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Practical AI LLC

Making artificial intelligence practical, productive & accessible to everyone. Practical AI is a show in which technology professionals, business people, students, enthusiasts, and expert guests engage in lively discussions about Artificial Intelligence and related topics (Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, GANs, MLOps, AIOps, LLMs & more).

The focus is on productive implementations and real-world scenarios that are accessible to everyone. If you want to keep up with the latest advances in AI, while keeping one foot in the real world, then this is the show for you!

Practical AI: Machine Learning, Data Science

As AI systems move from simple chatbots to complex agentic workflows, new security risks emerge. In this episode, Donato Capitella unpacks how increasingly complicated architectures are making agents fragile and vulnerable. These agents can be exploited through prompt injection, data exfiltration, and tool misuse. Donato shares stories from real-world penetration tests, the design patterns for building LLM agents and explains how his open-source toolkit Spikee (Simple Prompt Injection Kit for Evaluation and Exploitation) is helping red teams probe AI systems.

Featuring:

 • Donato Capitella – 
LinkedIn • , 
X • Chris Benson – 
Website • , 
LinkedIn • , 
Bluesky • , 
GitHub • , 
X • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links:

Reversec
Sponsors:

 • Outshift by Cisco - The open source collective building the Internet of Agents. Backed by Outshift by Cisco, AGNTCY gives developers the tools to build and deploy multi-agent software at scale. Identity, communication protocols, and modular workflows—all in one global collaboration layer. Start building at 
AGNTCY.org • .
 • Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at 
shopify.com/practicalaiFabi.ai • - The all-in-one data analysis platform for modern teams. From ad hoc queries to advanced analytics, Fabi lets you explore data wherever it lives—spreadsheets, Postgres, Snowflake, Airtable and more. Built-in Python and AI assistance help you move fast, then publish interactive dashboards or automate insights delivered straight to Slack, email, spreadsheets or wherever you need to share it. Learn more and get started for free at 
fabi.ai
Upcoming Events: 

 • Join us at the 
Midwest AI Summit • on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the 
AI Engineering Lounge • , where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!
 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !

Dealing with increasingly complicated agents

Daniel sits down with Chelsea Linder, VP of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at TechPoint, to explore the what AI innovation and impact look like on the ground. They discuss Chelsea's journey from the VC world into economic development/ innovation, the growth of an AI innovation network in Indiana (funded by the SBA), lessons learned from fostering AI communities, and how businesses are actually adapting to AI. Chelsea also shares insights from Techpoints AI workforce impact study, which explored AI related job creation and levels of AI adoption among other things.

Featuring:

 • Chelsea Linder – 
LinkedIn • 
 • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links: 

Techpoint
Sponsors:

 • Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. 

 • Start your one-dollar trial at 
shopify.com/practicalaiFabi.ai • - The all-in-one data analysis platform for modern teams. From ad hoc queries to advanced analytics, Fabi lets you explore data wherever it lives—spreadsheets, Postgres, Snowflake, Airtable and more. Built-in Python and AI assistance help you move fast, then publish interactive dashboards or automate insights delivered straight to Slack, email, spreadsheets or wherever you need to share it.

 • Learn more and get started for free at 
fabi.ai
Upcoming Events: 

 • Join us at the 
Midwest AI Summit • on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the 
AI Engineering Lounge • , where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!
 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !

The impact of AI on the workforce: A state-level case study

Longtime friend of the show Rajiv Shah returns to unpack lessons from a year of building retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and reasoning models integrations. We dive into why so many AI pilots stumble, why evaluation and error analysis remain essential data science skills, and why not every enterprise challenge calls for a large language model.

Featuring:

 • Rajiv Shah – 
LinkedIn • 
 • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Upcoming Events: 

 • Join us at the 
Midwest AI Summit • on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the 
AI Engineering Lounge • , where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!
 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !

We've all done RAG, now what?

In this episode, Daniel and Chris are joined by Chris Aquino, software engineer at Thunderbird to hear the story of how they developed a privacy-preserving AI executive assistant. They discuss various design decisions including remote (but confidential) inference, local encryption, and model selection. Chris A. does an amazing job describing the journey from "let the big LLM do everything" to splitting apart the workflow to be handled by multiple models. 

Featuring:

 • Chris Aquino – 
LinkedIn • Chris Benson – 
Website • , 
LinkedIn • , 
Bluesky • , 
GitHub • , 
X • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links: 

ThunderbirdThunderbird Pro
Sponsors:

 • Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce.

 • Start your one-dollar trial at 
shopify.com/practicalai
Upcoming Events: 

 • Join us at the 
Midwest AI Summit • on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the 
AI Engineering Lounge • , where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!
 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !

Creating a private AI assistant in Thunderbird

In this Fully Connected episode, we dig into the recent MIT report revealing that 95% of AI pilots fail before reaching production and explore what it actually takes to succeed with AI solutions. We dive into the importance of AI model integration, asking the right questions when adopting new technologies, and why simply accessing a powerful model isn’t enough. We explore the latest AI trends, from GPT-5 to open source models, and their impact on jobs, machine learning, and enterprise strategy. 

