The Neuron: AI Explained

Confused by AI Skills, Projects, Gems, Custom GPTs, and Agents?

You're not alone. It's important to separate which is best for which use-case, because each has a place depending on what you're trying to get done.

In this beginner-friendly live episode, we break down what these AI terms actually mean, who creates them, and when everyday users should use each one.

Think of this as your plain-English map to the new AI assistant world:

✅ Projects = places to organize ongoing work
✅ Gems & Custom GPTs = reusable custom assistants
✅ Skills = reusable instructions and workflows
✅ Agents = AI systems that can take actions on your behalf

By the end of this live session, you'll understand the practical difference between creating a custom assistant, organizing work in a project, giving AI a repeatable skill, and letting an agent complete tasks for you.

What You'll Learn:
🔹 What an AI Skill is
🔹 What an AI Project is
🔹 What Google Gemini Gems are
🔹 What Custom GPTs are
🔹 What AI Agents are
🔹 Which one beginners should start with
🔹 The simple framework for choosing the right tool for your workflow

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AI can write code, pass exams, and summarize the web, but ask it to reason through a real-world image, and the magic often breaks. Andrew Dai, co-founder and CEO of Elorian, joins The Neuron to explain why visual reasoning may be one of the biggest unsolved problems in AI.

Andrew spent years at Google Brain and DeepMind, including work connected to Gemini and sparse mixture-of-experts systems. Now, he’s building Elorian around a simple but powerful idea: if AI is going to understand the physical world, it needs more than text-based reasoning layered on top of images.

In this episode, Corey and Grant talk with Andrew about why frontier models struggle with counting, navigation, design, engineering, charts, and physical reasoning; why scaling language models hasn’t solved vision; what a “visual chain of thought” might look like; and how better visual reasoning could accelerate robotics, satellite analysis, product design, and mechanical engineering.

Sponsored by Dell Technologies and NVIDIA. Learn more at techrepublic.com/hubs/the-enterprise-guide-to-scalable-ai/.

Sponsored by Outshift: Visit https://outshift.cisco.com/?utm_campaign=fy26q3_outshift_ww_paid-media_ioc-neuronai-outshift_podcast&utm_channel=podcast&utm_source=podcast to learn more about the Internet of Cognition.

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Live from Microsoft Build, Corey Noles sits down with Scott Hanselman for a hands-on Neuron LIVE episode about AI-augmented software development, how it differs from just "vibe coding", and the surprisingly practical things people can now build with tools like GitHub Copilot and more.

Scott is one of the best technical explainers in software: a longtime Microsoft and GitHub developer, teacher, speaker, author, blogger, and podcaster who has helped millions of developers understand new technology without making it feel impossible to learn.

This episode turned into a live demo tour of what AI coding can already do, led by Scott's own use-cases. Corey and Scott walked through a series of examples showing how AI can help people build useful apps, prototypes, workflows, and small tools from everyday ideas, including Scott's own vibe-coded tools Baby Smash (https://www.babysmash.com/), which lets babies press random buttons for fun shapes and sounds, and Tiny Tool Town (https://www.tinytooltown.com/), which showcases random, cool tools Scott found around the web.

But in the coolest demo of all, Scott shows how to take an open source tool and create software a personal blood sugar tracking app for his own diabetes management. If that doesn't get your idea blood flowing for what you can do with AI, we don't know what will!

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In this episode of The Neuron, Corey Noles sits down with Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, at Microsoft Build 2026 to unpack Microsoft’s next AI chapter: seven new MAI models, a push toward in-house model development, and the idea of Humanist Superintelligence.

Mustafa explains how Microsoft is thinking about AI that can reason, code, generate images, transcribe speech, and power real products—without turning the future into a vague AGI race. The conversation gets into what “humanist” means in practice, why Microsoft is building models from the ground up, how AI agents may reshape work, and what it takes to keep increasingly capable systems useful, controlled, and aligned with human goals.

You’ll learn why Microsoft is investing in its own model family, how MAI-Thinking-1 and MAI-Code-1-Flash fit into the stack, why Suleyman frames superintelligence around human control, and what builders and operators should watch as agents move into real workflows.

Sponsored by BeyondTrust
Check it out at: https://www.beyondtrust.com/products/identity-security-insights/assessment?campid=701Vw00000drII6IAM

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Everyone is talking about Mercury-alpha, the mystery model that many believe could be GPT-5.6.

In this live discussion, we're separating fact from speculation and unpacking what would actually matter if OpenAI releases a new flagship model this week.

We'll cover:
🔹 What Mercury-alpha is (and why people think it's GPT-5.6)
🔹 The biggest rumors and evidence so far
🔹 What a new OpenAI model would need to deliver to move the industry forward
🔹 How Mercury-alpha fits into the broader AI agent race
🔹 Codex, Hermes Desktop, and the rise of coding and desktop agents
🔹 What all of this means for AI users, builders, and businesses

Join us live, bring your questions, and help us figure out whether Mercury-alpha is the next major leap in AI or just another chapter in the internet's favorite pastime: model-name archaeology.

👇 Drop your predictions in the chat:What do you think Mercury-alpha actually is?

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