
"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis
343 episodes — Page 7 of 7

S1 Ep 43E43: AI Scouting Report – Part 1 of 3: Fundamentals [Bonus YouTube Episode]
bonusHead to a special YouTube presentation with visual aides (https://youtu.be/0hvtiVQ_LqQ), where Nathan Labenz synthesizes the core fundamentals of AI as simply, clearly, and literally as possible. Nathan's aim is to impart the equivalent of a high school AP course understanding to listeners in 90 minutes. This special episode is in part brought to you by Athena. You can use Nathan’s referral link (http://athenago.me/nathan-labenz) for a free first month of Athena services for qualified customers. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics Questions or topics you want us to review for Part 2? Email [email protected] The Cognitive Revolution is a part of the Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: Turpentine.co TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSOR: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

S1 Ep 42E42: The Autonomy Revolution with Hayk Martiros of Skydio
In this episode, Nathan Labenz sits down with Hayk Martiros, VP of Autonomy at Skydio. Martiros leads the autonomy team, which holds the state of the art in complex autonomous flight. Skydio is the largest drone developer in the US, and recently raised $230M to expand its US manufacturing 10-fold, bringing its valuation to $2.2 billion. In this discussion, Hayk and Nathan discuss why Skydio will not weaponize its drones, Skydio’s systems and AI approach, and the considerations of choosing an autonomous system over a human agent. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. LINKS: SymForce: https://github.com/symforce-org/symforce End-to-End Learning of Geometry and Context for Deep Stereo Regression (Skydio’s 2017 paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04309 TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (01:12) Nathan’s episode intro (07:44) Hayk’s story (11:21) What is Skydio? (14:59) Sponsor: Omneky (16:56) The core driver of Skydio’s business (20:21) Skydio’s AI approach (23:56) Updating the voltage 30,000 times per second (24:52) How is the Skydio system built? (34:07) The loops in the Skydio system (36:00) SymForce, Skydio’s open source library and Hayk’s creation (41:06) Writing symbolic expressions as a roboticist (42:14) Writing an expression for a toy race car (47:58) Skydio neural networks (51:29) Going from designed systems to end-to-end systems (58:17) How much does a Skydio drone and dock cost to install? (01:00:19) The cost savings of using a Skydio drone (01:02:59) Are $1 drone missions in the consumer’s future? (01:06:22) Vertical integration vs platform (01:09:29) The advantages and disadvantages of drones (01:11:17) Running LLMs on a drone (01:14:36) Power consumption going to compute vs mechanics (01:18:26) Hayk’s predictions for consumer autonomous systems (01:21:51) Standards for choosing autonomous systems over humans (01:25:23) Skydio’s societal impact (01:28:34) Universal basic income (01:30:27) Skydio drone usage in defense (01:34:34) The Ukraine-Russia conflict (01:38:02) Hayk’s experience with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict TWITTER: @SkydioHQ (Skydio) @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. MUSIC CREDIT: MusicLM

S1 Ep 41E41: [Bonus Episode - Latent.space] Building the AI x UX Scenius with Linus Lee of Notion AI
[Bonus Episode] Latent.space hosts, Alessio and Swyx, sit down with Linus Lee of Notion AI to discuss Linus’ experience starting the AI/UX community, prompt engineering at Notion, and designing AI interfaces and agents. The latent.space podcast aims to be the first place where AI engineers hear about the latest AI news and technology trends. We’ve had several guests in common – including Shreya Rajpal of Guardrails, Jonathan & Abhi from the recently acquired for $1.3B MosaicML, and also Riley Goodside from Scale AI – and also explored similar themes, including the question of which AI companies have durable business moats, and the flurry of experimentation going into AI agents right now. We recommend checking them out! Keep up to date with Latent.space here: Website: https://www.latent.space/ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2p7zZVwVF6Yk0Zsb4QmT7t?si=95fb033e3c014975 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/latent-space-the-ai-engineer-podcast-codegen-agents/id1674008350 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LatentSpace-podcast We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics TIMESTAMPS (05:52) Starting the AI / UX community (12:23) Most knowledge work is not text generation (18:43) Finding the right constraints and interface for AI (21:27) Linus' journey to working at Notion (25:51) The importance of notations and interfaces (28:29) Setting interface defaults and standards (34:58) The challenges of designing AI agents (42:00) Notion deep dive: “Blocks”, AI, and more (53:22) Prompt engineering at Notion (01:04:22) Lightning Round SPONSOR: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

E40: Meta's MEGABYTE Revolution with Lili Yu of Meta AI
Nathan Labenz sits down with Lili Yu, a researcher of Meta AI to discuss the paper she authored: MEGABYTE: Predicting Million-byte Sequences with Multiscale Transformers. In this conversation, they discuss the architecture and breakthroughs of their research, and the opportunity to eliminate the need for tokenization. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics The Cognitive Revolution is a part of the Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: www.turpentine.co LINK: MEGABYTE Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.07185.pdf TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode preview (07:41) Takeaways from Lili Yu's paper: MEGABYTE: Predicting Million-byte Sequences with Multiscale Transformers (17:00) Architecture (24:59) Embeddings (27:43) Different local models (34:23) Encoder model (36:35) Transformer Architecture (48:10) Choosing patch size (01:08) What happens when you scale up? (01:19:20) Big picture for Meta AI (01:22:57) Responsible AI (01:27:02) China and AI TWITTER: @labenz (Nathan) @liliyu_lili (Lili) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @cogrev_podcast SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky (www.omneky.com) for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. MUSIC CREDIT: MusicLM:

S1 Ep 39E39: Seeing is Believing with MIT’s Ziming Liu
Ziming Liu is a Physics PhD student at MIT and IAIFI, advised by Prof. Max Tegmark. Ziming’s research is at the intersection of AI and physics. Today’s discussion goes in-depth on Liu’s paper “Seeing is Believing” where he presents Brain-Inspired Modular Training (BIMT), a method for making neural networks more modular and interpretable. The ability to see modules visually can complement current mechanistic interpretability strategies. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics The Cognitive Revolution is a part of the Turpentine podcast network. To learn more: Turpentine.co Watch this episode on YouTube to see research figures and graphics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKxwlxb2XWw Links: Seeing is Believing, authors: Ziming Liu, Eric Gan, and Max Tegmark https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.08746.pdf Ziming Liu: https://kindxiaoming.github.io/ TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode preview (01:16) Nathan introduces Ziming Liu and his research (04:50) What motivated Ziming's research into neural networks and modularity (08:06) Key Visuals of "Seeing is Believing" (08:44) Biology analogy & paper overview (15:07) Sponsor: Omneky (26:08) Research precedents (30:00) Locality vs modularity (37:40) Shoutout Tiny Stories : Episode 33 (39:00) Quantization Model of Neuro Scaling. (1:00:00) How can this work impact mechanistic interpretability strategies (1:27:00) Training (1:46:30) Downscaling large-scale models TWITTER: @labenz (Nathan) @ZimingLiu11 (Ziming) @cogrev_podcast SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky (www.omneky.com) for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. MUSIC CREDIT: MusicLM

