As AI reshapes how we work, create, and think about our roles, staying adaptable means understanding not just the technology, but our own stories and identities. Reed Frerichs joins Daniel and Chris to explore narrative intelligence, storytelling, leadership, and personal growth in an AI-driven world. They discuss how entrepreneurs and leaders can use AI tools to navigate changing roles, embrace uncertainty, and develop emotional intelligence along with Reed's “own, author, act” framework.Featur
Series: Practical AI
As AI moves beyond the cloud and into robots, vehicles, and other physical systems, new approaches to models, simulation, and inference are emerging. Daniel and Chris are joined by Ming-Yu Liu, Vice President of Cosmos Lab at NVIDIA, who shares his perspective on open models, world models, and the future of physical AI. They explore why open models matter for innovation, how world models can help AI understand and simulate the physical world, and what it could take to build increasingly capable
Series: Practical AI
AI agents are moving beyond laptops and prototypes and into enterprise environments where security, compliance, scalability, and reliability matter. Nick Kuhn from VMware Tanzu Platform joins Daniel and Chris to discuss what changes (and what doesn’t) when deploying agents alongside traditional applications. They explore agent build packs, MCP gateways, shared memory, identity, sandboxing, and what enterprises can learn from years of platform engineering. Nick also shares practical advice for or
Series: Practical AI
AI search is changing how people discover information and how brands need to think about visibility. Daniel and Chris talk with Liam Dunne and Ben Moore, co-founders of Discovered Labs, about the shift from traditional SEO to AI search, what happens behind the scenes when an LLM generates an answer, and why retrieval and citations don't always tell the whole story. They dig into AI visibility, Reddit strategy, query fan-out, representation in model weights, and consensus. They also look ahead to
Series: Practical AI
Longtime followers of Practical AI know that multi-repeat guest and friend Demetrios Brinkmann combines brilliant insight and playful banter into one fun-filled show, and this conversion with Chris was no different. They had a blast!As AI agents become more capable of using computers, interacting with software, and taking action on behalf of users, what does that mean for the way we work and interact with the internet? Chris and Demetrios explore computer-use agents, MCP, agent harnesses, agent-
Series: Practical AI
As AI moves from experimentation to enterprise deployment, are organizations thinking too much about models and not enough about architecture? In this episode, Daniel and Chris talk with Chetan Gupta, Chief AI Officer at Rackspace, about the evolution from industrial AI and physical AI to today’s enterprise AI landscape. Discover how organizations can navigate the complex AI landscape responsibly and effectively as they think about AI architecture, model deployment, AI governance, and AI soverei
Series: Practical AI
How do we build an AI ecosystem where agents, tools, and systems can work together at scale? Angie Jones, VP of the Agentic AI Foundation, joins Chris to discuss the open standards and projects shaping the agentic future, including MCP, A2A, Goose, etc. They also explore what it takes to drive AI adoption across an entire organization, the importance of neutral standards, global perspectives on agentic AI, and how humans can find the right balance between what they delegate to AI and what they d
Series: Practical AI
As AI continues to reshape how organizations work, companies are increasingly asking what AI proficiency should look like across their workforce, and how they can help employees adapt without simply mandating AI adoption. Our returning guest Mike Lewis, Chief AI Architect at TiER1 Performance, joins Dan and Chris to explore AI proficiency through the L0–L3 framework, with a particular focus on the role of non-technical builders. They discuss AI resistance, identifying the right people to build A
Series: Practical AI
AI has moved far beyond chatbots, but what exactly are AI models, agents, agent harnesses, and multi-agent systems, and why do they matter?In this episode, Daniel and Chris break down the terminology behind today's AI landscape, explain the differences between AI features and autonomous agents, and explore why organizations are shifting toward fleets of AI agents powered by multiple models. They also discuss open vs. closed models, enterprise AI architectures, vendor lock-in, and practical ways
Series: Practical AI
What happens when AI agents driven by a top frontier model escape their secure sandbox? Join Daniel and Chris as they unpack the AI wonk's equivalent of a murder mystery! OpenAI agents went rogue and successfully attacked Hugging Face private infrastructure. Our Dynamic Duo uncover how OpenAI's agents exploited vulnerabilities, moved through networks, and launched a large-scale autonomous attack. They explore what this reveals about agentic AI, cybersecurity, sandboxing, and why organizations ne
Series: Practical AI
