The Neuron: AI Explained

Most people are still using ChatGPT the way they used Google in 2005: type a question, get an answer, close the tab.

In 2026, that’s like owning a professional kitchen and only using the microwave.

In this episode, Grant and Corey walk through The Neuron’s 5-Level AI Proficiency Stack — a framework for going from “I use ChatGPT sometimes” to “AI saves me 10 hours a week.”

No coding required. No hype. Just the actual progression that separates casual users from people getting real, compounding value out of AI every single day.

The 5 Levels:
🔹 Level 1: Projects — Why your first move isn’t prompting. It’s onboarding.
🔹 Level 2: Prompting — The simplest formula that actually works
🔹 Level 3: Skills — Turn one good conversation into a reusable superpower
🔹 Level 4: Automations — Set it, schedule it, forget it
🔹 Level 5: Agents — AI that decides what to do and when to do it

Tools mentioned:• ChatGPT Projects: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10169521-projects-in-chatgpt
• Claude Skills: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12512176-what-are-skills
• Claude Cowork: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13854387-schedule-recurring-tasks-in-cowork
• OpenAI Codex: https://developers.openai.com/codex/app/automations
• Gemini Opal: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-labs/opal-agent/
• Gemini Scheduled Actions: https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/16316416

📩 Read the full deep dive:https://www.theneuron.ai/explainer-articles/how-to-actually-use-ai-in-2026-the-complete-guide/

Brian Gerkey is the CTO of Intrinsic, the robotics software company that started inside Alphabet and now sits inside Google, working directly with DeepMind and Gemini.

Brian co-created ROS (Robot Operating System), the open-source platform used by over 1 million developers that powers everything from factory robots to NASA's Astrobee on the International Space Station. In this episode, Grant talks with Brian about "physical AI" — what happens when AI leaves the screen and starts controlling robots in the real world.

They cover why 80% of US manufacturing facilities still have zero automation, how Intrinsic's platform acts as the "Android of robotics," the breakthroughs in AI-powered perception that let robots see with sub-millimeter accuracy using cheap cameras, the challenges of simulating physical contact (friction is a nightmare), and why the best robot application ideas often come from people who know nothing about robots.

Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.ai
Intrinsic: https://www.intrinsic.ai/
ROS (Robot Operating System): https://www.ros.org/
AI for Industry Challenge: https://www.intrinsic.ai/events/ai-for-industry-challenge
Intrinsic joins Google (Feb 2026): https://www.intrinsic.ai/blog/posts/intrinsic-joins-google-to-accelerate-physical-ai

Most businesses don't buy their AI services directly from OpenAI or Google—they buy it through a massive, invisible distribution network called "the channel." Victoria Durgin and Katie Bavoso of Channel Insider join Corey and Grant to explain how this hidden industry works, why AI is shaking it up unlike anything before, and what it means for businesses trying to adopt AI in 2026.

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Channel Insider: https://channelinsider.com

In this episode of The Neuron Podcast, Corey Noles and Grant Harvey sit down with Dan Shipper, CEO of Every, to talk about agent-native engineering—the framework his team uses to build and ship AI-powered products at a pace most companies can't match.

Dan walks us through what happened when his AI document editor Proof went viral (and then went down), why he believes the way we build software is fundamentally changing, and how Every's small team manages to ship and maintain an entire suite of AI tools: Spiral (automatic style guides from your writing), Sparkle (AI writing cleanup with custom folders), Cora (AI research assistant, now on iOS), Monologue (AI-powered journaling with notes), and Proof (the agent-first document editor that broke the internet for a day), as well as their new to be revealed on Friday: Plus One (a hosted AI agent for Slack).

Whether you're a founder, developer, or just someone trying to understand what "agentic" actually means in practice—this conversation is the real-world playbook.

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Products mentioned:
• Every: https://every.to
• Spiral: https://spiral.computer
• Sparkle: https://sparkle.computer
• Cora: https://cora.computer
• Monologue: https://www.monologue.to/
• Proof: https://proofeditor.ai
• Plus One (the new one!): https://every.to/plus-one

Nick Heiner leads RL environment development at Surge AI, the bootstrapped company that hit $1.2B in revenue training models for OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google. In this episode, we break down reinforcement learning environments—the secret training grounds where AI agents learn to actually do work. Nick shares why even the best models fail 40% of real workplace tasks, what happened when 200 Wall Street experts graded GPT-5 and Claude, and his prediction that a $1B company with one human employee could exist by 2030.

A Special Thank You To Our Sponsor For This Video: Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA. Learn more at https://dell.com/yourwaytoai

Resources: 
• Surge AI Research – Hierarchy of Agentic Capabilities: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.09032
• Surge AI Blog: https://surgehq.ai/blog
• Nick's Sonnet 4.5 Review: https://surgehq.ai/blog/sonnet-4-5-product-take
• Nick’s Substack: https://nickheiner.substack.com/ 
• SurgeHQ’s enterprisebench: https://surgehq.ai/blog/enterprisebench-corecraft 
• Nick’s hilarious Gemini 3.1 review: https://nickheiner.substack.com/p/gemini-31-pro-not-leading-edge-also  
• Hemingway-bench AI Writing Leaderboard https://surgehq.ai/blog/hemingway-bench-ai-writing-leaderboard 
• LMArena is a cancer on AI: https://surgehq.ai/blog/lmarena-is-a-plague-on-ai 
• Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA: https://dell.com/yourwaytoai

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