S1 Ep 38E38: The Virtual Biopsy Revolution with Dr. Tanishq Mathew Abraham (Part 2 of 2)
Part 2 of Nathan's conversation with Tanishq Mathew Abraham focuses on Tanishq's work with virtual biopsy technology enabled by deep learning. This unique technology has the potential to address a number of important biomedical challenges; in particular, qOBM could help during live tumor and cancer removal surgeries. Tanishq, a 19-year-old UC Davis grad and one of the youngest people in the world to receive a Ph.D, with a degree in biomedical engineering, is the founder of the Medical AI Research Center (MedARC). In case you haven’t yet listened to part 1, check it out! That episode goes deep on Tanishq’s first published paper: Reconstructions of the Mind’s Eye, which encompasses breakthrough research on reconstructing visual perceptions from fMRI scans into images. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics The Cognitive Revolution is a part of the Turpentine podcast network. To learn more: Turpentine.co TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (03:26) Introducing Tanishq’s second paper presenting an AI-enabled biopsy (06:39) Diagnostic applications of this unique slide-free and label-free technology (qOBM) (13:06) Leveraging deep learning, specifically generative adversarial networks (GANs) (14:55) Sponsor: Omneky (15:42) Framework for model (16:22) Challenges of medical data sets (20:11) Challenges of unpaired image to image translation, addressed with a CycleGAN architecture (22:19) What didn’t work (25:44) Breaking down GAN frameworks (34:30) Simplifying data to better with the CycleGAN (36:02) Factors for errors and confusing the model (39:00) Compute and training requirements (41:35) How this technology can scale in the near term and improve patient care (45:53) Tanishq’s relationships with EleutherAI and Stability AI (47:08) The future-looking focus of MedArc and unexplored opportunities (49:00) Developments in Medical AI field and interesting applications (55:11) Early education and AI (58:00) Would Tanishq get a neuralink? (1:00:00) Tanishq’s hopes and fears for AI LINKS: Paper: Label- and slide-free tissue histology using 3D epi-mode quantitative phase imaging and virtual H&E staining https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.00548.pdf Authors: Tanishq Mathew Abraham, Paloma Casteleiro Costa, Caroline Filan, Zhe Guang, Zhaobin Zhang, Stewart Neill, Jeffrey J. Olson, Richard Levenson, Francisco E. Robles TWITTER: @iScienceLuvr (Tanishq) @MedARC_AI (MedARC) @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSOR: Thank you Omneky (www.omneky.com) for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. MUSIC CREDIT: MusicLM

S1 Ep 36E37: The Mind-Reading Revolution with Dr. Tanishq Mathew Abraham (Part 1 of 2)
In this episode, Nathan sits down with Tanishq Mathew Abraham, 19-year-old UC Davis grad and one of the youngest people in the world to receive a Ph.D, with a degree in biomedical engineering. Tanishq is the founder of the Medical AI Research Center (MedARC), and with his teammates, recently published a paper: Reconstructions of the Mind's Eye, which encompasses their breakthrough research on reconstructing visual perceptions from fMRI scans into images. In this episode, Nathan and Tanishq talk about the technology behind the fMRI-to-image project, developing the model, and future applications for this research. Part 2 with Tanishq will be released as the next episode. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics The Cognitive Revolution is a part of the Turpentine podcast network. To learn more: Turpentine.co TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (05:43) The MindEye Project (09:06) Resemblance between AI reconstruction of mind's eye and visual presented (10:00) What is a voxel and which regions of the brain were studied? (10:23) What would the raw data of a voxel be? (11:44) Is there a time dimension to voxels? (15:00) Sponsor: Omneky (17:50) Goals for the MindEye project (25:57) What is the starting point of the model? (31:15) Aligning the model: reconstruction vs retrieval (40:34) Would doing a full end-to-end training be fine for the reconstruction? (42:15) The role of a limited data set (43:09) Training separate models per subject (45:07) Generalizability with a limited dataset (47:20) Mapping from one high-dimensional space to another (50:47) Stable Diffusion VAE encoding (1:00:50) How long does it take to train the model? (1:03:14) How similar or different are the subjects and their individual models? (1:05:59) The future of this research: custom models for your brain? (1:07:34) How much does this research contribute to brain research and wearables? (1:11:15) Fuzzing data and future research applications LINKS: MedARC: medarc.ai MindEye Paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371136623_Reconstructing_the_Mind's_Eye_fMRI-to-Image_with_Contrastive_Learning_and_Diffusion_Priors MP3 of this episode: https://chrt.fm/track/993DGA/traffic.megaphone.fm/RINTP1584997572.mp3?updated=1687271014 TWITTER: @iScienceLuvr (Tanishq) @MedARC_AI (MedARC) @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSOR: Thank you Omneky (www.omneky.com) for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. MUSIC CREDIT: MusicLM

S1 Ep 36E36: Your Model, Your Weights with MosaicML's Abhi Venigalla and Jonathan Frankle
In this episode, Nathan sits down with Jonathan Frankle, Chief Scientist, and Abhi Venigalla, Research Scientist of MosaicML. They chat about Mosaic’s custom LLMs, the customers seeking Mosaic out and what their journeys and use cases look like, and exciting developments in Mosaic’s research: including their new inference platform, as well as Mosaic’s MPT-7B-65k+ storywriter model. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics The Cognitive Revolution is a part of the Turpentine podcast network. To learn more: www.turpentine.co TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (06:04) Mosaic’s business model (07:28) Who uses Mosaic’s custom LLMs? What does their data look like? (09:55)Mosaic’s use cases for custom LLMs (12:47) How much extraction and summarization was done by humans pre-LLMs? (15:28) Sponsor: Omneky (21:50) The journeys of Mosaic’s customers and would a Wendy’s LLM know about a Big Mac? (25:46) The curriculum model and fine-tuning (29:10) Language models in the life sciences (33:20) How raw can data be before it becomes a problem? (35:44) Using the output of bulk pre-training process vs additional after training (38:30) Redteaming as a service (39:40) Mosaic’s inference platform (41:53) Spending one cent on 20,000 tokens, how is that cent distributed? (46:00)) Selling compute on a dedicated capacity basis (47:30) Oracle and AWS (49:50) The storywriter model and 65,000 token window (54:35) The transition from finite parameters into infinite attention matrix LINKS: MosaicML: https://www.mosaicml.com/ MPT-7B Storywriter Model: https://huggingface.co/mosaicml/mpt-7b-storywriter TWITTER: @jefrankle (Jonathan) @abhi_venigalla (Abhi) @MosaicML (Mosaic) @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. Music Credit: MusicLM

