In this episode, we examine the defining tension in modern AI: open versus closed models. We break down what “open” actually means in today’s AI landscape, why frontier labs increasingly keep their most capable systems closed, and how this divide shapes innovation, safety, economics, and global power dynamics.

We explore the difference between true open source and open-weights models, why closed APIs dominate at the frontier, and how the open ecosystem still drives massive downstream innovation. The episode also looks at how this debate becomes far more serious as models approach AGI-level capabilities, where misuse risks, offense–defense imbalance, and irreversibility force new approaches to access, governance, and accountability.

This episode covers:

• Open source vs open-weights vs closed AI models
• Safety, alignment, and the case for restricted access
• Innovation commons and open-model ecosystem dynamics
• AGI risk, misuse, and the offense–defense imbalance
• Staged release, audits, and mediated access models
• Power, geopolitics, efficiency, and the future of openness

This episode is part of the Adapticx AI Podcast. Listen via the link provided or search “Adapticx” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or most podcast platforms.

Sources and Further Reading

Additional references and extended material are available at:

https://adapticx.co.uk

In this episode, we trace the evolution of AI from passive text generation to autonomous systems that can reason, plan, act, and adapt. We explain why prediction alone was not enough, how structured reasoning techniques unlocked multi-step consistency, and how modern agent architectures enable AI to interact with the real world through tools, feedback, and memory.

We explore the progression from chain-of-thought reasoning to action-driven frameworks, reflection-based learning, and full agentic loops that combine planning, execution, evaluation, and adaptation. The episode also examines how multi-agent systems, tool use, and hybrid architectures are reshaping industries—from software and science to healthcare and manufacturing—while introducing new safety and governance challenges.

This episode covers:

• From prediction to reasoning, planning, and action
• Chain-of-thought, ReAct, and reflection-based learning
• Agent architectures and long-horizon planning
• Tool use, RAG, and real-world interaction
• Single-agent vs. multi-agent systems
• Autonomy, risk, and the need for guardrails

This episode is part of the Adapticx AI Podcast. Listen via the link provided or search “Adapticx” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or most podcast platforms.

Sources and Further Reading

Additional references and extended material are available at:

https://adapticx.co.uk

In this episode, we examine why AI safety and governance have become unavoidable as general-purpose AI systems move into every layer of society. We explore how the shift from narrow models to general-purpose AI amplifies risk, why high-level “responsible AI” principles often fail in practice, and what it takes to build systems that can be trusted at scale.

We break down the core pillars of trustworthy AI—fairness, reliability, transparency, and human oversight—and follow them across the full AI lifecycle, from pre-training and fine-tuning to deployment and continuous monitoring. The discussion also tackles real failure modes, from hallucinations and bias to misinformation, dual-use risks, and the limits of current alignment techniques.

This episode covers:

• Why general-purpose AI fundamentally changes the risk landscape
• The pillars of trustworthy AI: fairness, safety, transparency, and oversight
• The AI lifecycle: pre-training, fine-tuning, deployment, and monitoring
• Hallucinations, bias amplification, and misinformation risks
• Alignment challenges, red teaming, and accountability gaps
• Market concentration, environmental costs, and global governance

This episode is part of the Adapticx AI Podcast. Listen via the link provided or search “Adapticx” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or most podcast platforms.

Sources and Further Reading

Additional references and extended material are available at:

https://adapticx.co.uk

In this episode, we explore what happens when AI leaves the lab and enters real-world production. We examine why most AI projects fail at deployment, how production systems differ fundamentally from research models, and what it takes to operate large language models reliably at scale.

The discussion focuses on the engineering, organizational, and governance challenges of deploying probabilistic systems, along with the emerging architectures that turn LLMs into agents capable of planning, tool use, and autonomous action.

This episode covers:

• Why most AI projects fail in production
• Research vs. production AI: reliability, consistency, and scale
• Build vs. buy trade-offs for LLMs
• Hidden costs: prompt drift, prompt engineering, and inference
• Evaluation, monitoring, and governance in real systems
• Agent architectures and AI as infrastructure

This episode is part of the Adapticx AI Podcast. Listen via the link provided or search “Adapticx” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or most podcast platforms.

