Context Engineering, Multiplayer AI and Effective Search, with Dropbox’s Josh Clemm

Context engineering, "multiplayer" A.I. and building effective A.I.-search products are some of the cutting-edge topics covered by Josh Clemm, VP of Engineering at Dropbox, in today's episode!

Think about how many search bars you use at work... Slack has one. Google Drive has another... Your email, your project management tool, your file storage. Josh reckons knowledge workers juggle as many as 20 search tools daily… and now he’s built the fix.

At Dropbox, Josh is focused on building Dash, an A.I.-powered search across every application you use for work. Based on his extensive experience (including 8 years leading 400 engineers at Uber), this is an enlightening episode across A.I., building effective products and cultivating productive teams.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

Happy Holidays from All of Us at the SuperDataScience Podcast

Behind the scenes at the SuperDataScience Podcast, nine humans work to produce each of the 104 episodes we release annually. For today's episode, all nine of us recorded holiday messages for you 🌲

Thanks for listening all year 'round! The team wishing you gratitude for supporting us and wishing you peace this holiday season are:

• Kirill Eremenko: founder and original host

• Sonja Brajovic: operations manager

• Natalie Ziajski: partnerships manager

• Mario Pombo: media editor

• Dr. Zara Karschay: writer

• Serg Masís: researcher

• Anthony Gagnon: animator

• Boldiszár Mészáros: graphics

• Yours truly!

Listen to today's episode to get a glimpse behind the curtain at each of these humans, who are all exceptional at what they do. It's an honor to work alongside such clever and steadfastly reliable folks.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

Why AI Keeps Failing Society, with Stanford professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland

The Soviet Union collapsed because of A.I. and today's guest, Stanford/MIT professor Alex 'Sandy' Pentland, argues society is on the same crash course today!

Prof. Pentland is a rockstar:

• Distinguished professor at both Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• Pioneered the field of computational social science.

• Many-time best-selling author... in today's episode, we focus on his latest book, "Shared Wisdom: Cultural Evolution in the Age of A.I."

We discuss:

• How A.I. systems fail when they treat humans as logical engines rather than social foragers who learn by watching others.

• The parallels between Soviet central planning through early A.I. and today's systems.

• Why Washington DC residents wanted A.I. to defend them against city bureaucracy rather than optimize city services, revealing what real people actually need from A.I.

• "Data unions" as the next evolution after labor unions and agricultural co-ops.

• Living laboratories and digital twins as tools for testing A.I. systems in real-world contexts before deployment.

• ...and much more!

Today's episode is relatively high-level so can be enjoyed by any interested listener.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

In Case You Missed It in November 2025

I learned a lot from these brilliant guests last month. ICYMI, today's episode features the best parts of my conversations with them:

1. Tyler Cox and Shirish Gupta explain what state-space LLMs (like those incorporating Mamba layers) are and what advantages they have over transformer-only architectures.

2. Dr. Vijoy Pandey, who leads development of Cisco's open-source platform for the coming "internet of agents", explains a paradigm that allows us to trust agents (from a privacy and security perspective).

3. Fabi.ai co-founder Marc Dupuis details how to navigate several key organizational metrics simultaneously so that teams don’t lose sight of their goals and, crucially, so that AI models stay aligned with us too.

4. Santa Clara University professor Maya Ackerman and I discuss the importance of keeping human interests and welfare at the centre of the AI conversation.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

How to Get Hired at Top Firms like Netflix and Spotify, with Jeff Li

Many folks dream of doing AI/ML at top firms like Netflix and Spotify. In today's episode, Jeffrey Li spills the beans on how he got hired at these companies... and how you can too!

More on Jeff:

• Data Scientist at Netflix, focused on ads forecasting and optimization.

• Spent the last eight years building ML systems for Netflix, DoorDash and Spotify, specializing in time-series forecasting.

• Outside of work, he's sports-obsessed, incl. surfing, snowboarding, running, cycling and BJJ.

