Apr 07, 2026

Extreme Harness Engineering for the 1B token/day Dark Factory — Ryan Lopopolo, OpenAI Frontier

Ryan Lopopolo of OpenAI's Frontier team discusses "Harness Engineering," a new paradigm where AI agents manage the entire software development lifecycle. He details an experiment building a 1M LOC product with zero human-written code, shifting the engineer's role from coding to designing systems and context for agents. The conversation covers the Symphony orchestration framework, the concept of "agent-legible" software, and the future of AI-driven development.

Apr 02, 2026

How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z

Alex Blania, cofounder and CEO of Tools for Humanity (Worldcoin), details the critical challenge of proving human uniqueness in the AI era. He explains Worldcoin's iris biometric approach, its sophisticated privacy architecture using Multi-Party Computation and Zero-Knowledge Proofs, and the pervasive impact of AI agents and deepfakes on social media, dating, gaming, and government. Blania also outlines Worldcoin's strategy to scale this proof-of-human network globally, particularly in the US.

Apr 01, 2026

"We're Not Writing Code by Hand Anymore. That's Over." | Owen Jennings & David Haber - The a16z Show

Owen Jennings, Executive Officer at Block, details the company's radical restructuring (40% workforce reduction) driven by AI's impact on productivity. He explains how Block is now operating with smaller squads, leveraging internal AI tools like Goose and Builder Bot, and shipping AI-native products like Money Bot and Manager Bot to deliver personalized, generative UIs for millions of users, emphasizing a future where unique understanding forms the ultimate business moat.

Mar 31, 2026

This AI Company Catches Fraud Across the Internet

Variance, emerging from three years in stealth with a $21 million Series A, is transforming enterprise risk and compliance through purpose-built AI agents. Founded by ex-Apple engineers, the company automates complex tasks like fraud detection, content review, and identity verification for Fortune 500s and platforms such as GoFundMe. They discuss the strategic reasons for stealth, technical challenges of integrating disparate data sources (including UI scraping), the shift from legacy systems to self-healing AI agent architectures, and how their lean, AI-maximalist team detects sophisticated threats like state-sponsored fraud rings.

Mar 26, 2026

A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering • Jay Wengrow & Kris Jenkins • GOTO 2026

Jay Wengrow, author of “A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering,” breaks down how AI agents work, describing the 'clever hack' of intercepting LLM output to trigger functions. The discussion covers multi-agent architectures for complex tasks, implementing guardrails with regex and judge LLMs, and a pragmatic take on when to use frameworks versus building from scratch. Wengrow emphasizes understanding fundamentals over specific tools to create robust, production-ready AI applications.

Mar 25, 2026

AI Agents in Practice • Henrik Kniberg • GOTO 2025

Henrik Kniberg shares practical experiences from over two years of AI agent development, defining agents as autonomous entities with missions, tools, and an LLM brain. He covers effective design patterns, architectural insights, and safety considerations, emphasizing the importance of human-in-the-loop collaboration and iterative development to build agents that are not just powerful, but genuinely useful in real-world scenarios.