I don't want an AI that just writes the bubble sort for you. I want one that says I'd like to see you do it first. Mark Russinovich and I are working on a preceptorship, a model that teaches early in career engineers how to think. We should not become a subcognitive species. Talking with Felix Rieseberg. Full episode: hanselminutes.com/1053/

We should not become a subcognitive species

An AI agent wakes up each session going, who am I? Felix Rieseberg and I got into why OpenClaw's soul.md file is basically the movie Memento. The agent reads it to remember who it is, and tattoos on what it learns. Full episode: hanselminutes.com/1053/

Waking up with amnesia every single time

Maynard Holliday was sitting in the Pentagon as Assistant Secretary of Defense when his old Chernobyl colleagues messaged him on LinkedIn. One word: help. The Russians had taken Zaporizhzhia and damaged their equipment. What he did next is why you keep your network. Full episode: hanselminutes.com/1054/

Chernobyl messaged me on LinkedIn

Before Maynard Holliday built robots for Chernobyl and ran the Pentagon's tech portfolio, he was a kid reading Marvel comics. Tony Stark had no superpower but his mind, and T'Challa was the chief scientist of Wakanda. Representation matters, and this is what it builds. Full episode: hanselminutes.com/1054/

Tony Stark has no superpower but his mind

Varun Badhwar told me 60% of AI generated code is insecure by default. So I asked why we should trust models to catch security issues when models are the ones causing them. His answer: on their benchmarks it's actually 70 to 80%, even from the most sophisticated models. Full episode: hanselminutes.com/1052/

70 to 80% of AI code is insecure by default

Maynard Holliday spent decades building robots for nuclear disasters and the Pentagon, and he thinks humanoid robots are the wrong form factor for your home. Torso and arms, yes. Legs, no. Stairs want tracks and wheels. Full episode: hanselminutes.com/1054/

Humanoid robots are the wrong form factor

Will AI only make the top 5 percent smarter? John Maeda flipped it: there's a lot of knowledge that isn't in books, and the people who know how to survive may be the advantaged ones. Like I said, there are no software engineers on The Walking Dead. Everybody there is chopping wood. hanselminutes.com/921/

There's a lot of knowledge that isn't in books

I said this in 2023 and I stand by it. AI should be an Iron Man suit that augments you, not an Ultron that goes off on its own. John Maeda told me about his years in disaster tech, where every day was wildfires and hurricanes, and how far AI feels from those deep human problems. hanselminutes.com/921/

AI should make Iron Man suits, not Ultron

I pushed back on John Maeda about artists. You spend a lifetime finding your voice, and then that work becomes training data. His answer from art history: the moment he realized artists don't just make art, they think deeply about art, and a lot of them are curious about this new way of making. hanselminutes.com/921/

Your life's work becomes a corpus the AI trains on

Stack Overflow banned AI generated answers, and now they're building a platform for agents. I asked Alex Lato how those two worlds coexist without the whole thing turning into a slop cannon. Unverified answers get labeled, and humans stay in the loop. hanselminutes.com/1051/

You don't want to be on the receiving end of a slop cannon

A young man who's a sophomore in high school emailed me to come on his podcast that he does with his friend, and I had so much fun. I decided to make it a crossover episode. Check out "Compile after Class" on this week's episode!

https://www.youtube.com/@shreemanickaraja

Compile after Class Crossover Episode

Felix Rieseberg came to computing through poetry, and that background gives him a unique lens for explaining language models. A longtime engineer, Felix now gets to watch AI evolve from the inside. In this episode, Scott and Felix explore why language models are surprisingly easy to understand despite feeling magical, what it's like to train a model from noise to coherence, and the bigger philosophical questions about intelligence that AI keeps surfacing. You can learn how AI really works by making your own in a weekend with his free site below.

