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Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson

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

Longtime followers of Practical AI know that multi-repeat guest and friend Demetrios Brinkmann combines brilliant insight and playful banter into one fun-filled show, and this conversion with Chris was no different. They had a blast!

As AI agents become more capable of using computers, interacting with software, and taking action on behalf of users, what does that mean for the way we work and interact with the internet? Chris and Demetrios explore computer-use agents, MCP, agent harnesses, agent-to-agent interactions, and prognosticate the emerging possibilities around agentic commerce. They also discuss how these tools are already being used to automate everyday tasks, the challenges of bringing computer-use agents into enterprise environments, and how the relationship between models and agent harnesses is evolving.

In fact, they had so much fun that their conversation continued long after the show was over, but we didn’t get that here. 🤷‍♂️

Featuring:

 • Demetrios Brinkmann – 
LinkedIn • Chris Benson – 
Website • , 
LinkedIn • , 
Bluesky • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links:

Agentic AI FoundationMLOps CommunityAGNTCon + MCPCon • – the Agentic AI Foundation’s flagship conference

Sponsors:

Midwest AI Summit: • Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. 
https://midwestaisummit.com/#tickets
Resources and Events:

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !
 • Prior 
Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026

Computer-Use Agents and the Future of the Agentic Internet

As AI moves from experimentation to enterprise deployment, are organizations thinking too much about models and not enough about architecture? In this episode, Daniel and Chris talk with Chetan Gupta, Chief AI Officer at Rackspace, about the evolution from industrial AI and physical AI to today’s enterprise AI landscape. Discover how organizations can navigate the complex AI landscape responsibly and effectively as they think about AI architecture, model deployment, AI governance, and AI sovereignty.

Featuring: 

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

Midwest AI Summit: • Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. 
https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsPrediction Guard: • A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. 
predictionguard.com/practicalai
Resources and Events:

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !
 • Prior 
Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026

Less about Models; More about Architecture

How do we build an AI ecosystem where agents, tools, and systems can work together at scale? Angie Jones, VP of the Agentic AI Foundation, joins Chris to discuss the open standards and projects shaping the agentic future, including MCP, A2A, Goose, etc. They also explore what it takes to drive AI adoption across an entire organization, the importance of neutral standards, global perspectives on agentic AI, and how humans can find the right balance between what they delegate to AI and what they do themselves.

Featuring:

 • Angie Jones – 
LinkedIn • , 
X • Chris Benson – 
Website • , 
LinkedIn • , 
Bluesky • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links:

Agentic AI Foundation
Sponsors:

Framer: • The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at 
framer.com/practicalaiPrediction Guard: • A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. 
predictionguard.com/practicalai
Resources and Events:

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !
 • Prior 
Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026

Building the Foundation for the Agentic AI Era

As AI continues to reshape how organizations work, companies are increasingly asking what AI proficiency should look like across their workforce, and how they can help employees adapt without simply mandating AI adoption. Our returning guest Mike Lewis, Chief AI Architect at TiER1 Performance, joins Dan and Chris to explore AI proficiency through the L0–L3 framework, with a particular focus on the role of non-technical builders. They discuss AI resistance, identifying the right people to build AI-powered solutions, turning tacit knowledge into durable processes, and finding measurable business value from AI.

Mike Lewis was previously on Practical AI episode 289: https://practicalai.show/289

Featuring:

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

TiER1 PerformanceYour New Job Is to Onboard AI Agents: How AI Native Companies Actually Operate
Sponsors:

Midwest AI Summit: • Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. 
https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsPrediction Guard: • A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. 
predictionguard.com/practicalai
Resources and Events:

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !
 • Prior 
Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026

AI Proficiency: From Users to Builders

AI has moved far beyond chatbots, but what exactly are AI models, agents, agent harnesses, and multi-agent systems, and why do they matter?

In this episode, Daniel and Chris break down the terminology behind today's AI landscape, explain the differences between AI features and autonomous agents, and explore why organizations are shifting toward fleets of AI agents powered by multiple models. They also discuss open vs. closed models, enterprise AI architectures, vendor lock-in, and practical ways to begin adopting agentic AI in your own organization.

If you feel left behind by this ongoing agentic AI revolution that has rapidly accelerated to warp speed, then this episode is the catch-up primer you've been waiting for!

Featuring:

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

Framer: • The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at 
framer.com/practicalaiMidwest AI Summit: • Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. 
https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsPrediction Guard: • A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. 
predictionguard.com/practicalai
Resources and Events:

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !
 • Prior 
Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026

Models, Harnesses, and Multi-Agent Systems

What happens when AI agents driven by a top frontier model escape their secure sandbox? Join Daniel and Chris as they unpack the AI wonk's equivalent of a murder mystery! OpenAI agents went rogue and successfully attacked Hugging Face private infrastructure. Our Dynamic Duo uncover how OpenAI's agents exploited vulnerabilities, moved through networks, and launched a large-scale autonomous attack. They explore what this reveals about agentic AI, cybersecurity, sandboxing, and why organizations need AI systems capable of governing other AI systems. Along the way, Chris and Dan examine the surprising role of open vs. closed models and their link to geopolitics, sovereign AI, and what this incident means for the future of enterprise AI security. 

