Decentralizing AI with Jesse & Dustin

Jesse Posner, Dustin Dannenhauer

Digging into the ideas shaping the next era of AI, and how they intersect with decentralization, self-sovereignty, and empowerment of the individual.

Each episode, Jesse Posner and Dustin Dannenhauer, PhD explore the frontier of AI with topics such as open-source vs. proprietary models, world models vs. LLMs, autonomous agents, AI self-custody, vibe coding, bitcoin, Nostr, consciousness, and who actually owns the stack.

Vora co-founder Jesse focuses on AI self-custody, applying bitcoin’s self-sovereignty ethos to artificial intelligence. Dustin runs Delegance AI, a research lab focused on world models, planning, and agent orchestration. Both have spent more than a decade in AI and believe the most important AI story isn’t centralization but the quieter parallel movement using AI to accelerate decentralization and give power back to the individual.

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11 episodes
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Avg 1 hr 27 min
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Sunday · 1 hr 31 min
Open-Source AI Momentum, Omarchy, World Models, OpenAI's Math Controversy, Future of Private AI
0:00 - The shift to personalized models 7:44 - Omarchy and AI-native operating systems 10:00 - AI-powered game decompilation 12:04 - Nostr's vision for a decentralized internet 24:04 - Adversarial algorithms and reclaiming control over interfaces 28:15 - Moving beyond LLMs with structured reasoning and world models 37:44 - Using world models to secure agents 41:26 - What the OpenAI math controversy shows about AI data privacy 48:33 - Trusted execution environments (TEEs) and private AI 1:04:37 - Can homomorphic encryption solve AI privacy? 1:09:07 - The Rosario Cipher and future of authentication 1:14:34 - AI doomerism and the politics of fear 1:26:34 - Balancing freedom and control Links: Omarchy: https://omarchy.us/ Nostr: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr FIPS (Free Internetworking Peering System): https://github.com/jmcorgan/fips Marmot Protocol: https://github.com/marmot-protocol/marmot OpenAI's math controversy: https://www.wired.com/story/openai-is-pissing-off-a-bunch-of-mathematicians-again/ TrustedRouter: https://trustedrouter.com/ Tinfoil: https://tinfoil.sh/ TEE.fail: https://tee.fail/ Rosario Cipher: https://www.eni6ma.io/technology/rosario 🌐Learn more about Delegance at delegance.ai 🌐Learn more about Vora at vora.io
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October 4 · 47 min
Obama vs AI, the Pro-Human Assembly, OpenAI’s Agent Swarm, Loop & Graph Engineering, AI Alignment
0:00 - Back from hiatus and the Open Source AI Summit 3:15 - AI fear, regulation, and control at the Pro-Human Assembly 5:46 - Is existential AI risk actually possible? 8:46 - The main problem with AI alignment 10:30 - OpenAI’s agent swarm and the reward hacking problem 13:02 - Alignment is ultimately a political question 19:42 - Loop and graph engineering for reliable AI 27:00 - Why “global alignment” is probably impossible 35:13 - Obama’s critique of LLMs and agentic AI 36:58 - Claude Code undermines Obama's case against agentic AI 40:14 - The deeper political questions behind AI safety Vora reveal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t5N8C1pU0c 🌐Learn more about Delegance at delegance.ai 🌐Learn more about Vora at vora.io
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August 2 · 1 hr 35 min
AI Is Rebuilding the Internet: Agents, Secret Messages, and What Comes Next
0:00 - Opening and what’s new 1:05 - Escaping the algo 5:22 - The dead internet and cost of AI slop 11:08 - Private communities as the future of the internet 19:16 - Nostr, Buzz, and the agentic internet 29:48 - What an AI-native company needs to own 39:33 - Secret messages in AI output 48:06 - The incentives behind the OpenAI-Hugging Face story 56:26 - Hidden risks inside neural networks 1:06:54 - The problem with Anthropic and OpenAI’s “dangerous AI” marketing 1:12:54 - Bioweapons as the strongest case for slowing AI 1:21:38 - The worldview behind AI fear and the case for freedom 🌐Learn more about Delegance at delegance.ai 🌐Learn more about Vora at vora.io
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July 5 · 2 hr 10 min
Fable 5 and the Shift Beyond Models: Data, Harnesses, and Local AI
