In this special episode, we interview some of the sponsors and teams from a recent case competition organized by Purdue University, Microsoft, INFORMS, and SIL International. 170+ teams from across the US and Canada participated in the competition, which challenged students to create AI-driven systems to caption images in three languages (Thai, Kyrgyz, and Hausa). Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Matthew Lanham – Website, XMark Tabladillo – LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: Purdue University’s Krannert School of Business Master the basics of Azure: AI Fundamentals Azure Architecture Center SIL International The bloom-captioning dataset Books “Applied Machine Learning and AI for Engineers” by Jeff Prosise Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

There are some big AI-related controversies swirling, and it’s time we talk about them. A lawsuit has been filed against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI related to Copilot code suggestions, and many people have been disturbed by the output of Meta AI’s Galactica model. Does Copilot violate open source licenses? Does Galactica output dangerous science-related content? In this episode, we dive into the controversies and risks, and we discuss the benefits of these technologies. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:Related to Copilot: Article - “GitHub Copilot Isn’t Worth the Risk” Tabnine Big Code Project Related to Galactica: Model website Article: “Galactica: the AI knowledge base that makes stuff up” Books “Interpretable Machine Learning” by Christoph Molnar “Modeling Mindsets” by Christoph Molnar Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Online platforms and their users are susceptible to a barrage of threats – from disinformation to extremism to terror. Daniel and Chris chat with Matar Haller, VP of Data at ActiveFence, a leader in identifying online harm – is using a combination of AI technology and leading subject matter experts to provide Trust & Safety teams with precise, real-time data, in-depth intelligence, and automated tools to protect users and ensure safe online experiences. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Matar Haller – GitHub, LinkedInChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: ActiveFence Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

It’s been a while since we’ve touched on quantum computing. It’s time for an update! This week we talk with Yonatan from Quantum Machines about real progress being made in the practical construction of hybrid computing centers with a mix of classical processors, GPUs, and quantum processors. Quantum Machines is building both hardware and software to help control, program, and integrate quantum processors within a hybrid computing environment. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Yonatan Cohen – GitHub, LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:Quantum Machines Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Recently Chris and Daniel briefly discussed the Open RAIL-M licensing and model releases on Hugging Face. In this episode, Daniel follows up on this topic based on some recent practical experience. Also included is a discussion about graph neural networks, message passing, and tweaking synthesized voices! Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: Daniel’s team license from recent work Graph Neural Network courses from Zak Jost Coqui voice studio Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

This panel discussion was recorded at a recent event hosted by a company, Aryballe, that we previously featured on the podcast (#120). We got a chance to discuss the AI-driven technology transforming the order/fragrance industries, and we went down the rabbit hole discussing how this technology is being adopted at large, well-established companies. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Mary Fischer-Mullins – LinkedInYanis Caritu – LinkedInDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: Aryballe Cox Automotive Previous episode with Aryballe Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

People are starting to wake up to the fact that they have control and ownership over their data, and governments are moving quickly to legislate these rights. John K. Thompson has written a new book on the topic that is a must read! We talk about the new book in this episode along with how practitioners should be thinking about data exchanges, privacy, trust, and synthetic data. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:John K. Thompson – LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:Use the code podpracticalAI19 for 40% off of Data for All, along with all Manning products in all formats!!! Books “Data for All” by John K. Thompson John’s other books: “Building Analytics Teams” by John K. Thompson “Analytics” by John Thompson and Shawn Rogers Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Chris sits down with Ankur Goyal to talk about DocQuery, Impira’s new open source ML model. DocQuery lets you ask questions about semi-structured data (like invoices) and unstructured documents (like contracts) using Large Language Models (LLMs). Ankur illustrates many of the ways DocQuery can help people tame documents, and references Chris’s real life tasks as a non-profit director to demonstrate that DocQuery is indeed practical AI. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Ankur Goyal – LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XShow Notes: DocQuery DocQuery Announcement DocQuery Blog Announcement DocQuery | GitHub Impira Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

It’s one thing to gather some labels for your data. It’s another thing to integrate data labeling into your workflows and infrastructure in a scalable, secure, and useful way. Mark from Xelex joins us to talk through some of what he has learned after helping companies scale their data annotation efforts. We get into workflow management, labeling instructions, team dynamics, and quality assessment. This is a super practical episode! Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Mark Christensen – Website, LinkedInDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: Xelex.ai Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

WeightWatcher, created by Charles Martin, is an open source diagnostic tool for analyzing Neural Networks without training or even test data! Charles joins us in this episode to discuss the tool and how it fills certain gaps in current model evaluation workflows. Along the way, we discuss statistical methods from physics and a variety of practical ways to modify your training runs. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Charles Martin – GitHub, LinkedIn, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: WeightWatcher Talk from the Silicon Valley ACM meetup A deep dive into the theory behind WeightWatcher (a talk from ENS) Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!