Practical AI – Episode #289
Understanding what's possible, doable & scalable
with Mike Lewis, chief AI architect at Synthoni
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.
Featuring
Sponsors
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.
WorkOS – A platform that gives developers a set of building blocks for quickly adding enterprise-ready features to their application. Add Single Sign-On (Okta, Azure, Google, Microsoft OAuth), sync users from any SCIM directory, HRIS integration, audit trails (SIEM), free magic link sign-in. WorkOS is designed for developers and offers a single, elegant interface that abstracts dozens of enterprise integrations. Learn more and get started at WorkOS.com
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Notes & Links
Chapters
| Chapter Number | Chapter Start Time | Chapter Title | Chapter Duration |
| 1 | 00:00 | Welcome to Practical AI | 00:35 |
| 2 | 00:35 | Sponsor: Fly | 03:06 |
| 3 | 03:49 | State of AI tools | 05:03 |
| 4 | 08:52 | Mike's background | 04:30 |
| 5 | 13:22 | Finding value | 04:05 |
| 6 | 17:38 | Sponsor: WorkOS | 03:21 |
| 7 | 21:11 | Improving efficiency | 05:10 |
| 8 | 26:21 | Human level impact | 04:15 |
| 9 | 30:35 | Solution archetypes | 05:31 |
| 10 | 36:06 | Balancing progress and privacy | 02:35 |
| 11 | 38:48 | Sponsor: Eight Sleep | 02:31 |
| 12 | 41:34 | Champions of AI | 09:44 |
| 13 | 51:17 | 5-step process to effective reasoning | 06:25 |
| 14 | 57:42 | Looking to the future | 03:25 |
| 15 | 1:01:07 | Thanks for joining us! | 00:27 |
| 16 | 1:01:34 | Outro | 00:46 |