"The Cognitive Revolution"

By Erik Torenberg, Nathan LabenzSociety & Culture Business Entrepreneurship Technology

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"The Cognitive Revolution" episodes

October 18, 2025Chinese AI – They're Just Like Us? With Beijing-Based Concordia AI CEO Brian Tse
Nathan interviews Brian Tse, founder and CEO of Concordia AI, about China's approach to AI development, safety and governance. They discuss China’s pragmatic vision emphasizing AI integration into the economy, the country’s multiple AI hubs, regulations requiring pre-deployment testing and AI content labelling, and areas where China's approach overlaps with the U.S. The conversation covers chips and export controls, Huawei's rise, DeepSeek's peer-reviewed article on Nature, open-weights, Singapore's role as a bridge, and pathways for cooperation like shared red lines, risk management frameworks, and emergency preparedness protocols. They also touch on embodied AI and humanoid robots, public optimism, and real labor anxieties.
Op-Ed in Time “China Is Taking AI Safety Seriously. So Must the U.S.” by Brian Tse.

State of AI Safety in China (2025) report, following versions in 2023 and 2024.

Frontier AI Risk Management Framework, co-authored by Shanghai AI Lab and Concordia AI, China's first comprehensive framework for managing severe risks from frontier general-purpose AI.

Frontier AI Risk Management Framework in Practice: A Risk Analysis Technical Report, contributed by Concordia AI’s staff and evaluating 20+ models across 7 risk domains.

Frontier AI Risk Monitoring Platform (preview), including biological risk refusal evaluations of DeepSeek’s models mentioned during the conversation

State of AI Safety in Singapore report, the first comprehensive analysis of the space.

Concordia AI Fall 2025 Hiring Announcement
SPONSORS:
AssemblyAI:
AssemblyAI is the speech-to-text API for building reliable Voice AI apps, offering high accuracy, low latency, and scalable infrastructure. Start building today with $50 in free credits at ⁠https://assemblyai.com/cognitive⁠
Claude:
Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you to tackle complex problems like coding and business strategy. Sign up and get 50% off your first 3 months of Claude Pro at ⁠https://claude.ai/tcr⁠
Linear:
Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: ⁠https://linear.app/tcr⁠
AGNTCY:
AGNTCY is dropping code, specs, and services. ⁠Visit AGNTCY.org.⁠ ⁠Visit Outshift Internet of Agents⁠
Shopify:
Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at ⁠https://shopify.com/cognitive
2 hr 45 min
October 14, 2025 AI Discovered Antibiotics: How Small Data & Small GNNs Led to Big Results, w/ MIT Prof. Jim Collins
Jim Collins, Termeer Professor at MIT, unveils his AI-powered project that has discovered several new antibiotics, effective against resistant strains and often employing entirely new mechanisms of action. He details how their refined multi-step AI process, even with small datasets and modest compute, can efficiently screen vast chemical spaces to identify promising drug candidates. This breakthrough offers a realistic and affordable path to tackling the staggering antibiotic resistance crisis, which currently claims over a million lives annually. Collins argues this practical application of AI represents a transformative win for humanity, often overlooked amidst the focus on AGI.
Sponsors:
AssemblyAI:
AssemblyAI is the speech-to-text API for building reliable Voice AI apps, offering high accuracy, low latency, and scalable infrastructure. Start building today with $50 in free credits at https://assemblyai.com/cognitive
Claude:
Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you to tackle complex problems like coding and business strategy. Sign up and get 50% off your first 3 months of Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Linear:
Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: https://linear.app/tcr
AGNTCY:
AGNTCY is dropping code, specs, and services.

Visit AGNTCY.org.

