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Super Data Science: ML & AI Podcast with Jon Krohn

Super Data Science: ML & AI Podcast with Jon Krohn

1017: Vector Search, Agentic Memory and Effective RAG, with MongoDB’s Pete Johnson

Aug 11, 2026 · 57m

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In Episode #1017, Pete Johnson (Field CTO of AI at MongoDB) joins Jon Krohn to explain why four out of five organizations have AI steering committees and success metrics, yet only one in five sees a return on the investment. Having made nineteen stops across six countries this year advising more than a hundred companies on their AI strategies, Pete has an unusually wide view of what is actually working in production. In this episode, he traces the history of SQL and denormalization, unpacks why the embedding model is the most underrated choice in a RAG pipeline, explains Matryoshka embeddings and lays out what better agentic memory looks like. Additional materials: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠…