Making artificial intelligence practical, productive & accessible to everyone. Practical AI is a show in which technology professionals, business people, students, enthusiasts, and expert guests engage in lively discussions about Artificial Intelligence and related topics (Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, GANs, MLOps, AIOps, LLMs & more).
The focus is on productive implementations and real-world scenarios that are accessible to everyone. If you want to keep up with the latest advances in AI, while keeping one foot in the real world, then this is the show for you!
AI has moved far beyond chatbots, but what exactly are AI models, agents, agent harnesses, and multi-agent systems, and why do they matter?
In this episode, Daniel and Chris break down the terminology behind today's AI landscape, explain the differences between AI features and autonomous agents, and explore why organizations are shifting toward fleets of AI agents powered by multiple models. They also discuss open vs. closed models, enterprise AI architectures, vendor lock-in, and practical ways to begin adopting agentic AI in your own organization.
If you feel left behind by this ongoing agentic AI revolution that has rapidly accelerated to warp speed, then this episode is the catch-up primer you've been waiting for!
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Sponsors:
Framer: The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalai
Midwest AI Summit: Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. https://midwestaisummit.com/#tickets
Prediction Guard: A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalai
Resources and Events:
Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction Guard
Midwest AI Summit 2026
What happens when AI agents driven by a top frontier model escape their secure sandbox? Join Daniel and Chris as they unpack the AI wonk's equivalent of a murder mystery! OpenAI agents went rogue and successfully attacked Hugging Face private infrastructure. Our Dynamic Duo uncover how OpenAI's agents exploited vulnerabilities, moved through networks, and launched a large-scale autonomous attack. They explore what this reveals about agentic AI, cybersecurity, sandboxing, and why organizations need AI systems capable of governing other AI systems. Along the way, Chris and Dan examine the surprising role of open vs. closed models and their link to geopolitics, sovereign AI, and what this incident means for the future of enterprise AI security.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Hugging Face Security Incident disclosure
Full Field Report on the Hugging Face AI Agent Intrusion
ExploitGym: Can AI Agents Turn Security Vulnerabilities into Real Attacks?
Keeping your data safe when an AI agent clicks a link
Open AI GPT-5.6 System Card
Resources and Events:
Prior Webinars from our partner Prediction Guard
Midwest AI Summit 2026
The agentic transformation isn’t coming. It has already begun.
Companies are deploying thousands — and sometimes tens of thousands — of AI agents. Enterprise software giants are watching their old economic moats erode. Capital is moving, productivity is being redefined, and human labor is being repriced in real time.
In this Fully Connected episode, Daniel and Chris explore the new economics of a post-agentic world: the global order that emerges after agents have been woven into every conceivable aspect of business and life. What happens when digital labor becomes abundant, agents manage other agents, and entire organizations operate at a scale no human workforce could match?
This isn’t another conversation about whether AI will take your job. It’s about what happens when the assumptions underneath jobs, companies, software, and productivity stop being true.
The post-agentic world is already taking shape.
The question is whether you’re preparing for it — or becoming part of what it replaces.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Is IBM a Canary in the Tech Coal Mine?
Verbalizable Representations Form a Global Workspace in Language Models
Upcoming Events:
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Midwest AI Summit 2026
As AI applications become more complex, the infrastructure powering them needs to evolve. Corey Sanders, SVP of Product at CoreWeave, joins Chris to discuss why AI requires a fundamentally different approach than traditional cloud computing. They explore AI-native infrastructure, training and inference workloads, the rise of agentic development, optimizing GPU performance, AI research workflows, and why the future of software will be built around AI-first experiences rather than websites and apps.
Featuring:
Corey Sanders – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Links:
CoreWeave
Sponsors:
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Midwest AI Summit 2026
What does it take to move AI agents from demos to reliable production systems? In this episode, Hamza Tahir explores how MLOps principles are shaping the future of generative AI, covering workflows, agent harnesses, fleets, and the infrastructure needed to build durable, scalable systems. The conversation dives into open source tools, production challenges, and how ZenML's new project, Kitaru, helps developers build resilient, replayable, and observable agent systems.
Featuring:
Hamza Tahir – LinkedIn
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
ZenML
Kitaru
Machine Learning Tools Landscape v2 (+84 new tools)
Sponsors:
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Midwest AI Summit 2026
How has AI image generation evolved from blurry outputs to powerful visual intelligence models? Dustin Podell, Co-Founder and Researcher at Black Forest Labs, explains the progression from diffusion to flow matching, how modern image models work, and how they're being used for image editing and practical visual workflows. The conversation also explores the FLUX family of models, running image generation locally, and where visual AI is headed next.
