Episode 144 Happy New Year! This is one of my favorite episodes of the year — for the fourth time, Nathan Benaich and I did our yearly roundup of AI news and advancements, including selections from…
Episode 143 I spoke with Iason Gabriel about: * Value alignment * Technology and worldmaking * How AI systems affect individuals and the social world Iason is a philosopher and Senior Staff Research…
Our 220th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! Recorded on 08/30/2025 Check out Andrey's work over at Astrocade , sign up to be an ambassador here Hosted by Andrey…
Episode 141 I spoke with Professor Philip Goff about: * What a “post-Galilean” science of consciousness looks like * How panpsychism helps explain consciousness and the hybrid cosmopsychist view…
Episode 140 I spoke with Professor Jacob Andreas about: * Language and the world * World models * How he’s developed as a scientist Enjoy! Jacob is an associate professor at MIT in the Department of…
Episode 139 I spoke with Evan Ratliff about: * Shell Game, Evan’s new podcast, where he creates an AI voice clone of himself and sets it loose. * The end of the Longform Podcast and his thoughts on…
Episode 137 I spoke with Davidad Dalrymple about: * His perspectives on AI risk * ARIA (the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency) and its Safeguarded AI Programme Enjoy—and let me know what…
Episode 136 I spoke with Clive Thompson about: * How he writes * Writing about the climate and biking across the US * Technology culture and persistent debates in AI * Poetry Enjoy—and let me know…
Episode 136 I spoke with Judy Fan about: * Our use of physical artifacts for sensemaking * Why cognitive tools can be a double-edged sword * Her approach to scientific inquiry and how that approach…
Episode 122 I spoke with Azeem Azhar about: * The speed of progress in AI * Historical context for some of the terminology we use and how we think about technology * What we might want our future to…
Episode 122 I spoke with Professor David Thorstad about: * The practical difficulties of doing interdisciplinary work * Why theories of human rationality should account for boundedness, heuristics,…
Episode 121 I spoke with Professor Ryan Tibshirani about: * Differences between the ML and statistics communities in scholarship, terminology, and other areas. * Trend filtering * Why you can’t just…
In episode 120 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Sasha Luccioni. Sasha is the AI and Climate Lead at HuggingFace, where she spearheads research, consulting, and capacity-building to…
In episode 119 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Michael Sipser. Professor Sipser is the Donner Professor of Mathematics and member of the Computer Science and Artificial…
In episode 118 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Andrew Lee. Andrew is co-founder and CEO of Shortwave, a company dedicated to building a better product experience for email,…
Episode 117 “You get more of what you engage with. Everyone who complains about coverage should understand that every click, every quote tweet, every argument is registered by these publications as…
In episode 116 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Kate Park. Kate is the Director of Product at Scale AI. Prior to joining Scale, Kate worked on Tesla Autopilot as the AI team’s first…
In episode 115 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ben Wellington. Ben is the Deputy Head of Feature Forecasting at Two Sigma, a financial sciences company. Ben has been at Two Sigma for…
“There is this move from generality in a relative sense of ‘we are not as specialized as insects’ to generality in the sense of omnipotent, omniscient, godlike capabilities. And I think there's…
In episode 113 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Sasha Rush. Professor Rush is an Associate Professor at Cornell University and a Researcher at HuggingFace. His research aims…
In episode 112 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Cameron Jones and Sean Trott. Cameron is a PhD candidate in the Cognitive Science Department at the University of California, San…
In episode 111 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Nicholas Thompson. Nicholas is the CEO of The Atlantic. Previously, he served as editor-in-chief of Wired and editor of Newyorker.com.…
In episode 110 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Subbarao Kambhampati. Professor Kambhampati is a professor of computer science at Arizona State University. He studies…
In episode 109 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Russ Maschmeyer. Russ is the Product Lead for AI and Spatial Commerce at Shopify. At Shopify, he leads a team that looks at how AI can…
In episode 108 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Benjamin Breen. Professor Breen is an associate professor of history at UC Santa Cruz specializing in the history of science,…
In episode 107 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Ted Gibson. Ted is a Professor of Cognitive Science at MIT. He leads the TedLab, which investigates why languages look the…
In episode 106 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Harvey Lederman. Professor Lederman is a professor of philosophy at UT Austin. He has broad interests in contemporary…
In episode 105 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Eric Jang. Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here or reach us at editor@thegradient.pub…
In episode 104 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Nathan Benaich. Nathan is Founder and General Partner at Air Street Capital, a VC firm focused on investing in AI-first technology and…
In episode 103 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Dr. Kathleen Fisher. As the director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O), Dr. Kathleen Fisher oversees a portfolio that…
In episode 102 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Peter Tse. Professor Tse is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and chair of the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at…
In episode 101 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Vera Liao . Vera is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research (MSR) Montréal where she is part of the FATE (Fairness,…
In episode 100 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Thomas Dietterich. Professor Dietterich is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of Electrical Engineering and…
