Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

Flo Crivello, founder of Lindy.ai and former Uber tech specialist, shares insights on transforming AI workflows. He discusses the evolution from Lindy 1.0's complex interfaces to the user-friendly Lindy 2.0, emphasizing visual workflow design. The conversation dives into the challenges of AI customer support, innovations in evaluation tools, and the intense competition in the AI space. Flo also touches on the impact of remote work on company culture and the role of community in thriving within vertical and horizontal AI solutions.

Stanislas Polu, Co-founder and CEO of Dust.tt, shares insights from his journey through tech giants like Stripe and OpenAI, where he honed his skills in mathematical reasoning. He reveals the inspiration behind Dust's evolution from a developer framework to user-friendly AI assistants. Discussions delve into the blending of creativity and formal verification in problem-solving, the strategic development of LLM products, and the challenges of integrating AI in fraud solutions. Stan also contrasts vertical and horizontal approaches in AI, emphasizing their impact on growth and innovation.

Anastasios Angelopoulos and Wei-Lin Chiang, both PhD students at UC Berkeley, lead the Chatbot Arena—a pioneering platform for AI evaluation. They discuss the evolution of crowdsourced benchmarking and the philosophical challenges of measuring AI intelligence. Emphasizing the limitations of static benchmarks, they advocate for user-driven assessments. The duo also tackles human biases in evaluations and the significance of community engagement, showcasing innovative strategies in AI red teaming and collaboration, all aimed at refining how language models are compared.

Raiza Martin, Lead PM for NotebookLM at Google Labs, and Usama Bin Shafqat, AI engineer on the same project, share their insights on creating engaging AI-driven audio experiences. They discuss the unique approach of making digital voices sound conversational, incorporating natural interjections and pauses. The duo highlights the importance of user feedback in shaping their innovative product and the challenges of balancing advanced AI capabilities with accessibility for everyday users. Their work aims to redefine how we interact with information through AI.

In this engaging discussion, Josephine Teo, Singapore's Minister of Digital Development and Information, dives into the country's groundbreaking AI strategy. She emphasizes the balance between innovation and governance while exploring the societal impact of digital development. Teo sheds light on the importance of coding literacy and continuous education to prepare the workforce for tech transitions. The conversation also touches on Singapore's healthcare innovation landscape and the need for collaborations to nurture a vibrant AI ecosystem.

Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox and a pioneer in cloud storage, shares his unique journey with AI, coding over 400 hours with LLMs. He discusses how Dropbox is evolving into an AI-first organization, highlighting innovations like Files GPT and universal search with Dropbox Dash. Drew emphasizes the importance of aligning technology with user needs while navigating data privacy and ethical practices. He explores the transformative potential of AI as a 'silicon brain' for knowledge work, urging a balance between human creativity and AI capabilities.

Ankur Goyal, founder of Impira and former head of Figma AI, discusses the evolving landscape of AI engineering. He highlights the challenges in LLM Ops, emphasizing the importance of evaluations in systematic AI development. Ankur reflects on his journey navigating career pressures as a first-generation Indian student and shares insights from his experiences in tech startups. He dives into advancements in data extraction, the integration of software engineering principles with AI, and the significance of community feedback for product improvements.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, leads a team of experts including Kevin Weill and Michelle Pokrass, who unveil groundbreaking advancements in AI at Dev Day. They discuss the game-changing **Realtime API**, highlighting its capabilities for voice interaction and function calling. Alistair Pullen shares insights on developing AI models for software engineering. The conversation also dives into the challenges of AI fine-tuning and ethical considerations in AI communications, envisioning a future where seamless human-AI interaction transforms productivity.

Harrison Chase, founder of LangChain, LangSmith, and LangGraph, teams up with Shunyu Yao, an AI researcher known for his work on ReAct. They discuss the evolution of AI language agents, highlighting advancements in reasoning and acting. Shunyu shares insights on the ReAct framework and its impact on decision-making in AI. They delve into the challenges of benchmarking and interactive problem-solving in coding agents, while also exploring the future of AI model scaling and user experience in customer service applications.

Sander Schulhoff, author of The Prompt Report and creator of LearnPrompting.org, dives deep into the intricacies of prompt engineering and AI safety. He discusses the extensive research landscape with over 1,600 papers on prompting, clarifying popular methodologies like chain-of-thought and zero-shot prompting. Schulhoff also tackles ethical dilemmas surrounding AI-generated academic work and introduces innovative AI tools to streamline research methodologies. Further, he covers advancements in multimodal prompting, illustrating the complexities and potential of AI interactions.