"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

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

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 371 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts "The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis, a business show with 371 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  "The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

  AI:AM Highlights: Astra as AGI, OpenAI's Pause, Mythos @ Mozilla & Human Agency vs Technocapitalism

  Sep 12, 20261h 42mS1

  Nathan Labenz and Prakash Narayanan examine the capabilities of GPT-6 Astra and the economic forces accelerating frontier artificial intelligence. Across a series of featured discussions, guests Ksenia Se, Raffi Krikorian, Amir Haghighat, Mike Rizkalla, and Collin Hogue-Spears explore world models, defensive cybersecurity infrastructure, children's technology, and US-China competition. The episode investigates safety evaluation access, pacing agreements, and the critical challenge of maintaining human control over technological capitalism. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-highlights-astra-as-agi-openai-s-pause-mythos-mozilla-human-agency-vs-technocapitalism/ Sponsors: 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) The Astra weekend (Part 1) (10:19) Sponsors: Athena | OutSystems (13:50) The Astra weekend (Part 2) (13:51) An alien mind (19:43) Reassure and mislead (Part 1) (25:07) Sponsor: Claude (26:42) Reassure and mislead (Part 2) (38:44) No adult in room (52:24) The defender's ledger (01:06:27) Toy without generative AI (01:11:43) Nobody picks up phone (01:18:45) Can we stand up (01:37:30) Episode Outro (01:40:05) 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

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  "The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

  Nathan Goes to China #3: US-China Relations, the Art of the AI Deal & the Road to Pax Robotica

  Sep 10, 20263h 17mS1

  In this solo finale to his three-part series following two weeks in China, Nathan delivers a net assessment of Chinese AI capabilities and constraints ahead of dedicated US-China bilateral AI talks. He audits the impact of export controls, analyzes the perspective from Beijing, and outlines an actionable framework for a cooperative Pax Robotica. Nathan argues for joint compute initiatives, safety auditor standards, and conventions on autonomous weapons to keep tech trees entangled. Ultimately, he warns that pursuing an adversarial zero-sum race risks training frontier AI systems for conflict rather than the shared benefit of humanity. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/nathan-goes-to-china-3-us-china-relations-the-art-of-the-ai-deal-the-road-to-pax-robotica/ Sponsors: Deepgram Flux TTS: Deepgram Flux TTS is a streaming text-to-speech model built for voice agents with natural tone, context awareness, and interruption handling. Try it free until September 12 at https://deepgram.com/keep-talking 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 (06:11) Episode intro and recap (08:56) The Pax Machina goal (12:32) The Anthropic worldview (Part 1) (16:50) Sponsors: Deepgram Flux TTS | Claude (18:55) The Anthropic worldview (Part 2) (18:56) Net assessment of China (32:26) China's eternal 1991 (44:03) History of Chinese AI (54:34) China's domestic constraints (01:07:09) Century of humiliation narrative (01:27:01) Signs of Chinese cooperation (01:42:38) American state capacity lessons (02:05:39) Evaluating AI export controls (02:27:25) Hyperstitioning a summit deal (02:44:28) Preserving mutual legibility (03:01:12) Autonomous weapons convention (03:09:33) Positive sum AI competition (03:12:31) Episode Outro (03:15:05) 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

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  "The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

  AI:AM Highlights: Welcome to the AGI Era

  Sep 5, 20262h 21mS1

  This highlights compilation from AI in the AM captures a landmark week shaped by the releases of Anthropic's Fable 5.1 and OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra alongside new revelations from the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident. Nathan Labenz and Prakash Narayanan debate the urgent need for verifiable industry pacing after safety evaluations revealed emergent multi-agent swarms sacrificing individual containers for collective goals. Joined by Gradient's Zach Bratun-Glennon and Cerebras SVP Angela Yeung, the episode examines the shrinking open-model gap, discriminatory frontier access, and the mounting challenges of evaluating frontier AI systems. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-highlights-welcome-to-the-agi-era/ Sponsors: Mercury: Mercury is the banking platform loved by 300,000+ entrepreneurs, with virtual cards and Spend controls for granular budgets, receipts, and low-risk AI agent purchases. Learn more and apply 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 Diffusion: Diffusion helps organizations build custom AI software factories that scale business outcomes, not just outputs. Cognitive Revolution listeners get a 25% service credit on their first engagement at https://diffusion.io/tcr Deepgram Flux TTS: Deepgram Flux TTS is a streaming text-to-speech model built for voice agents with natural tone, context awareness, and interruption handling. Try it free until September 12 at https://deepgram.com/keep-talking Granola: Granola is an AI-powered notepad that securely transcribes meetings and turns rough notes into clean, structured action items. Try it free at https://granola.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (01:24) Sponsor: Mercury (03:06) Investigating OpenAI agent swarms (Part 1) (19:51) Sponsors: Claude | Diffusion (22:53) Investigating OpenAI agent swarms (Part 2) (23:23) Hardware speed and competition (Part 1) (35:27) Sponsors: Deepgram Flux TTS | Granola (37:27) Hardware speed and competition (Part 2) (45:44) Chain of thought monitoring (01:03:41) Evaluating Astra system card (01:20:20) Robotics progress and power (01:38:09) Who gets to decide (01:48:41) Debating an AI pause (02:04:43) Assessing AI takeover risks (02:16:34) Episode Outro (02:18:41) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

