Hilary Mason: Deterministic vs. Probabilistic, and How AI is Changing Storytelling

Hilary Mason was on the ground floor of data science research, and now she’s bringing that same pioneering spirit to generative AI. For this episode, Host and Partner at Lightspeed, Michael Mignano, talks with Hilary about how to safeguard probabilistic systems and how researchers and founders can form the most effective teams.

Episode Chapters

(00:00) - Intro

(05:18) - A founder’s thoughts - NYC vs. Silicon Valley

(09:50) - Why Hilary thinks non-linear storytelling was wrong

(13:44) - Understanding online traffic through bit.ly

(15:57) - The taxonomy of data science

(19:06) - Founding Fast Forward Labs - “Hire your nerd best friend”

(23:05) - Can academia and startups coexist?

(26:50) - Machine learning  (ML) vs. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

(34:00) - Selling Fast Forward Labs to Cloudera

(38:51) - Hidden Door’s inception

(44:29) - The challenge - and opportunity - of AI hallucinations

(48:07) - What is Hidden Door?

(52:38) - Building an architecture for unstructured input

(57:38) - How can you try Hidden Door?

(01:00:45) - Shifting the software engineer mindset

(01:04:17) - How will product-building shift with generative AI?

(01:07:34) - Is AI hype dangerous?

(01:12:36) - Where to learn more about Hidden Door 

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