# The AI Model Built for What LLMs Can't Do

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/ai-i-6714658/the-ai-model-built-for-what-llms-can-t-do
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/ai-i-6714658/the-ai-model-built-for-what-llms-can-t-do.md
Podcast: [AI & I](https://stenobird.com/podcast/ai-i-6714658)
Published: 2026-04-15T14:50:00+00:00
Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/548bb2bc
Audio file: https://pscrb.fm/rss/p/media.transistor.fm/548bb2bc/eaf7c146.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/ai-i-6714658/episodes/the-ai-model-built-for-what-llms-can-t-do
Duration seconds: 3218

## Resource

Most AI companies are racing to build bigger LLMs. Eve Bodnia thinks that's the wrong approach. Eve is the founder and CEO of Logical Intelligence, which is developing an alternative to the transformer-based models dominating the industry. Her argument: LLMs’ architecture makes them fundamentally unsuited for some mission-critical tasks. A system that generates output one token at a time, with no ability to inspect its own reasoning mid-process or guarantee its results, shouldn't be trusted to design chips, analyze financial data, or even fly a plane. Her alternative is the energy-based model (EBM), a form of AI rooted in the physics principle of energy minimization, not language prediction. Rather than guessing the next probable word, an EBM maps every possible outcome across a mathematical landscape, where likely states settle into valleys and improbable ones sit on peaks. Dan Shipper talked with Bodnia for AI & I about why she believes LLM progress is plateauing, what it means for AI to actually understand data rather than just pattern-match across it, and how her team is building toward formally verified code generated in plain English—no C++ required. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Head to http://granola.ai/every and get 3 months free with the code EVERY To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Timestamps: 00:00:51 - Introduction 00:02:09 - Why correctness and verifiability matter in AI 00:09:33 - What an energy-based model is 00:14:21 - How EBMs construct energy landscapes to understand data 00:19:00 - Why modeling intelligence through language alone is a flawed approach 00:26:54 - What it means for a model to "understand" d…

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## Transcript

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