The Data Exchange with Ben Lorica

Ben Lorica

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/].

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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.

Sep 3

30 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.

Aug 27

40 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 f...

Aug 20

35 min

The Bloomberg Terminal for AI Compute

Steve Hou, Head of Research at Silicon Data, joins Ben Lorica to unpack the data behind the AI compute market: GPU rental indices, forward curves, and token expenditure trends that reveal a market still tightening despite talk of oversupply. 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 Exc...

Aug 13

45 min

Can China Do to Robotaxis What It Did to Solar?

Ben Lorica talks with Evangelos Simoudis about three forces reshaping AI: why recent “rogue agent” incidents may be more about permissions, identity, and governance than runaway intelligence; how the belief that AGI is near is helping sustain enormous investment in AI models and data centers despite unanswered questions about margins and ROI; and whether Chinese robotaxi companies can challenge Waymo globally by following a playbook similar to China’s rise in solar and batteries. ...

Aug 8

54 min

Why Video Is AI's Next Great Frontier

Yoon Kim, President and Chief Strategy Officer of TwelveLabs, explains why understanding video takes more than bolting a language model onto a stream of frames. He walks through how TwelveLabs’ two foundation models, Marengo and Pegasus, embed and describe video content at scale, and how the company’s new agent, Jockey, orchestrates them for tasks like security investigations, sports film review, and documentary editing. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientflow.s...

Aug 6

39 min

Your AI Safety Tests Are Lying to You

Andrew Burt, CEO and co-founder of Luminos, joins Ben Lorica to unpack Luminos’s new report, A Practical Guide to Agentic and Gen AI Risk Evals. 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.

Jul 30

26 min

Enterprise AI Is Moving Slower Than You Think

Ben Lorica speaks with Denise Teng, partner at Gradient Ventures, about the real state of enterprise AI adoption, why security and data privacy still slow deployment, and why open weights may become increasingly important for regulated industries. 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 Da...

Jul 23

36 min

Why Observability May Be AI’s Next Frontier

Ameet Talwalkar, Carnegie Mellon ML professor and Chief Scientist at Datadog, joins Ben Lorica to trace time series foundation models from skepticism to Datadog’s Toto V1 and V2. 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.

Jul 16

50 min

AI Is Producing More Code, but Is It Producing More Value?

Ben Lorica sits down with Evangelos Simoudis to unpack why open-weights models are closing the gap with frontier labs and pushing enterprises toward “corporate AI sovereignty.” They then apply an attenuation-funnel lens to AI coding tools — more code, but far less shipped software and usage growth — before turning to “neoconsulting,” the outcomes-based services model reshaping Accenture, Palantir, and the big Indian IT firms. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩 https://gradientf...

Jul 11

56 min