Featuring:

 • Chris Benson – 
Website • , 
LinkedIn • , 
Bluesky • , 
GitHub • , 
X • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links: 

The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025MIT Report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing
Sponsors:

 • Miro – The innovation workspace for the age of AI. Built for modern teams, Miro helps you turn unstructured ideas into structured outcomes—fast. Diagramming, product design, and AI-powered collaboration, all in one shared space. Start building at 
miro.com • Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce.

 • Start your one-dollar trial at 
shopify.com/practicalai
Upcoming Events: 

 • Join us at the 
Midwest AI Summit • on November 13 in Indianapolis to hear world-class speakers share how they’ve scaled AI solutions. Don’t miss the 
AI Engineering Lounge • , where you can sit down with experts for hands-on guidance. Reserve your spot today!
 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !

Cracking the code of failed AI pilots

Daniel and Chris sit with Citadel AI’s Rick Kobayashi and Kenny Song and unpack AI safety and security challenges in the generative AI era. They compare Japan’s approach to AI adoption with the US’s, and explore the implications of real-world failures in AI systems, along with strategies for AI monitoring and evaluation.

Featuring:

 • Rick Kobayashi – 
LinkedIn • Kenny Song – 
LinkedIn • Chris Benson – 
Website • , 
LinkedIn • , 
Bluesky • , 
GitHub • , 
X • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links:

Citadel AI
Register for upcoming webinars here!

GenAI risks and global adoption

Dan and Chris break down Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan, issued by the White House in July 2025. Structured as three "pillars" — Accelerate AI Innovation, Build American AI Infrastructure, and Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security — our dynamic duo unpack the plan's policy goals and its associated suggestions — while also exploring the mixed reactions it’s sparked across political lines. They connect the plan to international AI diplomacy and national security interests, discuss its implications for practitioners, and consider how political realities could shape its success in the years ahead. 

Featuring:

 • Chris Benson – 
Website • , 
LinkedIn • , 
Bluesky • , 
GitHub • , 
X • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links:

 • Press Release: 
White House Unveils America's AI Action Plan • Paper: 
America's AI Action Plan
Sponsors:

Shopify • – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at 
shopify.com/practicalai
Register for upcoming webinars here!

Inside America’s AI Action Plan

Allegra Guinan of Lumiera helps leaders turn uncertainty about AI into confident, strategic leadership. In this conversation, she brings some actionable insights for navigating the hype and complexity of AI. The discussion covers challenges with implementing responsible AI practices, the growing importance of user experience and product thinking, and how leaders can focus on real-world business problems over abstract experimentation.

Featuring:

 • Allegra Guinan – 
LinkedIn • Chris Benson – 
Website • , 
LinkedIn • , 
Bluesky • , 
GitHub • , 
X • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links:

Lumiera
Sponsors:

Shopify • – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at 
shopify.com/practicalai
Register for upcoming webinars here!

Confident, strategic AI leadership

Dan sits down with guests Mark Daniel Ward and Katie Sanders from The Data Mine at Purdue University to explore how higher education is evolving to meet the demands of the AI-driven workforce. They share how their program blends interdisciplinary learning, corporate partnerships, and real-world data science projects to better prepare students across 160+ majors. From AI chatbots to agricultural forecasting, they discuss the power of living-learning communities, how the data mine model is spreading to other institutions and what it reveals about the future of education, workforce development, and applied AI training.

Featuring:

 • Mark Daniel Ward – 
LinkedIn • Katie Sanders – 
LinkedIn • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links:

The Data Mine
Sponsors:

Shopify • – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at 
shopify.com/practicalai
Register for upcoming webinars here!

Educating a data-literate generation

We unpack how AI is reshaping hiring decisions, shifting job roles, and creating new expectations for professionals — from engineers to marketers. They explore the rise of AI-assisted teams, the growing compensation bubble, why continuous learning is now table stakes, and how some service providers are quietly riding the AI wave.

Featuring:

 • Chris Benson – 
Website • , 
LinkedIn • , 
Bluesky • , 
GitHub • , 
X • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Sponsors:

Outshift by Cisco • : AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows."

Register for upcoming webinars here!

Workforce dynamics in an AI-assisted world

Woo hoo! As we celebrate reaching episode 50, we come full circle to discuss the basics of neural networks. If you are just jumping into AI, then this is a great primer discussion with which to take that leap.

Our commitment to making artificial intelligence practical, productive, and accessible to everyone has never been stronger, so we invite you to join us for the next 50 episodes!

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!

Featuring:

 • Chris Benson – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
LinkedIn • , 
X • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Show Notes:

Learn more about neural networks with the following learning resources.

Books

“Deep Learning” by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville
“Data Science from Scratch” by Joel Grus
 • There are literally too many others to name…

Online Courses

fast.ai MOOC
Deep Learning course by Google on Udacity (free)
Practical Machine Learning with TensorFlow 2.0 Alpha (free Udacity course)
deeplearning.ai Deep Learning Specialization
Introduction to TensorFlow for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning (free Coursera course for TensorFlow 2)
Intro to TensorFlow for Deep Learning by TensorFlow (free Udacity course for TensorFlow 2)

Websites

Microsoft AI School
TensorFlow 2 Docs
Amazon Machine Learning Training
PyTorch
Facebook AI
Google AI

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Celebrating episode 50 and the neural net!

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