In episode 99 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Martin Wattenberg. Professor Wattenberg is a professor at Harvard and part-time member of Google Research’s People + AI…
In episode 98 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Laurence Liew. Laurence is the Director for AI Innovation at AI Singapore. He is driving the adoption of AI by the Singapore ecosystem…
In episode 97 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Michael Levin and Adam Goldstein. Professor Levin is a Distinguished Professor and Vannevar Bush Chair in the Biology…
In episode 96 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Jonathan Frankle. Jonathan is the Chief Scientist at MosaicML and (as of release). Jonathan completed his PhD at MIT, where he…
In episode 95 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Nao Tokui. Nao Tokui is an artist/DJ and researcher based in Tokyo. While pursuing his Ph.D. at The University of Tokyo, he produced his…
In episode 94 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Divyansh Kaushik. Divyansh is the Associate Director for Emerging Technologies and National Security at the Federation of American…
In episode 93 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Tal Linzen. Professor Linzen is an Associate Professor of Linguistics and Data Science at New York University and a Research…
In episode 92 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Kevin K. Yang. Kevin is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research (MSR) who works on problems at the intersection of machine learning…
In episode 91 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Arjun Ramani and Zhengdong Wang. Arjun is the global business and economics correspondent at The Economist. Zhengdong is a research…
In episode 90 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Miles Grimshaw. Miles is General Partner at Benchmark. He was previously a General Partner at Thrive Capital, where he helped the firm…
Our 136th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! With guest host Daniel Bashir. Check out his AI interview podcast ! Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast…
In episode 89 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Shreya Shankar. Shreya is a computer scientist pursuing her PhD in databases at UC Berkeley. Her research interest is in building…
In episode 88 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Stevan Harnad. Stevan Harnad is professor of psychology and cognitive science at Université du Québec à Montréal, adjunct…
In episode 87 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Terry Winograd. Professor Winograd is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University. His research focuses on…
In episode 86 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Gil Strang. Professor Strang is one of the world’s foremost mathematics educators and a mathematician with contributions to…
In episode 84 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Raphaël Millière. Professor Millière is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence at…
In episode 83 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Peli Grietzer. Peli is a scholar whose work borrows mathematical ideas from machine learning theory to think through “ambient” and…
In episode 82 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ryan Drapeau. Ryan is a Staff Software Engineer at Stripe and technical lead for Stripe’s Payment Fraud organization, which uses machine…
In episode 81 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Shiv Rao. Shiv Rao, MD is the co-founder and CEO of Abridge, a healthcare conversation company that uses cutting-edge NLP and generative…
In episode 80 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Hugo Larochelle. Professor Larochelle leads the Montreal Google DeepMind team and is adjunct professor at Université de…
In episode 79 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Jeremie Harris. Jeremie is co-founder of Gladstone AI, author of the book Quantum Physics Made Me Do It, and co-host of the Last Week in…
In episode 78 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Antoine Blondeau. Antoine is a serial AI entrepreneur and Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Alpha Intelligence Capital. He was chief…
In episode 77 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Joon Park. Joon is a third-year PhD student at Stanford, advised by Professors Michael Bernstein and Percy Liang. He designs, builds,…
In episode 75 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Riley Goodside. Riley is a Staff Prompt Engineer at Scale AI. Riley began posting GPT-3 prompt examples and screenshot demonstrations in…
In episode 74 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Talia Ringer. Professor Ringer is an Assistant Professor with the Programming Languages, Formal Methods, and Software…
In episode 72 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Brigham Hyde. Brigham is Co-Founder and CEO of Atropos Health. Prior to Atropos, he served as President of Data and Analytics at…
In episode 72 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Scott Aaronson. Scott is the Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin and…
In episode 71 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ted Underwood. Ted is a professor in the School of Information Sciences with an appointment in the Department of English at the…
In episode 70 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Irene Solaiman. Irene is an expert in AI safety and policy and the Policy Director at HuggingFace, where she conducts social impact…
In episode 69 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Drago Anguelov. Drago is currently a Distinguished Scientist and Head of Research at Waymo, where he joined in 2018. Earlier, he spent…
In episode 68 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Joanna Bryson. Professor Bryson is Professor of Ethics and Technology at the Hertie School, where her research focuses on the…
In episode 67 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Daniel Situnayake. Daniel is head of Machine Learning at Edge Impulse. He is co-author of the O’Reilly books "AI at the Edge" and…
In episode 66 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Soumith Chintala. Soumith is a Research Engineer at Meta AI Research in NYC. He is the co-creator and lead of Pytorch, and maintains a…
In episode 65 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Sewon Min. Sewon is a fifth-year PhD student in the NLP group at the University of Washington, advised by Hannaneh Hajishirzi and Luke…