S1 Ep 35E35: Stability AI’s Emad Mostaque and Slow Ventures’ Sam Lessin Discuss Investing in AI
In this episode, Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg host a discussion between Emad Mostaque, founder of Stability AI, and Sam Lessin, GP of Slow Ventures and former VP Product at Facebook. These influential technology thinkers tackle topics pertinent to evaluating whether AI is a good investment for venture capital. They talk about the attention and information economy, SaaS markets, how AI-created entertainment will impact society and our relationships, and AI disruption of highly-regulated industries. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. LINK FOR NATHAN'S LIVE EVENT IN SAN FRANCISCO: Friday June 16th: Why AI with Athena: https://v4p9mjmurpv.typeform.com/to/llRcJSF9 TIMESTAMP: (00:00) Episode Preview (01:17) Nathan explains why we hosted a conversation with Emad and Sam (08:25) Discussion kicks off: AI as an extender rather than a deck shuffler (12:01) Is AI a disruptive or sustaining innovation? (14:22) What is intelligence? (16:00) The attention and information economy (21:56) Storytelling, the stock market, and the economy (23:23) Sponsor: Omneky (23:50) AI in the media industry, Hollywood, and distribution (29:10) Startups vs incumbents (30:30) Disrupting highly-regulated industries (32:30) AI in education: an AI tutor for every child (35:15) AI as StackOverflow 2.0 for engineers (37:23) Regulatory Arbitrage (40:06) The oracle problem in AI (42:00) Apple as the weakest BigTech player in AI (44:30) AI in communities and the future of social media (46:55) Replika on Valentine’s Day and AI-generated porn (53:50) How does the market for inference shape up? Inference vs. cloud (55:08) Price of primary care in US in the next decade (55:38) What are the most likely incumbents to be disrupted? (56:55) Will BigTech continue to opensource? (58:56) Marriage rate in US in the future given AI (01:00:24) Can any AI leader sustain high gross margins in the future? (01:02:04) Stability’s business model TWITTER: @EMostaque (Emad) @Lessin (Sam) @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. Download this episode as an mp3: https://chrt.fm/track/993DGA/traffic.megaphone.fm/RINTP2126380296.mp3?updated=1686676812 Music Credit: MusicLM

S1 Ep 34E34: The Consumer Rights Revolution with Joshua Browder of DoNotPay
In this episode, Nathan sits down with Joshua Browder of DoNotPay, the world’s first robot lawyer. They chat about the current state of AI use in law, what policymakers should consider in regulating AI, and the ethics of robo-lawyers for consumer use. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (03:22) Joshua Browder and the story of DoNotPay (04:50) The value incurred through an AI lawyer (07:17) What are the legal and financial injustices that motivates Joshua’s work? (12:46) How does the AI negotiate with a Comcast chat agent? (16:28) Consumer security (17:12) Sponsor: Omneky (21:08) The ethics of DoNotPay (22:27) Should AI need to disclose that it’s AI? (24:47) How much human intervention is necessary in AI tooling? (27:15) Where does the burden of proof lie for AI regulation and ethics? (31:47) Advice to policymakers (35:45) AI Liability (38:05) AI Arms Race (43:46) Productive bot interactions (45:00) AI-powered arbitration (49:28) How the consumer experience might change two years from now (51:45) AI Superapps (55:25) Moats in AI (57:11) How much money does DoNotPay save people today? (59:30) Consumer and enterprise timelines given AI (01:06:30) What will AI replace? (01:09:34) Impact of AI in different industries (01:11:10) The legal field’s view of AI (01:15:50) Deflationary factors in running DoNotPay (01:25:00) What are non-obvious ways to save money? (01:27:55) Joshua’s favorite AI tools (01:28:17) Would Joshua get a Neuralink implant? LINKS: https://donotpay.com/ TWITTER: @jbrowder1 (Joshua) @DoNotPay (DoNotPay) @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. NEWSLETTER: More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com

S1 Ep 34E33: The Tiny Model Revolution with Ronen Eldan and Yuanzhi Li of Microsoft Research
Nathan Labenz sits down with Ronen Eldan and Yuanzhi Li of Microsoft Research to discuss the small natural language dataset they created called TinyStories. Tiny Stories is designed to reflect the full richness of natural language while still being small to support research with modest compute budgets. Using this dataset, they began to explore aspects of language model performance, behavior, and mechanism by training a series of models that range in size from just 1 million to a maximum of 33 million parameters – which is still just 2% the scale of GPT-2. In this conversation, Nathan, Ronen, and Yuanzhi touch on LM reasoning, emergence, interpretability, and what understanding can be extended to LLMs. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics LINKS: Tiny Stories paper: https://huggingface.co/papers/2305.07759 TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (07:12) The inspiration for the Tiny Stories project (15:07) Sponsor: Omneky (15:44) Creating the Tiny Stories dataset (21:27) GPT-4 vs GPT-3.5 (24:13) Did the TinyStories team try any other versions of GPT-4 (29:23) Curriculum models and weirder curriculums (35:34) What does reasoning mean? (46:27) What does emergence mean? (01:01:44) The curriculum development space (01:11:40) The similarities between models and human development (01:20:12) Fewer layers vs. more layers (01:29:22) Attention heads (01:33:40) Semantic attention head (01:36:54) Neuron technique used in developing the TinyStories model (01:52:20) Interpretability work that inspires Ronen and Yuanzhi TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @EldanRonen (Ronen) @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. Music Credit: MusicLM More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com

