The Neuron: AI Explained

Voice agents are moving from “cool demo” to real product infrastructure.

In this livestream, we’re joined by Ben Cherry of LiveKit to break down what it actually takes to build real-time AI agents that can listen, respond, interrupt, call tools, and work in production.

LiveKit is an open source framework and developer platform for building voice, video, and physical AI agents in production.

We’ll talk through the stack behind real-time AI experiences, then build and test a live demo together on The Neuron.

In this live demo, we’ll cover:

🎙️ How LiveKit helps developers build voice, video, and physical AI agents
⚡ What makes real-time agents different from normal chatbots
🧠 How voice agents handle latency, interruptions, speech, and tool calls
🛠️ Why production-ready AI agents are much harder than a weekend demo
🚀 What builders should know before shipping voice AI to real users

And yes, we’re doing a live demo, which means there is at least a small chance the agent talks back at exactly the wrong time. Perfect television.

Guest: Ben Cherry, LiveKit
LiveKit: https://livekit.com/
Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bcherry-product-engineer
Ben on GitHub: https://github.com/bcherry

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What happens when AI stops simply giving answers and starts producing proofs a computer can verify?

In this episode of The Neuron, Corey Noles and Grant Harvey talk with Tudor Achim, Co-Founder and CEO of Harmonic, the company behind Aristotle — a formal reasoning system built to generate machine-checkable mathematical proofs. Tudor explains why math may be the clearest test case for moving AI from “trust me” to “check me,” and why formal verification could matter far beyond Olympiad benchmarks.

They discuss what “mathematical superintelligence” actually means, why Tudor thinks solving a Millennium Prize problem would be a meaningful threshold, and how Lean-based proofs could change the way mathematicians collaborate. They also explore Aristotle’s real-world use cases, from open math problems to verified software, chip design, scientific computing, and the future of AI-assisted discovery.

Plus: why Tudor thinks formal math has reached a “zero to one” moment, why specs may be the bottleneck in verified software, and why humans still need to direct the questions AI systems try to solve.

Subscribe to The Neuron and sign up for The Neuron Daily at theneuron.ai.

What happens when AI stops simply giving answers and starts producing proofs a computer can verify?

In this episode of The Neuron, Corey Noles and Grant Harvey talk with Tudor Achim, Co-Founder and CEO of Harmonic, the company behind Aristotle — a formal reasoning system built to generate machine-checkable mathematical proofs. Tudor explains why math may be the clearest test case for moving AI from “trust me” to “check me,” and why formal verification could matter far beyond Olympiad benchmarks.

They discuss what “mathematical superintelligence” actually means, why Tudor thinks solving a Millennium Prize problem would be a meaningful threshold, and how Lean-based proofs could change the way mathematicians collaborate. They also explore Aristotle’s real-world use cases, from open math problems to verified software, chip design, scientific computing, and the future of AI-assisted discovery.

Plus: why Tudor thinks formal math has reached a “zero to one” moment, why specs may be the bottleneck in verified software, and why humans still need to direct the questions AI systems try to solve.

Subscribe to The Neuron and sign up for The Neuron Daily at theneuron.ai.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and as AI becomes more embedded in our daily lives, one of the biggest questions we face is whether these systems can responsibly support emotional and psychological well-being.

AI chatbots are increasingly being used for emotional support, but recent lawsuits faced by OpenAI and earlier ones targeting character.ai and Google's AI Overviews, as well as clinical reports, and internal research have raised valid concerns about their impact on vulnerable users.

What does it take to build an AI system specifically designed for mental health from the ground up? Is that even possible?

In this LIVE episode of The Neuron Podcast, Corey Noles and Grant Harvey speak with Daniel Reid Cahn, co-founder and CEO of Slingshot AI, about Ash, an AI application purpose-built for therapeutic support. Slingshot has raised $93M from a16z, Radical Ventures, and others to develop a foundation model for psychology trained on structured therapeutic conversations across modalities such as CBT, DBT, and psychodynamic therapy.

We discuss the limitations of general-purpose chatbots in mental health contexts, recent controversies surrounding AI and psychiatric risk, and what differentiates a system designed to provide structured therapeutic engagement compared to one being used in a way it was never intended to be. The conversation also explores a broader question: Can AI meaningfully expand access to high-quality mental health care, and where should clear boundaries remain? Or should we keep our counseling where we always have, on a couch with a box of Kleenex and a hug nearby?

🔗 Try Ash:
https://www.talktoash.com/

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The Neuron breaks down the biggest stories in AI for 580,000+ daily readers. Our podcast goes deeper with the leaders, founders, and researchers shaping the future of AI. New episodes every week.

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Genspark went from AI search startup to autonomous AI agent platform, hitting $250M ARR in 12 months with no paid ads until they bought a Super Bowl spot.

Co-founder and COO Wen Sang joins Corey and Grant to explain what "AI employee" actually means, demos Genspark Claw live (including buying us coffee mid-interview), and lays out his big thesis: legacy software is becoming infrastructure while AI agents become the new interface between humans and work.

We get hands-on with Workspace 4.0, Claw, and a custom agent built live for the show.

• Genspark Workspace 4.0 announcement: https://www.genspark.ai/blog/genspark-ai-workspace-4
• Genspark sb-git: https://genspark.ai/sb-git/intro
• OpenAI's customer story on Genspark: https://openai.com/index/genspark/
• Forbes AI 50 (2026): https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50/
• Marc Benioff on Salesforce Headless 360 (referenced by Wen): https://x.com/Benioff
• Andrej Karpathy's "wiki for agents" idea (referenced as inspiration for sb-git): https://x.com/karpathy
• Wen on the DealMaker Show: https://alejandrocremades.com/wen-sang/

Try Genspark for free: https://genspark.ai

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