Episode 13: Open-source panel with Anton Troynikov, Brian Raymond, and Harrison Chase
Jan 28, 2024
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Open-source leaders in AI, Anton Troynikov, Brian Raymond, and Harrison Chase, discuss topics such as chatbot development with Lang Smith, usage of Chroma in AI applications, building open-source and commercial products, limitations of vector search in AI retrieval, favorite AI companies and TV portrayals, and the importance of agility in developing language models.
Open-source AI promotes wider access and experimentation for interpretability and safety research.
Startups can leverage agility, user trust, and problem-solving to overcome competition from larger companies.
Deep dives
The importance of agility and user trust in competition
As a startup, agility and user trust are key advantages over larger competitors. Staying close to users, delivering value, and building trust can help overcome competition.
The role of open source AI in interpretability and safety
Open source AI enables wider access to weights, fostering interpretability and safety research. It allows for experimentation and new ideas to be tested and developed.
Attributes of a great founder
Great founders have a strong sense of product, storytelling, and design. They are close to customers, prioritize problem-solving, and have a unique internal vision and drive.
The impact of competition and market dynamics
Competition from larger companies is expected, but it is viewed as validation of the startup's market presence. Execution, user delight, and differentiation are important for success.
On this special edition of Thursday Nights in AI, we chatted with three open-source leaders building in AI: Harrison Chase of LangChain, Brian S. Raymond of Unstructured.io, and Anton Troynikov of Chroma.
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About Harrison: Harrison Chase is the co-founder and CEO of LangChain, a company formed around the open-source Python/Typescript packages that aim to make it easy to develop Language Model applications. Prior to starting LangChain, he led the ML team at Robust Intelligence (an MLOps company focused on testing and validation of machine learning models), led the entity linking team at Kensho (a fintech startup), and studied stats and CS at Harvard.
About Brian: Brian S. Raymond is the co-founder and CEO of Unstructured.io, a company building open-source libraries and APIs to build custom preprocessing pipelines for labeling, training, or production machine learning pipelines. He completed his MS in Political Science and Government at UC Davis and his MBA at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
About Anton: Anton Troynikov co-founded Chroma, an open-source embedding database. Before Chroma, Anton was a robotics engineer, researcher, and founder of an edtech startup. Anton was born in the Soviet Union, did his Computer Engineering degree at the University of Melbourne in Australia, and completed an MS in robotics at the Technical University of Munich in Germany.
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About Outset Capital: Outset Capital is led by Ali Rohde, Kanjun Qiu, and Josh Albrecht — AI practitioners investing in AI, deeptech, and the future of work. We back companies at the outset and love to be the first check in.
About Imbue: Imbue is an AI research company aiming to rekindle the dream of the personal computer—by creating practical AI agents that can accomplish larger goals and safely work for us in the real world. They are hiring! https://imbue.com/careers
About WndrCo: Founded in 2016 by Sujay Jaswa, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and ChenLi Wang, WndrCo builds & invests in companies whose products are revolutionizing how people live and work. WndrCo's investments include 1Password, Aura, Databricks, Figma, Material Security, and Pilot.
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