Practical AI

Nous Research has been pumping out some of the best open access LLMs using SOTA data synthesis techniques. Their Hermes family of models is incredibly popular! In this episode, Karan from Nous talks about the origins of Nous as a distributed collective of LLM researchers. We also get into fine-tuning strategies and why data synthesis works so well.

Sponsors:

• Read Write Own – Read, Write, Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet—a new book from entrepreneur and investor Chris Dixon—explores one possible solution to the internet’s authenticity problem: Blockchains. From AI that tracks its source material to generative programs that compensate—rather than cannibalize—creators. It’s a call to action for a more open, transparent, and democratic internet. One that opens the black box of AI, tracks the origins we see online, and much more. Order your copy of Read, Write, Own today at readwriteown.com
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. 

Featuring:

• Karan Malhotra – LinkedIn
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• Nous on Hugging Face
• Nous Research

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

Recently the release of the rabbit r1 device resulted in huge interest in both the device and “Large Action Models” (or LAMs). What is an LAM? Is this something new? Did these models come out of nowhere, or are they related to other things we are already using? Chris and Daniel dig into LAMs in this episode and discuss neuro-symbolic AI, AI tool usage, multimodal models, and more.

Sponsors:

• Read Write Own – Read, Write, Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet—a new book from entrepreneur and investor Chris Dixon—explores one possible solution to the internet’s authenticity problem: Blockchains. From AI that tracks its source material to generative programs that compensate—rather than cannibalize—creators. It’s a call to action for a more open, transparent, and democratic internet. One that opens the black box of AI, tracks the origins we see online, and much more. Order your copy of Read, Write, Own today at readwriteown.com
• Shopify – Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/practicalai
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. 

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• rabbit r1
• Salesforce blog on LAMs
• LangChain tools
• MM-LLMs: Recent Advances in MultiModal Large Language Models

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

Small changes in prompts can create large changes in the output behavior of generative AI models. Add to that the confusion around proper evaluation of LLM applications, and you have a recipe for confusion and frustration. Raza and the Humanloop team have been diving into these problems, and, in this episode, Raza helps us understand how non-technical prompt engineers can productively collaborate with technical software engineers while building AI-driven apps.

Sponsors:

• Read Write Own – Read, Write, Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet—a new book from entrepreneur and investor Chris Dixon—explores one possible solution to the internet’s authenticity problem: Blockchains. From AI that tracks its source material to generative programs that compensate—rather than cannibalize—creators. It’s a call to action for a more open, transparent, and democratic internet. One that opens the black box of AI, tracks the origins we see online, and much more. Order your copy of Read, Write, Own today at readwriteown.com
• Changelog News – A podcast+newsletter combo that’s brief, entertaining & always on-point. Subscribe today. 
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. 

Featuring:

• Raza Habib – LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• Humanloop

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

Recently, Intel’s Liftoff program for startups and Prediction Guard hosted the first ever “Advent of GenAI” hackathon. 2,000 people from all around the world participated in Generate AI related challenges over 7 days. In this episode, we discuss the hackathon, some of the creative solutions, the idea behind it, and more.

Sponsors:

• Read Write Own – Read, Write, Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet—a new book from entrepreneur and investor Chris Dixon—explores one possible solution to the internet’s authenticity problem: Blockchains. From AI that tracks its source material to generative programs that compensate—rather than cannibalize—creators. It’s a call to action for a more open, transparent, and democratic internet. One that opens the black box of AI, tracks the origins we see online, and much more. Order your copy of Read, Write, Own today at readwriteown.com
• Changelog News – A podcast+newsletter combo that’s brief, entertaining & always on-point. Subscribe today. 
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. 

Featuring:

• Rahul Nair – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Ryan Metz – LinkedIn, X
• Eugenie Wirz – LinkedIn
• Ralph de Wargny – LinkedIn
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• Advent of GenAI Hackathon
• Intel’s Liftoff program for startups
• Prediction Guard
• Blog posts: 
  • Recap of Day 1
  • Recap of Day 2
  • Recap of Day 3
  • Recap of Day 4
  • Recap of Day 5
  • Final Challenge

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

We scoured the internet to find all the AI related predictions for 2024 (at least from people that might know what they are talking about), and, in this episode, we talk about some of the common themes. We also take a moment to look back at 2023 commenting with some distance on a crazy AI year.

