The AI conversation, week by week
18 AI-focused podcasts currently tracked18 AI podcasts

Currently tracking18 AI-focused podcasts

  • AI For Humans
  • AI Inside
  • AI Today Podcast
  • Eye on AI
  • Gradient Dissent
  • Interconnects
  • Last Week in AI
  • Latent Space
  • Machine Learning Street Talk
  • Me, Myself, and AI
  • No Priors
  • Practical AI
  • The AI Daily Brief
  • The AI Native Dev
  • The Artificial Intelligence Show
  • The Cognitive Revolution
  • The TWIML AI Podcast
  • Training Data

VAIBE tracks conversations across AI-focused podcasts to show what people are talking about now, and tracks how those conversations change week by week.

This week in AI conversations

Agents attention cooled while economics rebounded

Across 22 episodes from 13 contributing podcasts, agents fell 6.5 points to 8.7% while economics rose 5.2 points to 10.2%.

The TL;DR

What changed
Adoption Use Cases rose 3.3 points and Research fell 4.5 points.
Where it showed up
Adoption Use Cases, Research, and Safety & governance accounted for 59% of the relevant conversation across 24 episodes.
How to read it
Recurrence across podcasts does not mean agreement. The cited moments show the language behind each summary.

What’s hot this week

The ideas that came up most often, what changed, and why they mattered. Open any topic to see the podcast moments behind it.

  1. Adoption Use CasesPractical ways people and organizations are putting AI to work.Discussion of adoption use cases stayed near its recent level. It made up 32% of the conversation across 13 podcasts this week.About the same32% of this week · 13 podcasts
  2. ResearchNew models, training methods, benchmarks, and discoveries from AI labs.Discussion of research stayed near its recent level. It made up 15% of the conversation across 12 podcasts this week.About the same15% of this week · 12 podcasts
  3. Safety & governanceWays to reduce harm, set limits, test behavior, and govern how AI is used.Discussion of safety & governance grew compared with recent weeks. It made up 12% of the conversation across 11 podcasts this week.Gaining attention12% of this week · 11 podcasts
  4. EconomicsThe cost of building and running AI, and how money moves through the market.Discussion of economics grew compared with recent weeks. It made up 10% of the conversation across 12 podcasts this week.Gaining attention10% of this week · 12 podcasts
Showing 4 of 10 topicsView 6 more topicsShow fewer topics
  1. AgentsAI systems that can plan, use tools, and carry out multi-step tasks.Discussion of agents eased compared with recent weeks. It made up 9% of the conversation across 9 podcasts this week.Losing attention9% of this week · 9 podcasts
  2. Open ModelsAI models whose weights or code are available for others to use and adapt.Discussion of open models stayed near its recent level. It made up 5% of the conversation across 9 podcasts this week.About the same5% of this week · 9 podcasts
  3. RegulationLaws, rules, and government decisions about how AI may be built and used.Discussion of regulation stayed near its recent level. It made up 5% of the conversation across 7 podcasts this week.About the same5% of this week · 7 podcasts
  4. InfrastructureThe software and systems needed to build, deploy, and monitor AI.Discussion of infrastructure stayed near its recent level. It made up 4% of the conversation across 8 podcasts this week.About the same4% of this week · 8 podcasts
  5. HardwareThe chips, data centers, energy, and devices that AI depends on.Discussion of hardware stayed near its recent level. It made up 4% of the conversation across 5 podcasts this week.About the same4% of this week · 5 podcasts
  6. JobsHow AI is changing work, hiring, roles, and the skills people need.Discussion of jobs stayed near its recent level. It made up 3% of the conversation across 9 podcasts this week.About the same3% of this week · 9 podcasts
Back to all concepts
From Aug 3–9, 2026

About this Concept

Agents

AI systems that can plan, use tools, and carry out multi-step tasks.

Trend this week

7 of 7 weeks tracked had mentions across multiple podcasts.

A closer read

What changed
Its share fell from 15.2% to 8.7%, with evidence across 9 podcasts.
Where it showed up
It appeared in episodes including “Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $100...” and “Why People Are Paying 10x More for AI | Sid Sheth, d-Matrix”.
How to read it
6 cited episodes from 5 podcasts are shown below. The topic appeared across 9 podcasts in the full analysis.