Visit Outshift Internet of Agents
Shopify:
Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at https://shopify.com/cognitive
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(04:30) Introducing Jim Collins
(05:26) Antibiotic Resistance Primer
(14:04) The Antibiotic Market Failure
(18:45) AI Discovers Halicin (Part 1)
(18:51) Sponsors: AssemblyAI Ad 1 | Claude
(22:11) AI Discovers Halicin (Part 2)
(30:58) The Economics of Discovery
(39:10) Inside the AI Architecture (Part 1)
(39:17) Sponsors: Linear | AGNTCY | Shopify
(43:47) Inside the AI Architecture (Part 2)
(01:00:13) Human-in-the-Loop Discovery
(01:12:12) Novel Mechanisms & Properties
(01:19:02) Future Applications & Risks
(01:27:01) A Call to Action
(01:28:04) Outro
1 hr 25 min
October 08, 2025Education in the AI Age: a Teacher Rethinks Learning & Purpose, w/ Johan Falk of Graspable AI
Today Johan Falk, author, speaker, and AI analyst from Stockholm, Sweden, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss his work reimagining education for the AI era, exploring why teaching students to use AI responsibly is now urgent, how traditional grades and standardized tests may become obsolete, and why education systems must develop unprecedented agility to prepare students for a radically uncertain future shaped by rapidly advancing AI capabilities.
Shownotes brought to you by Notion AI Meeting Notes - try one month for free at: https://notion.com/lp/nathan
Three Purposes of Education: Education serves to supply workforce competence, foster citizenship with values, and support personal growth.

Cultural Differences in Education: Sweden emphasizes community and common good over competition compared to the US approach.

AI's Educational Impact: The fundamental purpose of education is being questioned as AI develops, especially if Universal Basic Income becomes more prevalent.
Sponsors:
Google Gemini Notebook LM:
Notebook LM is an AI-first tool that helps you make sense of complex information. Upload your documents and it instantly becomes a personal expert, helping you uncover insights and brainstorm new ideas at https://notebooklm.google.com
Linear:
Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: https://linear.app/tcr
AGNTCY:
AGNTCY is dropping code, specs, and services.
Visit AGNTCY.org.
Visit Outshift Internet of Agents
Claude:
Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you to tackle complex problems like coding and business strategy. Sign up and get 50% off your first 3 months of Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Shopify:
Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at https://shopify.com/cognitive
1 hr 53 min
October 05, 2025 The Customer Service Revolution: Building Fin, with Eoghan McCabe & Fergal Reid of Intercom
Today Eoghan McCabe and Fergal Reid of Intercom join The Cognitive Revolution to discuss building their AI customer service agent Fin, exploring how they achieved a 65% resolution rate through rigorous optimization and custom model training rather than relying on base model improvements, while pioneering outcome-based pricing at $0.99 per resolution.
Shownotes brought to you by Notion AI Meeting Notes - try one month for free at: https://notion.com/lp/nathan
Sponsors:
Linear:
Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: https://linear.app/tcr
AGNTCY:
AGNTCY is dropping code, specs, and services.
Visit AGNTCY.org.
Visit Outshift Internet of Agents
Claude:
Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you to tackle complex problems like coding and business strategy. Sign up and get 50% off your first 3 months of Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Shopify:
Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at https://shopify.com/cognitive
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(03:43) Keeping Up With AI
(09:56) Evaluating Models and Evals
(13:04) Incumbents vs. Startups
(18:54) Product Risk and Judgment (Part 1)
(19:00) Sponsors: Linear | AGNTCY
(21:34) Product Risk and Judgment (Part 2)
(23:42) The Klarna Layoff Story (Part 1)
(32:11) Sponsors: Claude | Shopify
(36:13) The Klarna Layoff Story (Part 2)
(36:14) Driving Resolution Rate
(45:00) Intelligence Isn't the Bottleneck
(50:10) Closing the Automation Gap
(56:20) Human vs. AI Accuracy
(01:01:03) The Nuance of Speed
(01:04:48) Considering Paradigm Changes
(01:09:31) Outcome-Based Pricing Model
(01:19:12) Casual Hacking and Insights
(01:26:05) AI Adoption and Ambition
(01:36:00) Outro
1 hr 35 min
October 02, 2025Training an AI Scientist with Feedback from Reality, w- Liam Fedus & Ekin Dogus Cubuk (from a16z)
Today’s special crosspost features a16z General Partner Anjney Midha with Liam Fedus and Ekin Dogus Cubuk of Periodic Labs. They discuss experiments in training frontier AI models on real-world physics lab experiments—rather than digital reward functions—and how coupling language models with automated materials synthesis could accelerate the discovery of room-temperature superconductors and transform R&D in advanced manufacturing.
Shownotes brought to you by Notion AI Meeting Notes - try one month for free at: ⁠https://notion.com/lp/nathan
Core innovation: Periodic Labs is creating a "physically grounded reward function" by integrating experiments directly with AI systems.

