Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

Andreas Stuhlmüller and Jungwon Byun, co-founders of Elicit, share their journey from a non-profit to a Public Benefit Corporation, emphasizing impactful reasoning and decision-making tools. They discuss the transformative effects of GPT advancements on AI tools, detailing the evolution of practical applications for research. The duo dives into optimizing AI research workflows, innovative summarization techniques, and balancing cost with functionality in model performance. Their insights on enhancing user experience highlight the importance of collaborative workflows in academic research.

NLW, the insightful host of AI Breakdown, dives into the current landscape of AI, discussing critical battlegrounds in the industry and the significance of strategies over mere access to data. Dylan Patel from SemiAnalysis shares his thoughts on Groq's advancements and the challenges in AI hardware. The chat also touches on Apple’s AI ambitions and its impact on user trust. Finally, the conversation highlights the evolving roles of AI engineers and the exciting future of multimodal AI, creating a lively and informative discussion.

Join Sam Schillace, Deputy CTO of Microsoft known for his early work on GPT-4, and Ben Dunphy, co-organizer of the AI Engineer conferences, as they unveil the upcoming AI Engineer World's Fair. They discuss the explosive growth of AI engineering since its inception and the triumphant return of in-person events. Expect exciting talks from major players like OpenAI and deep dives into topics such as prompt engineering and AI memory management. This fair promises to be a collaborative hub for innovation in the AI community.

David Luan, Co-founder and CEO of Adept, previously led efforts at Google and OpenAI. He shares fascinating insights about why Google lagged in creating GPT-3 despite their early lead in AI research. Luan discusses the shift from reinforcement learning to transformer models, emphasizing the significance of multimodal agents for achieving artificial general intelligence. He also highlights how Adept's AI agents aim to revolutionize productivity, seamlessly integrating into workflows to enhance human capabilities in software tasks.

Mikey Shulman, CEO and co-founder of the music generation startup Suno, shares his journey from finance to creating innovative AI-driven audio experiences. The discussion dives into the fascinating challenges of transforming text into music and the unique complexities tied to audio creation. They explore the balance between accessibility and artistry, the emotional depth AI can express, and even compose a humorous country tune about cloud computing hurdles. Shulman also highlights the evolving role of AI in music sampling and audience participation.

Florent Crivello, founder of Lindy.ai, and Eugene Cheah, CEO of RecursalAI, dive into the latest research trends in AI. They explore the impact of OpenAI's Sora and Google's Gemini Pro 1.5, including long inference features and multimodal capabilities. The conversation highlights Lindy.ai's innovative productivity tools and RWKV’s advancements as a transformer alternative. They also tackle the complexities of AI integration and the challenges of data management, all while celebrating their first anniversary in the AI podcasting scene.

In this conversation, Soumith Chintala, Engineering Lead at Meta AI and creator of PyTorch, discusses his journey from aspiring animator to AI pioneer. He highlights the importance of intrinsic motivation in tech innovation and dives into the exciting developments in open-source AI. The dialogue touches on Meta's impressive GPU resources, the evolution of PyTorch applications in diverse fields, and the challenges of integrating Mojo. Chintala also advocates for fair practices in the LLM inference market and emphasizes the ethical implications of synthetic data in AI.

Ben Firshman, Co-founder and CEO of Replicate, shares his journey from creating a vacation project called arXiv Vanity to establishing one of the leading AI inference platforms. He discusses the challenges of making machine learning research accessible and reproducible. The conversation touches on the evolution of command line interfaces, the impact of open-source tools in scientific research, and the trials of launching AI startups during the pandemic. Firshman also emphasizes the importance of collaboration in driving innovation within the AI community.

In this episode, Erik Bernhardsson, founder of Modal and former tech leader at Spotify, dives into his journey from building tools like Annoy and Luigi to launching a startup focused on high-performance cloud solutions. He discusses the evolution of AI infrastructure and the unique challenges of developing efficient tools for data teams. Erik also explores the competitive landscape of AI services, the shift towards serverless environments, and the importance of adapting to new developer needs. Insights into navigating cloud startup challenges provide further depth.

In this engaging discussion, Ce Zhang, Co-founder and CTO of Together AI, and Vipul Ved Prakash, Co-founder and CEO, share their insights on the evolution of open and independent AI systems. They highlight the balance between open-source contributions and proprietary innovations, stressing the importance of diverse data sources for training models. From optimization strategies for GPU cloud performance to their innovative AI platform upgrades, they delve into crucial advancements like federated learning and hybrid model architectures, shaping the future of AI.