Podcast moments from the week

Moments are grouped by episode so repeated excerpts from one conversation do not look like separate sources.

16 quoted moments · 6 episodes · 5 podcasts

The Cognitive Revolution

Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent

Open episode ↗
  1. C
    “agents are also advancing research and interpretability in many ways”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment
  2. C
    “the sort of craft that goes into imbuing the right types of tastes and the right types of decision-making capabilities into any agent goes a super long way.”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment
  3. C
    “the value of Silico reveals itself when you do long-running autonomous experiments.”

    ConceptAgents

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Eye on AI

Why People Are Paying 10x More for AI | Sid Sheth, d-Matrix

Open episode ↗
  1. B
    “Do you see emerging companies, startups that are agent-first? The New York Times had a piece recently about a guy and his brother running a $1.6 billion sales company that's basically an agent-first company. Do you see that segment of the economy growing?”

    ConceptAgents

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  2. A
    “there's this iterative recursive loop, whereas AI gets smart, it learns to build tools that it can use in more efficient ways and more capable ways.”

    ConceptAgents

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  3. A
    “I think what we would be most excited by next is, I think we have seen agentic capabilities unleashed.”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment

Practical AI

Models, Harnesses, and Multi-Agent Systems

Open episode ↗
  1. C
    “That's where the autonomy of what agents are, the potential of what agents can do is really realized”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment
  2. C
    “then you can really start getting a lot of productive work done through your group of agents at this point that is largely autonomous”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment
  3. C
    “having lots of agents interoperating together is going to become necessary”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment

The Artificial Intelligence Show

#229: Q3 Trends Briefing - The Pope's AI Encyclical, AI Agents Hack Hugging Face, Fable 5 vs. Washington, and the Battle Over Open Weights

Play episode ↗
  1. B
    “I mean, this seemed like it to me, it happened really fast in terms of businesses were all like, okay, how do I prompt better? How do I use chat better? And then suddenly, wait a second, there's an agent that can connect to all my files in my web app. If I have this thing on m...”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment
  2. A
    “agents have this amazing potential when they become really reliable”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment
  3. A
    “they are gonna put some serious guardrails in place to prevent the scaling of the use of agents just unfiltered”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment

The AI Native Dev

Datadog Deleted All Its AI Context. It Worked.

Play episode ↗
  1. C
    “For the agent. So anywhere between the new models don't need them and they're just wrong at this point.”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment
  2. A
    “Correct. Correct. I don't think they were— wrong per se, but I think early on there was a lot of basics that you would try to retrain the agent on.”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment
  3. A
    “I'm not sure the way we're working today with local agent only and everybody's set up for their own thing.”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment

The Artificial Intelligence Show

#228: More Rogue AI Agents, AI Lab Staff Ask Washington to Pace Development, Continuing Battle Over Open Weights & OpenAI Previews Astra

Play episode ↗
  1. A
    “What we're seeing here is the early versions of very advanced agents that have planning, reasoning, and action abilities over long horizon tasks. So agents are goal-seeking by design. In this case, it's the capture the flag. But if you take this same scenario, you can imagine ...”

    ConceptAgents

    Report this moment
What’s hot this weekBack to all concepts

Signals to keep watching

Topics whose movement across recent reports may matter beyond this week.

Safety & governance

Changed direction

Safety & governance reversed course

Its share fell from 16.5% last week to 11.7% this week, reversing the previous week's rise.

Share of this week’s podcast conversation

Recent weeks9.3%This week11.7%

Came up more often than in recent weeks.

Podcast moments5 cited moments
Where it came up

Open an episode to hear the surrounding conversation.