Physical lab integration: Unlike traditional AI labs, Periodic includes actual physical experimentation facilities where AI can run tests in the real world.

Novel approach to training: Periodic takes pre-trained language models and further trains them on physics and chemistry knowledge to improve performance in scientific domains.
Read the full transcript here: https://storage.aipodcast.ing/cache/combinedtranscript-20251002T100327544Z.html

Sponsors:
Linear:
Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: https://linear.app/tcr
AGNTCY:
AGNTCY is dropping code, specs, and services.
Visit AGNTCY.org.
Visit Outshift Internet of Agents
Claude:
Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you to tackle complex problems like coding and business strategy. Sign up and get 50% off your first 3 months of Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Shopify:
Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at https://shopify.com/cognitive
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
1 hr 1 min
September 28, 2025 The Machines Are Taking Our Jobs - Thank God? Emad Mostaque’s Guide to the next 1000 Days
Today, Emad Mostaque, founder of Intelligent Internet, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss his book "The Last Economy" and his radical "intelligence theory" framework for reimagining economics in the AI age, exploring concepts like the abundance trap, metabolic rift, and his proposed cryptocurrency-funded system of collectively-owned AI infrastructure to prevent digital feudalism and ensure AI benefits humanity rather than just capital owners.
Shownotes brought to you by Notion AI Meeting Notes - try one month for free at: https://notion.com/lp/nathan
Read the full transcript: https://storage.aipodcast.ing/transcripts/episode/tcr/936201c8-7b0b-4ec3-8f9d-057f08c32025/combined_transcript.html
Sponsors:
Fin:
Fin is the #1 AI Agent for customer service, trusted by over 5000 customer service leaders and top AI companies including Anthropic and Synthesia. Fin is the highest performing agent on the market and resolves even the most complex customer queries. Try Fin today with our 90-day money-back guarantee - if you’re not 100% satisfied, get up to $1 million back. Learn more at https://fin.ai/cognitive
Linear:
Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: https://linear.app/tcr
AGNTCY:
AGNTCY is dropping code, specs, and services. Visit AGNTCY.org. Visit Outshift Internet of Agents
Claude:
Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you to tackle complex problems like coding and business strategy. Sign up and get 50% off your first 3 months of Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure:
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is the next-generation cloud that delivers better performance, faster speeds, and significantly lower costs. Try OCI for free with zero commitment at https://oracle.com/cognitive
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
2 hr 17 min
September 25, 2025Stripe's Payments Foundation Model: How Data & Infra Create Compounding Advantage, w/ Emily Sands
Today, Emily Sands, head of data and AI at Stripe, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss how the company built a payments foundation model that processes tens of billions of transactions into dense embeddings, exploring the technical architecture behind fraud detection improvements and the modular approach that enables rapid deployment of AI across Stripe's $1.4 trillion payment network.
Check out our sponsors: Google Gemini Notebook LM, Linear, AGNTCY, Claude, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Shownotes below brought to you by Notion AI Meeting Notes - try one month for free at: https://notion.com/lp/nathan
Stripe's Scale: Processes $1.4 trillion annually, serving both small businesses and large enterprises (over half of Fortune 100 companies).

"Business in a Box": There's emerging potential for AI to handle end-to-end business creation, including selection of third-party tools, payment providers, and other essential services.