E32: [Bonus Episode - The AI Breakdown] Can OpenAI's New GPT Training Model Solve Math and AI Alignment At the Same Time?
This 20-min episode comes from our friend Nathaniel Whittemore's excellent daily podcast The AI Breakdown Podcast. This episode aired on June 1, 2023, and covers the latest developments from OpenAI, including new features, a cybersecurity grant program, and their new process rewards model for trading. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics SPONSOR: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. Subscribe to The AI Breakdown podcast: https://pod.link/1680633614 Subscribe to The AI Breakdown on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAIBreakdown

S1 Ep 31E31: Where are the Moats in AI? With Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg
Nathan and Erik analyze the moats of the most powerful companies in AI. The paradigm-shifting technology has led to a flourishing open-source community with market share. Yet, the big players have key competitive advantages that can be examined from many different angles. LINKS: Nathan’s Twitter thread on AI moats that sparked this discussion: https://twitter.com/labenz/status/1654853321876815872 Read about the 9 moats at length in our newsletter: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/p/the-leaked-google-memo-and-a Leaderboard for AI rankings: https://lmsys.org/ -- We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (01:36) Where are the moats in AI? (07:31) Open source vs. closed (15:24) Recommendation: The AI Breakdown Podcast (16:39) Sponsor: Omneky (20:46) AI Safety (33:00) Which players are going to win? 9 Moats. TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. Music Credit: MusicLM More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com

S1 Ep 30E30: The AI Revolution in Hollywood? With WGA writers Trey Kollmer, Sophia Lear, and Garrett Schabb
Today’s episode is a deep dive into the collision of AI and the future of entertainment, against the backdrop of the still-raging Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike. Nathan Labenz sits down with Trey Kollmer, Sophia Lear, and Garrett Schabb – all seasoned television writers and Guild members – to discuss the labor dispute. While the strike encompasses many dynamics, the timely intersection with a rapidly changing AI landscape has the writers entwined in the wild possibilities and existential threats of paradigm-shifting technology. Other entertainment guilds and labor unions are watching closely. Note: Nathan kicks off this episode with a longer-than-usual introduction and analysis as the subject matter of this episode requires some added context. If you would prefer to dive straight into the interviews, follow the timecodes below to skip ahead (and maybe give the intro a listen when you finish!) More about our guests Trey Kollmer, Sophia Lear, and Garrett Schabb and their work: Trey Kollmer, currently co-executive producer for the TV show Ghosts, was described to me as perhaps the single most knowledgeable guild member on the topic of AI. Follow him at @treyko on Twitter. Sophia Lear has been a writer for TV shows including Ghosts, The Unicorn, and New Girl, and was also previously an assistant literary editor for the New Republic. Garrett Schabb has written for shows including Tosh.0 and Suits (of Meghan Markle fame), and has also written for Crooked Media. Follow him at @garrettschabb TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Preview (01:54) Introduction and analysis for this episode (09:02) Trey Kollmer breaks down the dynamics of compensation, ownership and crediting for WGA writers, issues at the heart of the strike (14:52) Sponsor: Omneky (15:09) Recommendation: The AI Breakdown (22:42) Usefulness of AI for script writing (and will better training out of jailbreaks make it less useful?) (30:59) The main two AI-related demands of the labor dispute (42:48) Writers’ diverse reactions to AI, from hostility to experimentation (50:00) Picturing a long term Utopian future (57:46) Sophia Lear breaks down sentiments around GPT-4, AI-generated scripts and the previous eras of crappy sitcoms and bad streaming series (written by humans) (1:11:27) Whose jobs are safe? (1:17:03) Garrett Schabb breaks down dystopian/realistic view of studio’s incentives (1:20:33) How Garrett uses ChatGPT (1:27:37) Ethical boundaries of using the model to write like your favorite writers (1;32:16) The two types of storytelling in the future, UBI and decoupling writing from a profession SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. Music Credit: MusicLM More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com

S1 Ep 29E29: The AI Chip Revolution with Andrew Feldman of Cerebras
Nathan Labenz sits down with Andrew Feldman, CEO and Co-Founder of Cerebras Systems, a company building a new class of computer system for accelerating AI and changing the future of work. Cerebras Systems is the creator of the world’s largest chip, at 2.6 trillion transistors. In this episode, they discuss the founding story of Cerebras, the experience of creating the world’s largest chip, and the process that goes into chip design and manufacturing for an AI-focused chip. This episode is the first part of our hardware exploration series focused on the people building at the forefront of hardware applications in AI. LINKS: Cerebras: https://www.cerebras.net/ Book: The Chip War by Chris Miller We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. PODCAST RECOMMENDATION: The AI Breakdown: https://pod.link/1680633614 As anyone in AI knows, the pace of progress of new releases is relentless. The AI Breakdown is a daily podcast (10-20min long) that helps us ensure we don't miss anything important by curating news and analysis. TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Preview (04:27) Andrew’s story of creating the world’s largest chip and Cerebras (07:19) What is a chip? (08:14) The diversity of chips and what they can accomplish (09:47) What is it like to design a 2.5 trillion transistor chip? (12:41) The founding story of Cerebras and building the team (14:20) Sponsor: Omneky (23:00) What was the hardest part about building the company? (26:11) What happens after designing the chip’s blueprint? (27:29) The tradeoffs needed in chipmaking (34:08) The comparison between chips and neural networks (38:31) The generalization vs specialization of a chip (40:11) Sparse compute vs dense compute (43:55) Ghost in the machine (46:54) Supply chain challenges of the Cerebras chip (54:59) The future for chips (58:19) Building chip clusters (58:57) The Cerebras business model (01:00:41) Building a chip cluster vs using a Cerebras chip (01:02:57) Giant chips on the edge (01:05:32) What is the edge? (01:08:04) Andrew’s favorite AI products (01:10:08) Would Andrew get a Neuralink implant? (01:14:16) Consciousness and chips (01:17:50) AI hopes and fears TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @andrewdfeldman (Andrew) @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. Music Credit: MusicLM More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com

