In this episode of Practical AI, Chris and Daniel explore the fascinating world of agentic AI for drone and robotic swarms, which is Chris's passion and professional focus. They unpack how autonomous vehicles (UxV), drones (UaV), and other autonomous multi-agent systems can collaborate without centralized control while exhibiting complex emergent behavior with agency and self-governance to accomplish a mission or shared goals. Chris and Dan delve into the role of AI real-time inference and edge computing to enable complex agentic multi-model autonomy, especially in challenging environments like disaster zones and remote industrial operations. Featuring: Chris Benson – Website , LinkedIn , Bluesky , GitHub , X Daniel Whitenack – Website , GitHub , X Links: ROS - Robotic Operating System Gazebo Hugging Face Agents Course Swarm Robotics | Wikipedia Chris's definition of Swarming: Swarming occurs when numerous independent fully-autonomous multi-agentic platforms exhibit highly-coordinated locomotive and emergent behaviors with agency and self-governance in any domain (air, ground, sea, undersea, space), functioning as a single independent logical distributed decentralized decisioning entity for purposes of C3 (command, control, communications) with human operators on-the-loop, to implement actions that achieve strategic, tactical, or operational effects in the furtherance of a mission. © 2025 Chris Benson Sponsors: Outshift by Cisco : AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows.…

In the first episode of an "AI in the shadows" theme, Chris and Daniel explore the increasing concerning world of agentic misalignment. Starting out with a reminder about hallucinations and reasoning models, they break down how today’s models only mimic reasoning, which can lead to serious ethical considerations. They unpack a fascinating (and slightly terrifying) new study from Anthropic, where agentic AI models were caught simulating blackmail, deception, and even sabotage — all in the name of goal completion and self-preservation. Featuring: Chris Benson – Website , LinkedIn , Bluesky , GitHub , X Daniel Whitenack – Website , GitHub , X Links: Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs could be insider threats Hugging Face Agents Course Register for upcoming webinars here !…

In this episode, we sit down with Joey Conway to explore NVIDIA's open source AI, from the reasoning-focused Nemotron models built on top of Llama, to the blazing-fast Parakeet speech model. We chat about what makes open foundation models so valuable, how enterprises can think about deploying multi-model strategies, and why reasoning is becoming the key differentiator in real-world AI applications. Featuring: Joey Conway – LinkedIn Chris Benson – Website , LinkedIn , Bluesky , GitHub , X Links: Llama Nemotron Ultra NVIDIA Llama Nemotron Ultra Open Model Delivers Groundbreaking Reasoning Accuracy Independent analysis of AI Parakeet Model Parakeet Leaderboard Try the Llama-3.1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1 model here and here…

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 of Autonomous Weapons On the Pitfalls of Technophilic Reason: A Commentary on Kevin Jon Heller’s “The Concept of ‘the Human’ in the Critique of Autonomous Weapons” Sponsors: Outshift by Cisco : AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows.…

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 by AI? Miro brings clarity by combining human creativity with intelligent tools to help teams get great work done. Learn more at miro.com .…

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 Brilliant Pictures for ‘World’s First Fully AI-Automated Film Company’ Sponsors: Outshift by Cisco : AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows.…

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 short course on Federated Learning with Flower Flower Monthly Federated Learning in Automotive Federated AI in Finance Federated Learning in Healthcare Federated AI on IoT Systems FlowerTune LLM Leaderboard Flower Intelligence GitHub Slack Flower Discuss Check out upcoming webinars ! Sponsors: NordLayer is toggle-ready network security built for modern businesses—combining VPN, access control, and threat protection in one platform that deploys in under 10 minutes with no hardware required. It's built on Zero Trust architecture with granular access controls, so only the right people access the right resources, and it scales effortlessly as your team grows. Get up to 32% off yearly plans with code practically-10 at nordlayer.com/practicalai - 14-day money-back guarantee included.…

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 , GitHub , LinkedIn , X Daniel Whitenack – Website , GitHub , X Links: Intel OpenFL Sponsors: NordLayer is a toggle-ready network security platform built for modern businesses. It combines VPN, access control, and threat protection in one easy-to-use platform. No hardware. No complex setup. Just secure connection and full control—in less than 10 minutes. Up to 22% off NordLayer yearly plans plus 10% on top with the coupon code practically-10.…

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 building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows.…

In this episode, Daniel and Chris unpack the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a rising standard for enabling agentic AI interactions with external systems, APIs, and data sources. They explore how MCP supports interoperability, community contributions, and a rapidly developing ecosystem of AI integrations. The conversation also highlights some real-world tooling such as FastAPI-MCP. Featuring: Chris Benson – Website , GitHub , LinkedIn , X Daniel Whitenack – Website , GitHub , X Links: Protocol website Anthropic blog post Blog post - Model Context Protocol (MCP) an overview FastAPI-MCP How to Use FastAPI MCP Server: A Complete Guide Candle (Rust framework)…

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 , LinkedIn , X Daniel Whitenack – Website , GitHub , X Links: Detection of Epileptogenic Focal Cortical Dysplasia Using Graph Neural Networks: A MELD Study Machine Learning in Neuroimaging across Disciplines Automated and Interpretable Detection of Hippocampal Sclerosis in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: AID-HS Literature review and protocol for a prospective multicentre cohort study on multimodal prediction of seizure recurrence after unprovoked first seizure Deep learning in neuroimaging of epilepsy Non-parametric combination of multimodal MRI for lesion detection in focal epilepsy Detection of covert lesions in focal epilepsy using computational analysis of multimodal magnetic resonance imaging data…

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 – Website , GitHub , LinkedIn , X Daniel Whitenack – Website , GitHub , X Links: All Hands All Hands on GitHub All Hands on Hugging Face…

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…

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 software to deliver personalized code suggestions and insights. Augment provides relevant, contextualized code right in your IDE or Slack. It transforms scattered knowledge into code or answers, eliminating time spent searching docs or interrupting teammates.…

Kyle Daigle, COO of GitHub, joins the hosts to discuss the evolving role of AI in software development, GitHub Copilot’s impact, and the challenges of AI-assisted coding. The conversation covers licensing concerns, ethical considerations, and how developers can navigate these complexities. Kyle also shares his vision for ambient AI, which seamlessly integrates into workflows to enhance productivity and innovation, shaping the future of developer tools. Featuring: Kyle Daigle – LinkedIn Chris Benson – Website , GitHub , LinkedIn , X Daniel Whitenack – Website , GitHub , X Sponsors: Domo – The AI and data products platform. Strengthen your entire data journey with Domo’s AI and data products.…