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Making artificial intelligence practical, productive & accessible to everyone


Practical AI Practical AI #289

Understanding what's possible, doable & scalable

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2024-10-03T15:45:00Z #ai +1 🎧 14,721

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #288

GraphRAG (beyond the hype)

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2024-09-25T18:30:00Z #ai +1 🎧 23,649

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #287

Pausing to think about scikit-learn & OpenAI o1

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2024-09-17T19:00:00Z #ai +1 🎧 24,821

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.”

Practical AI Practical AI #285

AI is more than GenAI

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2024-09-05T14:00:00Z #ai +2 🎧 29,619

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #284

Metrics Driven Development

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2024-08-29T20:45:00Z #ai +1 🎧 28,763

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #283

Threat modeling LLM apps

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2024-08-22T13:30:00Z #ai +2 🎧 27,888

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #282

Only as good as the data

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2024-08-14T21:15:00Z #ai +1 🎧 29,630

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #281

Gaudi processors & Intel's AI portfolio

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2024-08-07T13:45:00Z #ai 🎧 28,966

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #280

Broccoli AI at its best 🥦

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2024-07-31T21:40:00Z #ai +1 🎧 30,745

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #278

The first real-time voice assistant

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2024-07-18T12:45:00Z #ai +1 🎧 25,944

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #277

Vectoring in on Pinecone

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2024-07-10T17:30:00Z #ai +2 🎧 25,366

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #276

Stanford's AI Index Report 2024

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2024-07-02T19:45:00Z #ai 🎧 27,369

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #274

The perplexities of information retrieval

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2024-06-19T16:30:00Z #ai +2 🎧 26,408

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #273

Using edge models to find sensitive data

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2024-06-13T16:45:00Z #ai +1 🎧 25,018

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #272

Rise of the AI PC & local LLMs

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2024-06-04T18:45:00Z #ai +2 🎧 33,629

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #271

AI in the U.S. Congress

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2024-05-29T14:30:00Z #ai +2 🎧 24,813

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #269

Full-stack approach for effective AI agents

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2024-05-15T14:00:00Z #ai 🎧 26,937

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #267

Private, open source chat UIs

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2024-04-30T20:45:00Z #ai +2 🎧 26,385

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).

Practical AI Practical AI #266

Mamba & Jamba

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2024-04-24T15:45:00Z #ai +1 🎧 23,952

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #265

Udio & the age of multi-modal AI

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2024-04-16T18:20:00Z #ai +2 🎧 26,140

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #263

Should kids still learn to code?

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2024-04-02T20:00:00Z #ai +3 🎧 26,358

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.

Practical AI Practical AI #261

Prompting the future

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2024-03-20T13:45:00Z #ai +2 🎧 30,716

Daniel & Chris explore the state of the art in prompt engineering with Jared Zoneraich, the founder of PromptLayer. PromptLayer is the first platform built specifically for prompt engineering. It can visually manage prompts, evaluate models, log LLM requests, search usage history, and help your organization collaborate as a team. Jared provides expert guidance in how to be implement prompt engineering, but also illustrates how we got here, and where we’re likely to go next.

Practical AI Practical AI #260

Generating the future of art & entertainment

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2024-03-12T17:00:00Z #ai +3 🎧 25,231

Runway is an applied AI research company shaping the next era of art, entertainment & human creativity. Chris sat down with Runway co-founder / CTO, Anastasis Germanidis, to discuss their rise and how it’s defining the future of the creative landscape with its text & image to video models. We hope you find Anastasis’s founder story as inspiring as Chris did.

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