S1 Ep 28E28: Keeping the AI Revolution on the Rails with Shreya Rajpal of Guardrails AI
Nathan Labenz sits down with engineer Shreya Rajpal, the creator of Guardrails AI, a new Python library that allows developers to add a layer of output, validation and correction to their code. Practically guardrails can ensure a reliable interface between language models and more traditional deterministic software systems. At the same time, mind-bending and potentially risky use case frameworks like Guardrails allow developers to ask and answer entirely new kinds of questions. Talking to Shreya really reinforced just how early we are in LLM’s impact on the software industry. We were introduced to Shreya’s work when recording our interview with Matt Welsh, the CEO of Fixie.AI (Ep 19: How AI Agents Will Change How We Work). LINKS: Guardrails AI: https://shreyar.github.io/guardrails/ We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode preview (05:00) Why Shreya built Guardrails AI (08:33) Common ways LMs can “go off the rails” and how Guardrails can correct it (13:45) Discussion of validators (15:31) Sponsor: Omneky (18:48) Business and creative use cases of Guardrails AI (25:00) What can be achieved by Guardrails AI that cannot be achieved by traditional code (32:44) How agents work vs how Guardrails works (35:34) AI as shepherd vs delegating to AI and the role of human understanding (39:54) Trust deficit and risks (46:33) Is it realistic to imagine GPT-4 using Guardrails? (52:00) How Shreya thinks about security (57:02) How Shreya thinks about embeddings (1:05:05) How Shreya thinks about problemsolving with LMs (1:07:50) Shreya on OpenAI’s Evals Library, Anthropic’s Constitutional AI (1:12:55) Discussion of determinism (1:15:00) Recommendations for developers to minimize overhead (1:26:00) Predictions about providers in the space of LMs (1:29:30) Shreya’s favorite AI tools (1:30:00) Would Shreya get a neuralink implant (1:31:50) Biggest hopes and fears for AI TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @ShreyaR (Shreya) @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. Music Credit: MusicLM More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com

S1 Ep 28E27: “Google’s Med-PaLM and Med-PaLM2 with Vivek Natarajan”
Nathan sits down with Vivek Natarajan, research scientist at Google Health. Vivek leads the Google Brain moonshot behind Med-PaLM, Google’s flagship medical large language model, featured in The Economist, The Scientific American, CNBC, and Forbes. In this episode, they discuss the foundational models that Vivek and team built before Med-PaLM, the techniques used to develop Med-PaLM which will be of interest to anyone developing AI systems for high-stakes use cases, and the capabilities for Med-PaLM to equalize access to medical knowledge and care. This episode is part of a series centered on talking to the people at the cutting edge of building AI-driven solutions in medicine. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. LINKS: https://sites.research.google/med-palm/ FEEDBACK / COLLABORATE WITH NATHAN: Email: [email protected] TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode preview (03:43) The story of how Med-PaLM came to be (09:41) Building Med-PaLM’s infrastructure (13:10) The US medical licensing exam as a measure of AI progress (15:23) Sponsor: Omneky (18:17) Practicality of benchmarking in real-world usage (21:39) Overcoming the shortfalls of Flan-PaLM with Med-PaLM (25:08) Choosing to use soft prompting over few shot prompting (30:36) The process of training Flan-PaLM (37:31) A curriculum approach to soft-prompting (38:43) Layperson vs expert interactions with LLMs (43:54) How did the Google team facilitate user exploration of the model’s capabilities? (46:58) Shift in techniques from Med-PaLM to Med-PaLM2 (50:21) Using different prompting strategies with Med-PaLM2 (57:33) Is Med-PaLM 2 preferred over clinicians? (01:02:28) Will there be a multimodal version of Med-PaLM? (01:04:52) Breakthroughs required for AI to further advance human potential (01:10:23) The Med-PaLM business plan (01:12:08) Is there a vision for a consumer product? (01:15:46) The pros and cons of pre-training a model (01:19:45) Vivek’s favorite AI products (01:21:01) Would Vivek get a Neuralink implant? (01:23:08) AI hopes and fears TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @vivnat (Vivek) @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. Music Credit: MusicLM More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

S1 Ep 26E26: [Bonus Episode] Connor Leahy on AGI, GPT-4, and Cognitive Emulation w/ FLI Podcast
[Bonus Episode] Future of Life Institute Podcast host Gus Docker interviews Conjecture CEO Connor Leahy to discuss GPT-4, magic, cognitive emulation, demand for human-like AI, and aligning superintelligence. You can read more about Connor's work at https://conjecture.dev Future of Life Institute is the organization that recently published an open letter calling for a six-month pause on training new AI systems. FLI was founded by Jann Tallinn who we interviewed in Episode 16 of The Cognitive Revolution. We think their podcast is excellent. They frequently interview critical thinkers in AI like Neel Nanda, Ajeya Cotra, and Connor Leahy - an episode we found particularly fascinating and is airing for our audience today. The FLI Podcast also recently interviewed Nathan Labenz for a 2-part episode: https://futureoflife.org/podcast/nathan-labenz-on-how-ai-will-transform-the-economy/ SUBSCRIBE: Future of Life Institute Podcast: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/future-of-life-institute-podcast/id1170991978 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2Op1WO3gwVwCrYHg4eoGyP -- We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode introduction (01:55) GPT-4 (18:30) "Magic" in machine learning (29:43) Cognitive emulations (40:00) Machine learning VS explainability (49:50) Human data = human AI? (1:01:50) Analogies for cognitive emulations (1:28:10) Demand for human-like AI (1:33:50) Aligning superintelligence SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. If you'd like to listen to Part 2 of this interview with Connor Leahy, you can head here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/connor-leahy-on-the-state-of-ai-and-alignment-research/id1170991978?i=1000609972001

S1 Ep 25E25: Revolutionizing Patient Care with Neal Khosla of Curai Health
Nathan and Erik sit down with Neal Khosla, founder of Curai Health, a venture-backed virtual care startup using AI to provide low-cost primary healthcare. Prior to his current role at Curai, Neal was a machine learning researcher at Google and Stanford. In this episode, they discuss the current state of AI in medicine, what the future patient experience may look like, and how developments in AI healthcare may interact with different regulatory and social forces across the globe. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics FEEDBACK We'd love to hear your feedback or answer any listener questions live on an upcoming episode. DM @labenz on Twitter or email us at [email protected] with "TCR" in the subject line. We'd appreciate it immensely if you left us a review on Apple Podcasts or a rating on Spotify! TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Preview (04:32) The future of AI in medicine (12:50) Patient experience in AI-driven medicine and the current state of AI in medicine (15:04) Sponsor: Omneky (20:34) Building the LLM architecture for medicine (25:25) Current state of the art for AI in medicine (28:54) Evaluating LLM performance in medicine (31:49) Benchmarking LLMs in medicine (39:17) Using the Socratic method in training LLMs (43:57) Multimodal systems and deploying multiple models in medicine (51:30) The future of LLM creation and usage (59:47) The interaction of AI medicine with social and regulatory forces (01:11:00) AI adoption in countries with centralized healthcare systems (01:13:37) How should we regulate the usage of AI in medicine? (01:16:57) AI-first systems in medicine (01:18:19) Is there an obligation to deploy AI in medicine in its current state? (01:20:48) Neal’s favorite AI products (01:22:21) Would Neal get a Neuralink implant? (01:24:54) AI hopes and fears TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @nealkhosla (Neal) @labenz (Nathan) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com

