AI-podden

In this September AI news roundup, our host Ather Gattami sits down with Anders Arpteg to unpack the biggest developments across frontier models, autonomous systems, AI efficiency and the ongoing debate around AGI. The conversation covers OpenAI's Astra model and its Navier-Stokes breakthrough, the industry-wide shift toward smaller and more cost-efficient models, and why impressive benchmark gains still do not necessarily mean we are close to artificial general intelligence.

They also discuss the growing importance of workflow automation and agentic products, recent advances in autonomous driving and physical AI, and why future progress may depend less on...

In this special two-part Dreamforce episode, our host Ather Gattami sits down with Itai Asseo, VP at Salesforce AI Research, and Dr. Franny Hsiao, Chief AI Architect at Salesforce, to explore how Salesforce is approaching the next phase of enterprise AI. Across the two conversations, they cover Koa, Salesforce's new CRM-specific reasoning model, the role of customer data and privacy, and why businesses should choose the right-sized model for each task rather than defaulting to the largest frontier models. They also discuss dynamic AI interfaces, self-evolving enterprises, and why successful AI adoption depends as much on people, organisational change...

In this August AI news roundup, our host Ather sits with Anders Arpteg to unpack the latest developments in frontier models, physical AI, autonomous agents and the growing race for AI infrastructure. The conversation covers breakthroughs in robotics and latent-space reasoning, fierce model and pricing competition from US and Chinese players, major changes at Google, and the escalating battle for chips and compute. They also explore the limits of current AI reasoning, emerging security risks as agents become more autonomous, and why efficiency, reliability and infrastructure are becoming just as important as raw model performance.

In this July AI news roundup, our host Ather sits with Anders Arpteg to unpack the latest frontier model releases, the rapid rise of open-source competitors, and the growing importance of enterprise agent platforms. The conversation explores how innovation is shifting from raw model performance towards infrastructure, governance, efficiency and latent-space reasoning, while Chinese models, energy constraints and increasingly capable autonomous agents reshape the competitive landscape.

In this June news episode, host Ather Gattami sits down with Anders Arpteg to unpack the biggest AI developments from the past month. The discussion looks beyond frontier model hype to the infrastructure, platforms and specialised models that are starting to define real-world adoption. From GPT 5.6, Claude and China's fast-rising open models to custom chips, enterprise agents, geopolitical pressure, continual learning and AI-enabled cyberattacks, the episode explores where advantage in AI is really shifting: from model weights alone to data, orchestration, efficiency and domain expertise.

In this May news episode, our host Ather Gattami sits with Anders Arpteg to discuss how the industry accelerating on several fronts at once: coding, agentic workflows, enterprise tooling and research capability. As Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Mistral and others push new models and platforms, the competitive edge is shifting from raw model performance toward speed, integration, transparency and data sovereignty. At the same time, breakthroughs in mathematical proof, AI-assisted research and formal reasoning suggest the technology is beginning to move beyond pattern recognition toward genuinely novel insight and more autonomous problem-solving.

In this special episode of AI-Podden, our host Ather Gattami sits down with Rolf Njor Jensen, VP of Technology at Lunar to explore how AI is reshaping the future of banking.

From AI-powered support agents and smarter customer onboarding, to the rise of "invisible banking", we discuss how financial services could move beyond the banking app and become part of everyday digital experiences.

We also look at what it takes to use AI responsibly in one of the world's most regulated industries, including data governance, privacy, security, human oversight and the new identity models needed...

In this May news episode, our host Ather Gattami sits with Anders Arpteg to discuss how the industry accelerating on several fronts at once: coding, agentic workflows, enterprise tooling and research capability. As Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Mistral and others push new models and platforms, the competitive edge is shifting from raw model performance toward speed, integration, transparency and data sovereignty. At the same time, breakthroughs in mathematical proof, AI-assisted research and formal reasoning suggest the technology is beginning to move beyond pattern recognition toward genuinely novel insight and more autonomous problem-solving.

