AI Agents That Reason and Code with Imbue Co-Founders Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht
Nov 16, 2023
32:48
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Co-founders of Imbue, Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht, discuss the potential of AI agents to accomplish goals and improve performance. They explore the significance of reasoning and code in AI development, the challenges of reliability, and the importance of building scalable AI development tools.
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Quick takeaways
The founders highlight the importance of training large foundation models for high-level reasoning and the need for different architectures for AI agents compared to language models.
The founders emphasize their vision for a future where machines can act autonomously on behalf of humans to accomplish tasks, highlighting the potential of AI in creating systems that can perform real work and free up humans to focus on their interests.
Deep dives
Developing AI agents for reasoning and coding
MBU is a company focused on developing AI agents that can reason and code. They discuss the importance of training large foundation models for high-level reasoning and the need for different architectures for agents compared to language models. They also highlight how current computers require micromanagement and the potential for future computers to have more autonomy. The founders discuss their journey from meeting at a conference to building AI agents and share their vision for a future where machines can act on behalf of humans to accomplish tasks.
The focus on building agents
The founders emphasize their interest in building agents that can go beyond chatbots or classifiers and actually perform real work on behalf of users. They believe that the true potential of AI lies in creating systems that can act autonomously and accomplish goals, freeing up humans to focus on what they're interested in. They discuss how improving the reliability and performance of agents can lead to more general and autonomous systems.
Overcoming challenges and improving reliability
The founders highlight the challenges of making AI agents work reliably and output the desired results. They discuss the importance of reasoning in improving reliability and mention techniques such as error correction and chain of thought. They also mention the need for incremental progress in agent development, moving from co-pilot systems to more autonomous agents as capabilities and reliability improve over time.
The potential of coding agents and future possibilities
The founders explain their focus on coding agents and how coding can accelerate their research efforts and make the development of AI agents more efficient. They discuss the ability of coding agents to write code, solve specific tasks, improve code quality, and generate custom software interfaces. They envision a future where coding agents enable individuals and organizations to create more software, better software, and highly customized software, ultimately enhancing the interaction with computers.
The future of tech is 25-person companies powered by AI agents that help us accomplish our larger goals. Imbue is working on building AI agents that reason, code and generally make our lives easier. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil sit down with co-founders Kanjun Qiu (CEO) and Josh Albrecht (CTO) to discuss how they define reasoning, the spectrum of specialized and generalized agents, and the path to improved agent performance. Plus, what’s behind their $200M Series B fundraise.
Kanjun Qiu is the CEO and co-founder of Imbue. Kanjun is also a partner at angel fund Outset Capital, where she invests in promising pre-seed companies. Previously, Kanjun was the co-founder and CEO of Sourceress, a machine learning recruiting startup backed by YC and DFJ. She was previously Chief of Staff to Drew Houston at Dropbox, where she helped scale the company from 300 employees to 1200.
Josh Albrecht is the CTO and co-founder of Imbue. He also invests in other founders via his fund, Outset Capital. He has published machine learning papers as an academic researcher; founded an AI recruiting company that went through YC and a 3D injection molding software company that was acquired; helped build Addepar as an early engineer; and served as a Thiel Fellow mentor. He started programming as a kid and began working professionally as a software engineer in high school.