The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: The Biggest AI Leaders on What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size & Where Does The Value in AI Accrue; to Startups or to Incumbents

Sep 15, 2023

Richard Socher, Douwe Kiela, and Alex Lebrun discuss the importance of model size and data size in AI. They explore the impact of larger models and the significance of training data. The value accrual in AI startups is highlighted, along with the importance of feeding accurate data to language models for improved reasoning capabilities. They also discuss ML AI investments and the challenges of competing in the AI space.

31:20

Creator website

Episode guests

Richard Socher

Alex Lebrun

Douwe Kiela

AI Summary

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Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

The podcast highlights the importance of training bigger models for longer periods, emphasizing that model size is the bigger challenge in AI.

The conversation underscores the value of training models with larger amounts of quality data, with startups having the advantage of utilizing both open and proprietary data sets.

Deep dives

The Importance of Model Size in AI

The podcast episode explores the question of whether model size or data size matters more in AI. Noam Shazir, Founder and CEO at character.ai, suggests that model size is the bigger challenge due to the amount of computation required for training. He emphasizes the importance of training bigger models for longer periods. Chris at runway ML adds that larger models have the potential to perform better in multimodal tasks. However, he also highlights the importance of specific models tailored to different tasks. This reflects the notion that there isn't a single model to rule them all. The discussion further delves into the impact of model lifespan and the role of human involvement and adaptability in model building.

Introduction

3min

The Importance of Model Size and Data Size in AI

2min

The Impact of Model Size and Data Size in AI

6min

Value Accrual in AI Startups and Factors for Building a Viable Business

1min

The Importance of Feeding Accurate Data to Language Models

15min

ML AI Investment, Model Companies, and Competing in the AI Space

4min

Richard Socher is the founder and CEO of You.com. Richard previously served as the Chief Scientist and EVP at Salesforce.

Douwe Kiela is the CEO of Contextual AI, building the contextual language model to power the future of businesses. Previously, he was the Head of Research at Hugging Face, and before that a Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research.

Alex Lebrun is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nabla, an AI assistant for doctors. Prior to Nabla, he led engineering at Facebook AI Research. Alex founded Wit.ai, acquired by Facebook in 2015.

Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages.

Sarah Guo is the Founding Partner @ Conviction Capital, a $100M first fund purpose-built to serve “Software 3.0” companies. Prior to founding Conviction, Sarah was a General Partner at Greylock where she made investments in the likes of Figma, Coda and Neeva.

Emad Mostaque is the Co-Founder and CEO @ StabilityAI, the parent company of Stable Diffusion. Stability are building the foundation to activate humanity’s potential. To date, Emad has raised over $110M with Stability with the latest round reportedly pricing the company at $4BN.

Clem Delangue is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Hugging Face, the AI community building the future. To date, Clem has raised over $160M from the likes of Sequoia, Coatue, Addition and Lux Capital to name a few.

Cris Valenzuela is the CEO and co-founder of Runway, the company that trains and builds generative AI models for content creation. To date, Cris has raised over $285M for the company from the likes of Lux Capital, Felicis, Coatue, Amplify, and Nvidia to name a few.

Noam Shazeer is the co-founder and CEO of Character.AI. A renowned computer scientist and researcher, Shazeer is one of the foremost experts in artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP).

The Two Most Pressing Questions in AI:

What matters more the size of the model or the size of the data?
Where does the value accrue in the next 5-10 years; to startups or to incumbents?

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