In this episode of Gradient Dissent, host Lukas Biewald sits down with Mike Knoop, Co-founder and CEO of Ndea, a cutting-edge AI research lab. Mike shares his journey from building Zapier into a major automation platform to diving into the frontiers of AI research. They discuss DeepSeek’s R1, OpenAI’s O-series models, and the ARC Prize, a competition aimed at advancing AI’s reasoning capabilities. Mike explains how program synthesis and deep learning must merge to create true AGI, and why he believes AI reliability is the biggest hurdle for automation adoption. This conversation covers AGI timelines, research breakthroughs, and the future of intelligent systems, making it essential listening for AI enthusiasts, researchers, and entrepreneurs. Mentioned Show Notes: https://ndea.com https://arcprize.org/blog/r1-zero-r1-results-analysis https://arcprize.org/blog/oai-o3-pub-breakthrough 🎙 Get our podcasts on these platforms: Apple Podcasts: http://wandb.me/apple-podcasts Spotify: http://wandb.me/spotify Google: http://wandb.me/gd_google YouTube: http://wandb.me/youtube Connect with Mike Knoop" @mikeknoop Follow Weights & Biases: https://twitter.com/weights_biases https://www.linkedin.com/company/wandb Join the Weights & Biases Discord Server: https://discord.gg/CkZKRNnaf3