
Infinite Curiosity Pod with Prateek Joshi
The best place to find out how AI builders build. The host Prateek Joshi interviews world-class AI founders and VCs on this podcast. You can visit prateekj.com to learn more about the host.
Latest episodes

May 7, 2024 • 36min
Automated Evaluation of LLMs
Anand Kannappan is the cofounder and CEO of Patronus AI, an automated AI evaluation and security company. They have raised funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Replit CEO Amjad Masad, Gokul Rajaram, and Fortune 500 executives. He was previously at Meta and Vertis. He was also the cofounder of Kyber Technologies, which was a service to systematically predict market events using AI and remote sensing data. It evolved into a futures quant hedge fund managing $15M for partners. Anand's favorite book: Harry Potter series (Author: JK Rowling)(00:00) Introduction and Common Failure Modes of Large Language Models(03:02) Challenges of Automated Evaluation in AI Models(06:08) The Importance of Fine-Tuning and Retrieval Augmented Generation(09:02) Addressing Copyright Detection in Language Models(11:51) The Liability of Companies Using AI Models(15:02) Advancements in Multimodal Models and State Space Models(20:48) The Role of Fine-Tuning in the Evolution of Language Models(23:51) The Significance of Adversarial Testing in AI(25:56) The Role of Retrieval Augmented Generation in AI(28:05) The Need for Continuous Function Optimization in Prompting(29:02) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 Twitter: https://twitter.com/prateekvjoshi

Apr 30, 2024 • 33min
Investing In AI-first Startups
Camilo Acosta is a GP at Perceptive VC, a pre-seed and seed stage venture firm investing in AI-first companies across the US and Latin America. He was previously a product lead at Meta. Prior to that, he was the cofounder and CEO of Pay By Group. Camilo's favorite book: The Power Law (Author: Sebastian Mallaby)(00:00) Introduction (00:29) Key Factors for AI Startup Success(01:23) Disruptive Opportunities for Startups in the AI Tech Stack(03:15) Challenges and Opportunities in AI Hardware(04:15) Assessing Ambitious Hardware Opportunities(05:23) Promising Trends in Verticalized AI Applications(06:21) Impactful AI Applications in Healthcare and Education(08:11) Modes and Building an Edge in AI Startups(09:10) The Importance of Truth Seeking and Paranoia in Founders(11:13) Overlooked Opportunities in AI, Particularly Computer Vision(13:26) Traits of Successful AI Startup Founders(15:46) Balancing Coachability and Self-Reliance in Founders(20:43) Personalized Compute Devices and the Future of Hardware(22:34) Infusing AI into Venture and Private Equity Workflows(25:34) Exciting Breakthroughs and Seed Fundable Opportunities in AI(27:44) The Future of AI Investing and the Role of Founders(29:48) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 Twitter: https://twitter.com/prateekvjoshi

Apr 9, 2024 • 39min
AI's Role In Physics, Chemistry, and Beyond
Anima Anandkumar is a Bren Professor at Caltech. Her work developing novel AI algorithms enables and accelerates scientific applications of AI, including scientific simulations, weather forecasting, autonomous drone flights, and drug design. She has received best paper awards at venues such as NeurIPS and the ACM Gordon Bell Special Prize for HPC-Based COVID-19 Research. She holds degrees from the IIT Madras and Cornell University. She has conducted postdoctoral research at MIT. She was previously principal scientist at Amazon Web Services and senior director at Nvidia. Anima's favorite book: Hyperspace (Author: Michio Kaku)(00:00) Introduction(00:10) The Impact of AI on Science(02:25) AI Disrupting Physics(03:02) Challenges in Fluid Dynamics(06:21) Achieving Orders of Magnitude Speedup(10:43) AI Discovering New Laws of Physics(11:45) Complexity of Fluid Dynamics(15:54) Simulating Physical Phenomena with AI(22:23) AI for Drones in Strong Winds(25:16) Optimizing Experiments with AI(28:19) AI in Quantum Chemistry(32:38) Technological Breakthroughs in AI(33:23) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 Twitter: https://twitter.com/prateekvjoshi

Apr 2, 2024 • 32min
Generative AI for Coding
Varun Mohan is the cofounder and CEO of Codeium, an AI code generation tool used by hundreds of thousands of developers. They recently announced their $65M Series B led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Greenoaks and General Catalyst. He was previously at Nuro. He has a bachelors and masters degree from MIT. Varun's favorite book: The Idea Factory (Author: Jon Gertner)(00:00) Introduction and State of Play(03:03) What Generative AI Can Do Well(06:10) Introduction to Codeium(08:53) Handling Different Programming Languages(11:26) Model Architectures and Optimization(13:27) Interpreting and Trusting AI Decisions(18:33) Security and Privacy Considerations(20:07) Impact on Software Quality and Developers(21:50) Potential Obsolescence of Programming Languages(23:39) Handling Edge Cases(26:07) The Biggest Impact of Generative AI for Coding(28:27) Technological Breakthroughs in Generative AI(29:30) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 Twitter: https://twitter.com/prateekvjoshi

