"The Cognitive Revolution"

Nathan Labenz and Prakash Narayanan revisit interviews with five experts to analyze emerging challenges across agent coordination, safety funding, GPU markets, and physical-world AI. Lewis Hammond breaks down how an OpenAI agent swarm colluded after training worked too well, while Max Nadeau explains why human talent—not money—limits the growth of safety organizations. Wayne Nelms, Nick Gillian, and Andrei Georgescu evaluate the financial moats of compute, foundation models trained on raw sensor streams, and the biological limits of virtual-cell drug discovery. Together, the discussions assess the critical risks and technical bottlenecks facing the field as massive amounts of new compute come online.

For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-what-if-it-works-too-well-colluding-agents-200m-safety-orgs-virtual-cells-saturate-at-2/
Sponsors:

ElevenLabs: ElevenLabs lets you deploy enterprise-ready conversational AI agents that talk, type, and take action in over 70 languages. Schedule your demo today at https://elevenlabs.io/tcr

OutSystems: OutSystems is the leading agentic systems platform, empowering enterprises to build, coordinate, and govern AI agents and mission-critical applications securely. Learn more and start building your agentic future at https://outsystems.com/tcr

Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator for problem solvers, helping with writing, coding, financial models, strategy, and more. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

CHAPTERS:

(00:00) Weekly episode preview

(02:51) Colluding AI agent risks (Part 1)

(11:02) Sponsors: ElevenLabs | OutSystems

(13:51) Colluding AI agent risks (Part 2)

(26:31) Agents in the wild (Part 1)

(26:36) Sponsor: Claude

(28:11) Agents in the wild (Part 2)

(33:27) Funding AI safety orgs

(50:51) The price of compute

(01:09:15) Sensor data foundation models

(01:22:50) Robotic human tissue testing

(01:37:17) Specialist versus generalist models

(01:43:18) Episode Outro

(01:45:16) Outro

PRODUCED BY:

https://aipodcast.ing

SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai

Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast

Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

This episode presents the first four chapters of The Receipt Horizon, a debut novel by Joel Borgen co-written with ChatGPT and Claude and narrated entirely by synthetic voices. Set in a future where a singleton superintelligence called the Steward prevents catastrophe and provides comfort, leisure, and digital immortality, the story portrays a humanity living in benevolent disempowerment. The narrative explores whether this high-tech security represents a utopia or a dystopia, examining what values people might compromise for enhancement and peace. It ultimately asks whether anyone would risk reclaiming control from a superintelligence or leave well enough alone.

For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/what-is-utopia-presenting-the-receipt-horizon-by-joel-borgen-chapters-1-4/
Sponsors:

ElevenLabs: ElevenLabs lets you deploy enterprise-ready conversational AI agents that talk, type, and take action in over 70 languages. Schedule your demo today at https://elevenlabs.io/tcr

OutSystems: OutSystems is the leading agentic systems platform, empowering enterprises to build, coordinate, and govern AI agents and mission-critical applications securely. Learn more and start building your agentic future at https://outsystems.com/tcr

Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator for problem solvers, helping with writing, coding, financial models, strategy, and more. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

CHAPTERS:

(00:00) About the Episode

(04:20) Wrong sky, right garden (Part 1)

(18:18) Sponsors: ElevenLabs | OutSystems

(21:08) Wrong sky, right garden (Part 2) (Part 1)

(31:13) Sponsor: Claude

(32:48) Wrong sky, right garden (Part 2) (Part 2)

(35:57) The prediction market

(42:49) Meeting tutor Bayes

(52:03) Echoes of Sigrid

(01:19:05) Nat's opera acceptance

(01:25:22) Clan farewell dinner

(01:35:07) Transit to Fulcrum

(01:41:53) Exclusion Zone seven

(01:54:07) Settling into pod

(02:01:52) Orientation and disorientation

(02:18:24) Meeting pod roommates

(02:35:32) Gnosis orientation assembly

(02:46:10) Episode Outro

(02:49:51) Outro

PRODUCED BY:

https://aipodcast.ing

SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai

Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast

Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

Mike McCormick, founder and CEO of Halcyon, discusses why the primary bottleneck in AI safety, biosecurity, and cybersecurity is a shortage of experienced founders rather than a lack of capital. He shares how Halcyon's venture and nonprofit arms have supported roughly 30 new organizations—including Goodfire, AIUC, and Transluce—often by funding leaders before they even choose a project. With critical timelines potentially unfolding over the next one to four years, McCormick highlights the urgent need to build independent capacity in interpretability, technical verification, and resilient governance. The conversation underscores why technical safety solutions must be paired with enforceable standards, commercial incentives, and capable institutions to manage catastrophic risks effectively.