Today's episode gets into the technical weeds on time-series analysis on massive scales so it will appeal especially to hands-on practitioners like data scientists, AI/ML engineers and statisticians. Lots of it, however, will be fascinating to any listener, including Jeff's general tips on getting hired at top firms and his experience launching an AI startup.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

AI is a Joke, with Joel Beasley

This is definitely the funniest episode of my podcast: Software-engineer-turned-comedian Joel Beasley explains how he uses A.I. to quantify and optimize his comedy, with a lot of laughs along the way.

Joel:

• Two decades of experience as a software developer, including several CTO positions.

• Hosts the popular "Modern CTO Podcast", a top half-percent podcast globally.

• Most recently, a comedian who took off professionally as the opening act for comedy big-wig Jeff Allen on a US-wide tour.

Today's episode should be accessible — and hilarious! — to any interested listener.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

Why 95% of AI Projects Fail and How to Be the 5% with Jon Krohn

95% of AI projects fail.

Here’s how to be the 5%.

On the latest episode of the Signal to Noise Podcast, I sat down with Michael Newcomer to unpack:

• Why AI capabilities are doubling every seven months

• How to identify and prioritize high-ROI AI projects

• The #1 trait of a great data scientist

… and much more!

If you're leading AI adoption or just trying to stay sane while doing it, this one's essential.

Creative Machines: AI in Music and Art, with Prof. Maya Ackerman

Humans haven't been able to distinguish Mozart from machine since the 1980s... why is it that we're only now freaking out about A.I. creativity? Prof. Maya Ackerman explains in today's episode!

More on Maya:

• Associate professor of computer science and engineering at Santa Clara University, where she specializes in generative A.I. research, a field she’s been immersed in for decades.

• Author of the brand-new book "Creative Machines: A.I., Art & Us".

• Co-founder and CEO of lyric- and music-generation startup WaveAI.

• Holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Waterloo.

Today's episode should be accessible — and fascinating! — to any interested listener.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

Introducing the First Book in My A.I. Signature Series

I'm delighted to announce that the first book in my "Pearson A.I. Signature Series" is "Building Agentic AI" by the prolific author Sinan Ozdemir... and it will be published on Sunday!

It's available for pre-order now worldwide from wherever you buy your books! You can also read a digital version in the O'Reilly platform today if you have access to it.

The book is packed with hands-on examples in Python and it allows you to master the complete agentic A.I. pipeline, including practical guidance and code on how to:

• Design adaptive A.I. agents with memory, tool use, and collaborative reasoning capabilities.

• Build robust RAG workflows using embeddings, vector databases and LangGraph state management.

• Implement comprehensive evaluation frameworks beyond just "accuracy"

• Deploy multimodal A.I. systems that seamlessly integrate text, vision, audio and code generation.

• Optimize models for production through fine-tuning, quantization and speculative decoding techniques.

• Navigate the bleeding edge of reasoning LLMs and computer-use capabilities.

• Balance cost, speed, accuracy and privacy in real-world deployment scenarios.

• Create hybrid architectures that combine multiple agents for complex enterprise applications.

Thanks to Debra Williams Cauley, Dayna Isley and many more at Pearson for bringing this series to life. The second book in the series will be available in December and I'll announce that shortly!

Pre-order the book here!

Multi-Agent Human Societies, with Dr. Vijoy Pandey

AI agents will collaborate with us and each other to solve humanity’s biggest challenges. BUT a major hurdle toward this elysian future is being able to TRUST agents. In today's episode, Dr. Vijoy Pandey reveals solutions.

More on Vijoy:

• Brilliantly thoughtful and well-spoken engineering researcher who heads Outshift, a major tech incubator inside of Cisco.

• Focused on the Internet of Agents (specifically, AGNTCY | A Linux Foundation Project) and the Quantum Internet.

• Prior to Cisco, held engineering leadership roles (including CTO roles) at Google, IBM, Nortel Networks and others.