S1 Ep 24E24: The AI Revolution in Medicine with Dr. Isaac Kohane of Harvard Medical School
Nathan sits down with Professor Zak Kohane, the Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, and co-author of the new book, The AI Revolution in Medicine, for which Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO wrote the foreword to the book. Professor Kohane was among a select few people to receive early preview and research access to GPT-4 in the fall of 2022, and his approach to exploring and characterizing how AI is about to transform medicine. The book is out May 13, 2023 and can be ordered here (or on Amazon by searching for "The AI Revolution in Medicine") Regardless of the field you're in, Dr. Kohane's combination of deep immersion, enthusiastic exploration, pragmatic optimism, risk awareness, realism, and forward-thinking vision make this a worthy example for others to study and emulate. -- We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode preview (05:29) Dr. Isaac Kohane’s story (15:00) Sponsor: Omneky (16:29) Advice to others thinking of applying AI to their own disciplines (20:33) The tension of using AI in medicine (25:04) The Trial Paradigm of AI (31:15) Is it possible to use GPT as a healthcare provider in population studies? (34:14) The Trainee Paradigm of AI (36:09) The Partner Paradigm of AI and how doctors should use AI (40:33) AI provided interaction and how that can improve patient care (42:26) The Torchbearer Paradigm of AI (42:59) Can GPT independently conduct medical research? (46:58) The future for impactful use cases of AI in medicine (51:04) Integrating AlphaFold into language models (54:10) AI-alignment and patient data in medicine TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @zakkohane (Isaac) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: cognitiverevolution.substack.com

S1 Ep 23E23: Scouting the AI Revolution with Robert Scoble and "Ben's Bites" creator Ben Tossell
Nathan Labenz sits down with prominent – and notably prescient – AI media figures Robert Scoble and Ben Tossell. They discuss what the work of being an AI scout looks like, how to bring the mainstream along with emerging AI developments, and their predictions and hopes for AI. Robert Scoble is a long-time Silicon Valley technology explorer and connector, a futurist who's met so many technology legends in their primes that he's now also something of a historian. https://scobleizer.blog/ Ben Tossell is the creator of Ben's Bites, an AI round up newsletter meant to be read in 5 minutes or less, read by over 90,000 subscribers. https://www.bensbites.co/ This episode caps off our series centered on talking to rising voices in AI media: people who are now only working overtime to understand everything going on in AI, but also creating thought leadership and educational content meant to help others get up to speed as well. -- We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics BOOK RECOMMENDATION: The Scout Mindset from author Julia Galef TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @Scobleizer (Robert) @bentossell (Ben SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. More original content from Nathan is published in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

S1 Ep 22E22: Helping Businesses Use AI with Rachel Woods of The AI Exchange
Nathan Labenz sits down with Rachel Woods, founder of The AI Exchange, an AI education platform with over 130,000 subscribers on TikTok. They discuss Rachel’s experience consulting for public and private companies on AI strategy, how teams should think about their AI strategy, and how Rachel uses AI in her own business. Rachel was previously a data scientist at Meta, and a founder of a venture-backed e-commerce startup, where she began to use chatGPT in her startup operations. This episode is the second in a series centered on talking to rising voices in AI media: people who are now only working overtime to understand everything going on in AI, but also creating thought leadership and educational content meant to help others get up to speed as well. -- We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode preview (02:59) Rachel Woods’ story (04:30) State of the public who comes across videos (9:49): How do you frame AI to business owners and how should they use it? (15:29) Sponsor: Omneky (18:58) How should teams set up their AI strategy for success? (26:41) The leap from GPT 3.5 to GPT-4 (30:42) Step changes of AI and public perception of capabilities (35:17) Common misconceptions people have about AI (36:22) How Rachel uses AI in her business (44:09) What’s your style of prompt engineering for content creation? (46:01) How AI will change the way we use a computer in the next year? (49:34) Bing launch and how companies launch AI products (54:15) AI safety and restraint (1:00:11) Alpaca and LLaMA (1:04:16) Rachel’s favorite products in AI (1:05:24) Would Rachel get a Neuralink implant? (1:07:55) AI hopes and fears TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @rachel_l_woods (Rachel) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

S1 Ep 21E21: VC Insights on Investing in Artificial Intelligence with Sarah Guo and Elad Gil of No Priors Podcast
Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg sit down with Sarah Guo and Elad Gil, notable investors and co-hosts of the AI-focused No Priors podcast. They discuss how Sarah and Elad are approaching AI investment opportunities right now, how that differs from how they've thought about investing in the past, where in the stack from hardware to applications they expect to see value accrue, what modes of human-AI interaction they are most interested in, and more. Sarah is the founder of $100M AI-focused venture fund Conviction VC, which she launched last fall. She was previously General Partner at Greylock. Elad is a serial entrepreneur and a startup investor. He has invested in over 40 companies now worth $1B or more each, and is also author of the High Growth Handbook. This episode is the first in a series centered on talking to rising voices in AI media, people who are now only working overtime to understand everything going on in AI, but also creating thought leadership and educational content meant to help others get up to speed as well. LINKS: No Priors Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0O65xhqvGVhpgdIrrdlEYk No Priors on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/no-priors-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning/id1668002688 Elad Gil's blog: https://blog.eladgil.com/ Sarah Guo's blog: https://sarahguo.com/blog -- We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode preview (04:43) What is software 3.0 (09:14) Disruption coming from startups or incumbents? (13:42) Sarah and Elad identify overlooked investment opportunities in AI (15:19) Sponsor: Omneky (15:46) Future of social media (22:45) AI agents & personal co-pilots (25:32) Where to invest in AI? (31:11) How our kids will interact with AI (34:50) How to gain conviction as an investor in AI (45:07) When should founders raise money and when should they bootstrap? (46:28) How should startups spend their capital now that we have AI capabilities? (48:10) Sarah & Elad’s favorite products in AI (51:39) Would Sarah & Elad get a neuralink implant? (53:41) AI hopes and fears TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @sarahnormous (Sarah) @eladgil (Elad) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