In this March news episode, our host Ather Gattami sits with Anders Arpteg to unpack a fast-moving period in AI, from NVIDIA GTC and the rise of agentic, always-on systems to the growing demand for inference, physical AI and autonomous driving. They argue that while the industry is moving quickly and companies are racing to build more proactive, capable systems, current models are still far weaker at reasoning and action-taking than the hype often suggests, something they link to the poor results on Arc AGI 3. The conversation also touches on shifting power dynamics between companies like Anthropic, OpenAI and...

In this February news update, our host Ather Gattami sits with Anders Arpteg, to recap the latest and most significant shifts in AI. On the menu; OpenAI's $100 billion funding round, intensifying competition from companies like Anthropic, Google, and xAI, and the growing geopolitical role of AI in defense and national security. They also explore the gap between rapid technological progress and slower real-world adoption, the evolving role of software engineers as AI automates more coding tasks, and Sweden's new AI strategy aimed at becoming a leading AI nation through stronger adoption and practical application of AI.

In this months January news update, hosts Ather Gattami and Anders Arpteg, recap the latest and most significant shifts in AI. They including new model releases, the shift toward autonomous agent systems like OpenClaw, and breakthroughs in reasoning such as Gemini DeepThink's results. They also discuss the growing concentration of AI power among tech giants, the role of open and specialized models, and why rapid adoption will be critical for companies and individuals as AI capabilities accelerate.

In this episode, Anders Hammarbäck, co-founder of Redpine AI, discusses how data, not models - will define the winners in the AI era. He explains RedPine's role as a "knowledge layer" that unlocks proprietary, high-quality data to improve AI accuracy and reduce hallucinations, especially in sectors like healthcare and pharmaceuticals. The conversation also covers the potential value of personal data, the near-term outlook for AI and AGI, Europe's position in the global AI race, and Ander's shift from venture capital to founding a company focused on data as the core competitive advantage in AI.

Happy New Year listeners!

In our first AI-Podden news update of 2026, our hosts Ather Gattami and Anders Arpteg, reflect on the key highlights of AI in 2025 and what lies ahead. They discuss OpenAI's loss of momentum, Google Gemini's rise, the hype and shortcomings of agentic AI, and the growing gap between rapid technological progress and real-world adoption.

The conversation also covers infrastructure and hardware investments, energy efficiency, AI sovereignty, regulation, geopolitics, robotics, and the shift toward smaller, more specialised models, with a clear warning that the AI divide between leaders and laggards is likely to...

In this months November news update, our hosts; Ather Gattami and Anders Arpteg, recap November's biggest AI shifts. Google's Gemini 3 Pro taking the lead, OpenAI facing pressure over massive infrastructure bets and AGI expectations, Yann LeCun leaving Meta for new research ventures, the EU softening its regulatory stance, and Grok sparking laughs with overly pro-Elon responses, capturing both rapid progress and rising bubble concerns.

In October's AI news update, Ather Gattami and Anders Arpteg discuss OpenAI's transition to a full for-profit structure, the rollout of in-chat shopping, and its new browser. They clarify what Google's "Quantum Echoes" actually demonstrates and why practical quantum computing is still distant. The episode also covers recent improvements in AI systems' ability to use computer interfaces and the security implications of autonomous action-taking, new details emerging from the OpenAI leadership conflict, and NVIDIA's compact DGX-Spark supercomputer.

Lastly, a quick congratulations to all of this year's AI Swede of the nominees:

In this special episode, our host Ather Gattami interviews Jayesh Govindarajan, EVP at Salesforce AI and AgentForce, live at Dreamforce in San Francisco, where Salesforce unveiled major advances in agentic AI including AgentForce Voice, advanced context engineering, and AFScript.

Jayesh explains that successful enterprise AI requires not only powerful models but also well-defined goals, reliable context, actionable capabilities, and robust guardrails that deliver both creativity and precision. He describes Salesforce's full lifecycle for building, testing, and monitoring agents, which enables continual improvement and lays the foundation for future self-learning systems that can safely expand their own capabilities. 

