Beyond Prompts: Practical Paths to Self‑Improving AI
Summary In this episode Raj Shukla, CTO of SymphonyAI, explores what it really takes to build self‑improving AI systems that work in production. Raj unpacks how agentic systems interact with real-world environments, the feedback loops that enable continuous learning, and why intelligent memory layers often provide the most practical middle ground between prompt tweaks and full Reinforcement Learning. He discusses the architecture needed around models - data ingestion, sensors, action layers, sandboxes, RBAC, and agent lifecycle management - to reach enterprise-grade reliability, as well as the policy alignment steps required for regulated domains like financial crime. Raj shares hard-won lessons on tool use evolution (from bespoke tools to filesystem and Unix primitives), dynamic code-writing subagents, model version brittleness, and how organizations can standardize process and entity graphs to accelerate time-to-value. He also dives into pitfalls such as policy gaps and tribal knowledge, strategies for staged rollouts and monitoring, and where small models and cost optimization make sense. Raj closes with a vision for bringing RL-style improvement to enterprises without requiring a research team - letting businesses own the reasoning and memory layers that truly differentiate their AI systems. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management If you lead a data team, you know this pain: Every department needs dashboards, reports, custom views, and they all come to you. So you're either the bottleneck slowing everyone down, or you're spending all your time building one-off tools instead of doing actual data work. Retool gives you a way to break that cycle. Their platform lets people build custom apps on your company data—while keeping it all secure. Type a prompt like 'Build me a self-service reporting tool that lets teams query customer metrics from Databricks—and they get a production-ready app with the permissions and governance built in. They can self-serve, and you get your time back. It's data democratization without the chaos. Check out Retool at dataengineeringpodcast.com/retool today and see how other data teams are scaling self-service. Because let's be honest—we all need to Retool how we handle data requests. Your host is Tobias Macey, and today I’m interviewing Raj Shukla about building self-improving AI systems — and how they enable AI scalability in real production environments. Interview Introduction How did you get involved in AI/ML? Can you start by outlining what actually improves over time in a self-improving AI system? How is that different from simply improving a model or an agent? How would you differentiate between an agent/agentic system vs. a self-improving system? One of the components that are becoming common in agentic architectures is a "memory" layer. What are some of the ways that contributes to a self-improvement feedback loop? In what ways are memory layers insufficient for a generalized self-improvement capability? For engineering and technology leaders, what are the key architectural and operational steps you recommend to build AI that can move from pilots into scalable, production systems? One of the perennial challenges for technology leaders is how to build AI systems that scale over time. How has AI changed the way you think about long-term advantage? How do self-improvement feedback loops contribute to AI scalability in real systems? What are some of the other key elements necessary to build a truly evolutionary AI system? What are the hidden costs of building these AI systems that teams should know before starting? I’m talking about enterprise who are deploying AI into their internal mission-critical workflows. What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen self-improving AI systems implemented? What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on evolutionary AI systems? What are some of the ways that you anticipate agentic architectures and frameworks evolving to be more capable of self-improvement? Contact Info LinkedIn Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems. Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes. If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@dataengineeringpodcast.com with your story. Parting Question From your perspective, what are the biggest gaps in tooling, technology, or training for AI systems today? Links Symphony AI Reinforcement Learning Agentic Memory In-Context Learning Context Engineering Few-Shot Learning OpenClaw Deep Research Agent RAG == Retrieval Augmented Generation Agentic Search Google Gemma Models Ollama The intro and outro music is from Hitman's Lovesong feat. Paola Graziano by The Freak Fandango Orchestra/CC BY-SA 3.0