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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

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

How do we build trust in AI agents before the AI hailstorm arrives? Emil Lassen from the Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) joins the show to discuss how the enterprise flywheel of standards, certification, audit, and insurance is being applied to AI agents. They explore the AIUC-1 framework, the challenges of securing agentic AI systems, and why red teaming (based on standards) may be key to accelerating enterprise AI adoption.

Featuring:

 • Emil Lassen – 
LinkedIn • 
 • Daniel Whitenack – 
Website • , 
GitHub • , 
X
Links: 

Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company
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
Upcoming Events: 

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

AIUC-1: Building trust in AI agents

As AI agents become more capable and autonomous, they also introduce new security challenges. In this 'Fully Connected' episode, Dan and Chris unpack Anthropic’s Zero Trust for AI Agents security framework and what it means for organizations deploying agentic systems. They examine the key security risks facing agentic systems and discuss how organizations can apply Zero Trust principles to deploy AI agents safely. Along the way, they break down practical security controls and discuss how traditional cybersecurity principles must evolve for the age of AI agents.

Featuring:

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

Zero Trust for AI AgentsOWASP GenAI Project 
Sponsors:

Prediction 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

Zero Trust for AI Agents

Fireflies CEO, Krish Ramineni shares how the company is transforming AI-powered note-taking into a deeper layer of knowledge automation. He breaks down the technology behind real-time functionality like Live Assist, the user behavior patterns driving product evolution, and how Fireflies is innovating far beyond meetings. Krish also shares insights on future trends in AI and the potential for hardware integration, emphasizing the ongoing evolution of AI in knowledge work.

Featuring:

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

Fireflies AI
Sponsors:

 • Miro – Get the right things done faster with Miro's Innovation Workspace. AI Sidekicks, instant insights, and rapid prototyping—transform weeks of work into days. No more scattered docs or endless meetings. Help your teams get great done at 
Miro.com • .
 • Framer – Design and publish without limits with Framer, the free all-in-one design platform. Unlimited projects, no tool switching, and professional sites—no Figma imports or HTML hassles required. Start creating for free at 
framer.com/design • with code `PRACTICALAI` for a free month of Framer Pro.

Upcoming Events: 

 • Register for 
upcoming webinars here • !

Beyond note-taking with Fireflies

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