EPISODE · Feb 22, 2026 · 55 MIN
Intelligence with Everyone: RL @ MiniMax, with Olive Song, from AIE NYC & Inference by Turing Post
from "The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis · host Erik Torenberg, Nathan Labenz
Olive Song from MiniMax shares how her team trains the M series frontier open-weight models using reinforcement learning, tight product feedback loops, and systematic environment perturbations. This crossover episode weaves together her AI Engineer Conference talk and an in-depth interview from the Inference podcast. Listeners will learn about interleaved thinking for long-horizon agentic tasks, fighting reward hacking, and why they moved RL training to FP32 precision. Olive also offers a candid look at debugging real-world LLM failures and how MiniMax uses AI agents to track the fast-moving AI landscape. Nathan uses Granola to uncover blind spots in conversations and AI research. Try it at granola.ai/tcr with code TCR — and if you’re already using it, test his blind spot recipe here: https://bit.ly/granolablindspot LINKS: Conference Talk (AI Engineer, Dec 2025) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY1iFbDPRlwInterview (Turing Post, Jan 2026) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkUMqWeHn40 Sponsors: Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (04:15) Minimax M2 presentation (Part 1) (17:59) Sponsors: Claude | Tasklet (21:22) Minimax M2 presentation (Part 2) (21:26) Research life and culture (26:27) Alignment, safety and feedback (32:01) Long-horizon coding agents (35:57) Open models and evaluation (43:29) M2.2 and researcher goals (48:16) Continual learning and AGI (52:58) Closing musical summary (55:49) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
What this episode covers
Olive Song from MiniMax shares how her team trains the M series frontier open-weight models using reinforcement learning, tight product feedback loops, and systematic environment perturbations. This crossover episode weaves together her AI Engineer Conference talk and an in-depth interview from the Inference podcast. Listeners will learn about interleaved thinking for long-horizon agentic tasks, fighting reward hacking, and why they moved RL training to FP32 precision. Olive also offers a candid look at debugging real-world LLM failures and how MiniMax uses AI agents to track the fast-moving AI landscape. Nathan uses Granola to uncover blind spots in conversations and AI research. Try it at granola.ai/tcr with code TCR — and if you’re already using it, test his blind spot recipe here: https://bit.ly/granolablindspot LINKS: Conference Talk (AI Engineer, Dec 2025) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY1iFbDPRlwInterview (Turing Post, Jan 2026) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkUMqWeHn40 Sponsors: Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (04:15) Minimax M2 presentation (Part 1) (17:59) Sponsors: Claude | Tasklet (21:22) Minimax M2 presentation (Part 2) (21:26) Research life and culture (26:27) Alignment, safety and feedback (32:01) Long-horizon coding agents (35:57) Open models and evaluation (43:29) M2.2 and researcher goals (48:16) Continual learning and AGI (52:58) Closing musical summary (55:49) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
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Intelligence with Everyone: RL @ MiniMax, with Olive Song, from AIE NYC & Inference by Turing Post
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