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Eye On A.I.

Eye On A.I.

By: Craig S. Smith
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Eye on A.I. is a biweekly podcast, hosted by longtime New York Times correspondent Craig S. Smith. In each episode, Craig will talk to people making a difference in artificial intelligence. The podcast aims to put incremental advances into a broader context and consider the global implications of the developing technology. AI is about to change your world, so pay attention.Eye On A.I.
Episodes
  • #327 Baris Gultekin: The Next Phase of AI - Agents That Understand Your Company's Data
    Mar 19 2026

    This episode is sponsored by Modulate.

    Meet Velma, voice AI that detects tone, intent, and stress:http://preview.modulate.ai

    Baris Gultekin, Head of AI at Snowflake, breaks down how enterprise AI is actually being built, deployed, and scaled today. From running AI directly inside governed data environments to enabling natural language access across entire organizations, this conversation explores the shift from experimentation to real-world impact.

    You'll learn why Snowflake's core philosophy centers around bringing AI to the data, how data agents are transforming decision-making across teams, and what it takes to build trustworthy AI systems with governance, guardrails, and high-quality retrieval at the core.

    Baris also shares how leading companies are already saving thousands of hours through AI-driven automation, why culture and leadership determine AI success, and what the future looks like as agents move from pilots to full-scale production.

    If you want to understand where enterprise AI is actually headed and what separates hype from real execution, this episode breaks it down.

    (00:00) The Evolution of Snowflake AI

    (01:40) Baris Gultekin: Background & AI Mission

    (02:59) Why AI Must Run Next to Data

    (04:29) Inside Snowflake's AI Infrastructure

    (09:08) Model Choice vs Product Layer Strategy

    (12:16) Building Trust: Governance, Guardrails & Quality

    (16:01) How Enterprise Agents Are Built & Orchestrated

    (20:10) AI Adoption Across the Entire Organization

    (24:39) Reasoning vs Retrieval: What Matters More

    (27:43) Real Use Case: Faster Decision-Making with AI

    (31:44) AI as a Co-Pilot for Leaders

    (36:52) Preparing Data for AI at Scale

    (38:46) What the AI Data Cloud Really Means

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    42 mins
  • #326 Zuzanna Stamirowska: Inside Pathway's Post-Transformer Architecture Designed for Memory and On-the-Fly Learning
    Mar 11 2026

    This episode is sponsored by tastytrade.

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    This episode dives into why Pathway's Baby Dragon Hatchling (BDH) might mark the beginning of the post-transformer era in AI.

    Zuzanna Stamirowska, Pathway's CEO and co‑author of BDH, explains why today's transformer-based LLMs hit a wall on long-horizon reasoning, how memory and synaptic plasticity are built directly into BDH's architecture, and what that means for continual learning, hallucinations, and "generalization over time."

    The conversation ranges from complexity science and brain-inspired computation to practical implications for real-world, small-data, and safety‑critical applications.

    Stay Updated:

    Craig Smith on X: https://x.com/craigss

    Eye on A.I. on X: https://x.com/EyeOn_AI


    (00:00) The Core Problem: Why Today's AI Lacks Memory

    (03:16) Pathway's Mission to Bring Memory Into AI

    (04:53) Zuzanna's Background in Complexity Science

    (10:30) Why Transformers Reset Like "Groundhog Day"

    (14:34) The Brain-Inspired Dragon Hatchling Architecture

    (23:59) How the Network Learns and Builds Connections

    (37:38) Performance vs Transformers on Language Tasks

    (49:37) Productizing the Technology With NVIDIA and AWS

    (54:23) Can Memory Solve AI Hallucinations?

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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • #325 Phelim Brady: Why AI's Future Depends on Human Judgement
    Mar 9 2026

    AI often looks fully automated. But behind the scenes, a huge amount of human judgment is shaping how these systems actually work.

    In this episode, Craig Smith speaks with Phelim Bradley, co-founder and CEO of Prolific, a platform that connects millions of real people with researchers and AI labs to evaluate and improve AI systems.

    They explore the hidden human layer behind modern AI, why traditional benchmarks are becoming less reliable, and why AI companies increasingly rely on real human feedback to measure model performance in the real world.

    Phelim also explains how demographic differences influence how models are evaluated, why human judgment remains critical even as AI improves, and how the collaboration between humans and AI will shape the next phase of development.

    This conversation reveals the human backbone behind today's AI systems.


    Stay Updated:

    Craig Smith on X: https://x.com/craigss

    Eye on A.I. on X: https://x.com/EyeOn_AI

    (00:00) Preview and Intro

    (02:45) Founding Prolific And Early Pain Points

    (06:30) From Mechanical Turk To Representativeness

    (09:55) Academic Research And AI Use Cases Split

    (13:40) Vetting Real Participants And Fighting Fraud

    (17:45) Scale, Community Growth, And Talent Mix

    (22:00) High-Complexity Projects Over Commoditised Labeling

    (26:40) Measuring Model Persuasion With Live Conversations

    (30:20) Demographic-Aware Model Preference Benchmarks

    (34:10) The Rise Of Human Evaluation Over Benchmarks

    (38:00) Enterprise Model Choice And Continuous Evaluation

    (42:00) Why Humans Won't Disappear From The Loop





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    47 mins
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