In episode 64 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Richard Socher . Richard is founder and CEO of you.com, a new search engine that lets you personalize your search workflow and eschews…
In episode 63 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Joe Edelman . Joe developed the meaning-based organizational metrics at Couchsurfing.com , then co-founded the Center for Humane…
In episode 62 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ed Grefenstette. Ed is Head of Machine Learning at Cohere and an Honorary Professor at University College London. He previously held…
In episode 61 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ken Liu . Ken is an author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he is the author of silkpunk…
In episode 60 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Hattie Zhou . Hattie is a PhD student at the Université de Montréal and Mila. Her research focuses on understanding how and why neural…
In episode 59 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Kyunghyun Cho. Professor Cho is an associate professor of computer science and data science at New York University and CIFAR…
In episode 58 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Steve Miller. Steve is a Professor Emeritus of Information Systems at Singapore Management University. Steve served as…
In episode 56 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Linus Lee. Linus is an independent researcher interested in the future of knowledge representation and creative work aided by machine…
In episode 55 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Suresh Venkatasubramanian. Professor Venkatasubramanian is a Professor of Computer Science and Data Science at Brown…
Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here ! In episode 53 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Melanie Mitchell . Professor Mitchell is…
Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here! In episode 52 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Marc Bellemare. Professor Bellemare leads…
In episode 51 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to François Chollet. François is a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google and creator of the Keras deep learning library, which has…
Happy episode 50! This week’s episode is being released on Monday to avoid Thanksgiving. Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here! In episode 50 of The…
In episode 49 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht . Kanjun and Josh are CEO and CTO of Generally Intelligent, an AI startup aiming to develop general-purpose…
* Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here! * Want to write with us? Send a pitch using this form :) In episode 48 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir…
* Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here! * Want to write with us? Send a pitch using this form :) In episode 47 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir…
* Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here! * Want to write with us? Send a pitch using this form :) In episode 46 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir…
* Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here! * Want to write with us? Send a pitch using this form :) In episode 45 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir…
Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here! In episode 44 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Stuart Russell. Stuart Russell is a…
Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here! In episode 43 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Varun Ganapathi. Varun is co-founder and CTO at AKASA,…
Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here! In episode 42 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Joel Lehman. Joel is a machine learning scientist…
Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here! In episode 42 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Andrew Feldman. Andrew is the co-founder and CEO of…
Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here! In episode 41 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Christopher Manning. Chris is the Director of the…
In episode 38 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Been Kim. Been is a staff research scientist at Google Brain focused on interpretability–helping humans communicate with complex machine…
In episode 36 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Sebastian Raschka. Sebastian is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Lead AI Educator at…
In episode 34 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Sara Hooker. Sara (@sarahookr) leads Cohere for AI and is a former Research Scientist at Google. Sara founded a Bay Area non-profit…
In episode 31 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Preetum Nakkiran. Preetum is a Research Scientist at Apple, a Visiting Researcher at UCSD, and part of the NSF/Simons Collaboration on…
In episode 30 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Max Woolf. Max Woolf (@minimaxir) is currently a Data Scientist at BuzzFeed in San Francisco. Some work he’s done for BuzzFeed includes…
In episode 28 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ben Green, postdoctoral scholar in the Michigan Society of Fellows and Assistant Professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public…
In episode 26 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Yejin Choi, professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington, and senior research manager at the Allen Institute for…
In episode 25 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to David Chalmers, professor of philosophy and Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University, and co-director of NYU’s center for…
In episode 24 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir talks to Greg Yang, senior researcher at Microsoft Research. Greg Yang’s Tensor Programs framework recently received attention for its role in the…
Daniel Bashir is on the show today, we go deep into Artificial Intelligence and talk about his new book which takes in contemporary ethical and political considerations surrounding AI and its use in…
In episode 9 of The Gradient Podcast, we interview Yannic Kilcher, an AI researcher and educator. Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSS Evan is an AI safety…