S1 Ep 20E20: The Great Implementation with Raza Habib, CEO of Humanloop
Raza Habib is on the front lines of LLM implementation as CEO of Humanloop, a Y Combinator backed startup that helps companies of all kinds, small and large bridge the gap from API access to successful LLM deployment. Nathan sat down with Raza to hear what he has learned in the process of helping so many companies on their LLM implementation journeys – and he did not disappoint – as you'll hear, he shared a bunch of concrete examples of customer use cases, practical challenges that people face, and the strategies they use to overcome them. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Preview of episode (07:00) Humanloop’s mission and surprising customer base (12:10) Why a language model is so advantageous (15:00) Customization and understanding model performance (18:14) Sponsor: Omneky (18:35) Users graduating from playground experimentation to develop robust implementations (23:25) Raza’s two mental models for using AI (27:50) How customers are actually integrating API (31:50) Challenge of evaluation and feedback (43:33) Prediction: more fine tuning in the immediate future (47:00) RLHF myth-busting (57:12) Robust agents need feedback loops (1:02:27) AI productization challenges (01:07:32) Adopt or die moment for incumbents (01:11:19) Fast iteration cycles (1:15:45) Rapid fire questions for The Cognitive Revolution guests TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @RazRazcle (Raza) @labenz (Nathan) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

S1 Ep 19E19: The AI Agent Revolution with Matt Welsh of Fixie.ai
Nathan Labenz sits down with Matt Welsh, the CEO and co-founder of Fixie.AI which just raised $17M in seed funding. The technology world's attention has turned en masse to AI agents over the last month, but Matt, a former Harvard professor and ex-Google, has been focused on AI agents for longer over at Fixie. The platform is currently in developer preview mode, where developers can build agents and end users can try them. Agents hold the promise of handling not only the core cognitive work, but many of the messy implementation details as well – the searching & finding, sorting through & scanning, signing in & navigating, reading documentation & using APIs – all the manual ad hoc routing of information for which we act today as human plumbing. -- We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Preview of the episode (02:08) Why AI Agents are so topical right now, and Matt's prescience with Fixie (06:40) How Matt started Fixie (10:55) How AI Agents "figure out the plumbing" (15:57) How Matt envisions work changing in the near term + concrete examples (22:40) Building your own agent (26:00) New threat model and guardrails of this new paradigm (34:48) Synthetic memories in autonomous agents (42:39) Examples of incredible use cases (48:00) Single sign on idea (51:00) Form factor for AI-assisted living (54:32) Matt's hopes and fears for AI TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @mdwelsh (Matt) @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. https://www.omneky.com/ More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com Also, check out the debut of co-host Erik's new long-form interview podcast Upstream, whose guests include David Sacks. Ezra Klein, Balaji Srinivasan, and Marc Andreessen. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts: bit.ly/3z8TldL Spotify: bit.ly/40letd0 Music Credit: OpenAI's Jukebox

S1 Ep 18E18: Why Jailbreaking ChatGPT Is A Public Good with Alex Albert of The Prompt Report
Nathan dives in with Alex Albert, a 22-year-old computer science student at the University of Washington, who has become a prolific creator of Jailbreakchat.com and author over at The Prompt Report.com. This is Alex's first podcast appearance! Please enjoy this thought-provoking conversation with Alex Albert as part of 'Prompt Engineering Week' at The Cognitive Revolution. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics Thank you to everyone for listening, and shout out to those who commented to let us know how you discovered the show – it was interesting to see the responses across platforms. We'd appreciate you leaving us a review in the Apple Podcasts Store: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1669813431 TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) Preview of Alex on this episode (6:00) How Alex lent structure to his jailbreaking activities early on (8:00) AI is fun and interesting and it's being overshadowed by hype and confusion (12:15) Does Alex see cases of jailbreaking for utility? (16:13) Sponsor: Omneky (25:59) GPT-4 is best for jailbreaking (33:20) Role-play jailbreaks can work (43:59) How to think about exploring black box technology (45:19) Training models to override bad behavior (54:55) Content filters are a band-aid (1:07:14) AI safety (1:13:02) AI models require scrutiny. (1:19:39) Optimism - humans will figure it out TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @alexalbert__ (Alex) @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. https://www.omneky.com/ More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com Also, check out the debut of co-host Erik's new long-form interview podcast Upstream, whose guests include David Sacks. Ezra Klein, Balaji Srinivasan, and Marc Andreessen. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts: bit.ly/3z8TldL Spotify: bit.ly/40letd0 Music Credit: OpenAI's Jukebox

S1 Ep 17E17: The Prompt Engineering Revolution with Riley Goodside
For anyone who discovered this show on Twitter, Riley (@goodside) likely needs no introduction – after all, he spent most of 2022 posting his explorations of OpenAI's text-davinci-002, and quickly became one of the must-follow accounts in AI. Riley Goodside is the world's first Staff Prompt Engineer at Scale AI, and is an expert in prompting large language models and integrating them into AI-powered applications. Few have spent as much time on the language model frontier, so I hope you enjoy this unique conversation with Riley Goodside. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) Preview of the episode (05:13) Riley's unique background (11:24) Riley's original narrow moat (15:07) Sponsors: Omneky (17:02) LLMs can take on ncreasingly complex instructions (27:41) Language models can do math (30:05) Models can learn from context (37:29) Fine-tune models for tasks (38:47) Automate instruction following (44:34) Large language models are alien text prediction (52:27) Avoid mode collapse by framing (59:05) Composing AI capabilities like Lego bricks (1:00:37) Language models solve tasks (1:05:37) GPT-3 solves real-world tasks (1:15:03) GPT-4's amazing capabilities (1:17:03) Multimodal abilities unlock possibilities (1:25:03) Compare models for best task fit (1:26:24) Compare models using trial and error (1:36:15) AI and the future of work (1:42:29) GPT-4 can provide second opinions (1:45:06) AI safety discussion (1:50:20) AI permeates society cautiously (1:55:26) The AI revolution underway TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @Goodside (Riley) @scale_AI (Scale) @labenz (Nathan) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