0:00 - Opening 0:50 - HSMs for agentic payments & the security tradeoff in personal AI 8:36 - The fragility of cloud security 11:43 - Vora's compartmentalized architecture for personal AI 14:50 - Why Fable 5 feels nerfed 20:13 - Fable 5 isn't a big deal because intelligence is no longer the bottleneck (data & harnesses are) 23:38 - Local models are getting useful: Hermes Agent, Qwen 3.6, and LLM wikis 28:18 - Why fast local inference with DeepSeek v4 Flash changes things 35:00 - Better workflows (i.e., HumanLayer AI IDE) beats more agents 40:40 - Planning systems for AI coding 52:00 - Fable 5 and model ceilings/diminishing returns 55:00 - Personal data as an AI moat 1:00:43 - Intelligence = search efficiency 1:08:30 - Why harnesses matter more than models 1:13:30 - Reasoning versus stored knowledge 1:21:10 - Why AI is so good at coding 1:28:13 - Export controls and AI gatekeeping 1:41:55 - Decentralization as civilizational infrastructure 1:56:30 - Practical steps toward AI sovereignty 2:04:20 - Using AI to dumb vs strengthen yourself 2:07:40 - Human verification in the age of cheap answers Everyone is focused on Fable 5, but what if the model wars are becoming a distraction? Jesse and Dustin discuss why the next phase of AI is probably less about raw model intelligence and more by data, harnesses, local hardware, memory, workflows, and control. The future may belong not just to the most powerful model, but the systems and stack around it. 🌐Learn more about Delegance at delegance.ai 🌐Learn more about Vora at vora.io
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June 28 · 1 hr 6 min
The Local AI Boom and the Coming AI Underclass | 0xSero
0:00 0xSero intro 3:00 Finding the best models for your machine (local.ai) 7:29 Why choosing local models is so hard 12:15 Specs that mislead users 14:15 Memory bandwidth is the real bottleneck 16:26 Qwen on cheap consumer hardware 18:13 Gemma, Strix Halo, and faster local models 20:00 How diffusion models could change speed 21:55 Fable 5 as a turning point & AI export controls 26:57 What powerful models actually threaten 33:57 Should powerful models stay open? 39:20 When AI helps attackers and defenders 46:32 'AI safety' in the social media age 53:50 Why local AI becomes personal survival gear 1:03:30 The economic case for local AI 0xSero joins Jesse and Dustin to discuss the local AI hardware boom, why running models at home is still so confusing, and how open-weight AI, personal agents, and sovereign intelligence could shape the future. 🌐Learn more about Delegance at delegance.ai 🌐Learn more about Vora at vora.io
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June 21 · 1 hr 19 min
What New AI Models Keep Revealing: Multi-Agent Workflows, Context Limits & the End of One-Model AI
0:00 - Opus 4.8 agent workflows 7:02 - Ultracode and long coding workflows 17:05 - Why AI gets stuck in bad patterns 24:12 - What makes AI an actual collaborator 31:33 - Why specialization will beat one big model 36:14 - The real debate behind AI jobs 43:21 - The abundance case for AI 47:31 - The political roots of AI fear 59:37 - The new human premium & what AI reveals about human value 1:03:57 - The case for decentralized AI 1:11:29 - How AI helps rethink desire & make better choices 1:16:23 - Struggle unlocks human potential Jesse and Dustin explore how Opus 4.8 and new agent workflows are changing the way people build with AI, then zoom out to the bigger questions: why AI should push back, why the future may be many specialized models, and the growing importance of decentralized AI. 🌐Learn more about Delegance at delegance.ai 🌐Learn more about Vora at vora.io
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June 14 · 1 hr 18 min
Claude’s Less Obvious Edge, AI Layoffs, Prompting & Consciousness
0:00 What AI layoffs are getting wrong 5:54 The most important trait to hire for now 14:46 How AI unlocks untapped potential 22:04 Heidegger on fear & anxiety and AI’s self-help potential 31:50 Walter Benjamin and the main human job in an AI world 44:31 Why Claude feels special & how prompts create personality 50:47 Gemma 4 with vs without a system prompt 54:56 AI is still missing real planning 1:04:07 Did LLMs unlock the ability to simulate consciousness? 1:12:28 Claude Code’s permission security theater 1:15:03 Return to consciousness discussion A wide-ranging conversation covering what AI layoffs are getting wrong, why Claude feels different, how prompts shape personality, and why AI forces us to rethink consciousness. 🌐Learn more about Delegance at delegance.ai 🌐Learn more about Vora at vora.io