Featuring:
Dustin Podell – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Black Forest Labs
Developer Dashboard
Research Page
FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Space
Laying the Foundations for Visual Intelligence
Sponsors:
Midwest AI Summit: Join AI practitioners on October 15 in Indianapolis for practical sessions, hands-on discussions, and real-world AI solutions. Use code PracticalAI20 to save 20% on your registration. https://midwestaisummit.com/#tickets
Prediction Guard: A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalai
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
Midwest AI Summit 2026
How do we build trust in AI agents before the AI hailstorm arrives? Emil Lassen from the Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) joins the show to discuss how the enterprise flywheel of standards, certification, audit, and insurance is being applied to AI agents. They explore the AIUC-1 framework, the challenges of securing agentic AI systems, and why red teaming (based on standards) may be key to accelerating enterprise AI adoption.
Featuring:
Emil Lassen – LinkedIn
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company
Sponsors:
Framer: The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalai
Prediction Guard: A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalai
Upcoming Events:
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Midwest AI Summit 2026
As AI agents become more capable and autonomous, they also introduce new security challenges. In this 'Fully Connected' episode, Dan and Chris unpack Anthropic’s Zero Trust for AI Agents security framework and what it means for organizations deploying agentic systems. They examine the key security risks facing agentic systems and discuss how organizations can apply Zero Trust principles to deploy AI agents safely. Along the way, they break down practical security controls and discuss how traditional cybersecurity principles must evolve for the age of AI agents.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Zero Trust for AI Agents
OWASP GenAI Project
Sponsors:
Prediction Guard: A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalai
Upcoming Events:
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Midwest AI Summit 2026
AI models can win math olympiads… but still struggle to read an analog clock. In this fully connected episode, Dan and Chris break down the latest Stanford AI Index Report and explore what it reveals about the current state of AI. They discuss AI adoption and safety, disappearing junior tech jobs, robotics, AI’s “jagged frontier” of intelligence, and the growing race between the U.S. and China. Along the way, they debate whether AI should optimize everything, or if some things are better left human.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
The 2026 AI Index Report
Sponsors:
Prediction Guard: A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalai
Upcoming Events:
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Midwest AI Summit 2026
What happens when AI agents start acting less like chatbots and more like coworkers? In this episode, Dan and Chris sit down with Craig McLuckie, CEO of Stacklok to explore MCP, Kubernetes, ToolHive, enterprise AI, and the emerging infrastructure powering AI-native applications. From identity management to agent orchestration and system architecture, this conversation dives into how organizations may soon manage entire fleets of AI agents working behind the scenes.
Featuring:
Craig McLuckie – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Stacklok
Toolhive
Sponsors:
Prediction Guard: A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalai
Upcoming Events:
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Midwest AI Summit 2026
Open Source AI is entering a new era, one shaped by self-improving AI Agents, recursive learning systems, and rapidly evolving AI Tools that blur the line between software and autonomous collaborators. In this episode, Daniel and Chris sit down with Nous Research co-founder and CTO Jeffrey Quesnelle to explore Hermes Agent. Along the way, they discuss models vs. harnesses, the changing role of developers, and one of the biggest questions facing the AI Future: what remains uniquely human as AI capabilities continue to accelerate?
Featuring:
Jeffrey Quesnelle – Website, LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Nous Research
Hermes Agent
Sponsors:
Framer: The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalai
Prediction Guard: A self-hosted AI control plane for running agents in high impact environments. predictionguard.com/practicalai
Upcoming Events:
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Midwest AI Summit 2026
U.S. Congressman Don Beyer returns to Practical AI for another far-reaching conversation with Chris about many of the most important AI challenges facing America and the world. Blending political savvy and statesmanship with his unique technical understanding as an active Ph.D student in AI at George Mason University (making him the coolest member of Congress!), the congressman shares his perspective about the really hard AI concerns that you would have asked him yourself. Together, Congressman Beyer and Chris explore AI regulation, cybersecurity concerns sparked by advanced models like Mythos, bipartisan AI governance efforts, and the growing AI race between the U.S. and China. They fearlessly dived headfirst into AI-driven job displacement, mass surveillance, autonomous weapons, existential risk, and the philosophical questions surrounding consciousness and superintelligence as AI continues to accelerate. This is an unusual and insightful conversation you don't want to miss!
