Episode notes
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…
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Practical AI
Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson · Tech & Science · English
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…
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E318 · 27 Jun 2025 · 46 min
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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…
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E317 · 18 Jun 2025 · 42 min
Behind-the-Scenes: VC Funding for AI Startups
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…
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E316 · 12 Jun 2025 · 43 min
AI-Automated Film Making
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…
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E315 · 4 Jun 2025 · 45 min
Federated learning in production (part 2)
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…
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E314 · 30 May 2025 · 45 min
Federated learning in production (part 1)
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 ,…
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E312 · 8 May 2025 · 42 min
Model Context Protocol Deep Dive
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E311 · 30 Apr 2025 · 43 min
Seeing beyond the scan in neuroimaging
In this episode, we explore the intersection of AI, machine learning, and healthcare through the lens of neuroimaging and epilepsy diagnosis. Dr. Gavin Winston shares insights from his work using MRI data and machine learning to uncover subtle abnormalities in brain function. We discuss the cultural and ethical barriers to AI adoption in medicine, how predictive data analysis could transform the diagnostic workflow, and what the future holds for medical imaging in a world increasingly shaped by intelligent systems. Featuring: Gavin Winston – LinkedIn , Website Chris Benson – Website , GitHub…
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E310 · 17 Apr 2025 · 42 min
Open source AI to tackle your backlog
Vibe coding, agentic workflows, and AI-assisted pull requests? In this episode, Daniel and Chris chat with Robert Brennan and Graham Neubig of All Hands AI about how AI is transforming software development—from senior engineer productivity to open source agents that address GitHub issues. They dive into trust, tooling, collaboration, and what it means to build software in the era of AI agents. Whether you're coding from your laptop or your phone on a morning walk, the future is hands-free (and All Hands). Featuring: Robert Brennan – LinkedIn , X Graham Neubig – LinkedIn , X Chris Benson –…
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E309 · 14 Apr 2025 · 43 min
Orchestrating agents, APIs, and MCP servers
In this episode, Daniel sits down with Pavel Veller, EPAM’s Chief Technologist, to explore the practical challenges of orchestrating many AI agents and managing connections to disparate systems/tools. Pavel shares insights from his hands-on work with agentic architectures and internal tools like "DIAL". Pavel also helps us understand things like MCP servers and why connecting assistants via APIs is easy—but making them useful is hard. Featuring: Pavel Veller – LinkedIn , X Daniel Whitenack – Website , GitHub , X Links: EPAM DIAL SWE-bench results
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E308 · 2 Apr 2025 · 43 min
Software and hardware acceleration with Groq
How do you enable AI acceleration (at both the hardware and software layers) that stays ahead of rapid industry shifts? In this episode, Dhananjay Singh from Groq dives into the evolving landscape of AI inference and acceleration. We explore how Groq optimizes the serving layer, adapts to industry shifts, and supports emerging model architectures. Featuring: Dhananjay Singh – LinkedIn , X Chris Benson – Website , GitHub , LinkedIn , X Daniel Whitenack – Website , GitHub , X Links: Groq Sponsors: Augment Code - Developer AI that uses deep understanding of your large codebase and how you build…
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