In this episode, our host Ather Gattami, speaks with Beda Grahn, Managing Director at Kyndryl Nordics & Baltics, about how they use AI to manage and modernize the core infrastructure around the globe. From banking systems to home-care platforms, Beda explains how "Kyndryl Bridge" produces over 12 million AI-driven insights monthly, enabling preventive actions and major efficiency gains, such as cutting KYC workloads by 60 percent. Ather and Beda explore the rise of agentic AI, its challenges in enterprise adoption, and the importance of leadership in driving transformation. Beda stresses that executives must lead by example, foster reverse mentorship with young talent...

In this month's AI news update episode, our hosts Ather Gattami and Anders Arpteg discuss all the latest AI breakthroughs, from OpenAI's Sora 2 and Claude 4.5 to Gemini 2.5 and Grok 4 - and the massive infrastructure race behind them, including the $500 billion Stargate project and Elon Musk's Colossus 2 data center. They explore OpenAI's move toward productisation with its "Instant Checkout" feature, Microsoft's "Vibe Working", and Google's browser-integrated Gemini, before highlighting DeepMind's progress on the Navier–Stokes problem. The episode ends on an optimistic note: AI's power lies in augmenting, not replacing, human capability.

In this very special episode, our host Ather Gattami welcomes Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google Search, to reveal some truly exciting Google news: the global rollout of AI Mode. 

This new feature introduces conversational, multimodal search in nearly 50 countries and 36 languages, allowing users to ask complex questions through text, voice, or images - and receive richer, link-backed responses powered by Google's real-time information systems.

Robby explains how AI mode builds on tools like Lens and AI Overviews, while carefully balancing innovation with reliability, addressing challenges such as compute costs and hallucinations through Google's l...

In the latest AI-Podden news episode, our hosts Ather Gattami and Anders Arpteg, discussed insights from a recent Stockholm AI event with Mistral and Anthropic, covering debates on open-source vs. open weights, safety-first agent design, and the rise of "context engineering." They reviewed major lawsuits involving Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, highlighted Google's new Nano Banana image generator, and reflected on AGI's limits, arguing that today's AI excels at knowledge management but still lacks true reasoning and autonomy, with future progress hinging on new architectures, massive compute, and energy considerations.

In this week's update, host Ather Gattami is joined by regular guest Anders Arpteg, Head of AI and Data at GlobalConnect, to unpack the summer's biggest AI developments. They review the release of GPT-5, which introduced cheaper APIs, longer context windows, and fewer hallucinations but ultimately fell short of lofty expectations, particularly when compared with Claude and Gemini. The discussion explores possible reasons, including talent losses, outdated training data, and speculation of withheld advances, while also spotlighting AI's Olympiad successes, DeepMind's pursuit of hard mathematical problems, and video models like Veo 3 that demonstrate an emerging grasp of physical laws...

In this special summer episode, we do something a bit different. Our usal host Ather Gattami steps into the guest seat and is interviewed by close friend; Joseph Michael, Venture Partnerships at Google. Ather shares his journey from PhD researcher to leading Sweden's top AI podcast. He reflects on AI's evolution, the shift from theory to compute-driven progress, and why reasoning and real-world learning are the next big steps. Ather urges everyone to embrace AI tools or risk falling behind and shares his excitement about trends like agentic AI - while reaffirming that his true passion lies in doing...

In this episode, Ather Gattami and one of our favourite guests; Anders Arpteg, Head of AI and Data at GlobalConnect, explore Meta's shifting AI strategy, including its investment in Scale AI amid doubts about LeCun's JEPA model and LLaMA 4 performance. They compare Tesla's vision-based Robotaxi rollout to Waymo's sensor-heavy approach, highlighting Tesla's edge in scalability and real-world data. They also dive into Apple's "Illusion of Thinking" paper, questioning whether today's LLMs genuinely reason or simply excel at recall, and discuss the need for memory, planning, and architectural breakthroughs to push AI beyond current limits.

