The field of natural language processing (NLP), and specifically large language models (LLM), has proven to be a disruptive technology. I spoke to Sireesha who has been in this industry for over 5 years to break down what NLP and LLMs are, their use cases from healthcare to warfare, and how much of people's concerns about natural language processing is valid. Sireesha is the Director of Engineering at Primer AI where she leads the engineering team building NLP workflows. Previously Sireesha was a Principal Machine Learning Specialist Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services where she helped Fortune 1000 customers utilize AI in the AWS cloud. She is an author of the machine learning textbook Amazon SageMaker Best Practices: Proven tips and tricks to build successful machine learning solutions on Amazon SageMaker. Sireesha has a PHD in Computer Science from the University of Colorado.

Links to topics discussed

- White House framework on AI

-AI in warfare

Will there be a robot that can do everything? Fold laundry, do the dishes, cook dinner, and clean your home? I wanted to find out so I spoke to Erica Aduh, a robotics research scientist at Amazon. Erica is in the robotics team where she focuses on advancing how robots transport and move packages. She develops the analytical models for robotic item manipulation. Erica received her bachelors and masters in Engineering and Robotics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Are there any tech trends that you want to learn more about? Let me know on Twitter @missjillforde! 

There has been some fascinating innovations in AI the past three years around image and video generation. 2020 was the year of deepfakes. 2022 was the year of image to text. Wondering how it works and what the future looks like? That's why I interviewed an expert on this topic. Rohith is a Principal Applied Scientist at Amazon Prime Video team. He has worked in areas of computer vision, video synthesis, and generative models. Rohith received is PHD in Philosophy and Computer science from the University of Delaware. He has since worked in areas of machine vision for consumer devices and video understanding.

Let me know what tech trends you want to learn about by DMing me on Twitter @missjillforde! 

Quantum Computing are said to be able to solve problems that the computers used today cannot solve like finding cures for rare diseases and drug discovery. That is because the way that they are designed allows faster computational speed. This year has been a massive year in innovations in AI, and quantum computers would be able to reduce the time that it would take to train a machine learning model, which would mean greater innovations in challenging AI problems like autonomous vehicles and robotics. 

I had a lot of questions on how quantum computers work which is why I spoke to Jordan Sullivan. Jordan is a Tech Evangelist for Amazon Braket at Amazon Web Services, which is Amazon Web Service’s Quantum Computing service in the cloud. At AWS, Jordan helps companies and researchers understand and utilize the latest in quantum computing.  Previously, they were a quantum architect at PsiQuantum, a series D startup that has raised $665 million in funding to build a commercially viable quantum computer. Jordan studied physics at UC Berkeley where they did theoretical research in quantum chemistry and superconducting qubits, which is a basic unit of quantum information in a quantum computer. 

Resources Jordan mentions to learn more: 

https://thequantuminsider.com/ 

https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/quantum-computing/#:~:text=Quantum%20computing%20is%20a%20multidisciplinary,hardware%20research%20and%20application%20development.

https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Quantum-Computers-Essential-Algorithms/dp/1492039683/ref=asc_df_1492039683/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=366282014808&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10963098266681064658&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9003435&hvtargid=pla-629791076767&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=79033899031&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=366282014808&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10963098266681064658&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9003435&hvtargid=pla-629791076767

The release and buzz around ChatGPT shows that this is just the beginning of human like AI chatbots. I think more companies will release their own AI chatbots and that these models will improve over time. Since OpenAI has been publishing their research, I decided to read through it and explain how it works without getting into any of the math. 

Resources to learn more: 

- ChatGPT

- AWS DeepRacer: This was my first introduction to reinforcement learning and the reinforcement learning algorithm that DeepRacer uses is the same algorithm that ChatGPT uses.

-Clear visual of how words are translated into numbers

-Overview of how ChatGPT works

Any tech trends that you want me to cover? Let me know on Twitter @missjillforde! 

If you want to understand what web3 is all about then you’ve got to understand the fundamentals of blockchain. That’s why I interviewed Charles Okochu on this topic because he knows a ton!  Charles is a Senior Worldwide Go-To-Market Specialist for Amazon Managed Blockchain at Amazon Web Services where Charles advises businesses on how to implement blockchain in the cloud. Charles has been in the tech industry for over 10 years and brings a lot of wisdom in explaining what makes blockchain different from other databases. Charles has a bachelors in engineering from City College of New York and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Topics that we get into:

Which trending tech topics are you most interested in learning? Let me know on Twitter @missjillforde! 

We're at a fascinating time in history with space: space travel, space exploration and using satellites to provide internet access to over 2 billion people are actually happening.  If you're curious to understand what's going on in space and how space will improve the quality of our lives, listen to this episode. I interview Dylan Ellsworth. Dylan is a senior research and development satellite technician at Project Kuiper, which is Amazon's satellite internet project currently being developed that will provide internet service all over the world. Dylan started his career working as a submariner and still serves the US Navy as a reservist working on unmanned underwater vehicles. Since leaving active duty, Dylan has worked at Blue Origin on the New Shepard and New Glenn rockets, and Leostella where he built and tested several small earth imaging satellites that are currently in orbit.

Where people can watch space launches: https://www.discovery.com/shows/space-launch-live 

If you have any topics you want me to cover, message me on twitter @missjillforde!