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AI Podcasts

March 28, 2025

Hash Rate - Ep 103: 'It's AI' $TAO Subnet 32

Hash Rate pod - Bitcoin, AI, DePIN, DeFi

AI

Key Takeaways:


1. Niche Focus Wins: Its AI demonstrates the power of specializing in one thing (AI text detection) within the BitTensor ecosystem, achieving leading accuracy and carving out a clear market position.


2. Ecosystem Arbitrage: There's a significant valuation gap between BitTensor AI projects (like Its AI or ReadyAI) and comparable VC-funded companies (GPTZero, Scale AI), suggesting potential upside once accessibility improves.


3. The Bridge is Coming: Easier access via wrapped tokens or user-friendly platforms bridging BitTensor to chains like Solana/Ethereum is the critical next step for unlocking subnet value and attracting mainstream capital.

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March 28, 2025

Subnet 3 Templar –World’s First Distributed, Permissionless, Incentivized Open Source AI Training

Opentensor Foundation

AI

Key Takeaways:


1.  Permissionless Works: Templar validates that truly open, decentralized AI training with economic incentives is not just theory—it's running, learning, and stabilizing *now*.
2.  Incentives Align: Token ownership fundamentally shifts dynamics, turning potential adversaries into collaborative builders invested in the network's success.
3.  The Future is Co-Owned: Templar paves the way for globally co-owned, state-of-the-art AI models, potentially outcompeting even the most well-funded centralized labs and offering a more equitable model for AI development.

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March 28, 2025

Novelty Search March 27, 2025

taostats

AI

Key Takeaways:


1.  Incentivized Decentralized Training Works: Templar demonstrates that coordinating anonymous miners globally via crypto-economic incentives to train a single AI model is feasible, moving beyond permissioned compute pools.
2.  Production is the Only True Test: Real-world deployment with adversarial miners is non-negotiable for building robust decentralized systems, revealing exploits impossible to find otherwise. Templar's rapid iteration (>200 runs) provides a significant edge.
3.  Community & Ownership are Superpowers: Openly sharing struggles and leveraging tokenomics to give miners ownership transformed Templar's development, aligning incentives and fostering collective problem-solving far exceeding a centralized team's capacity.

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March 24, 2025

Steffen Cruz and Will Squires: Macrocosmos, AI, APEX, Data, Bittensor Subnets 1 9 13 25 37 | Ep. 32

Ventura Labs

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. The open-source AI landscape has rapidly evolved, with models like Deepseek and R1 significantly impacting the decentralized AI space.
  2. Macrocosmos focuses on building high-quality, feature-rich products that leverage the power of Bittensor's network and incentivize miner innovation.
  3. Long-term vision, community engagement, and sustainable monetization strategies are critical for success in the maturing Bittensor ecosystem.
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March 24, 2025

ARC Prize Version 2 Launch Video!

Machine Learning Street Talk

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. ARC V2 represents a significant advancement in benchmarking AI reasoning capabilities, moving beyond the limitations of pre-trained language models.
  2. Efficiency, not just capability, is a critical aspect of intelligence, and ARC V2 effectively measures this efficiency gap between AI and humans.
  3. While O3 demonstrates early signs of fluid intelligence, it is not yet human-level and further breakthroughs are needed to achieve true AGI.
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March 24, 2025

Steffen Cruz and Will Squires: Macrocosmos, AI, APEX, Data, Bittensor Subnets 1 9 13 25 37 | Ep. 32

Ventura Labs

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. Macrocosmos is building an interconnected suite of products (Constellation) that leverage different Bittensor subnets, aiming for a synergistic approach to decentralized AI.
  2. The focus on building high-quality, feature-rich products over simply competing on price highlights a maturing mindset within the Bittensor ecosystem.
  3. The emphasis on long-term vision, community engagement, and sustainable monetization strategies is crucial for navigating the rapidly evolving decentralized AI landscape.
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March 23, 2025

The Magic of LLM Distillation — Rishi Agarwal, Google DeepMind

Latent Space

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. Distillation is more than just model compression; it's a powerful technique for improving LLM performance and enabling practical deployment.
  2. On-policy distillation offers significant advantages over traditional methods, especially for complex, long-horizon tasks.
  3. Choose the right distillation strategy based on the specific needs of your application, balancing complexity, cost, and desired performance.
  4. Explore on-policy distillation if your model tackles complex or lengthy generation tasks.
  5. Prioritize simple distillation methods initially, and escalate to more complex techniques only when necessary.
  6. Don't underestimate the value of distillation; a small improvement during training can yield massive benefits during deployment.
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March 23, 2025

Exploring Program Synthesis: Francois Chollet, Kevin Ellis, Zenna Tavares

Machine Learning Street Talk

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. Deep learning alone is insufficient for program synthesis; symbolic approaches and hybrid models are crucial for tackling discrete, algorithmic tasks.
  2. Developing dedicated infrastructure for program synthesis is premature; further research is needed to identify effective, scalable techniques.
  3. Benchmarks like Arc are essential for driving progress in program synthesis, providing focused environments to study generalization and adaptation.
  4. Deep learning's strength lies in pattern recognition, not program generation.  Symbolic methods or hybrid models are key to unlocking the true potential of program synthesis.
  5. A "Keras for Program Synthesis" is coming, but not yet.  More foundational research is needed before building specialized frameworks.
  6. Arc, particularly Arc 2,  is a crucial testing ground for stronger generalization in AI, pushing beyond mere interpolation towards true compositional understanding.
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March 22, 2025

