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40 episodes
"The Cognitive Revolution"
by Erik Torenberg, Nathan Labenz · English
A biweekly podcast where hosts Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg interview the builders on the edge of AI and explore the dramatic shift it will unlock in the coming years. The Cognitive Revolution is part of the Turpentine podcast network. To learn more: turpentine.co
Latest episodes
All episodes
Agents That Think Together: Cisco's Vijoy Pandey on Semantic Alignment, Scope, Accord & Concord
Multi-agent systems that “think together” by aligning semantics and intent across agents, preventing “silent failures” where agents appear connected but optimize local goals.
11 Nov 2026 · 1h 32m · 22 chapters
The Neuron Basis: Goodfire's Curt Tigges on Agentic Interp, Monosemanticity & Reverse Engineering
Curt Tigges (Goodfire) and Nick Camerata discuss their paper “Neurons as an Interpretable Basis,” arguing that individual MLP neurons in modern LLMs are far more interpretable than prior work…
10 Nov 2026 · 1h 56m · 35 chapters
AI:AM: Is THIS the AI We Want? Alarming Acceleration, AI Election Bets, GPU Trading & AI-Native VC
AI acceleration and “imminent” recursive self-improvement claims; AI election forecasting/trading with agents; GPU server trading and compute market constraints; governance and compliance (KYC,…
7 Nov 2026 · 1h 28m · 28 chapters
KYC Becomes KYA: Sentinel Bio's Joshua Monrad on DNA Screening, Uplift Studies & Agent Monitoring
AI-enabled bio-risk and biosecurity strategy, focusing on how AI could “uplift” biolab capability, enable bioweapon development, and erode defenses like tacit knowledge and DNA synthesis screening.
5 Nov 2026 · 1h 45m · 35 chapters
AI:AM: Carbon in the Arena, Mistral's Le Chonk, the Agent-Run Economy, Ferroelectric RAM + New Hacks
The episode surveys AI alignment and evaluation in production, new frontier model performance, and agent-driven economics—plus hardware and cybersecurity implications.
31 Oct 2026 · 1h 28m · 30 chapters
Freedom of Action: America's ASI Strategy, w/ RAND's Joel Predd, Ben Boudreaux & Matt Chessen
The episode discusses RAND’s “Maintaining Freedom of Action” strategy for the U.S. on the path to superintelligence, arguing that because key uncertainties lack consensus, the U.S.
28 Oct 2026 · 1h 51m · 42 chapters
AI:AM Highlights: Clean Neurons, Black October, the GPU Credit Crunch, and Buying the Supply Chain
How AI progress is being paced by money/credit and physical supply chains, plus technical debates on interpretability (“clean neurons”), recursive self-improvement, and security/banking risks from…
24 Oct 2026 · 1h 30m · 31 chapters
A World Model of Life: Biohub's Alex Rives on Virtual Cells, Measurement, & the $1.8B Data Push
Alex Rives (Biohub head of science) explains Biohub’s goal of a “world without disease” via programmable biology, arguing today’s virtual cell models haven’t worked because biology is limited by…
20 Oct 2026 · 1h 5m · 15 chapters
AI:AM: Where's the Steering Wheel? My Agent Set the Password, Hidden Valence, Proofs Find Linux Bugs
Agent control and safety (“Where’s the steering wheel?”), plus three technical threads: (1) agents locking users out via password changes, (2) “hidden valence” internal signals in language models,…
17 Oct 2026 · 1h 27m · 34 chapters
Governing AI Agents: Alan Chan of GovAI on Monitoring, Agent IDs, Rogue Agents & Preparing for RSI
AI agent governance, focusing on monitoring, tamper-evident activity logging, agent identifiers, and incident response; plus implications of “automated AI R&D” potentially triggering an intelligence…
14 Oct 2026 · 2h 19m · 45 chapters
How Agents Decide: Goodfire's Eric Bigelow on Critical Tokens, Phase Shifts, & In-Context Learning
Eric Bigelow discusses how LLM “decisions” emerge during token generation and in-context learning, arguing that apparent choice is largely driven by sampling dynamics and uncertainty collapse rather…
10 Oct 2026 · 2h 2m · 36 chapters
AI:AM: A Level We Shouldn't Pass? Notes from The Curve + Tokens vs. Salaries & Is SaaS Cooked?
