Tue Dec 09 2025

Illia Polosukhin, co author of Attention Is All You Need and founder of NEAR Protocol, joins Henrik and Jeremy to explore the origins of transformers, the evolution of AI inside Google, and why he believed a major step change was coming years before it arrived. He explains how blockchain can help create trust and provenance in a world where AI increasingly mediates information, and why personal AI ownership will matter as autonomous agents begin acting on our behalf. The conversation ranges from the technical breakthroughs that shaped modern AI to the risks of large scale manipulation and the infrastructure needed to support a trustworthy AI ecosystem.