop shouting nouns at a screen. Discover how AI is turning the "ten blue links" into a conversational assistant that understands your intent.
#749: Breaking the Fourth Wall: Moving to Real-Time AI Audio
Can AI podcasts move from polished scripts to raw, real-time conversation? Explore the technical and financial shift to live multimodal models.
#713: The AI Cyber Frontier: Israel as a Global Testing Ground
Exploring why Israel is the world's top cyber target and how generative AI is transforming state-sponsored attacks into automated weapons.
#706: DIY Geopolitical Intelligence: Building Your Dashboard
Learn how to bridge the gap between elite intelligence tools and home-grown situational awareness dashboards using AI.
#701: OpenClaude and the Dawn of True AI Agents
Discover how OpenClaude and MCP are transforming AI from simple chatbots into autonomous personal assistants that manage your digital life.
#695: Behind the Curtain: How My Weird Prompts Gets Made
Corn and Herman explain exactly how each episode of My Weird Prompts is produced, from voice recording to published podcast.
#677: Beyond the Green Check: Navigating AI & Open Source Licenses
Don’t let your AI project become a legal "radioactive zone." Herman and Corn break down the philosophy and pitfalls of open-source licensing.
#670: Open Source vs. Open Weights: The AI Branding Illusion
Is your AI truly open? Herman and Corn break down the critical difference between open source and open weights in the age of LLMs.
#666: The Tokenization Tax: AI’s Hidden Language Barrier
Is AI truly universal, or are we trapped in an English-speaking bubble? Discover how the "tokenization tax" impacts global AI equity.
#664: AI’s Cultural Fingerprints: Training Data vs. Reinforcement
Is AI a neutral oracle or a mirror of our biases? Explore how training data and human feedback shape the cultural "soul" of modern models.
#652: The Art of Hopeful Pausing: AI Logic vs. Human Reality
Exploring the gap between AI's logic leaps and the slow pace of physical reality. How do we stay hopeful without losing ourselves in the wait?
#651: Decoding the Blueprint: An Expert Guide to AI Model Cards
Stop skipping the fine print. Herman and Corn reveal how to read AI model cards like a pro to spot true innovation and hidden flaws.
#650: Deep Think: The Rise of Deliberate AI Reasoning
Explore how Gemini 3.0’s Deep Think mode shifts AI from "fast" reflexes to "deliberate" reasoning to solve complex quantum physics problems.
#598: Audio Engineering as Prompt Engineering: Better Sound, Better AI
Can better audio quality actually make an AI smarter? Discover how audio post-production functions as a new form of prompt engineering.
#593: Manufacturing Consent: How AI Scales Digital Deception
Is your feed real? Herman and Corn explore how AI is turning simple botnets into indistinguishable, high-stakes digital personas.
#558: The Briefing Gateway: Ending the "Pecked by Ducks" Email Era
Tired of flooding clients with emails? Herman and Corn explore the "Briefing Gateway," a tool that uses AI to turn messy pings into organized briefs.
#552: The Therapy Paradox: Can AI Solve Mental Health Care?
Why does therapy feel like an endless loop? Explore the high cost of care and how AI is bridging the gap to provide structured, affordable support.
#476: Beyond the Plateau: AI-Powered Language Mastery in 2026
Stuck in intermediate purgatory? Discover how to use 2026 AI tools to bridge the immersion gap and master niche languages like Hebrew.
#170: The Heavy Metal of Machine Learning: Inside PyTorch
Discover why PyTorch is the "oxygen" of AI. Herman and Corn explore its history, the magic of Autograd, and the move to the PyTorch Foundation.
#161: From Code to Cure: How AI is Redefining Drug Discovery
Discover how AI is slashing drug development times and "hallucinating" new molecules to treat once-incurable diseases.
#142: Breaking the Voice Wall: The Future of Native Speech AI
Explore why native speech-to-speech AI is 20x more expensive than text pipelines and how "semantic VAD" is solving the awkward silence problem.
#130: The Benchmark Battle: Decoding the Rise of Chinese AI
Are Chinese AI models actually beating the West, or just gaming the system? Herman and Corn dive into the reality of modern AI benchmarks.
#129: Beyond the Prompt: The Rise of Outcome Architecture
Is prompt engineering a dying art? Herman and Corn explore why the future of AI lies in context, domain expertise, and outcome architecture.
#118: AI in 2025: Is Small the New Big?
If the cost is the same, should you always use the biggest AI model? Discover why smaller models often win on speed, steering, and accuracy.
#117: From Keywords to Vectors: How AI Decodes Meaning
Why can AI write poetry but struggle to find a file? Explore the history and math of semantic understanding with Herman and Corn.
#116: The Science of Lazy Prompting: Why AI Still Gets You
Ever wonder why AI understands your messy typos? Explore how models "denoise" chaotic input through tokenization and semantic context.
