The Data Exchange with Ben Lorica

Hosted by Ben Lorica

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Episodes

371

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

A series of informal conversations with thought leaders, researchers, practitioners, and writers on a wide range of topics in technology, science, and of course big data, data science, artificial intelligence, and related applications. Anchored by Ben Lorica (@BigData), the Data Exchange also features a roundup of the most important stories from the worlds of data, machine learning and AI. Detailed show notes for each episode can be found on https://thedataexchange.media/ The Data Exchange podcast is a production of Gradient Flow [https://gradientflow.com/].

Listen to episodes

60 recent

October 15, 202656 min

AI Is Coming for Tasks Before It Comes for Jobs

MIT FutureTech director Neil Thompson joins Ben Lorica to discuss how AI is reshaping work, the economy, and the future of automation. Drawing on recent research, Thompson explains why AI’s impact on most occupations may unfold gradually rather than arrive as a sudden shock, why adoption continues to lag behind technical capabilities, and why the fixed costs of implementation favor larger firms. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientflow.substack.com/ Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon · RSS . Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site .

October 8, 202649 min

Why Build Your Own AI Model When Frontier Models Already Exist?

In this episode, we talk with Joel Hron , CTO of Thomson Reuters , about the company’s decision to develop its own frontier AI model, Thomson, using open-weight models and decades of proprietary content and expertise. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientflow.substack.com/ Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon · RSS . Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site .

October 1, 202658 min

Why AI Makes Games Worse—and How to Make Them Better

Piero Molino , CEO and co-founder of Studio Atelico , joins Ben Lorica to discuss what happens when AI becomes a core game mechanic rather than a cost-cutting tool. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientflow.substack.com/ Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon · RSS . Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site .

September 24, 202646 min

What Comes After Transformers?

Ben Lorica speaks with Zuzanna Stamirowska , CEO of Pathway , about the company’s push beyond transformers toward models that reason in latent space, learn from experience, and maintain state over long time horizons. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientflow.substack.com/ Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon · RSS . Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site .

September 17, 202635 min

Inside OpenAI's First Chip

Richard Ho , VP of Hardware at OpenAI , explains how the team built Jalapeño , its first custom AI accelerator, and why controlling more of the hardware stack could lower inference costs and improve performance. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientflow.substack.com/ Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon · RSS . Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site .

September 12, 202656 min

Navier-Stokes and AI generated work: If You Can't Explain It, Did You Really Do It?

Ben Lorica is joined by Evangelos Simoudis for a wide-ranging discussion on how AI is reshaping knowledge work: from the Navier-Stokes controversy and the need to protect intellectual property to whether workers should still be expected to understand and defend AI-generated work. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientflow.substack.com/ Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon · RSS . Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site .

September 10, 202644 min

The Missing Data for Spatial Intelligence

Ben Lorica talks with David Fattal , founder and CTO of Leia Inc . , about why stereo data could become an important ingredient for AI systems that need to understand the physical world. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientflow.substack.com/ Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon · RSS . Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site .

September 3, 202630 min

Your AI Agent Is Costing You More Than You Think

Ben Lorica talks with Abi Aryan , AI engineer, author of LLMOps: Managing Large Language Models in Production , about how deploying generative AI is turning into a distributed systems problem. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientflow.substack.com/ Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon · RSS . Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site .

August 27, 202640 min

Reasoning Doesn't Start With Language

Ben Lorica speaks with Andrew Dai , co-founder and CEO of Elorian AI , about why today’s frontier models still struggle with complex visual reasoning and why simply scaling language-centric architectures may not solve the problem. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientflow.substack.com/ Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon · RSS . Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site .

August 20, 202635 min

An Agent Is Just an LLM in a For-Loop

Maarten Grootendorst , a developer relations engineer at Google DeepMind and co-author of Hands-On Large Language Models and An Illustrated Guide to AI Agents , joins Ben Lorica to explain the concepts developers need to understand beneath today’s AI tools. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientflow.substack.com/ Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon · RSS . Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site .