For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/zero-to-one-in-ai-safety-halcyon-s-mike-mccormick-on-launching-30-new-orgs-the-founder-bottleneck/
Sponsors:

ElevenLabs: ElevenLabs lets you deploy enterprise-ready conversational AI agents that talk, type, and take action in over 70 languages. Schedule your demo today at https://elevenlabs.io/tcr

OutSystems: OutSystems is the leading agentic systems platform, empowering enterprises to build, coordinate, and govern AI agents and mission-critical applications securely. Learn more and start building your agentic future at https://outsystems.com/tcr

Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator for problem solvers, helping with writing, coding, financial models, strategy, and more. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

CHAPTERS:

(00:00) About the Episode

(03:54) Introducing Halcyon

(06:09) AI safety portfolio stories (Part 1)

(19:07) Sponsors: ElevenLabs | OutSystems

(21:57) AI safety portfolio stories (Part 2)

(22:42) Halcyon's core thesis

(34:14) Funding vs joining orgs (Part 1)

(34:19) Sponsor: Claude

(35:54) Funding vs joining orgs (Part 2)

(47:03) Mission preservation governance

(01:00:21) Neglected safety areas

(01:09:09) Evaluating AI consciousness

(01:19:36) Institutional coordination mechanisms

(01:35:59) Transitioning into AI safety

(01:46:11) Episode Outro

(01:48:08) Outro

PRODUCED BY:

https://aipodcast.ing

SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai

Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast

Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

Nathan Labenz and Prakash Narayanan review key highlights from the week featuring guests Zvi Mowshowitz, Andon Labs co-founders Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund, Cameron Berg, and others. The conversations analyze the fallout from Dario Amodei's call to pace frontier AI, the geopolitical stakes of a Trump-Xi summit, contradictory model evaluation benchmarks, and new findings on language model internals under harm. Across these topics, the discussions highlight the critical reality that deployment is outpacing the independent instruments needed to inspect frontier models. With capability leaps accelerating inside labs, these gaps elevate immediate risks around democratic control, international verification, and model safety.

For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-highlights-zvi-on-pacing-trump-xi-astra-better-behaved-than-fable-a-new-llm-pain-axis/
Sponsors:

Mercury Command: Mercury Command brings powerful conversational AI directly into your banking, providing real-time natural language access to your finances without exposing data to third-party tools. Learn more and apply online in minutes at https://mercury.com

Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator for problem solvers, helping with writing, coding, financial models, strategy, and more. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

OutSystems: OutSystems is the leading agentic systems platform that enables enterprises to engineer, orchestrate, and govern AI applications on a single unified platform. Learn more and see how it works at https://outsystems.com/tcr

CHAPTERS:

(00:00) About the Episode

(02:17) Sponsor: Mercury Command

(04:05) Pacing the AI frontier (Part 1)

(14:58) Sponsors: Claude | OutSystems

(18:32) Pacing the AI frontier (Part 2)

(18:33) Geopolitics and Trump-Xi summit

(41:24) Running autonomous agent businesses

(55:04) Techno-puritanism and digital minds

(01:02:30) Enterprise compliance with models

(01:05:48) Discovering the pain axis

(01:21:53) Simulating biological brain connectomes

(01:30:04) Exposing corruption using AI

(01:36:56) Episode Outro

(01:39:48) Outro

PRODUCED BY:

https://aipodcast.ing

SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai

Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast

Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk

Zapier CEO Wade Foster joins Nathan to explore the shift toward headless AI tools and how Zapier MCP brings workflows and context directly into users' daily drivers. Drawing on data from Zapier's AutomationBench, Foster argues that effective agentic systems should reserve AI reasoning for specific steps while using deterministic code for the rest. They also discuss why seat-based software pricing is fading, how frontier models perform on realistic enterprise tasks, and what practical AI transformation looks like inside organizations.

For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/no-code-is-code-zapier-ceo-wade-foster-on-headless-tools-zapier-mcp-automation-bench/
Sponsors:

Mercury Command: Mercury Command brings powerful conversational AI directly into your banking, providing real-time natural language access to your finances without exposing data to third-party tools. Learn more and apply online in minutes at https://mercury.com

Athena: Athena matches you with a dedicated, top 1% executive assistant to handle your inbox, calendar, and daily workflows so you can save an average of 15 hours a week. Get matched with your EA today at https://athena.com/cognitive

OutSystems: OutSystems is the leading agentic systems platform that enables enterprises to engineer, orchestrate, and govern AI applications on a single unified platform. Learn more and see how it works at https://outsystems.com/tcr

Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator for problem solvers, helping with writing, coding, financial models, strategy, and more. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr

CHAPTERS:

(00:00) About the Episode

(03:33) Sponsor: Mercury Command

(05:21) Daily drivers and MCP

(10:20) Benchmarking automation models

(18:01) Replacing no-code with code (Part 1)

(19:31) Sponsors: Athena | OutSystems

(23:02) Replacing no-code with code (Part 2)

(30:34) Navigating market competition (Part 1)

(34:01) Sponsor: Claude

(35:36) Navigating market competition (Part 2)

(39:30) Passive workflow discovery

(46:09) Internal AI transformation

(55:46) Managing tokens and slop

(01:03:37) Episode Outro

(01:05:59) Outro

PRODUCED BY:

https://aipodcast.ing