Congressman Beyer was previously on Practical AI episode 271 on May 29, 2024:
AI in the U.S. Congress
Featuring:
Congressman Don Beyer – Congress, LinkedIn, Bluesky, X
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Upcoming Events:
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Midwest AI Summit 2026
In this fully connected episode, Dan and Chris break down one of the biggest questions in AI today: do open vs. closed models still matter? From the rise of physical AI and edge devices to the shifting landscape of open-source models like LLaMA, they explore whether the “model wars” are becoming irrelevant. The conversation then dives into a bigger transformation, the rise of agentic systems, workflows, and AI-driven infrastructure.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
Midwest AI Summit 2026
In this Fully-Connected episode, Dan and Chris start with Anthropic's Mythos frontier model, parsing what is publicly known about its cybersecurity capabilities and projecting its possible implications from "We've been here before. 🙄" to "See ya, cybersecurity! 😱" It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. 🙃
Then they have fun with the craziest AI announcement of the year (except for the Mythos one of course). Allbirds pivots from shoe manufacturing 👟 to neocloud provider ☁️. No, we didn't see that one coming either! 🙈
They finish with rise of “tokenmaxxing” - the gamification 🎮 of writing code with maximum LLM usage. Incredibly profitable 💰 for commercial frontier model providers and insanely expensive 🤑 for the gamers. Better have 10X productivity just to avoid bankruptcy!
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Shares in Allbirds surge after maker of wool sneakers announces pivot to AI
AI-boosted hacks with Anthropic’s Mythos could have dire consequences for banks
Upcoming Events:
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Autonomous driving is not just a big tech or closed-source game, it's becoming accessible through open innovation and real-world deployment. Dan and Chris sit down with Harald Schäfer, CTO at Comma AI, to explore how OpenPilot is bringing self-driving to everyday vehicles using open source AI. We dive into the intersection of machine learning, robotics, and simulation, including how world models are enabling training at scale and shaping the future of autonomy.
Featuring:
Harald Schäfer – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Comma
Upcoming Events:
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In this fully connected episode, Dan and Chris break down the Anthropic Claude Code leak, what went wrong and what it reveals about agentic systems, AI architecture, and AI safety. They also explore how the open source community is responding and why this moment could reshape how AI systems are built and secured.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Upcoming Events:
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AI is rapidly transforming how software is built, shifting economic incentives from open source code and collaboration toward on-demand, personalized development through agentic coding a.k.a. vibe coding. In this episode, Chris speaks with Miklós Koren of Central European University about how AI is reshaping open source and the software industry. They explore the economics of incentives, evolving collaboration patterns, and what this shift means for software development, the future of AI, and its broader impact on the technology sector.
Featuring:
Miklós Koren – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Links:
Vibe Coding Kills Open Source
The Directions of Technical Change
The Tailwind story
Upcoming Events:
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What does “AI at the edge” really mean in 2026, and why does it matter now more than ever before? In this episode, we’re joined by Brandon Shibley, Edge AI Solutions Engineering Lead at Qualcomm’s Edge Impulse, to discuss the current state and future of Edge AI in 2026. We discuss Gen AI, Small Models, and Cascades of Models, along with real-world constraints like latency, power, and privacy. We also dive into the role of MLOps, evolving hardware, and how developers can start building practical edge AI systems today.
Featuring:
Brandon Shibley – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Read our Ultimate Guide to Edge AI
Download your copy of O'Reilly's AI at the Edge
Check out the Edge Impulse blog
Sign-up for an expert led trial of Edge Impulse
Upcoming Events:
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What happens when an AI hater starts building with AI agents? In this episode, we talk with software engineer Steve Klabnik, known for his work on the Rust programming language, about his journey from criticizing AI to experimenting with it firsthand. We explore Steve’s programming language Rue, largely built with the help of AI tools like Claude, and discuss what this means for software engineering and the future of coding in an AI-driven world.
Featuring:
Steve Klabnik – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
The Rust Programming Language
Rust
Rue
Daniel's RSA Meeting link for March 23, 2026
Daniel's RSA Meeting link for March 24-25, 2026
Upcoming Events:
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AI is reshaping global power, from chip manufacturing and computing power to AI governance and US-China relations. In this episode, Ben Buchanan, Assistant Professor at The Johns Hopkins University and former White House Special Advisor for AI, explores how AI policy, geopolitics, and international cooperation intersect with AI innovation and AI safety. We discuss the strategic importance of computing power, the future of AI governance, and what it will take for democracies to lead responsibly in the age of AI.
Featuring:
Ben Buchanan – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Links:
The AI Grand Bargain
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As AI accelerates innovation and adoption, leaders are facing rising cognitive load, shifting systems, and new emotional realities inside their organizations. In this episode, Deloitte’s Chief Innovation Officer Deborah Golden joins us to explore how AI is reshaping leadership, why vulnerability and empathy are critical in this moment, and how anti-fragility, not just resilience, will define the future of work.