• Holds a PhD in Computer Science from University of California, Davis.

Dr. Pandey explains complex concepts so clearly and eloquently that anyone interested in AI or the future should enjoy today's episode.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

In Case You Missed It in October 2025

ICYMI... October's guests on my podcast were exceptional. Our most recent episode highlights the best part of my conversations with them:

1. Sheamus McGovern, founder of ODSC (the world's largest data science conference), details how to "rewire" your skills for the age of AI.

2. Gurobi Optimization's in-house guru Jerry Yurchisin provides real-world examples of how enterprises (specifically Toyota and Total Wine) have used mathematical optimization to save millions.

3. Researcher, broadcaster and bestselling author Dr Stephanie Hare opines on how we can use AI to build a fairer, more equitable world.

4. Pathway's brilliant Dr. Adrian Kosowski explains how their Transformer-killer BDH architecture, remarkably, allows multilingual models to be created by simply concatenating together two single-language models.

5. Unframe AI co-founder and COO Larissa Schneider explains how her firm (which recently raised $50m) has achieved so much success with a business model that she herself admits “did everything against the book.”

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

Mixture-of-Experts and State-Space Models on Edge Devices, with Tyler Cox and Shirish Gupta

Mixture-of-experts models? State-space models? Easily running these cutting-edge LLM approaches on any device? In today's episode, deep experts Shirish and Tyler masterfully reveal all.

Shirish Gupta:

• Returns to my podcast for the third time this year!

• Director of A.I. Product Management at Dell Technologies, where he's been for over 20 years!

• Holds a Master's in Engineering from the University of Maryland.

Tyler Cox:

• Distinguished Engineer at Dell in the Client Solutions Group CTO.

• Leads on-device A.I. innovation programs across a wide range of products, including A.I. PCs, workstations, and edge computing platforms.

• Holds a Master's in Software Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.

Today's episode will be particularly appealing to hands-on practitioners (e.g., data scientists, AI/ML engineers, software developers) as well as anyone who could benefit from considering shifting A.I. workloads from the cloud to local devices.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

Where to Find Me at Web Summit 2025

Hello from Lisbon — hope to see you at Web Summit this week! I'll be speaking, emceeing, hosting a meetup and judging a startup competition. Here's where you can catch me:

• Tue Nov 11 at 11:30am: I'll be hosting a "Beyond the Stage" Meetup for founders and execs on successful Agentic A.I. projects (at Meetup Location 2).

• Tue Nov 11 at 3pm: I'll be a judge in the "Startup Pitch" competition (on Stage 9).

• Wed Nov 12 at 1:20pm: "Intro to Agentic A.I." afternoon-opening keynote on the Developer Summit stage.

• Wed Nov 12 from 1:40pm to 4pm: Emceeing the Developer Summit stage.

• Thu Nov 13 at noon: I'll be providing one-to-one guidance to tech startups on scaling effectively (this is at the official "Mentor Hours" location).

Thanks to Brendan Garrett and Jack Knox for inviting me back! Can't wait :)

Frontier AI Agents for Data Science, with Sphinx’s Rohan Kodialam (Copy)

Rohan Kodialam has raised $9.5m to have A.I. agents work alongside you in Jupyter Notebooks, working as fluently with data as ChatGPT does with language. Hear all about Sphinx in today's episode!

More on Rohan:

• Founder/CEO of Sphinx.ai — you can check out their free tier right now.

• Previously head of A.I. development in the data strategies group of Citadel.

• Holds an M.Eng. in A.I. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Rohan is an exceptional speaker covering a fascinating topic so anyone might enjoy listening in but this episode will be particularly appealing to folks who work hands-on with data such as data scientists and analysts.

This episode was filmed live at Bessemer Venture Partners — thanks to Bhavik Nagda and Charles Birnbaum for hosting us! Videography by Eliana Alvarez Martinez.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.