Sponsors:

• Changelog News – A podcast+newsletter combo that’s brief, entertaining & always on-point. Subscribe today. 
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. 

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

Prashanth Rao mentioned LanceDB as a stand out amongst the many vector DB options in episode #234. Now, Chang She (co-founder and CEO of LanceDB) joins us to talk through the specifics of their open source, on-disk, embedded vector search offering. We talk about how their unique columnar database structure enables serverless deployments and drastic savings (without performance hits) at scale. This one is super practical, so don’t miss it!

Sponsors:

• Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. 
• Typesense – Lightning fast, globally distributed Search-as-a-Service that runs in memory. You literally can’t get any faster! 

Featuring:

• Chang She – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• LanceDB
• Episode #234 “Vector DBs beyond the hype”

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

The new open source AI book from PremAI starts with “As a data scientist/ML engineer/developer with a 9 to 5 job, it’s difficult to keep track of all the innovations.” We couldn’t agree more, and we are so happy that this week’s guest Casper (among other contributors) have created this resource for practitioners.

During the episode, we cover the key categories to think about as you try to navigate the open source AI ecosystem, and Casper gives his thoughts on fine-tuning, vector DBs & more.

Sponsors:

• Changelog News – A podcast+newsletter combo that’s brief, entertaining & always on-point. Subscribe today. 
• Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. 

Featuring:

• Casper da Costa-Luis – GitHub
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

State of Open Source AI Book - 2023 Edition

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

In this enlightening episode, we delve deeper than the usual buzz surrounding AI’s perils, focusing instead on the tangible problems emerging from the use of machine learning algorithms across Europe. We explore “suspicion machines” — systems that assign scores to welfare program participants, estimating their likelihood of committing fraud. Join us as Justin and Gabriel share insights from their thorough investigation, which involved gaining access to one of these models and meticulously analyzing its behavior.

Sponsors:

• Changelog News – A podcast+newsletter combo that’s brief, entertaining & always on-point. Subscribe today. 
• Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. 

Featuring:

• Gabriel Geiger – X
• Justin-Casimir Braun – X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• Article - “Inside the suspicion machine”
• The methodology behind Justin and Gabriel’s report

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

Daniel & Chris conduct a retrospective analysis of the recent OpenAI debacle in which CEO Sam Altman was sacked by the OpenAI board, only to return days later with a new supportive board. The events and people involved are discussed from start to finish along with the potential impact of these events on the AI industry.

Sponsors:

• Traceroute – Listen and follow Season 3 of Traceroute starting November 2 on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts! 
• Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. 

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• OpenAI | Wikipedia
• How OpenAI’s origins explain the Sam Altman drama
• OpenAI chaos: A timeline of firings, interim CEOs, re-hirings and other twists
• OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster, sources say
• Everyone’s talking about OpenAI’s Q*. Here’s what you need to know about the mysterious project.
• It is Time to Profit off of the OpenAI Drama
• Yann LeCun | LinkedIn
• Advent of GenAI Hackathon

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

Shopify recently released a Hugging Face space demonstrating very impressive results for replacing background scenes in product imagery. In this episode, we hear the backstory technical details about this work from Shopify’s Russ Maschmeyer. Along the way we discuss how to come up with clever AI solutions (without training your own model).

Sponsors:

• Advent of GenAI Hackathon – Join us for a 7-day journey into the world of Generative AI with the Advent of GenAI Hackathon. Learn more here! 
• Traceroute – Listen and follow Season 3 of Traceroute starting November 2 on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts! 

Featuring:

• Russ Maschmeyer – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• Advent of GenAI Hackathon
• Shopify’s HF Space for background replacement
• Shopify Magic

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!