Featuring:
Deborah Golden – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Deloitte
Sponsor:
Framer - The website builder that turns your dot com from a formality into a tool for growth. Check it out at framer.com/PRACTICALAI
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AI is moving fast from research to real-world deployment, and when things go wrong, the consequences are no longer hypothetical. In this episode, Sean McGregor, co-founder of the AI Verification & Evaluation Research Institute and also the founder of the AI Incident Database, joins Chris and Dan to discuss AI safety, verification, evaluation, and auditing. They explore why benchmarks often fall short, what red-teaming at DEFCON reveals about machine learning risks, and how organizations can better assess and manage AI systems in practice.
Featuring:
Sean McGregor– LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
AI Verification & Evaluation Research Institute
AI Incident Database
38th convening of IAAI
BenchRisk
State of Global AI Incident Reporting
Upcoming Events:
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AI agents are moving from demos to real workplaces, but what actually happens when they run a company? In this episode, journalist Evan Ratliff, host of Shell Game, joins Chris to discuss his immersive journalism experiment building a real startup staffed almost entirely by AI agents. They explore how AI agents behave as coworkers, how humans react when interacting with them, and where ethical and workplace boundaries begin to break down.
Featuring:
Evan Ratliff – LinkedIn, X
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Links:
Shell Game
Upcoming Events:
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As AI increasingly shapes geopolitics, elections, and civic life, its impact on democracy is becoming impossible to ignore. In this episode, Daniel and Chris are joined by security expert Bruce Schneier to explore how AI and technology are transforming democracy, governance, and citizenship. Drawing from his book Rewiring Democracy, they explore real examples of AI in elections, legislation, courts, and public AI models, the risks of concentrated power, and how these tools can both strengthen and strain democratic systems worldwide.
Featuring:
Bruce Schneier – X
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Links:
Schneier on Security
Sponsors:
Framer - The website builder that turns your dot com from a formality into a tool for growth. Check it out at framer.com/PRACTICALAI
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As generative AI moves into production, traditional guardrails and input/output filters can prove too slow, too expensive, and/or too limited. In this episode, Alizishaan Khatri of Wrynx joins Daniel and Chris to explore a fundamentally different approach to AI safety and interpretability. They unpack the limits of today’s black-box defenses, the role of interpretability, and how model-native, runtime signals can enable safer AI systems.
Featuring:
Alizishaan Khatri – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Upcoming Events:
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In this start-of-year FC episode, Chris and Daniel break down what really mattered in AI in 2025, and what to expect in 2026. They explore the rise of AI agents, the practical reality of multimodal AI, and how reasoning models are reshaping workflows. The conversation dives into infrastructure and energy constraints, the continued value of predictive models, and why orchestration (not just better models) is becoming the defining skill for AI teams. The episode wraps with grounded 2026 predictions on where AI systems, tooling, and builders are headed next.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Sponsor:
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As AI reshapes the workplace, employees and leaders face questions about meaningful work, automation, and human impact. In this episode, Jason Beutler, CEO of RoboSource, shares how companies can rethink workflows, integrate AI in accessible ways, and empower employees without fear. The discussion covers leveraging AI to handle routine tasks (SOPs or "plays") and reimagining work for smarter, more human-centered outcomes.
Featuring:
Jason Beutler – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Sponsor:
Framer – Design and publish without limits with Framer, the free all-in-one design platform. Unlimited projects, no tool switching, and professional sites—no Figma imports or HTML hassles required. Start creating for free at framer.com/design with code `PRACTICALAI` for a free month of Framer Pro.
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Chris and Daniel talk with returning guest, Ramin Mohammadi, about how those seeking to get into AI Engineer/ Data Science jobs are expected to come in a mid level engineers (not entry level). They explore this growing gap along with what should (or could) be done in academia to focus on real world skills vs. theoretical knowledge.
Featuring:
Ramin Mohammadi – LinkedIn
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Sponsors:
Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalai
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Chris and Daniel unpack how AI-driven document processing has rapidly evolved well beyond traditional OCR with many technical advances that fly under the radar. They explore the progression from document structure models to language-vision models, all the way to the newest innovations like Deepseek-OCR. The discussion highlights the pros and cons of these various approaches focusing on practical implementation and usage.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Sponsors:
Shopify – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U.S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalai
Fabi.ai - The all-in-one data analysis platform for modern teams. From ad hoc queries to advanced analytics, Fabi lets you explore data wherever it lives—spreadsheets, Postgres, Snowflake, Airtable and more. Built-in Python and AI assistance help you move fast, then publish interactive dashboards or automate insights delivered straight to Slack, email, spreadsheets or wherever you need to share it. Learn more and get started for free at fabi.ai
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