Sources and Further Reading

Additional references and extended material are available at:

https://adapticx.co.uk

Season 7 begins at a turning point. AI is no longer confined to research papers and demos—it is deployed, operational, and shaping real-world systems at scale. This season focuses on what changes when models move from experiments to production infrastructure.

We explore how organizations build, monitor, and maintain AI systems whose behavior is probabilistic rather than deterministic. What reliability means when models can adapt, fail in unexpected ways, and influence high-stakes decisions. And how engineering practices evolve when AI is treated not as a tool, but as a collaborator embedded in workflows.

The season also looks ahead to the next frontier: reasoning models, planning systems, and autonomous agents capable of using tools, coordinating tasks, and acting toward goals. Alongside these capabilities come urgent questions of safety, governance, and control—how risks are identified, how responsibility is enforced, and how oversight scales with capability.

Finally, we examine one of the defining debates of this era: open versus closed models. Who should control powerful AI systems, how transparency affects innovation and safety, and what these choices mean for the long-term trajectory toward AGI.

Season 7 is about AI in the world—how it behaves in production, how it is governed, and how today’s decisions shape what comes next.

This episode is part of the Adapticx AI Podcast. Listen via the link provided or search “Adapticx” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or most podcast platforms.

Sources and Further Reading

Additional references and extended material are available at:

https://adapticx.co.uk

In this episode, we explore how large language models evolved from passive text generators into agentic systems that can use tools, take actions, collaborate, and operate inside dynamic environments. We explain the shift from “knowing” to “doing,” and why this transition marks one of the most significant changes since the Transformer.

We break down what defines agentic AI, how agents plan and act through tool use, and why multi-agent systems outperform single models on complex, real-world tasks. The episode also covers the emerging agent frameworks, real business impact, and the safety and governance challenges that come with autonomy.

This episode covers:

• The gap between text generation and real-world action
• What defines agentic AI: autonomy, reactivity, proactivity, learning
• Tool use as the bridge from reasoning to execution
• Agent lifecycles: planning, action, observation, refinement
• Single-agent limits and multi-agent systems (MAS)
• Popular agent frameworks (LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI)
• Enterprise, science, and productivity impacts
• Safety, latency, memory, and responsibility challenges

This episode is part of the Adapticx AI Podcast. Listen via the link provided or search “Adapticx” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or most podcast platforms.

Sources and Further Reading

Additional references and extended material are available at:

https://adapticx.co.uk

In this episode, we explore how open-source large language models transformed AI by breaking proprietary barriers and making advanced systems accessible to a global community. We examine why the open movement emerged, how open LLMs are built in practice, and why transparency and reproducibility matter.

We trace the journey from large-scale pre-training to instruction tuning, alignment, and real-world deployment, showing how open models now power education, tutoring, and specialized applications—often matching or surpassing much larger closed systems.

This episode covers:

• Why open LLMs emerged and what they changed
• Model weights, transparency, and reproducibility
• Pre-training, instruction tuning, and alignment
• Open LLMs in education and specialized domains
• RAG, multi-agent systems, and trust
• Small specialized models vs large proprietary models

This episode is part of the Adapticx AI Podcast. Listen via the link provided or search “Adapticx” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or most podcast platforms.

Sources and Further Reading

Additional references and extended material are available at:

https://adapticx.co.uk

In this episode, we explore how AI crossed a critical threshold—from powerful but expert-only systems to tools anyone can use naturally. We trace the usability revolution that turned large language models into conversational, intuitive interfaces, and explain why this shift mattered as much as raw intelligence.

We walk through the technical breakthroughs behind this change—from static word embeddings and LSTMs to Transformers, scale, and RLHF—and connect them to human-centered design principles like effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. The episode also examines how usability is measured, why ChatGPT succeeded despite imperfections, and how multimodal and efficient architectures are shaping the next phase of AI interaction.

This episode covers:

• Why early AI systems were hard to use
• Static vs contextual language understanding
• Transformers, scale, and zero-/few-shot learning
• RLHF and conversational alignment
• Usability metrics (SUS) and adoption drivers
• Multimodal models and efficiency-focused designs
• AI as a universal natural-language interface

This episode is part of the Adapticx AI Podcast. Listen via the link provided or search “Adapticx” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or most podcast platforms.

Sources and Further Reading

Additional references and extended material are available at:

https://adapticx.co.uk