muckrAIkers

muckrAIkers

Jacob Haimes and Igor Krawczuk

Episodes 24
Avg. Duration 1h 1m
Activity Highly Active
Apple Rating 5.0 (3)
Since Sep 2024
Latest Episode May 2026

Publishing Details

Schedule
Monthly
Format
Episodic
Consistency
81%
Hosting
feeds.transistor.fm

Contact & Outreach

About This Podcast

Join us as we dig a tiny bit deeper into the hype surrounding "AI" press releases, research papers, and more. Each episode, we'll highlight ongoing research and investigations, providing some much needed contextualization, constructive critique, and even a smidge of occasional good will teasing to the conversation, trying to find the meaning under all of this muck.

Podcasting 2.0 Features

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Recent Episodes

The AI Booster Tier List

May 04, 2026 46m Transcript

This week, Jacob and Igor swap the usual news breakdown for a complete taxonomy of AI boosters within the framing of a tier list. They run through every type, from the good-faith genuine enthusiast…

The Enemy of My Enemy is Still a Corporation

Apr 13, 2026 58m Transcript

In this episode, Jacob and Igor break down the DoD vs. Anthropic standoff, tracing how Claude's use in military operations led to Anthropic being designated a supply chain security risk. Perhaps more…

The Mythical AI Bear

Mar 17, 2026 43m Transcript

This week, Jacob and Igor dissect the "mythical AI bear," the strawman version of AI criticism that gets thrown around in tech discourse. Working through a viral blog post that typifies the genre,…

Big Tech Plans to Move Fast and Break Democracy

Feb 09, 2026 49m Transcript

We're talking about developments in AI while those in power have unapologetically revealed their true fascist intensions; are we spending our time in the right way? Igor and I discuss the importance…

AI Skeptic PWNED by Facts and Logic

Jan 12, 2026 38m Transcript

Igor shares a significant shift in his perspective on AI coding tools after experiencing the latest Claude Code release. While he's been the stronger AI skeptic between the two of us, recent…

Tech Bros Love AI Waifus

Dec 15, 2025 45m Transcript

OpenAI is pivoting to porn while public sentiment turns decisively against AI. Pew Research shows Americans are now concerned over excited by a 2:1 margin. We trace how we got here: broken promises…

AI Safety for Who?

Oct 13, 2025 49m Transcript

Jacob and Igor argue that AI safety is hurting users, not helping them. The techniques used to make chatbots "safe" and "aligned," such as instruction tuning and RLHF, anthropomorphize AI systems…

The Co-opting of Safety

Aug 21, 2025 1h 24m

We dig into how the concept of AI "safety" has been co-opted and weaponized by tech companies. Starting with examples like Mecha-Hitler Grok, we explore how real safety engineering differs from AI…

AI, Reasoning or Rambling?

Jul 14, 2025 1h 11m

In this episode, we redefine AI's "reasoning" as mere rambling, exposing the "illusion of thinking" and "Potemkin understanding" in current models. We contrast the classical definition of reasoning…

One Big Bad Bill

Jun 23, 2025 53m Transcript

In this episode, we break down Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" and its dystopian AI provisions: automated fraud detection systems, centralized citizen databases, military AI integration, and a…

Breaking Down the Economics of AI

May 26, 2025 1h 6m

Jacob and Igor tackle the wild claims about AI's economic impact by examining three main clusters of arguments: automating expensive tasks like programming, removing "cost centers" like call centers…

DeepSeek: 2 Months Out

Apr 09, 2025 1h 31m

DeepSeek has been out for over 2 months now, and things have begun to settle down. We take this opportunity to contextualize the developments that have occurred in its wake, both within the AI…

DeepSeek Minisode

Feb 10, 2025 15m Bonus

DeepSeek R1 has taken the world by storm, causing a stock market crash and prompting further calls for export controls within the US. Since this story is still very much in development, with…

Understanding AI World Models w/ Chris Canal

Jan 27, 2025 3h 19m

Chris Canal, co-founder of EquiStamp, joins muckrAIkers as our first ever podcast guest! In this ~3.5 hour interview, we discuss intelligence vs. competencies, the importance of test-time compute,…

NeurIPS 2024 Wrapped 🌯

Dec 30, 2024 1h 26m

What happens when you bring over 15,000 machine learning nerds to one city? If your guess didn't include racism, sabotage and scandal, belated epiphanies, a spicy SoLaR panel, and many fantastic…

OpenAI's o1 System Card, Literally Migraine Inducing

Dec 23, 2024 1h 16m

The idea of model cards, which was introduced as a measure to increase transparency and understanding of LLMs, has been perverted into the marketing gimmick characterized by OpenAI's o1 system card.…

How to Safely Handle Your AGI

Dec 02, 2024 58m

While on the campaign trail, Trump made claims about repealing Biden's Executive Order on AI, but what will actually be changed when he gets into office? We take this opportunity to examine policies…

The End of Scaling?

Nov 19, 2024 1h 7m

Multiple news outlets, including The Information, Bloomberg, and Reuters [see sources] are reporting an "end of scaling" for the current AI paradigm. In this episode we look into these articles, as…

US National Security Memorandum on AI, Oct 2024

Nov 06, 2024 1h 16m

October 2024 saw a National Security Memorandum and US framework for using AI in national security contexts. We go through the content so you don't have to, pull out the important bits, and summarize…

Understanding Claude 3.5 Sonnet (New)

Oct 30, 2024 1h

Frontier developers continue their war on sane versioning schema to bring us Claude 3.5 Sonnet (New), along with "computer use" capabilities. We discuss not only the new model, but also why Anthropic…

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does muckrAIkers have?

muckrAIkers has published 24 episodes since September 2024, covering topics in Mathematics, Science.

Is muckrAIkers still active?

muckrAIkers is currently highly active with new episodes monthly. Average episode length is 1h 1m.

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