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June 7 · 1 hr 35 min
The AI Stack After LLMs: Local Inference, World Models, and Logic | Dr. Matthew Molineaux
0:00 - Matt Molineaux intro 1:30 - Agents before LLMs 3:23 - Why Matt hated LLMs at first 5:34 - Why AI (and LLMs) need world models 13:05 - The problem with LLMs' nondeterminism & the case for adding logic 21:49 - How & why open-weight local models could win 25:22 - Who owns AI-generated work? 31:17 - Can governments control LLM outputs? 35:30 - Mythos and AI danger messaging 41:16 - Whose ethics govern AI? 48:37 - Filtering the internet through agents 56:03 - Controlling AI is short-hand for controlling humans 1:01:43 - How & why decentralization builds resilience 1:06:48 - Can AI solve coordination problems? 1:16:12 - "Personal lens": Aligned local AI project 1:25:15 - Why LLMs still need logic 1:34:30 - The stack after LLMs A conversation with Delegance co-founder Dr. Matthew Molineaux on what comes after LLMs, why AI needs world models and logic, and how open-weight local inference could shape the next AI stack. 🌐Learn more about Delegance at delegance.ai 🌐Learn more about Vora at vora.io
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May 31 · 1 hr 32 min
What LLMs Reveal About Language and Reality | Trilogues I with Max Webster (Hivemind)
0:00 - Introducing Max Webster & the first trilogue 2:32 - Is reality made of language? 8:10 - Do LLMs understand the world? 12:09 - Is language more than description? 18:51 - The hidden power of naming 25:28 - The language beneath everything 29:41 - How meaning changes life 36:57 - The limits of thinking & concepts 42:40 - The weird psychology of vibe coding & why it gets emotional 49:04 - Are LLMs enough for superintelligence? 58:20 - Could AI self-perpetuate and run without humans? 1:06:18 - What AI reveals about us 1:12:24 - Is there something beyond language? 1:24:03 - Why imagination makes language powerful 1:30:15 - The infinite game after AI A wide-ranging conversation with Max Webster on why LLMs work better than they “should,” what language reveals about reality, and what AI reveals about the human mind. 🌐Learn more about Delegance at delegance.ai 🌐Learn more about Vora at vora.io 🌐Learn more about Hivemind at hivemind.vc
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May 24 · 1 hr 54 min
AI Is Your Birthright: Open Models, Private AI, and Why LLMs Fall Short
0:00 - Why AI is your birthright (if you're American or European) 5:00 - The fight over training data 10:29 - Was AI invented or discovered? 18:31 - Why open models matter 27:34 - Building a better AI workflow 47:44 - Why agents need world models 56:52 - Choosing the right AI & why AI needs more than LLMs 1:11:51 - Coding as discovery not execution 1:13:56 - Can the world become language? 1:28:23 - How names unlock understanding 1:41:00 - Why private AI matters 1:47:30 - Will superintelligence = superwisdom? Episode 2 of Decentralizing AI with Delegance co-founder Dustin Dannenhauer and Vora co-founder Jesse Posner. 🌐Learn more about Delegance at delegance.ai 🌐Learn more about Vora at vora.io
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May 17 · 1 hr 11 min
Intros, World Models, the End of Apps, and the Paramount Importance of User-Aligned AI
Timestamps: 0:00 Podcast origins and the AI moment 3:11 Dustin’s background: AI research, bitcoin, Nostr, and decentralization 11:20 Jesse’s background: from philosophy and law to bitcoin security 17:18 Dustin’s startup (Delegance) vision and world models explained through chess 25:45 Determinism: why AI works better with structure and clear rules 34:05 Reflecting on process: how to debug better, waste fewer tokens, and improve workflow 50:50 The end of apps and the rise of personal AI interfaces 1:06:48 The stakes of AI that serves the individual Delegance co-founder Dustin Dannenhauer and Vora co-founder Jesse Posner kick off the Decentralizing AI podcast by introducing their backgrounds and exploring some of the ideas that will shape the show, including: AI, bitcoin, decentralization, world models, the future of software, and importance of AI serving the individual rather than the interests of platforms, governments, or other institutions. 🌐Learn more about Delegance at delegance.ai 🌐Learn more about Vora at vora.io
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