# Arto's Talks

My recent presentations & interviews.

- [Interview on the Rowshan Podcast](https://ar.to/2026/09/rowshan-podcast.md) (2026-09-12): My conversation with Mehran Rowshan on the Rowshan Podcast, "School Teaches Obedience, Not Intelligence": dropping out of school, dropping in on university, homeschooling, self-learning, Dubai, and AI privacy. (1h12m)
- [Roaring Bitmaps at the AI Paper Reading Club](https://ar.to/2026/05/roaring-bitmaps.md) (2026-05-04): My reading of Daniel Lemire's Roaring Bitmaps papers, with a sneak peek at how we use compressed bitsets at ASIMOV to power complex on-device queries on large social graphs.
- [ASIMOV Protocol on NEAR DevHub Live #39](https://ar.to/2025/02/near-devhub-live.md) (2025-02-20): My ASIMOV Protocol primer on NEAR DevHub Live #39: enriching user-owned AI with high-quality structured, linked, and verified knowledge—and how the neurosymbolic synthesis of LLMs with knowledge graphs enables trustworthy and interoperable AI.
- [ASIMOV Protocol at the NEAR Town Hall](https://ar.to/2025/02/near-town-hall.md) (2025-02-06): My ASIMOV Protocol sneak peek on the NEAR Town Hall: enriching user-owned AI with high-quality structured, linked, and verified knowledge in order to realize the promise of the neurosymbolic synthesis.
- [Interview with The National](https://ar.to/2024/03/interview-with-the-national.md) (2024-03-18): My interview with The National, a leading English-language print newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.
- [Interview with AI Time Journal](https://ar.to/2023/12/interview-with-aitimejournal.md) (2023-12-01): My interview with AI Time Journal, touching on privacy and on-device AI, open publication instead of patents, building a dream team, fostering a culture of extreme ownership, and more.
- [Meet the Team: Arto Bendiken](https://ar.to/2023/03/meet-the-aurora-team.md) (2023-03-23): My interview for the _Meet the Team_ blog series, published on the Aurora Labs blog.
- [Humans of NEAR: Arto Bendiken](https://ar.to/2021/02/humans-of-near.md) (2021-02-16): My interview for the _Humans of NEAR_ blog series, published on the NEAR Protocol ecosystem blog.
- [Building Arweave Smart Contracts with Clarity](https://ar.to/2020/11/arweave-hack-and-tell.md) (2020-11-11): I present and discuss my work on Sworn, the Clarity compiler for SmartWeave.
- [Stacks Grants Demo Day](https://ar.to/2020/10/stacks-demo-day.md) (2020-10-30): I present my work on Clarc, the Clarity compiler for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
- [Cypherpunk Bitstream: Pandemic II](https://ar.to/2020/03/cypherpunk-bitstream-0x08.md) (2020-03-29): My guest appearance on a special episode of the Cypherpunk Bitstream podcast regarding the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. (4h27m)
- [Cypherpunk Bitstream: Pandemic I](https://ar.to/2020/03/cypherpunk-bitstream-0x07.md) (2020-03-16): My guest appearance on a special episode of the Cypherpunk Bitstream podcast regarding the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. (2h58m)
- [Make Your Own Neural Network with Ruby](https://ar.to/2019/03/talk-at-ifrb-5.md) (2019-03-06): How to build a neural network from scratch to recognize handwritten numbers with excellent accuracy.
- [Building a Home Security System with Elixir and Nerves](https://ar.to/2019/02/talk-at-pivorak-conf-2.md) (2019-02-01): How to get started with Nerves by building a home security system running on a Raspberry Pi.
- [In Search of Silver Bullets for Polyglots](https://ar.to/2018/04/talk-at-pivorak-33.md) (2018-04-20): An examination of some force multipliers to reduce the cognitive load of polyglot programming.
- [A Post-Libertarian Realpolitik](https://ar.to/2017/10/talk-at-hcpp17.md) (2017-10-08): My talk at the Hackers Congress Paralelní Polis 2017 (HCPP17) conference.
- [Interactive Robotics with Elixir and Nerves](https://ar.to/2017/03/talk-at-pivorak-21.md) (2017-03-24): An introduction to the Nerves embedded framework based on a live-action wargame involving drones.