https://languagemodelbuilder.com/

Language Model Builder with Felix Rieseberg

Maynard Holliday spent 30+ years at the intersection of robotics, nuclear security, and defense technology, most recently serving as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies. He's worked on everything from helping remediate Three Mile Island to securing tons of Soviet nuclear material in post-Cold War Ukraine to overseeing the Pentagon's critical technology portfolio including AI, hypersonics, and microelectronics. He shares what "trusted AI" really means, why he co-founded Black in Robotics, and how T'Challa and Tony Stark shaped his career more than you'd expect.

https://www.maynardholliday.com/

Robots, Nukes, and AI: A Career at the Frontier with Maynard Holliday

Maynard Holliday spent 30+ years at the intersection of robotics, nuclear security, and defense technology, most recently serving as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies. He's worked on everything from helping remediate Three Mile Island to securing tons of Soviet nuclear material in post-Cold War Ukraine to overseeing the Pentagon's critical technology portfolio including AI, hypersonics, and microelectronics. He shares what "trusted AI" really means, why he co-founded Black in Robotics, and how T'Challa and Tony Stark shaped his career more than you'd expect.

 * https://www.maynardholliday.com/

Felix Rieseberg came to computing through poetry, and that background gives him a unique lens for explaining language models. A longtime engineer, Felix now gets to watch AI evolve from the inside. In this episode, Scott and Felix explore why language models are surprisingly easy to understand despite feeling magical, what it's like to train a model from noise to coherence, and the bigger philosophical questions about intelligence that AI keeps surfacing. You can learn how AI really works by making your own in a weekend with his free https://languagemodelbuilder.com/

Varun Badhwar, CEO and Co-Founder of Endor Labs, joins Scott to explore the expanding software supply chain risk in the age of AI-generated code. They discuss how developers have gone from writing code to assembling it from layers of dependencies like open source, third-party libraries, and now the outputs of AI...and what all this means for security. From hallucinated npm packages that could be squatted on, to developers becoming part of the attack surface themselves, this is a wake-up call for anyone building software today.

https://www.endorlabs.com/

AI and the Software Supply Chain with Endor Lab's Varun Badhwar

Varun Badhwar, CEO and Co-Founder of Endor Labs, joins Scott to explore the expanding software supply chain risk in the age of AI-generated code. They discuss how developers have gone from writing code to assembling it from layers of dependencies like open source, third-party libraries, and now the outputs of AI...and what all this means for security. From hallucinated npm packages that could be squatted on, to developers becoming part of the attack surface themselves, this is a wake-up call for anyone building software today.

 * https://www.endorlabs.com/

Alexandra Lato, VP of Product at Stack Overflow, joins Scott to talk about how Stack Overflow is evolving for the age of AI agents. They explore the new "Stack Overflow for Agents" feature, where a single prompt bootstraps an agent with all the knowledge and APIs of Stack Overflow, and what it means for how developers, agents, and communities share and verify knowledge together.

https://agents.stackoverflow.com/

Stack Overflow for the Agent Era - with VP of Product Alex Lato

Alexandra Lato, VP of Product at Stack Overflow, joins Scott to talk about how Stack Overflow is evolving for the age of AI agents. They explore the new "Stack Overflow for Agents" feature, where a single prompt bootstraps an agent with all the knowledge and APIs of Stack Overflow, and what it means for how developers, agents, and communities share and verify knowledge together.

 * https://agents.stackoverflow.com/

Hanselminutes is Fresh Air for Developers. A weekly commute-time podcast that promotes fresh technology and fresh voices. Talk and Tech for Developers, Life-long Learners, and Technologists.

Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman

Compile after Class Crossover Episode

Compile after Class Crossover Episode

Language Model Builder with Felix Rieseberg

Robots, Nukes, and AI: A Career at the Frontier with Maynard Holliday

Robots, Nukes, and AI: A Career at the Frontier with Maynard Holliday

Language Model Builder with Felix Rieseberg

AI and the Software Supply Chain with Endor Lab's Varun Badhwar

AI and the Software Supply Chain with Endor Lab's Varun Badhwar

Stack Overflow for the Agent Era - with VP of Product Alex Lato

Stack Overflow for the Agent Era - with VP of Product Alex Lato