IBM just released Granite 4.0, a new family of open language models designed to be fast, memory-efficient, and enterprise-ready — and it represents a very different philosophy from today’s frontier AI race. In this episode of The Neuron, IBM Research’s David Cox joins us to unpack why IBM treats AI models as tools rather than entities, how hybrid architectures dramatically reduce memory and cost, and why openness, transparency, and external audits matter more than ever for real-world deployment. We dive into long-context efficiency, agent safety, LoRA adapters, on-device AI, voice interfaces, and why the future of AI may look a lot more boring — in the best possible way. If you’re building AI systems for production, agents, or enterprise workflows, this conversation is required listening. Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter for more interviews with the leaders shaping the future of work and AI: https://theneuron.ai