Ivan Zhang, co-founder of Cohere, discusses the company's enterprise-focused AI solutions. He explains Cohere's early emphasis on embedding technology and training models for secure environments.
Zhang highlights their implementation of Retrieval-Augmented Generation in healthcare, significantly reducing doctor preparation time. He explores the shift from monolithic AI models to heterogeneous systems and the importance of improving various AI system components. Zhang shares insights on using synthetic data to teach models reasoning, the democratization of software development through AI, and how his gaming skills transfer to running an AI company.
He advises young developers to fully embrace AI technologies and offers perspectives on AI reliability, potential risks, and future model architectures.
https://cohere.com/
https://ivanzhang.ca/
https://x.com/1vnzh
TOC:
00:00:00 Intro
00:03:20 AI & Language Model Evolution
00:06:09 Future AI Apps & Development
00:09:29 Impact on Software Dev Practices
00:13:03 Philosophical & Societal Implications
00:16:30 Compute Efficiency & RAG
00:20:39 Adoption Challenges & Solutions
00:22:30 GPU Optimization & Kubernetes Limits
00:24:16 Cohere's Implementation Approach
00:28:13 Gaming's Professional Influence
00:34:45 Transformer Optimizations
00:36:45 Future Models & System-Level Focus
00:39:20 Inference-Time Computation & Reasoning
00:42:05 Capturing Human Thought in AI
00:43:15 Research, Hiring & Developer Advice
REFS:
00:02:31 Cohere, https://cohere.com/
00:02:40 The Transformer architecture, https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762
00:03:22 The Innovator's Dilemma, https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Management-Innovation/dp/1633691780
00:09:15 The actor model, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model
00:14:35 John Searle's Chinese Room Argument, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/
00:18:00 Retrieval-Augmented Generation, https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.11401
00:18:40 Retrieval-Augmented Generation, https://docs.cohere.com/v2/docs/retrieval-augmented-generation-rag
00:35:39 Let’s Verify Step by Step, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.20050
00:39:20 Adaptive Inference-Time Compute, https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02725
00:43:20 Ryan Greenblatt ARC entry, https://redwoodresearch.substack.com/p/getting-50-sota-on-arc-agi-with-gpt
Disclaimer: This show is part of our Cohere partnership series
