"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

AI Engineers, Pendants, and Competition Between OpenAI and Developers with Swyx of Latent Space

Oct 5, 2023

01:34:20

Snipd AI

Swyx of Latent Space and Nathan, former college dorm mate of Mark Zuckerberg, discuss AI engineers, tools for developers, and tensions between OpenAI and developers. They also touch on the emergence of AI engineers, finding and joining AI communities, progress in AI, and differences between open source and close source companies. They explore the potential dominance of OpenAI and upcoming events in the AI field.

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Quick takeaways

AI engineers are specialized in the AI stack and need to be entrepreneurial and proactive to stay on the cutting edge of AI technology.

The role of AI engineers includes working with trained AI models and implementing them in real-world applications, requiring skills in AI UX, coding tools, LLN tooling, infrastructure, and agents.

AI agents have potential applications in domains like scheduling meetings or generating code, but more advanced forms with planning and autonomy are still in research stage.

The upcoming AI Engineer Summit will provide a platform for AI engineers to learn, share, and discuss advancements and best practices in AI engineering.

Deep dives

The Emergence of AI Engineering

The podcast episode discusses the emerging role of AI engineering and the importance of specialized AI engineers. AI engineers specialize in the AI stack and are focused on working with AI models after they have been trained. The demand for AI engineers has been increasing, given the availability of pre-trained models and the need for engineers who can effectively utilize them. The episode emphasizes the need for AI engineers to be entrepreneurial and proactive in order to stay on the cutting edge of AI technology. It also highlights the importance of having a strong foundation in AI UX, AI coding tools, LLN tooling, AI infrastructure, and AI agents.

The Benefits of Using a Human Loop for Prompt Development

00:44

Memory, Interactions, and UI: key components for agents research

00:26

The Importance of Strong Engineering Teams and Impactful Work

00:23

Introduction

5min

The Emergence of AI Engineers

10min

Podcast resources, personal preferences, sponsor ad, Discord discussions, and recent post

4min

Finding and Joining Emerging AI Communities

14min

Progress in AI, AI Engineers, and Speaker Lineup for an AI Engineering Conference

4min

Conference Stage and AI Projects

3min

Approaches of Close Source vs. Open Source Companies

23min

OpenAI's Potential Dominance

28min

Upcoming Summit, Short Domains, and Ad Promotions

2min

In this episode, Nathan sits down with Swyx of Latent Space to chat about AI engineers and tools to check out, competitive dynamics between OpenAI, other foundation model providers, and developers, and if Swyx would wear an AI Horcrux. We also learn that Nathan lived in the same dorm as Mark Zuckerberg back in his college days (and was a late adopter to Facebook…). If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/cognitive

Subscribe to the show Substack to join future conversations and submit questions to upcoming guests! https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

SPONSORS: Shopify | NetSuite | Omneky

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Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off.

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Episode Preview

(00:00:49) AI Nathan’s intro

(00:03:14) What is an AI engineer?

(00:05:56) What backgrounds do AI engineers typically have?

(00:15:51) Sponsors: Netsuite | Omneky

(00:17:13) Swyx’s Discord AI project

(00:20:41) Key tools for AI engineers

(00:23:42) HumanLoop, Guardrails, Langchain

(00:27:01) Criteria for identifying capable AI engineers when hiring

(00:30:59) Skepticism around AI being a fad and doubts about contributing to AI

(00:34:03) AI Engineer Conference speaker lineup

(00:41:14) AI agents and two years to AGI

(00:46:04) Expectations and disagreement around what AI agent capabilities will work soon

(00:50:12) Swyx’s OpenAI thesis

(00:53:03) AI safety considerations and the role of AI engineers

(00:56:24) Disagreement on whether AI will soon be able to generate code pull requests

(01:01:07) AI helping non-technical people to code

(01:01:49) Multi-modal Chat-GPT and the future implications

(01:03:33) Nathan living in the same dorm as Mark Zuckerberg

(01:04:44) Competitive dynamics between OpenAI and other AI model developers

(01:05:39) Play.ht vs ElevenLabs

(01:09:20) The tension between platforms and developers building on top of them

(01:11:40) The best thing startups can do to compete with foundation model providers

(01:16:26) User identity/authentication services like Login with OpenAI

(01:19:20) Google vs the other live players

(01:20:46) AI Horcruxes / Pendants

(01:22:05) The concept of an AI app bundle for consumers and developers

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