Hands-On AI (Video)

About Hands-On AI (Video)

Hands-On AI explores and explains artificial intelligence — and shows you how to actually use it. Because AI is exactly that: a tool, and like any tool, what matters is what you do with it. In short, focused episodes, Mikah Sargent takes you inside the technology reshaping how we work, create, and communicate. Learn what's really happening inside a large language model, run AI entirely on your own hardware, put the AI already in your pocket to work, and discover uses you hadn't thought of. No buzzwords, no doom — just practical, hands-on help from one human to another. Submit your AI questions through email at handsonai@twit.tv (mailto:handsonai@twit.tv) or via TWiT's social media. You might hear your question answered on the show! New episodes every Thursday.

Publisher

TWiT

Category

technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

2 Sept 2026

Latest episode

29 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

9 of 9 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   29 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   HOAI 5: Why Does AI Sound So Generic? - One Prompt, Five Runs, and What Prompt Engineering Really Means

   Host Mikah Sargent explores why AI responses can sound generic and reveals four prompt engineering habits for more useful answers in this interview.

2. 

   23 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   HOAI 4: Is AI Deep Research Worth the Wait? - Four AI Deep Research Tools Get One Hard Question and a Stopwatch

   Host Mikah Sargent interviews four AI research tools, comparing their speed, accuracy, and usability to determine if their deep research capabilities justify the wait.

3. 

   15 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   HOAI 3: The AI That Does the Thing - Meta's Muse Agent Takes On Simple, Hard, and Weird Jobs

   Mikah Sargent interviews Meta's Muse agent, exploring its capabilities on diverse tasks and clarifying the distinction between agents and chatbots.

4. 

   9 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   HOAI 2: Nine Billion Knobs - What's Actually Inside an AI Model, Explained

   Host Mikah Sargent demystifies AI models, revealing their inner workings of tokens and numbers to explain how they generate text and why they can be confidently incorrect.

5. 

   1 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   HOAI 1: The Chatbot in Your Laptop - Run AI on Your Own Computer, No Cloud Required

   Mikah Sargent demonstrates running AI chatbots locally on a computer, explaining model selection and comparing performance against cloud-based assistants.

6. 

   28 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Welcome to Hands-On AI

   Host Mikah Sargent introduces Hands-On AI, a show demystifying AI through short, practical episodes and honest tool reviews.

7. 

   18 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT

   HOAI: Hands-On AI Is Getting Into the Good Stuff - Local Models, Open Weights, No Cloud

   Host Mikah Sargent explores local AI models, open weights, and cloud-free applications, demystifying complex terms for practical use on personal hardware.

8. 

   9 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT

   HOAI: Hands-On AI Cuts Through Hype and Doom - AI Is a Tool. Here's What It Actually Does

   Host Mikah Sargent explores AI's practical applications, cutting through hype to reveal its true capabilities as a tool.

9. 

   2 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT

   HOAI: Introducing Hands-On AI - Everyone Says You Should Use AI. Nobody Says How.

   Host Mikah Sargent introduces Hands-On AI, demystifying practical AI application for everyone with step-by-step guidance.

Inside a recent episode

HOAI 5: Why Does AI Sound So Generic? - One Prompt, Five Runs, and What Prompt Engineering Really Means

Published 29 Oct 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] With that style in there, you get a little bit more of what you're wanting. But look, the goal here was not... to have five different answers or five identical answers. The goal is to have an answer that you actually send. That is what people mean. That's all they mean when they're talking about prompt engineering. It sounds like some special, you know, I'm a prompt engineer. It's just writing and refining the set of instructions that you have for the AI system to guide the system to the answer that you're after. So how did I prompt engineer here? Well, I did that by filling in the blanks like we talked about and then showing the style that I wanted afterward. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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