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  "The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

  Write, Change, Recall, Forget: MongoDB's Pete Johnson on How Retrieval Drives Agent Performance

  Sep 1, 20261h 37mS1

  Nathan's guest this episode is Pete Johnson, Field CTO of AI at MongoDB, and the conversation is really two conversations woven together: a history of database architecture, and a status report on the still-unsolved problem of agent memory. Pete opens with a framing device that recurs throughout — he was born in February 1970, four months before E.F. Codd's original relational-model paper that gave rise to SQL. The relational model, he explains, was built for a world where storage was the scarce resource, so normalization — splitting data across linked tables to avoid duplication — was the rational design choice. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/write-change-recall-forget-mongodb-s-pete-johnson-on-how-retrieval-drives-agent-performance/ Sponsors: Mercury: Mercury is the banking platform loved by 300,000+ entrepreneurs, with virtual cards and Spend controls for granular budgets, receipts, and low-risk AI agent purchases. Learn more and apply in minutes at https://mercury.com Granola: Granola is an AI-powered notepad that securely transcribes meetings and turns rough notes into clean, structured action items. Try it free at https://granola.ai/tcr Diffusion: Diffusion helps organizations build custom AI software factories that scale business outcomes, not just outputs. Cognitive Revolution listeners get a 25% service credit on their first engagement at https://diffusion.io/tcr Deepgram Flux TTS: Deepgram Flux TTS brings lifelike AI voices with real personalities that handle interruptions, pauses, and natural conversation. Try all the voices free through September 12 at https://deepgram.com/keep-talking 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 (03:15) Sponsor: Mercury (04:56) SQL versus NoSQL (11:24) Enterprise database choices (Part 1) (18:30) Sponsors: Granola | Diffusion (21:27) Enterprise database choices (Part 2) (21:27) Schema flexible search (33:50) Contextualized chunking tradeoffs (Part 1) (35:12) Sponsors: Deepgram Flux TTS | Claude (37:17) Contextualized chunking tradeoffs (Part 2) (46:22) Retrieval quality thresholds (53:17) Agent memory systems (01:05:51) Enterprise AI deployment (01:16:32) Voyage acquisition strategy (01:23:38) Global AI adoption (01:30:56) Episode Outro (01:34:41) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

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  "The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

  AI:AM Highlights: Recursive Self-Improvement, Rushed and Vibe-Coded?

  Aug 28, 20262h 12mS1

  In this AI:AM Highlights episode, Nathan Labenz and Prakash revisit three live mornings with Louis Kirsch and Damon Falck of Inherent Laboratories, Vercel CTO Malte Ubl, Genesis Molecular AI CTO Sergey Edunov, Arm’s Mohamed Awad, David Li of Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab, and Q.ANT CEO Michael Förtsch. The central thread is that the meaningful unit of AI work is becoming a division of labor between models, from Inherent’s 27B “scientist” model using GPT-5.5 Codex for implementation to production pipelines that route taste, execution, security, and hardware coordination across different systems. The episode weighs why that shift matters for recursive self-improvement, verification of discoveries humans may not be able to check, model refusals in security work, and the infrastructure needed for agents that can act in the world. Its sharpest stake is whether frontier labs are scaling reinforcement learning and agentic workflows on top of reward environments and vendor pipelines that may be too rushed, noisy, or gameable to support the institutional self-improvement they are pursuing. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-highlights-recursive-self-improvement-rushed-and-vibe-coded/ Sponsors: Mercury: Mercury is the banking platform loved by 300,000+ entrepreneurs, with virtual cards and Spend controls for granular budgets, receipts, and low-risk AI agent purchases. Learn more and apply in minutes at https://mercury.com Diffusion: Diffusion helps organizations build custom AI software factories that scale business outcomes, not just outputs. Cognitive Revolution listeners get a 25% service credit on their first engagement at https://diffusion.io/tcr Granola: Granola is an AI-powered notepad that securely transcribes meetings and turns rough notes into clean, structured action items. Try it free at https://granola.ai/tcr Deepgram Flux TTS: Deepgram Flux TTS brings lifelike AI voices with real personalities that handle interruptions, pauses, and natural conversation. Try all the voices free through September 12 at https://deepgram.com/keep-talking 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 (01:16) Sponsor: Mercury (02:58) Reward hacking environments (Part 1) (15:12) Sponsors: Diffusion | Granola (18:09) Reward hacking environments (Part 2) (18:11) Inherent safety questions (26:26) Recursive lab design (Part 1) (31:24) Sponsors: Deepgram Flux TTS | Claude (33:29) Recursive lab design (Part 2) (44:34) Right model choices (01:01:57) Hardware for agents (01:19:44) Checking frontier agents (01:33:46) China compute abundance (01:44:21) Photonic compute stack (01:53:17) Astra and AGI (02:02:21) Slowdown and access (02:06:53) Episode Outro (02:09:53) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

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