Topic: Open models

Ming-Yu Liu, NVIDIA vice president of research and head of the Cosmos Lab, joins Practical AI hosts Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson to discuss AI systems that interact with the physical world. The conversation examines open models, world models and simulation as foundations for robotics and autonomous vehicles, and how research and deployment can advance physical AI. Published 1 October 2026; publisher runtime 47 minutes 19 seconds.

Nathan Lambert discusses post-training and the prospects for open AI models, drawing on his work on OLMo at Ai2 and his writing on reinforcement learning from human feedback. Topics include capability gaps, the economics of the open ecosystem, training environments, continual learning and skepticism about recursive self-improvement. The conversation also examines research culture, concentrated talent and whether increased model spending translates into better products. Hosted by Ravid Shwartz Ziv and Allen Roush. Watch the full conversation on the publisher’s YouTube channel.