Test-Time Adaptation: the key to reasoning with DL

Machine Learning Street Talk

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. Test-time adaptation is a powerful technique for tackling abstract reasoning tasks like ARC, enabling neural networks to adapt to novel perceptual challenges and achieve state-of-the-art performance.
  2. Prioritizing raw representations and flexible contextualization over specialized encodings or program synthesis can be crucial for handling ARC’s adversarial and abstract nature.
  3. The future of reasoning with deep learning lies in exploring creative test-time compute strategies, including more nuanced pre-training and diverse benchmarking, to further unlock the potential of neural networks for complex reasoning.
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Crypto Podcasts

August 8, 2025

Is TradFi Buying Our Bags? Why Jordi Owns Zero Stocks!!

Steady Lads Podcast

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. **Play Offense or Get Diluted.** The dollar is devaluing faster than official numbers suggest. Sitting in cash or even diversified index funds may not be enough to preserve wealth. An offensive strategy, focused on assets like Bitcoin that can outpace this devaluation, is essential.
  2. **This Isn't 2021.** Don’t mistake short-term liquidity pumps for a sustained bull market. The market structure favors quick rotations and profit-taking, not long-term holds on unproven altcoins.
  3. **Attention is the New Scarcity.** The memecoin and launchpad meta is saturated. Most projects are ephemeral, designed for a quick flip. Long-term value will likely come from projects that can solve the attention decay problem or create sustainable revenue models.
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August 8, 2025

The Solana Seeker Phone Is Here | Emmett Hollyer

Lightspeed

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. Hardware is the Trojan Horse: The Seeker phone isn't the endgame; it's the proof-of-concept. The real vision is TPIN, a network that allows any hardware manufacturer to integrate Solana's secure, crypto-native mobile stack.
  2. A Breakout App is Non-Negotiable: The platform's success depends on developers building a "viral" app that is only possible in this open, crypto-friendly environment. Watch for "Seeker Season" and hackathon results as key indicators of traction.
  3. The SKR Token is Pure Utility: SKR is designed to be the economic glue for the TPIN ecosystem. For investors, its value is tied not to a speculative cash grab but to the growth and security of a new, decentralized mobile platform.
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August 7, 2025

Is Coding a Crime? Roman Storm Tornado Cash Verdict

Bankless

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. Guilty by Definition. The verdict was a product of a legal trap; the judge’s instructions forced the jury to view Roman as a money transmitter, a premise that directly contradicts FinCEN's own guidance and is the central issue for appeal.
  2. A Threat to All of DeFi. The DOJ’s legal theory is boundless. It weaponizes a low "knowledge" standard that could hold any developer liable for the actions of their users, putting the entire non-custodial ecosystem at risk.
  3. Three Paths to Victory. The crypto industry has three shots on goal to fix this: Roman’s direct appeal, a preemptive legal challenge in a separate case, and passing the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA) to create hardcoded legal protections for developers.
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August 7, 2025

When Will Companies IPO Onchain?

Lightspeed

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. Accountability Unlocks Adoption: The biggest barrier isn't tech, but inertia. Until executives are held accountable for incinerating billions in mispriced IPOs, the broken system will persist. The path to onchain IPOs is paved by firing the people who get it wrong in TradFi.
  2. Onchain Auctions Are IPO 2.0: Blockchains replace the "guy with a spreadsheet" with transparent, permissionless auctions. This ensures fair price discovery and prevents the insider discounts that lock out the public.
  3. The First Domino Starts a Cascade: Regulatory winds are shifting (e.g., the SEC's "Project Crypto"). The moment one major company successfully IPOs onchain, the perceived career risk will flip, opening the floodgates for others to follow.
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August 6, 2025

The World’s Largest ETH Holder - Tom Lee on Treasuries, Ethereum Dominance, and Wall Street

Bankless

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. ETH Treasuries are Infrastructure, Not ETFs: These companies are active players, using staking yield, MNAV premiums, and balance sheet velocity to accumulate ETH. Bitmine’s goal to own 5% of all ETH positions it as a key, US-compliant entity for Wall Street’s on-chain future.
  2. This is ETH's "2017 Bitcoin Moment": Wall Street is beginning to recognize Ethereum as the settlement layer for tokenization and AI. This institutional awakening creates the potential for a massive step-function price increase as capital flows in.
  3. The Upside Case for ETH > Bitcoin: Tom Lee argues Ethereum has a greater asymmetric upside, with a potential 100x return and a "significant probability" of flipping Bitcoin in network value. The investment thesis is based on this expansive vision, not myopic spreadsheet models.
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August 6, 2025

Karia Samaroo: xTAO Bittensor Treasury, Validators, Subnets, Crypto AI Investing | Ep. 56

Ventura Labs

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. It’s an Operating Company, Not Just a Vault: xTAO’s strategy is to actively build validators and infrastructure, using its public listing as a flywheel for accretive TAO acquisition, rather than passively holding the asset.
  2. Structure is Strategy: The combination of a low-cost TSXV listing and a tax-free Cayman Islands headquarters gives xTAO a significant operational and financial edge designed for long-term sustainability.
  3. The Next Frontier is User Adoption: For Bittensor to reach its potential, it must break out of the crypto bubble. The ecosystem's ultimate success hinges on subnets creating useful products that attract mainstream users.
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