Training Data

Fred Luddy, Founder of ServiceNow, shares his inspiring journey from bankruptcy to building a $150 billion cloud application platform. Frank Slootman, the former CEO, discusses the challenges and growth they faced together. The duo delves into how ServiceNow evolved from a basic IT tool to a powerful platform for digital workflows, emphasizing the importance of corporate culture and strategic leadership. They reflect on pivotal moments that shaped their path and the role of innovation in navigating the tech landscape's complexities.

Clay Bavor, Co-founder of Sierra and former Google executive, chats about revolutionizing customer service through AI. He explains how Sierra's AgentOS helps businesses create delightful, branded AI agents that enhance customer interactions. Bavor highlights the importance of integrating brand voice and values into these agents, which can handle everything from basic inquiries to complex issues. He also discusses innovative pricing models that align customer interests with AI solutions, transforming the customer experience while delivering tangible ROI.

Jim Gao, a mechanical engineer at Google and co-founder of Phaidra, discusses how reinforcement learning can revolutionize energy efficiency in data centers. He shares insights from his collaboration with DeepMind that achieved a remarkable 40% energy savings. Jim highlights the challenges of integrating AI into legacy systems and the urgent need for self-learning technologies to tackle climate change. The conversation also explores the intersection of AI and entrepreneurship, emphasizing risk-taking and the value of co-founders in innovation.

Lin Qiao, founder and CEO of Fireworks and former head of the PyTorch team at Meta, shares insights on the evolving landscape of generative AI. She discusses how her platform aims to democratize access to AI with fast, cost-effective inference using smaller models. Lin explains the challenges B2C companies face with latency and operational costs. She also predicts the convergence of open and closed-source models and highlights the importance of simple API access for diverse AI applications. Her vision could transform how businesses utilize AI technology.

Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, leads the conversation on the revolutionary impact of GitHub Copilot, born from OpenAI’s GPT technology. He shares how a small team transformed Copilot from simple autocomplete to a comprehensive tool that boosts developers' productivity. The discussion highlights the need for secure software supply chains and the growing accessibility of coding. Thomas envisions a future where a billion developers can harness these AI tools by 2030, democratizing software creation and enhancing collaboration across the industry.

Joe Spisak is the head of Product Management for Generative AI at Meta, leading the team behind the recently launched Llama 3.1 405B model. He discusses how this model, trained on 15 trillion tokens, enhances zero-shot tool use and aids in generating synthetic data. Spisak believes frontier models will commoditize, benefiting startups and promoting open-source innovation. The conversation also touches on the integration of coding to improve AI reasoning, the advantages of smaller models, and the balance between open and closed systems in AI development.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna, discusses how their AI-powered assistant revolutionized customer service, replacing 700 reps. He explores the impacts of AI on society and the arts, emphasizing an experimental AI mindset at Klarna.

AI expert Misha Laskin discusses the current state of AI agents and the need to unlock agentic capability for LLMs. He shares insights on building reliable models with Reflection AI and leveraging search capabilities of RL. Topics include leaving Russia, his journey into AI, and evolution of agents from AlphaGo to universal agents.

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott discusses the enduring trend of scaling in AI, emphasizing the shift to inference over training as models improve. He touches on the future business models for training data and speculates on ad units for autonomous agents. Scott's short-term pessimism contrasts with his long-term optimism for industry growth and Microsoft's AI platform.

Mike Knoop, co-founder of Zapier, discusses launching the ARC Prize to stimulate AGI development. The podcast covers the importance of new benchmarks for AI, efficiency in acquiring skills, differences between foundation models and ArcGIS, techniques for improving puzzle solving, and advancing AI systems for reliability and innovation. The episode also explores innovative competitions, open-source collaboration, and the potential of AGI to revolutionize AI.