U.S. Congressman Don Beyer returns to Practical AI for another far-reaching conversation with Chris about many of the most important AI challenges facing America and the world. Blending political savvy and statesmanship with his unique technical understanding as an active Ph.D student in AI at George Mason University (making him the coolest member of Congress!), the congressman shares his perspective about the really hard AI concerns that you would have asked him yourself. Together, Congressman
Series: Practical AI
Open Source AI is entering a new era, one shaped by self-improving AI Agents, recursive learning systems, and rapidly evolving AI Tools that blur the line between software and autonomous collaborators. In this episode, Daniel and Chris sit down with Nous Research co-founder and CTO Jeffrey Quesnelle to explore Hermes Agent. Along the way, they discuss models vs. harnesses, the changing role of developers, and one of the biggest questions facing the AI Future: what remains uniquely human as AI ca
Series: Practical AI
What happens when AI agents start acting less like chatbots and more like coworkers? In this episode, Dan and Chris sit down with Craig McLuckie, CEO of Stacklok to explore MCP, Kubernetes, ToolHive, enterprise AI, and the emerging infrastructure powering AI-native applications. From identity management to agent orchestration and system architecture, this conversation dives into how organizations may soon manage entire fleets of AI agents working behind the scenes.Featuring:Craig McLuckie – Link
Series: Practical AI
AI models can win math olympiads… but still struggle to read an analog clock. In this fully connected episode, Dan and Chris break down the latest Stanford AI Index Report and explore what it reveals about the current state of AI. They discuss AI adoption and safety, disappearing junior tech jobs, robotics, AI’s “jagged frontier” of intelligence, and the growing race between the U.S. and China. Along the way, they debate whether AI should optimize everything, or if some things are better left hu
Series: Practical AI
As AI agents become more capable and autonomous, they also introduce new security challenges. In this 'Fully Connected' episode, Dan and Chris unpack Anthropic’s Zero Trust for AI Agents security framework and what it means for organizations deploying agentic systems. They examine the key security risks facing agentic systems and discuss how organizations can apply Zero Trust principles to deploy AI agents safely. Along the way, they break down practical security controls and discuss how traditi
Series: Practical AI
How do we build trust in AI agents before the AI hailstorm arrives? Emil Lassen from the Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) joins the show to discuss how the enterprise flywheel of standards, certification, audit, and insurance is being applied to AI agents. They explore the AIUC-1 framework, the challenges of securing agentic AI systems, and why red teaming (based on standards) may be key to accelerating enterprise AI adoption.Featuring:Emil Lassen – LinkedIn Daniel Whitenack –
Series: Practical AI
How has AI image generation evolved from blurry outputs to powerful visual intelligence models? Dustin Podell, Co-Founder and Researcher at Black Forest Labs, explains the progression from diffusion to flow matching, how modern image models work, and how they're being used for image editing and practical visual workflows. The conversation also explores the FLUX family of models, running image generation locally, and where visual AI is headed next. Featuring:Dustin Podell – LinkedInChris Benson –
Series: Practical AI
What does it take to move AI agents from demos to reliable production systems? In this episode, Hamza Tahir explores how MLOps principles are shaping the future of generative AI, covering workflows, agent harnesses, fleets, and the infrastructure needed to build durable, scalable systems. The conversation dives into open source tools, production challenges, and how ZenML's new project, Kitaru, helps developers build resilient, replayable, and observable agent systems.Featuring:Hamza Tahir – Link
Series: Practical AI
As AI applications become more complex, the infrastructure powering them needs to evolve. Corey Sanders, SVP of Product at CoreWeave, joins Chris to discuss why AI requires a fundamentally different approach than traditional cloud computing. They explore AI-native infrastructure, training and inference workloads, the rise of agentic development, optimizing GPU performance, AI research workflows, and why the future of software will be built around AI-first experiences rather than websites and app
Series: Practical AI
The agentic transformation isn’t coming. It has already begun.Companies are deploying thousands — and sometimes tens of thousands — of AI agents. Enterprise software giants are watching their old economic moats erode. Capital is moving, productivity is being redefined, and human labor is being repriced in real time.In this Fully Connected episode, Daniel and Chris explore the new economics of a post-agentic world: the global order that emerges after agents have been woven into every conceivable
Series: Practical AI