Reasoning Models: When LLMs Went Beyond Fancy Autocomplete
Reasoning models don't just answer your question — they *think out loud* first. In this episode we dig into the class of AI models that generate intermediate chains of thought before arriving at a final answer, exploring how the internal re...
Distillation, or, How to Steal a Model
This week we’re covering model distillation: the technique of using a large "teacher" model's outputs to train a smaller, cheaper "student" model that mimics it. They cover the two big reasons labs do this — making lighter, faster, more foc...
Invisible LLM Failures and AI Fluency with Chris Potts (Stanford)
What happens when a Stanford linguistics professor turns his attention to AI chatbots — and the surprisingly invisible ways humans misunderstand them? Chris Potts joins the show to unpack the hidden failure modes in how we interact with AI,...
Interviewing the Linear Digressions Agents (The Agents Season, Episode 11)
After a five-year hiatus, the podcast that burned out partly over the tedium of writing episode descriptions is back — and using AI agents to handle exactly that task. The season-11 finale turns the lens on the podcast itself, putting the A...
Agent Economics (The Agents Season, Episode 10)
What if building more highways made your commute *slower*? That's the paradox at the heart of AI agent economics: even as per-token inference costs have plummeted dramatically over the past two years, total LLM spending keeps climbing. Draw...
Agent Trust, Oversight and Control (The Agents Season, Episode 9)
Capabilities get all the attention when it comes to AI agents — but what happens when a highly capable agent makes a bad decision in the real world? Trust, oversight, and control are the unglamorous but critically important flip side of the...
Many Agents, Many Problems (The Agents Season, Episode 8)
Whether you work best solo or thrive in a team, you know collaboration is complicated — and it turns out AI agents face the same tensions. This episode dives into multi-agent systems, exploring how networks of AI agents can overcome the ind...
How Do You Evaluate An AI Agent? (The Agents Season, Episode 7)
Knowing when an AI agent has failed sounds straightforward — until it isn't. Agents have a frustrating habit of finishing confidently while quietly doing the wrong thing, or looping endlessly without ever crashing in an obvious way. This ep...
AI Agent Failure Modes (The Agents Season, Episode 6)
Despite what the marketing hype might suggest, AI agents are far from infallible — and if you've ever actually used one, you already know this. Today's episode dives deep into the many, varied, and sometimes surprising ways AI agents can fa...
Agentic Planning (The Agents Season, Episode 5)
When tackling a complex, multi-step task, even the smartest AI agent can fail without a solid game plan. This episode dives into the research around agentic planning — how agents move beyond simply reacting to what's in front of them and in...
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