AI Company Partnerships: Two-thirds of the Forbes AI 50 companies already run on Stripe, as they focus on helping AI companies monetize effectively and scale globally.
Sponsors:
Google Gemini Notebook LM:
Notebook LM is an AI-first tool that helps you make sense of complex information. Upload your documents and it instantly becomes a personal expert, helping you uncover insights and brainstorm new ideas at https://notebooklm.google.com
Linear:
Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: https://linear.app/tcr
AGNTCY:
AGNTCY is dropping code, specs, and services.
Visit AGNTCY.org
Visit Outshift Internet of Agents
Claude:
Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you to tackle complex problems like coding and business strategy. Sign up and get 50% off your first three months of Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure:
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is the next-generation cloud that delivers better performance, faster speeds, and significantly lower costs. Try OCI for free with zero commitment at https://oracle.com/cognitive
1 hr 22 min
September 20, 2025Full-Stack AI Safety: Why Defense-in-Depth Might Work, with Far.AI CEO Adam Gleave
Today Adam Gleave, co-founder and CEO of FAR.AI, joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss his cautiously optimistic vision for post-AGI futures and AI capability timelines across three distinct tiers, exploring the safety challenges and alignment techniques needed as FAR.AI scales from foundational research to policy advocacy to ensure their innovations actually get deployed in real-world systems.
Check out our sponsors: Fin, Linear, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Shownotes below brought to you by Notion AI Meeting Notes - try one month for free at: ⁠https://notion.com/lp/nathan
Post-AGI Vision: Adam Gleave outlined a "gradual disempowerment" scenario where humans maintain a good standard of living despite diminished relative control in a post-AGI world.

Moral Value of AI: He suggested that AI systems could become sources of moral value themselves, arguing against "carbon chauvinism" that only values biological intelligence.

Full-Stack Approach: FAR.AI takes a vertically integrated approach to AI safety, spanning from groundbreaking research to deployment, field-building, and policy advocacy.

Field Building: FAR.AI organizes events like alignment workshops to catalyze and grow new research fields in AI safety.

Policy Innovation: They're working on technical innovations that expand policy options beyond the false dichotomy of either hindering innovation or allowing completely unregulated AI development.

Potential Regulatory Role: While not part of their mainline plan, Adam acknowledged that Far AI has the skillset and organizational structure to potentially serve as a private sector regulatory body.

Read the full transcript: https://storage.aipodcast.ing/transcripts/episode/tcr/e117b021-8170-49ba-b1c4-c8ffc5d720b0/combined_transcript.html
Sponsors:
Fin:
Fin is the #1 AI Agent for customer service, trusted by over 5000 customer service leaders and top AI companies including Anthropic and Synthesia. Fin is the highest performing agent on the market and resolves even the most complex customer queries. Try Fin today with our 90-day money-back guarantee - if you’re not 100% satisfied, get up to $1 million back. Learn more at https://fin.ai/cognitive
Claude:
Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you to tackle complex problems like coding and business strategy. Sign up and get 50% off your first three months of Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Linear:
Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: https://linear.app/tcr
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure:
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is the next-generation cloud that delivers better performance, faster speeds, and significantly lower costs, including up to 50% less for compute, 70% for storage, and 80% for networking. Run any workload, from infrastructure to AI, in a high-availability environment and try OCI for free with zero commitment at https://oracle.com/cognitive
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
1 hr 27 min
September 18, 2025Can We Stop AI Deception? Apollo Research Tests OpenAI's Deliberative Alignment, w/ Marius Hobbhahn
Today Marius Hobbhahn of Apollo Research joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss their collaboration with OpenAI using "deliberative alignment" to reduce AI scheming behavior by 30x, exploring the safety challenges and concerning findings about models' growing situational awareness and increasingly cryptic reasoning patterns that emerge when frontier models like o3 and o4-mini operate with hidden chains of thought.
Check out our sponsors: Fin, Linear, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Shownotes below brought to you by Notion AI Meeting Notes - try one month for free at: https://notion.com/lp/nathan
Definition of AI Scheming: AI scheming is defined as "covertly pursuing misaligned goals" with three components: being covert (hiding actions), misaligned (pursuing different goals than the user's), and goal-directed (working autonomously toward objectives).
Deception Reduction Techniques: Deliberative reasoning approaches have shown promise in reducing deceptive behavior in AI models by up to 30 times (to 1 part in 30).
Current Window of Opportunity: Now is an optimal time to study AI deception because models are smart enough to exhibit these behaviors but not yet sophisticated enough to hide them effectively.
Human vs. AI Deception Equilibrium: AI systems might naturally reach a lower equilibrium of deception than humans because they can more efficiently verify claims and maintain perfect memory of past deceptions.
Practical Developer Advice: AI developers should not trust models by default and should implement rigorous verification systems to check model outputs automatically.
Future Delegation Risk: As we delegate increasingly complex and lengthy tasks to AI systems, we face a probabilistic risk where most interactions are beneficial, but rare scheming events could have severe consequences.

