It seems like everyone is uses the term “agent” differently these days. In this episode, Chris and Daniel dig into the details of tool calling and its connection to agents. They help clarify how LLMs can “talk to” and “interact with” other systems like databases, APIs, web apps, etc. Along the way they share related learning resources.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 4 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

There is crazy hype and a lot of confusion related to DeepSeek’s latest model DeepSeek R1. The products provided by DeepSeek (their version of a ChatGPT-like app) has exploded in popularity. However, ties to China have raised privacy and geopolitical concerns. In this episode, Chris and Daniel cut through the hype to talk about the model, privacy implications, running DeepSeek models securely, and what this signals for open models in 2025.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 5 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

We seem to be experiencing a surge of video generation tools, models, and applications. However, video generation models generally struggle with some basic physics, like realistic walking motion. This leaves some generated videos lacking true motion with disappointing, simplistic panning camera views. Genmo is focused on the motion side of video generation and has released some of the best open models. Paras joins us to discuss video generation and their journey at Genmo.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 2 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Domo – The AI and data products platform. Strengthen your entire data journey with Domo’s AI and data products.

Featuring:

• Paras Jain – LinkedIn, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Daniel and Chris groove with Jeff Smith, Founder and CEO at CHRP.ai. Jeff describes how CHRP anonymously analyzes emotional wellness data, derived from employees’ music preferences, giving HR leaders actionable insights to improve productivity, retention, and overall morale. By monitoring key trends and identifying shifts in emotional health across teams, CHRP.ai enables proactive decisions to ensure employees feel supported and engaged.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 9 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Shopify – Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/practicalai

Featuring:

• Jeff Smith – LinkedIn, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Today, Chris explores Shopify Magic and other AI offerings with Mike Tamir, Distinguished ML Engineer and Head of Machine Learning, and Matt Colyer, Director of Product Management for Sidekick. They talk about how Shopify uses generative AI and LLMs to enhance their products, and they take a deeper dive into Sidekick, a first-of-its-kind, AI-enabled commerce assistant that understands a merchant’s business (products, orders, customers) and has been trained to know all about Shopify.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 9 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.

Featuring:

• Mike Tamir – LinkedIn
• Matt Colyer – LinkedIn, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Kyutai, an open science research lab, made headlines over the summer when they released their real-time speech-to-speech AI assistant (beating OpenAI to market with their teased GPT-driven speech-to-speech functionality). Alex from Kyutai joins us in this episode to discuss the research lab, their recent Moshi models, and what might be coming next from the lab. Along the way we discuss small models and the AI ecosystem in France.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 10 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.

Featuring:

• Alexandre Défossez – Website, GitHub, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Chris and Daniel dive into what Trump’s impending second term could mean for AI companies, model developers, and regulators, unpacking the potential shifts in policy and innovation. Next, they discuss the latest models, like Qwen, that blur the performance gap between open and closed systems. Finally, they explore new AI tools for meeting clones and AI-driven commerce, sparking a conversation about the balance between digital convenience and fostering genuine human connections.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 8 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• WorkOS – AuthKit offers 1,000,000 monthly active users (MAU) free — The world’s best login box, powered by WorkOS + Radix. Learn more and get started at WorkOS.com and AuthKit.com

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

We are at GenAI saturation, so let’s talk about scikit-learn, a long time favorite for data scientists building classifiers, time series analyzers, dimensionality reducers, and more! Scikit-learn is deployed across industry and driving a significant portion of the “AI” that is actually in production. :probabl is a new kind of company that is stewarding this project along with a variety of other open source projects. Yann Lechelle and Guillaume Lemaitre share some of the vision behind the company and talk about the future of scikit-learn!

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 9 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Timescale – Purpose-built performance for AI Build RAG, search, and AI agents on the cloud and with PostgreSQL and purpose-built extensions for AI: pgvector, pgvectorscale, and pgai.

Featuring:

• Yann Lechelle – LinkedIn
• Guillaume Lemaitre – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

It can be frustrating to get an AI application working amazingly well 80% of the time and failing miserably the other 20%. How can you close the gap and create something that you rely on? Chris and Daniel talk through this process, behavior testing, and the flow from prototype to production in this episode. They also talk a bit about the apparent slow down in the release of frontier models.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 10 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

This week, Chris is joined by Gregory Richardson, Vice President and Global Advisory CISO at BlackBerry, and Ismael Valenzuela, Vice President of Threat Research & Intelligence at BlackBerry. They address how AI is changing the threat landscape, why human defenders remain a key part of our cyber defenses, and the explain the AI standoff between cyber threat actors and cyber defenders.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 10 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.

Featuring:

• Gregory Richardson – LinkedIn
• Ismael Valenzuela – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!