Fran Alexander

When Fran Alexander looks at the current AI landscape she sees some interesting parallels between the Alien vs Predator science fiction franchise and the way RAG and other architectures are combining LLMs and knowledge graphs.

We talked about:

the analogy she draws between the Alien and Predator science fiction franchise with LLMs and knowledge graphs

how the human-esque (if malevolent) cognitive and behavioral nature of Predators aligns more with knowledge graphs and how the unpredictable and stochastic nature of Aliens aligns more with LLMs

how the eloquence of LLM outputs can deceive humans

the lack of explainability and transparency in both Alien and LLM behavior, and the opposite in knowledge graphs

the difficulty of dealing with baked-in biases in LLMs

the lack of repeatability in LLMs and the opposite in KGs

the current trend of architectures and practices like RAG that draw on the strengths of KGs and LLMs to get better results, just as the Alien and Predator media franchises combined forces

how over the past year or so investment in LLMs has overshadowed all other investments, just as Aliens are out to wipe out anything that's not an Alien

her approach to AI architectures that combine LLMs and knowledge graphs

how different kinds of people consume LLM output

how she helps enterprise decision makers choose whether to address a use case with a knowledge graph or an LLM

how taxonomists and ontologists can use LLMs in their work

the Alien Loves Predator UK Facebook group and Alien and Predator on a seesaw

Alien and Predator cosplay actors on a seesaw

Fran's bio

Fran started her career as a writer and editor of dictionaries and thesauruses in the UK, and, as technology evolved, she specialised in information architecture, search systems, and digital archives, and more recently, the use of semantics in knowledge graphs and LLM applications. Having worked on reference publications including the Collins English Dictionary, and as Taxonomy Manager for the BBC Archive, she now lives in Montreal, Canada, and is the Senior Taxonomist for Expedia Group. She was Taxonomy Bootcamp London’s Taxonomy Practitioner of the Year 2023.

Connect with Fran online

LinkedIn

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/VWwDBIws6G8

Podcast intro transcript

This is the Knowledge Graph Insights podcast, episode number 15. When two impressive domains converge, amazing things can happen. When the Alien and Predator science fiction franchises joined forces, both enjoyed new commercial success. Similarly, in the AI world right now, Fran Alexander sees knowledge graphs and large language models combining forces to create retrieval augmented generation and similar architectures that work together to create systems more useful and valuable than the sum of their individual capabilities.

Interview transcript

Larry:

Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 15 of the Knowledge Graph Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show, Fran Alexander. Fran is an independent taxonomist and ontologist based in Montreal. And so, welcome Fran. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days.

Fran:

Hi Larry. Well, it's nice to talk to you again. I really enjoyed talking to you on the previous podcast that we did a little while ago. And that one was kind of a bit of a general introduction to taxonomies, ontologies, thesauruses, knowledge modeling and semantics. But this time, I thought we could talk about knowledge graphs and LLMs. They're a big hot topic and I did a presentation earlier on in the year for Taxonomy Boot Camp London, Bite-sized Taxonomy Boot Camp London. That was a lot of fun and has been really popular. A lot of people have been asking me about it. I've revisited it a couple of times and that's LLMs versus knowledge graphs, Alien versus Predator.

Larry:

Okay. So why Alien versus Predator?