  1. The Cognitive RevolutionThinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent
  2. The Cognitive RevolutionThinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent
  3. The Cognitive RevolutionPick Your Poison: Zvi Mowshowitz on the Unipolar/Multipolar AGI Dilemma, OpenFace & Pacing the ...
  4. The Cognitive RevolutionPick Your Poison: Zvi Mowshowitz on the Unipolar/Multipolar AGI Dilemma, OpenFace & Pacing the ...
  5. The Artificial Intelligence Show#228: More Rogue AI Agents, AI Lab Staff Ask Washington to Pace Development, Continuing Battle Over Open Weights & OpenAI Previews Astra

Adoption Use Cases

Changed direction

Adoption Use Cases rebounded

Its share rose from 29.1% last week to 32.4% this week, reversing the previous week's drop.

Share of this week’s podcast conversation

Recent weeks30.9%This week32.4%

Came up more often than in recent weeks.

Podcast moments5 cited moments
Where it came up

Open an episode to hear the surrounding conversation.

  1. The Cognitive RevolutionThinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent
  2. The Cognitive RevolutionThinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent
  3. AI For HumansSeedance 2.5 & The New Age of AI Video (w/ Theoretically Media)
  4. AI For HumansSeedance 2.5 & The New Age of AI Video (w/ Theoretically Media)
  5. The AI Daily BriefGoogle’s AI Leadership Shakeup: Disaster or Exactly What It Needs?

Economics

Changed direction

Economics rebounded

Its share rose from 5% last week to 10.2% this week, reversing the previous week's drop.

Share of this week’s podcast conversation

Recent weeks6.9%This week10.2%

Came up more often than in recent weeks.

Podcast moments5 cited moments
Where it came up

Open an episode to hear the surrounding conversation.

  1. No PriorsChasing Trillion-Dollar Companies, Founder Ambition, Token Budgets, and Regulatory Capture with Sarah & Elad
  2. Practical AIModels, Harnesses, and Multi-Agent Systems
  3. Practical AIModels, Harnesses, and Multi-Agent Systems
  4. AI InsideWhat Happens When AI Outsmarts Mathematicians
  5. Last Week in AI#253 - Opus 5, Gemini 3.6, Kimi K3, Hugging Face Hack

Agents

Losing attention

Agents cooled

Its share fell from 15.2% last week to 8.7% this week.

Share of this week’s podcast conversation

Recent weeks14.8%This week8.7%

Came up less often than in recent weeks.

Podcast moments5 cited moments
Where it came up

Open an episode to hear the surrounding conversation.

  1. The Cognitive RevolutionThinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent
  2. The Cognitive RevolutionThinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent
  3. Eye on AIWhy People Are Paying 10x More for AI | Sid Sheth, d-Matrix
  4. Eye on AIWhy People Are Paying 10x More for AI | Sid Sheth, d-Matrix
  5. Practical AIModels, Harnesses, and Multi-Agent Systems

Research

Losing attention

Research cooled

Its share fell from 19.3% last week to 14.8% this week.

Share of this week’s podcast conversation

Recent weeks16.4%This week14.8%

Came up less often than in recent weeks.

Podcast moments5 cited moments
Where it came up

Open an episode to hear the surrounding conversation.

  1. The Cognitive RevolutionThinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent
  2. The Cognitive RevolutionThinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent
  3. Eye on AIWhy People Are Paying 10x More for AI | Sid Sheth, d-Matrix
  4. No PriorsChasing Trillion-Dollar Companies, Founder Ambition, Token Budgets, and Regulatory Capture with Sarah & Elad
  5. The Cognitive RevolutionPick Your Poison: Zvi Mowshowitz on the Unipolar/Multipolar AGI Dilemma, OpenFace & Pacing the ...

Infrastructure

Gaining attention

Infrastructure gained ground

Its share grew from 0.7% last week to 3.8% this week.

Share of this week’s podcast conversation

Recent weeks3.7%This week3.8%

Came up about as often as in recent weeks.

Podcast moments4 cited moments
Where it came up

Open an episode to hear the surrounding conversation.

  1. Eye on AIWhy People Are Paying 10x More for AI | Sid Sheth, d-Matrix
  2. Eye on AIWhy People Are Paying 10x More for AI | Sid Sheth, d-Matrix
  3. The AI Daily BriefWhy the Data Center Fight Has Little to Do With AI
  4. Gradient Dissent40 Trillion Tokens a Day (Yes, More Than OpenAI) | Lin Qiao, CEO of Fireworks

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