In this week's episode, special guest; Eva Fors, Managing Director at Google Cloud Nordics returns to the podcast. Eva and our host, Ather Gattami look at how companies in the region are shifting from AI pilots to real deployments, with leaders like Klarna, EasyPark, and Bonnier News using generative AI in areas like customer engagement, M&A, and personalization. While adoption is growing, Eva notes traditional industries are slowed by governance and execution gaps rather than tech limitations. She emphasizes the importance of treating data as a key asset and sees major potential for AI in public sector services...

In this episode, Stephen Jenkins, VP of Technology Strategy at Magna Electronics, shares practical insights into how AI is reshaping the automotive industry - from cutting development timelines with synthetic data to building smarter, more efficient autonomous parking systems. He explores the challenges of trust, safety, and explainability in AI, the current state of self-driving technology, and why full autonomy may be closer than we think.

In this week's episode, we host one of our favourite guests; Anders Arpteg, Head of AI and Data at GlobalConnect, to discuss how AI could enable "single person unicorns" by handling core business functions, based on his keynote at the Data Innovation Summit. The episode also explores leadership shifts at Meta and OpenAI, the growing divide between research and product focus, and a promising new approach to training AI without human data, inspired by AlphaZero.

In this week's episode, Ather chats with Magnus Hambleton, investor at byFounders and former data lead at Natural Cycles. Magnus has successfully applied transformers to improve fertility predictions in a medical setting. As an investor, he focuses on agentic AI and backs startups slightly ahead of what's currently possible, betting on near-future model capabilities. He remains cautious about LLMs' reliability and generalization, believing new architectures may be needed for AGI. While big tech is dominant, he sees room for startups in complex, workflow-driven applications. 

In this episode, Salla Franzén, Investment Manager at Navigare Ventures, returns to AI-Podden to explore how AI accelerates discovery in fields like life sciences and neuroscience. She unpacks the risks of tech hype, the need for explainable, trustworthy AI, and the importance of tools that bridge disciplinary gaps. Salla also shares insights on scientific investing, technical depth, and improving EU funding processes.

In this week's episode we host John Lamb, Solutions Lead AI & Analytics at TietoEvry. John emphasises that while tools like LLMs are useful for automating repetitive tasks such as code generation or data prep, they fall short when it comes to reasoning and interpreting structured data. He explains that data cleaning still dominates much of a data scientist's time and that current AI tools, though helpful, cannot yet be trusted for end-to-end analysis. John also discusses why he believes AGI is still years away, requiring a fundamental shift in technology, and shares practical advice for using AI responsibly, underscoring...

In this episode, we host special guest; Senior Business and Tech Correspondent at SVT and author, Alexander Norén. We discuss how AI is transforming warfare, especially through autonomous drones and decision-making systems, as explored in his documentary AI War. Alexander also reflects on AI's impact on jobs, arguing that human-made work will gain value in the future. The conversation ends with concerns about AI-driven misinformation and the importance of trustworthy, human-centered journalism.

In this episode we speak to Anders Indset, a philosopher, deep tech investor, and best-selling author. We discuss AI's real-world impact, emphasizing Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) that optimize industry-specific data in fields like healthcare, finance, and logistics. Anders critiques Europe's cautious investment culture, advocating for a bolder approach in AI-driven sectors. Inset stresses the need for balanced AI regulation to foster innovation while addressing global challenges like climate change.

In this episode we chat to Niklas Silfverström, CEO of Klang.ai, about Europe's need for AI independence. We discuss data privacy risks, the Cloud Act, and AI bias, emphasizing the need for European infrastructure and language models. Niklas highlights how relying on American AI companies threatens sovereignty, and why investing in GPUs, data centers, and energy is crucial for Europe's competitive future. He also warns that without these efforts, Europe risks becoming a mere consumer of AI rather than a leader in the field.