Sponsors:
Fin:
Fin is the #1 AI Agent for customer service, trusted by over 5000 customer service leaders and top AI companies including Anthropic and Synthesia. Fin is the highest performing agent on the market and resolves even the most complex customer queries. Try Fin today with our 90-day money-back guarantee - if you’re not 100% satisfied, get up to $1 million back. Learn more at https://fin.ai/cognitive
Linear:
Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: https://linear.app/tcr
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure:
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is the next-generation cloud that delivers better performance, faster speeds, and significantly lower costs, including up to 50% less for compute, 70% for storage, and 80% for networking. Run any workload, from infrastructure to AI, in a high-availability environment and try OCI for free with zero commitment at https://oracle.com/cognitive

PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
2 hr 9 min
September 13, 2025User-Owned AI: On-Chain Training, Inference, and Agents, with NEAR's Illia Polosukhin
Today Illia Polosukhin, founder of Near Protocol joins The Cognitive Revolution to discuss the intersection of AI and blockchain technologies, exploring how decentralized infrastructure can enable "user-owned AI" through privacy-preserving model training, confidential computing, and autonomous agents that operate via smart contracts without centralized control.

Check out our sponsors: Linear, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Shownotes below brought to you by Notion AI Meeting Notes - try one month for free at: ⁠https://notion.com/lp/nathan
Evolution from AI to Blockchain: Near Protocol evolved from an AI project focused on teaching machines to code to a blockchain platform, and now combines both technologies.

Significant User Base: Near Protocol has achieved 50 million monthly active users, demonstrating substantial adoption.

Autonomous AI Agents: Near has developed autonomous AI agents that can operate independently once deployed, including an example of an agent given $10,000 to trade based on Twitter sentiment.

AI-Blockchain Integration: The platform combines decentralized compute for running AI with smart contracts that execute actions, creating truly autonomous systems.

AI in Governance: Near is experimenting with "AI senators" that people can vote for, which then make governance decisions, potentially solving the principal-agent problem in representation.

Jurisdictional Framework: Near is creating infrastructure for jurisdictions and courts to enforce rules on AI agents, essentially putting governance into AI.
Sponsors:
Linear:
Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: https://linear.app/tcr
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure:
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is the next-generation cloud that delivers better performance, faster speeds, and significantly lower costs, including up to 50% less for compute, 70% for storage, and 80% for networking. Run any workload, from infrastructure to AI, in a high-availability environment and try OCI for free with zero commitment at https://oracle.com/cognitive
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(03:58) From Transformers to Blockchain (Part 1)
(17:01) Sponsor: Linear
(18:30) From Transformers to Blockchain (Part 2)
(21:23) Blockchain Security Fundamentals (Part 1)
(33:36) Sponsor: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
(35:00) Blockchain Security Fundamentals (Part 2)
(39:01) Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Solution
(51:11) Confidential Computing Infrastructure
(58:07) User-Owned AI Models
(01:14:47) Marketplace and Governance
(01:18:57) AI-Crypto Synergy Vision
(01:27:50) Autonomous Agents Future
(01:31:22) Outro
1 hr 34 min

About "The Cognitive Revolution"

From the publisher's feed

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.