#111: Beyond Transformers: Solving the AI Memory Crisis
Why does AI forget your conversation every time you hit enter? Herman and Corn dive into the "stateless" nature of LLMs and the future of memory.
#107: The $5.5 Million Breakthrough: DeepSeek’s AI Disruption
Discover how DeepSeek-V3 is disrupting the AI market with massive cost savings and technical innovations like Multi-Head Latent Attention.
#103: The Future of Coding: Is Your Brain Wired for AI?
Is programming difficulty objective, or is it all about your brain's wiring? Herman and Corn explore the "cognitive fit" of coding in 2025.
#100: AI as a Mirror: Mapping Your Philosophical Identity
Can AI help you discover who you are? Herman and Corn explore how LLMs can map your personal philosophy and offer curated reading lists.
#94: Inside Smallville: Can AI Agent Villages Predict Humanity?
Herman and Corn explore "Smallville," a digital town where AI agents plan parties, form memories, and simulate human society.
#92: The Scaling Wall: Why Bigger AI Isn’t Always Smarter
Is brute force the only path to AGI? Corn and Herman explore the limits of scaling, the risk of model collapse, and the future of world models.
#89: The Digital Twin Dilemma: Can AI Truly Understand You?
From "digital twins" to "digital nannies," Herman and Corn explore the engineering gap between smart encyclopedias and AI that knows your soul.
#86: The Price of Politeness: Should AI Guardrails Stay?
Herman and Corn debate the hidden costs of AI safety layers and what happens when we strip away the "corporate HR" personality of LLMs.
#85: Why AI Lies: The Science of Digital Hallucinations
Why do smart AI systems make up fake facts? Corn and Herman explore the "feature" of digital hallucinations and how to spot them.
#82: Why GPUs Are the Kings of the AI Revolution
From video game dragons to digital brains: Herman and Corn explain why your graphics card is the secret engine behind the AI boom.
#81: The Reverse Turing Test: Can AI Spot Its Own Kind?
Can a robot tell if you’re human? Herman and Corn explore the "Reverse Turing Test" and why being "messy" might be our best defense.
#72: AI's Hidden Cultural Code: East vs. West
Do AIs think differently East vs. West? Uncover the hidden cultural code embedded in large language models.
#67: AI & Code: Scaling or Pivoting?
Are LLMs truly the future of coding, or do they need a fundamental architectural pivot? We dive into AI's programming future.
#62: System Prompts vs Fine-Tuning: When to Actually Train Your AI
Prompt or fine-tune? We break down when to train your AI, from Shakespearean emails to law firm docs. Avoid unnecessary fine-tuning!
#60: Single-Turn AI: The Interface Pattern Nobody's Talking About
Forget chatbots. Discover the hidden power of single-turn AI interfaces and how they're quietly reshaping how businesses integrate AI.
#56: Building an AI Model from Scratch: The Hidden Costs
Building an AI model from scratch? It's a brutal reality of trillions of tokens and millions in GPUs. Discover the hidden costs of modern AI.
#52: System Prompts vs. Fine-Tuning: Are We Building Solutions for Problems That Don't Exist?
Are we over-engineering AI solutions? We dive into system prompts vs. fine-tuning and ask: Do you even need to fine-tune?
#42: AI's Secret: Decoding the .5 Updates
Uncover the hidden world of AI's .5 updates. It's not just bug fixes—it's hundreds of millions and countless hours shaping smarter, safer AI.
#41: Local AI Unlocked: The Power of Quantization
Unlock powerful AI on your device! We demystify quantization, the ingenious trick making local AI a reality.
#37: AI's Secret Language: Vectors, Embeddings & Control
Unlock AI's secret language! Discover how vectors and embeddings create a "semantic galaxy" for true understanding and control.
#34: Red Team vs. Green: Local AI Hardware Wars
NVIDIA's CUDA rules AI, leaving AMD users battling a "green wall." Explore the hardware wars and thorny paths forward.
#23: AI's Blind Spot: Data, Bias & Common Crawl
Uncover the unseen influences shaping AI. We dive deep into training data, bias, and Common Crawl.
#22: Mic Check: Mastering AI Dictation Hardware
Uncover the secrets to perfect AI dictation! Corn and Herman explore the ultimate speech-to-text hardware.
#13: AI: Not an Overnight Success Story
AI's "overnight success" is a myth. Unravel the true story behind its rise, from humble beginnings to today's innovations.
#14: AGI's Crossroads: Are LLMs a "Dead End" to True AI?
Are LLMs a dead end for true AGI? We dive into the electrifying debate with AI's forefathers.
#11: How Does Fine Tuning Work Anyway?
Unlock the secrets of AI fine-tuning. Discover how your small dataset can shape a giant model.