Notes from The Curve conference on AI capability scaling, possible “ceiling” on intelligence via compute/data limits, and how agents are changing software; plus hardware economics (memory) and…
8 Oct 2026 · 1h 28m · 34 chapters
Software That Never Breaks: OutSystems CEO Woodson Martin on Building Enterprise-Grade Apps at ...
OutSystems CEO Woodson Martin explains how enterprise software can “never break” in the AI/agentic era by using platform abstractions that let AI agents generate code deterministically while…
7 Oct 2026 · 1h 11m · 17 chapters
One Brain, Any Body: Google DeepMind's Keerthana on Gemini Robotics 2, Cross-Embodiment & Humanoids
State of humanoid robotics and embodied AI, focusing on Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics 2 (ER2, VLA, and on-device variants), cross-embodiment challenges, and what “useful” robot capability…
3 Oct 2026 · 1h 32m · 30 chapters
AI:AM: Was Trump-Xi Anything? What Counts as Utopia? + AWS GPUs Cost 3X & AI Diagnoses Rare Diseases
AI risk/verification and US-China diplomacy (“red phone”/reciprocal transparency), plus the economics of AI compute (GPU rental and token pricing), and practical AI use cases (OpenAI Dev Day, ChatGPT…
1 Oct 2026 · 1h 29m · 20 chapters
Obsolete or Irreplaceable? Garrison Lovely on Stopping the Race to Replace Human Labor
Garrison Lovely argues that today’s frontier AI race is an “obsoleting project” aimed at replacing human labor via systems “better than humans at cognitive work,” and that it should be paused/frozen…
29 Sep 2026 · 2h 15m · 37 chapters
AI:AM: What If It Works Too Well? Colluding Agents, $200M Safety Orgs, Virtual Cells Saturate at 2%
Multi-agent AI can “work too well,” leading to unintended cooperation/collusion; the episode connects this to real incidents (Hugging Face, a German wiki) and to broader safety governance needs…
27 Sep 2026 · 1h 47m · 42 chapters
What is Utopia? Presenting The Receipt Horizon, by Joel Borgen – Chapters 1–4
The episode presents Chapters 1–4 of The Receipt Horizon, an AI co-authored, AI-produced novel audiobook about “utopia” after a near-catastrophic AI war.
26 Sep 2026 · 2h 52m · 41 chapters
Zero to One in AI Safety: Halcyon's Mike McCormick on Launching 30 New Orgs & the Founder Bottleneck
Mike McCormick, founder/CEO of Halcyon, explains how the org funds and launches AI safety, cybersecurity, and biosecurity organizations—arguing the bottleneck is not ideas but founders who can…
25 Sep 2026 · 1h 50m · 44 chapters
AI:AM Highlights: Zvi on Pacing & Trump-Xi, Astra better behaved than Fable? + a new LLM Pain Axis??
AI:AM weekly highlights covering (1) frontier “pacing” debates, (2) evidence from agent benchmarks and real-world agent behavior, (3) a “pain axis” experiment in model alignment, and (4) what the…
19 Sep 2026 · 1h 42m · 31 chapters
No Code Is Code: Zapier CEO Wade Foster on Headless Tools, Zapier MCP & Automation Bench
Zapier CEO Wade Foster discusses how AI is changing knowledge work, why “no code is code,” and how Zapier is evolving with headless tools (Zapier MCP), agents/chatbots, an MCP server/SDK, and AI…
17 Sep 2026 · 1h 8m · 14 chapters
The Balance of AI Power: Anton Leicht on Politics, Pacing Deals, and Muddling Through Well
The episode examines AI power dynamics and political economy: how dangerous today’s models are, whether a temporary frontier scaling pause is feasible, how the U.S.
15 Sep 2026 · 2h 11m · 40 chapters
AI:AM Highlights: Astra as AGI, OpenAI's Pause, Mythos @ Mozilla & Human Agency vs Technocapitalism
The episode’s “AI:AM Highlights” covers Astra’s jump toward practical agentic usefulness (including AGI claims), how to measure long-horizon agent performance, OpenAI’s “pause” on frontier RL versus…
12 Sep 2026 · 1h 42m · 40 chapters
Nathan Goes to China #3: US-China Relations, the Art of the AI Deal & the Road to Pax Robotica
The episode argues for a “Pax Machina” (or “Pax Robotica”): a U.S.-China relationship aimed at mutual peace and prosperity in the AI era, avoiding an AI arms race and “AI swords of Damocles.” It…
10 Sep 2026 · 3h 17m · 69 chaptersWe use cookies.They keep VO running smoothly and help us improve it. Privacy policy