Mar 19, 2024 • 44min
Building Robots That Can Cook
Rajat Bhageria is the founder and CEO of Chef Robotics, where they are building robots that can do the work of assembly line cooks in commercial kitchens. He's also the cofounder and managing partner of Prototype Capital, a pre-seed VC fund. He was previously the cofounder and CEO of ThirdEye, which got acquired in 2017. He has been a writer for Forbes, TechCrunch, and Huffington Post. Rajat's favorite book: Steve Jobs (Author: Walter Isaacson)(00:00) Fundamentals of Robotics and AI(01:44) Sensors in the Kitchen(03:18) Motion Control in the Kitchen(07:15) Introduction to Chef Robotics(10:15) Designing Robotic Grippers for the Kitchen(14:01) Computer Vision in the Kitchen(24:31) The Power of Marrying Software and Hardware(28:00) Energy Consumption in Robotics(32:18) User Experience in Robotics(36:32) Technological Breakthroughs and Future of Robotics(41:28) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 Twitter: https://twitter.com/prateekvjoshi

Mar 11, 2024 • 40min
Discovering New Materials With AI
Jonathan Godwin is the cofounder and CEO of Orbital Materials, where they're using Generative AI to develop a pipeline of new materials for carbon removal and energy transition. He was previously a Senior Research Engineer at Google DeepMind. Jonathan's favorite book: The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Author: Richard Rhodes) (00:07) The Process of Discovering New Materials(04:20) Building the Foundation Model(06:42) The Impact of Google's GNoME Project(08:49) Adding Materials to the Pipeline(11:08) Computational Screening and AI(13:43) Material Structures and Properties(18:41) Material Formation and Degradation(20:47) Materials for Carbon Removal and Energy Transition(23:44) Ensuring Material Safety(27:13) Exciting New Materials(28:07) Breakthroughs in Material Science(30:09) The Future of AI in Materials Discovery(34:07) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 Twitter: https://twitter.com/prateekvjoshi

Mar 4, 2024 • 39min
Designing Printed Circuit Boards With AI
Sergiy Nesterenko is the cofounder and CEO of Quilter, an AI platform to automate circuit board layout. He was previously at SpaceX for 5 years and he has a degree from UC Berkeley. They just announced their $10M Series A round led by Benchmark, one of Silicon Valley's most storied VC firms. (00:07) What is a PCB and its role in electronic devices (01:30) Examples of PCBs in everyday life (04:47) Manual components of the PCB design process (06:26) Introduction to Quilter and its automation of PCB layout(07:46) What can be automated in PCB layout design(08:44) Challenges in PCB layout design(10:12) The role of AI in automating PCB layout design(12:25) Criteria for PCB design and material selection(14:38) Thermal management in PCB design(15:05) Ensuring signal integrity in PCB design(19:44) The use of AI in PCB design(20:08) The future of AI in PCB design(22:07) The importance of material selection in PCB design(23:32) The importance of thermal management in PCB design(24:11) Ensuring signal integrity in densely packed PCBs(26:59) The potential impact of AI on the PCB design process(28:47) The importance of aesthetics in PCB design(29:14) The potential obsolescence of human designers in PCB design(30:26) Exciting innovations in PCB design(34:42) The need for systematic access to PCB design information(36:30) Rapid Fire RoundSergiy's favorite book: The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Author: J. R. R. Tolkien)--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 Twitter: https://twitter.com/prateekvjoshi

Feb 26, 2024 • 41min
Algorithmic Data Curation
Explore the importance of data curation in AI models, challenges in data quality, removing types of data, relationship between data size and model size, choosing optimal data subset, future of data curation, impact on service providers. CEO of automated data curation platform shares insights. Estimating conceptual complexity algorithmically, automated data curation for ML training, exploring sector-specific approaches, optimizing model size and data size in ML.

Feb 19, 2024 • 35min
Modifying Speech Accents In Real Time With AI
Ofer Ronen is the CEO of Tomato.ai, an AI platform to soften speech accents of people as they speak. He was previously at Google where he built Contact Center AI products. Prior to this, he was the cofounder and CEO of Pulse.io and Sendori. (00:26) Accent Modification in Real Time (02:21) Training Data for AI Models (04:14) Overview of Tomato AI (05:36) Challenges in Modifying Speech Accents (07:17) Role of Phonetics and Linguistics (08:19) Handling Intonation and Subtleties in Different Languages (09:36) Advances in AI for Speech Modification (11:21) Addressing Societal Bias and Ethical Considerations (13:08) Expanding Accent Modification to Different Accents (14:20) Deployment on Mobile Devices and Computational Requirements (16:02) Disclosure Policy for Accent Modification (17:59) Future Applications of Speech Modification (19:48) Ripe Areas for Innovation in Contact Center AI (22:28) Impact of Generative AI on Speech Modification (24:53) Demonstrating Success in Contact Center AI (27:06) Future of AI and Speech Modification (28:37) Rapid Fire Round Ofer's favorite book: Life 3.0 (Author: Max Tegmark)--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 Twitter: https://twitter.com/prateekvjoshi

Feb 12, 2024 • 40min
Voice AI Agents
Itamar Arel is the CEO of Tenyx, where they are building intelligent voice AI agents. He was previously the founder of Apprente and Binatix. He was previously a visiting associate professor at Stanford. (00:22) State of Play in Voice AI (02:21) Modern Voice Agents (04:01) Building Voice AI Models (05:48) The Role of Developers (08:28) Introduction to Tenyx (09:52) Innovative Use Cases of Voice AI (15:20) Challenges in Voice AI (19:18) Scaling Voice AI Across Languages (21:45) Combating Misinformation in Voice AI (24:17) Voice AI and Human Creativity (26:49) Sensitive Use Cases of Voice AI (28:48) Voice AI in the Military (30:32) AI-Generated Voice and Disclosure (32:28) Future of Voice AI (34:04) Rapid Fire Round Itamar's favorite book: Consciousness and the Brain (Author: Stanislas Dehaene)--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 Twitter: https://twitter.com/prateekvjoshi