We should note that we use Klang.ai's wonderful platform in t...

In this episode, we host Anders Arpteg to discuss GROK 3's rapid innovation, the competitive AI landscape, and the rise of Chinese models. We explore Elon Musk's influence, AI power concentration, open-source challenges, and the Tesla Agile DNA. The conversation concludes with insights into AI reasoning, AGI development, and future challenges.

In this episode, Ather speaks to Galina Esther Shubina, Senior Director of AI Strategy at King. They discuss how AI improves gameplay and development at King through AI-powered playtesting bots. Galina is excited about robotics but sees major technical challenges ahead. On AGI, she is skeptical, predicting it won't emerge for at least 100 years due to AI's Game on limitations in reasoning. For 2025, she expects smaller generative models and a shift toward traditional AI methods like supervised learning, which she sees as more valuable for businesses.

In this episode, Ather speaks to Mehrdad Mamaghani, Volvo Group's Head of Data Science. They discuss AI's role in predictive maintenance, financial forecasting, and sustainability. Merdad critiques the hype around AGI, emphasizing transparency and practical applications, and highlights the need for AI talent and expertise in Europe. 

Merry Christmas folks! This week, guest host (Sifted's) Mimi Billing and Ather discuss December's AI news updates. Highlights included Uber's entry into AI data labeling, Google DeepMind's Genie 2 for training AI in simulated environments, and Amazon's collaboration with Anthropic to develop a mega AI supercomputer. We covered the importance of new algorithms over mere scaling and the potential of agentic AI to bring advancements toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). The year saw record AI funding rounds, with Databricks leading at $10 billion, while disappointments included unmet expectations for reasoning capabilities in AI models. Looking ahead, we anticipate innovations in AI...

This week, guest host (Sifted's) Mimi Billing and Ather discuss November's AI news updates. Topics include; OpenAI's Slush presentation, which revealed both innovation and cultural challenges, and the diminishing returns of AI scaling laws. They explore the rise of specialized models, new players like Gemesis and Mistral, and OpenAI's ChatGPT search feature. The episode also examines AI's growing role in medicine, highlighting its diagnostic potential alongside concerns about biases and reliability, while reflecting on the balance between rapid progress and persistent challenges in AI development.

Christian Guttmann, Executive Director of the Nordic AI Institute, discusses AI as both a philosophical aspiration and a practical tool. He highlights applications like personalized banking recommendations and data querying with large language models but notes their limitations in reasoning and understanding. Advocating for hybrid AI models and richer data, he emphasizes the need for multimodal approaches that integrate various forms of input, such as speech and gestures, to advance AI capabilities. He also warns that Europe risks falling behind in AI development without greater investment and bold innovation.

This week we welcome back; Reggie Townsend, Vice President of Data Ethics at SAS Institute and member of President Biden's National AI Advisory Council. We discussed AI development and regulation in the US. He stressed balancing innovation incentives with government restraint and cited the CHIPS Act as key for AI infrastructure, though most investments are private. He highlighted that AI trustworthiness varies, suggesting risk-based assessments. Townsend underscored the importance of AI education and common standards. On regulation, he noted a risk-focused, citizen-protective approach with inevitable dissent. Lastly, he urged AI to remain a bipartisan issue, avoiding politicization similar to...

This episode, recorded live, at the third installment of AI-Podden live at Epicenter, features Ingrid af Sandeberg, Strategic Advisor at Epicenter and Chairman of the board at Stockholm AI. She joins Ather & Mimi on the stage to discuss AI trends and tools, including Notebook LM, highlighting the shift toward smaller, specialized models like those on Hugging Face. She emphasizes the challenges of regulating AI in rapidly evolving fields and advocates for outcome-based regulations. Despite Sweden's strong AI expertise, she notes a slow adoption rate and calls for better collaboration between AI experts, domain professionals, and regulators.