Workflow orchestration has always been a pain for data scientists, but this is exacerbated in these AI hype days by agentic workflows executing arbitrary (not pre-defined) workflows with a variety of failure modes. Adam from Prefect joins us to talk through their open source Python library for orchestration and visibility into python-based pipelines. Along the way, he introduces us to things like Marvin, their AI engineering framework, and ControlFlow, their agent workflow system.

As Argilla puts it: “Data quality is what makes or breaks AI.” However, what exactly does this mean and how can AI team probably collaborate with domain experts towards improved data quality? David Berenstein & Ben Burtenshaw, who are building Argilla & Distilabel at Hugging Face, join us to dig into these topics along with synthetic data generation & AI-generated labeling / feedback.

We are constantly hearing about disillusionment as it relates to AI. Some of that is probably valid, but Mike Lewis, an AI architect from Cincinnati, has proven that he can consistently get LLM and GenAI apps to the point of real enterprise value (even with the Big Cos of the world). In this episode, Mike joins us to share some stories from the AI trenches & highlight what it takes (practically) to show what is possible, doable & scalable with AI.

Seems like we are hearing a lot about GraphRAG these days, but there are lots of questions: what is it, is it hype, what is practical? One of our all time favorite podcast friends, Prashanth Rao, joins us to dig into this topic beyond the hype. Prashanth gives us a bit of background and practical use cases for GraphRAG and graph data.

Recently the company stewarding the open source library scikit-learn announced their seed funding. Also, OpenAI released “o1” with new behavior in which it pauses to “think” about complex tasks. Chris and Daniel take some time to do their own thinking about o1 and the contrast to the scikit-learn ecosystem, which has the goal to promote “data science that you own.”

Dinis Cruz drops by to chat about cybersecurity for generative AI and large language models. In addition to discussing The Cyber Boardroom, Dinis also delves into cybersecurity efforts at OWASP and that organization’s Top 10 for LLMs and Generative AI Apps.

GenAI is often what people think of when someone mentions AI. However, AI is much more. In this episode, Daniel breaks down a history of developments in data science, machine learning, AI, and GenAI in this episode to give listeners a better mental model. Don’t miss this one if you are wanting to understand the AI ecosystem holistically and how models, embeddings, data, prompts, etc. all fit together.

How do you systematically measure, optimize, and improve the performance of LLM applications (like those powered by RAG or tool use)? Ragas is an open source effort that has been trying to answer this question comprehensively, and they are promoting a “Metrics Driven Development” approach. Shahul from Ragas joins us to discuss Ragas in this episode, and we dig into specific metrics, the difference between benchmarking models and evaluating LLM apps, generating synthetic test data and more.

If you have questions at the intersection of Cybersecurity and AI, you need to know Donato at WithSecure! Donato has been threat modeling AI applications and seriously applying those models in his day-to-day work. He joins us in this episode to discuss his LLM application security canvas, prompt injections, alignment, and more.

You might have heard that “AI is only as good as the data.” What does that mean and what data are we talking about? Chris and Daniel dig into that topic in the episode exploring the categories of data that you might encounter working in AI (for training, testing, fine-tuning, benchmarks, etc.). They also discuss the latest developments in AI regulation with the EU’s AI Act coming into force.

There is an increasing desire for and effort towards GPU alternatives for AI workloads and an ability to run GenAI models on CPUs. Ben and Greg from Intel join us in this episode to help us understand Intel’s strategy as it related to AI along with related projects, hardware, and developer communities. We dig into Intel’s Gaudi processors, open source collaborations with Hugging Face, and AI on CPU/Xeon processors.

We discussed “🥦 Broccoli AI” a couple weeks ago, which is the kind of AI that is actually good/healthy for a real world business. Bengsoon Chuah, a data scientist working in the energy sector, joins us to discuss developing and deploying NLP pipelines in that environment. We talk about good/healthy ways of introducing AI in a company that uses on-prem infrastructure, has few data science professionals, and operates in high risk environments.

This week Daniel & Chris hang with repeat guest and good friend Demetrios Brinkmann of the MLOps Community. Together they review, debate, and poke fun at the 2024 Gartner Hype Cycle chart for Artificial Intelligence. You are invited to join them in this light-hearted fun conversation about the state of hype in artificial intelligence.

In the midst of the demos & discussion about OpenAI’s GPT-4o voice assistant, Kyutai swooped in to release the first real-time AI voice assistant model and a pretty slick demo (Moshi). Chris & Daniel discuss what this more open approach to a voice assistant might catalyze. They also discuss recent changes to Gartner’s ranking of GenAI on their hype cycle.