Featuring:

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

Hugging Face Security Incident disclosureFull Field Report on the Hugging Face AI Agent IntrusionExploitGym: Can AI Agents Turn Security Vulnerabilities into Real Attacks?Keeping your data safe when an AI agent clicks a linkOpen AI GPT-5.6 System Card
Sponsors:

Prediction Guard: • A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. 
predictionguard.com/practicalai
Resources and Events:

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !
 • Prior 
Webinars from our partner Prediction GuardMidwest AI Summit 2026

Reconstructing how OpenAI agents attacked Hugging Face

The agentic transformation isn’t coming. It has already begun.

Companies are deploying thousands — and sometimes tens of thousands — of AI agents. Enterprise software giants are watching their old economic moats erode. Capital is moving, productivity is being redefined, and human labor is being repriced in real time.

In this Fully Connected episode, Daniel and Chris explore the new economics of a post-agentic world: the global order that emerges after agents have been woven into every conceivable aspect of business and life. What happens when digital labor becomes abundant, agents manage other agents, and entire organizations operate at a scale no human workforce could match?

This isn’t another conversation about whether AI will take your job. It’s about what happens when the assumptions underneath jobs, companies, software, and productivity stop being true.

The post-agentic world is already taking shape.

The question is whether you’re preparing for it — or becoming part of what it replaces.

Featuring:

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

Is IBM a Canary in the Tech Coal Mine?Verbalizable Representations Form a Global Workspace in Language Models
Upcoming Events: 

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !
Midwest AI Summit 2026

Surviving the New Economics of a Post-Agentic World

As AI applications become more complex, the infrastructure powering them needs to evolve. Corey Sanders, SVP of Product at CoreWeave, joins Chris to discuss why AI requires a fundamentally different approach than traditional cloud computing. They explore AI-native infrastructure, training and inference workloads, the rise of agentic development, optimizing GPU performance, AI research workflows, and why the future of software will be built around AI-first experiences rather than websites and apps.

Featuring:

 • Corey Sanders – 
LinkedIn • 
 • Chris Benson – 
Website • , 
LinkedIn • , 
Bluesky • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links:

CoreWeave
Sponsors:

Framer: • The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at 
framer.com/practicalai
Upcoming Events: 

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !
Midwest AI Summit 2026

The Future of AI Infrastructure with CoreWeave

What does it take to move AI agents from demos to reliable production systems? In this episode, Hamza Tahir explores how MLOps principles are shaping the future of generative AI, covering workflows, agent harnesses, fleets, and the infrastructure needed to build durable, scalable systems. The conversation dives into open source tools, production challenges, and how ZenML's new project, Kitaru, helps developers build resilient, replayable, and observable agent systems.

Featuring:

 • Hamza Tahir – 
LinkedIn • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links:

ZenMLKitaruMachine Learning Tools Landscape v2 (+84 new tools)
Sponsors:

Framer: • The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at 
framer.com/practicalai
Upcoming Events: 

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !
Midwest AI Summit 2026

Building Durable AI Agents

How has AI image generation evolved from blurry outputs to powerful visual intelligence models? Dustin Podell, Co-Founder and Researcher at Black Forest Labs, explains the progression from diffusion to flow matching, how modern image models work, and how they're being used for image editing and practical visual workflows. The conversation also explores the FLUX family of models, running image generation locally, and where visual AI is headed next. 

Featuring:

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

Black Forest LabsDeveloper DashboardResearch PageFLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent SpaceLaying the Foundations for Visual Intelligence
Sponsors:

Midwest AI Summit: • Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. 
https://midwestaisummit.com/#ticketsPrediction Guard: • A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. 
predictionguard.com/practicalai
Upcoming Events: 

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !
Midwest AI Summit 2026

Image Generation and Visual Intelligence with Black Forest Labs

Prashanth Rao mentioned LanceDB as a stand out amongst the many vector DB options in episode #234. Now, Chang She (co-founder and CEO of LanceDB) joins us to talk through the specifics of their open source, on-disk, embedded vector search offering. We talk about how their unique columnar database structure enables serverless deployments and drastic savings (without performance hits) at scale. This one is super practical, so don’t miss it!

Sponsors:

Fastly • – 
Our bandwidth partner. • Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at 
fastly.comFly.io • – 
The home of Changelog.com • — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at 
fly.io/changelog • and check out 
the speedrun in their docs • . 
Typesense • – Lightning fast, globally distributed Search-as-a-Service that runs in memory. You literally can’t get any faster! 

Featuring:

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

LanceDBEpisode #234 “Vector DBs beyond the hype”
Upcoming Events: 

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !

Open source, on-disk vector search with LanceDB

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