Daniel & Chris explore the advantages of vector databases with Roie Schwaber-Cohen of Pinecone. Roie starts with a very lucid explanation of why you need a vector database in your machine learning pipeline, and then goes on to discuss Pinecone’s vector database, designed to facilitate efficient storage, retrieval, and management of vector data.

We’ve had representatives from Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) on the show in the past, but we were super excited to talk through their 2024 AI Index Report after such a crazy year in AI! Nestor from HAI joins us in this episode to talk about some of the main takeaways including how AI makes workers more productive, the US is increasing regulations sharply, and industry continues to dominate frontier AI research.

Daniel & Chris engage in an impromptu discussion of the state of AI in the enterprise. Then they dive into the recent Apple Intelligence announcement to explore its implications. Finally, Daniel leads a deep dive into a new topic - Advanced RAG - covering everything you need to know to be practical & productive.

Daniel & Chris sit down with Denis Yarats, Co-founder & CTO at Perplexity, to discuss Perplexity’s sophisticated AI-driven answer engine. Denis outlines some of the deficiencies in search engines, and how Perplexity’s approach to information retrieval improves on traditional search engine systems, with a focus on accuracy and validation of the information provided.

We’ve all heard about breaches of privacy and leaks of private health information (PHI). For healthcare providers and those storing this data, knowing where all the sensitive data is stored is non-trivial. Ramin, from Tausight, joins us to discuss how they have deploy edge AI models to help company search through billions of records for PHI.

We’ve seen a rise in interest recently and a number of major announcements related to local LLMs and AI PCs. NVIDIA, Apple, and Intel are getting into this along with models like the Phi family from Microsoft. In this episode, we dig into local AI tooling, frameworks, and optimizations to help you navigate this AI niche, and we talk about how this might impact AI adoption in the longer term.

At the age of 72, U.S. Representative Don Beyer of Virginia enrolled at GMU to pursue a Master’s degree in C.S. with a concentration in Machine Learning.

Rep. Beyer is Vice Chair of the bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Caucus & Vice Chair of the NDC’s AI Working Group. He is the author of the AI Foundation Model Transparency Act & a lead cosponsor of the CREATE AI Act, the Federal Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Act & the Artificial Intelligence Environmental Impacts Act.

We hope you tune into this inspiring, nonpartisan conversation with Rep. Beyer about his decision to dive into the deep end of the AI pool & his leadership in bringing that expertise to Capitol Hill.

Daniel & Chris share their first impressions of OpenAI’s newest LLM: GPT-4o and Daniel tries to bring the model into the conversation with humorously mixed results. Together, they explore the implications of Omni’s new feature set - the speed, the voice interface, and the new multimodal capabilities.

There’s a lot of hype about AI agents right now, but developing robust agents isn’t yet a reality in general. Imbue is leading the way towards more robust agents by taking a full-stack approach; from hardware innovations through to user interface. In this episode, Josh, Imbue’s CTO, tell us more about their approach and some of what they have learned along the way.

Yep, you heard that right. Autonomous fighter jets are in the news. Chris and Daniel discuss a modified F-16 known as the X-62A VISTA and autonomous vehicles/ systems more generally. They also comment on the Linux Foundation’s new Open Platform for Enterprise AI.

We recently gathered some Practical AI listeners for a live webinar with Danny from LibreChat to discuss the future of private, open source chat UIs. During the discussion we hear about the motivations behind LibreChat, why enterprise users are hosting their own chat UIs, and how Danny (and the LibreChat community) is creating amazing features (like RAG and plugins).

First there was Mamba… now there is Jamba from AI21. This is a model that combines the best non-transformer goodness of Mamba with good ‘ol attention layers. This results in a highly performant and efficient model that AI21 has open sourced! We hear all about it (along with a variety of other LLM things) from AI21’s co-founder Yoav.

2024 promises to be the year of multi-modal AI, and we are already seeing some amazing things. In this “fully connected” episode, Chris and Daniel explore the new Udio product/service for generating music. Then they dig into the differences between recent multi-modal efforts and more “traditional” ways of combining data modalities.

Daniel & Chris delight in conversation with “the funniest guy in AI”, Demetrios Brinkmann. Together they explore the results of the MLOps Community’s latest survey. They also preview the upcoming AI Quality Conference.

In this fully connected episode, Daniel & Chris discuss NVIDIA GTC keynote comments from CEO Jensen Huang about teaching kids to code. Then they dive into the notion of “community” in the AI world, before discussing challenges in the adoption of generative AI by non-technical people. They finish by addressing the evolving balance between generative AI interfaces and search engines.

Daniel and Chris are out this week, so we’re bringing you conversations all about AI’s complicated relationship to software developers from other Changelog pods: JS Party, Go Time & The Changelog.