S1 Ep 16E16: Pausing the AI Revolution? With Technologist Jaan Tallinn
Nathan Labenz dives in with Jaan Tallinn, a technologist, entrepreneur (Kazaa, Skype), and investor (DeepMind and more) whose unique life journey has intersected with some of the most important social and technological events of our collective lifetime. Jaan has since invested in nearly 180 startups, including dozens of AI application layer companies and some half dozen startup labs that focus on fundamental AI research, all in an effort to support the teams that he believes most likely to lead us to AI safety, and to have a seat at the table at organizations that he worries might take on too much risk. He's also founded several philanthropic nonprofits, including the Future of Life Institute, which recently published the open letter calling for a six-month pause on training new AI systems. In this discussion, we focused on: - the current state of AI development and safety -Jan's expectations for possible economic transformation - what catastrophic failure modes worry him most in the near term - How big of a bullet we dodged with the training of GPT-4 - Which organizations really matter for immediate-term pause purposes - How AI race dynamics are likely to evolve over the next couple of years LINKS REFERENCED IN THE EPISODE: Future of Life's open letter: https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/ Eliezer Yudkowsky's TIME article: https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/ Podcast: Daniela and Dario Amodei on Anthropic- https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/daniela-and-dario-amodei-on-anthropic/id1170991978?i=1000552976406 Zvi on the pause: https://thezvi.substack.com/p/on-the-fli-ai-risk-open-letter -- We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) Episode Preview (1:30) Jaan's impressive entrepreneurial career and his role in the recent AI Open Letter (3:26) AI safety and Future of Life Institute (6:55) Jaan's first meeting with Eliezer Yudkowsky and the founding of the Future of Life Institute (13:00) Future of AI evolution (15:55) Sponsor: Omneky (17:20) Jaan's investments in AI companies (24:22) The emerging danger paradigm (33:48) AI supervising itself (40:06) Evolution, useful heuristics, and lack of insight into selection process (43:13) Current estimate for life-ending catastrophe (54:20) Our luck given the softness of language models (56:24) Future of Language Models (1:01:00) The Moore’s law of mad science (1:03:02) GPT-5 type project (1:11:00) AI alignment with the latest models (1:14:31) AI research investment and safety (1:21:00) What a six month pause buys us (1:27:01) AI’s Turing Test Passing (1:33:18) Responsible AI development. (1:41:20) Neuralink implant technology

S1 Ep 15E15: Will GPT-4 Cause Economic Transformation?
Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg delve into the upcoming economic transformation and the future of work in light of the threshold crossed by GPT-4. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics LINKS REFERENCED IN THE EPISODE: Microsoft research paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712 TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) Preview (1:56) Unpacking "There will be economic transformation," Nathan’s reflection after red teaming GPT-4 (4:55) A cross-section of prompts Nathan ran through GPT-4 (17:00) Sponsor: Omneky (18:00) Future of business and a new style of Taylorism of knowledge work (28:00) The “shrinking category of work” and a new definition of work (36:00) A future of “Muggles” and the 1000x developer (51:15) Are we facing a bifurcated economy and regulations from special interest groups? (58:30) Upcoming morale shift of white-collar workers and predictions TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

S1 Ep 14E14: The Reasoning Revolution with Ought's Jungwon Byun and Andreas Stuhlmüller
We've looked forward to today's episode since we launched the show! Andreas Stuhlmuller and Jungwon Byun are the co-founders of Ought, a product-driven research lab that develops mechanisms for delegating open-ended thinking to advanced machine learning systems. Their flagship product, Elicit (elicit.org), is an AI research assistant that helps researchers accelerate time-consuming workflows, starting with literature review. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. LINKS REFERENCED IN EPISODE: Ought: https://ought.org/ Elicit: https://elicit.org/ TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) Preview (2:00) Nathan introduces the founders of Ought (4:20) Why doesn't AI serve better reasoning? (6:55) What limits the current paradigm (8:40) Reflections on the last six years of Ought’s research experiments of "composable thinking" (13:10) Error elimination mechanism is a shared challenge between human and AI systems (16:45) Sponsor: Omneky (18:00) Interpretability by construction product philosophy (25:00) Nathan’s personal experience using Elicit as a research assistant (30:00) Explicit concerns about model reasonings, and the importance of going a step further (36:00) What customers of OpenAI Foundry should consider (43:15) Evaluation challenges (48:15) Embeddings challenges (51:00) Vision for a knowledge work assembly line corporate paradigm (56:00) Ought's short-term approach to building: Understanding human ways of teaching the model to be more helpful (59:00) Wishful thinking versus real helpfulness (1:03:00) What's next for Elicit: expansion and new workflows (1:17:00) Zapier for reasoning (1:23:00) What are the most fundamental "magic questions" for all domains? (1:31:43) Significant impact of GPT4 (1:36:00) How people are using Elicit (1:44:00) AI Uncertainty and reason for hope (1:48:00) 3 lightning-round questions TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @jungofthewon @stuhlmueller @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]. More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/
S1 Ep 16E13: AI open letter debate, "pausers", and what we're all scared of with AI with Anton Troynikov and Flo Crivello [Moment of Zen]
Anton Troynikov of Chroma and Flo Crivello of Lindy AI join The Cognitive Revolution cohosts Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg to debate the issues raised in the AI open letter, which advocates for a 6-month pause on AI system trainings. This episode was recorded on March 31st and was first released as a Moment of Zen episode (airing April 1). Subscribe to Moment of Zen for more timely debates like this one! Also, check out the debut of Erik's new long-form interview podcast Upstream, whose guests in the first two episodes were Balaji Srinivasan and Marc Andreessen. This coming season will feature interviews with Ezra Klein, David Sacks, Katherine Boyle, and more. Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts: bit.ly/3z8TldL Spotify: bit.ly/40letd0 We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics LINKS REFERENCED IN EPISODE: Open letter: https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/ Scott Aronson blog post: https://scottaaronson.blog/ TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) Preview of debate (3:10) Introduction from Nathan and explanation of the AI open letter (8:50) Anton’s skepticism of the open letter (12:14) Flo’s skepticism of the open letter (16:35) Nathan’s support for the open letter (22:52) Sponsor: Omneky (28:00) Differences between Flo and Anton’s positions (34:00) GPT4 is still dangerous (42:30) Luddites/“Pausers” are on the wrong side of history (47:44) Why not pause for 6 months? (56:30) Anton and Flo debate robotics (1:04:30) What we’re all scared of with AI (1:27:45) Is there an asymmetric risk with pausing or not pausing? TWITTER: @CogRev_Podcast @atroyn (Anton) @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @altimor (Flo) SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/ Thank you to Graham Bessellieu for production.

S1 Ep 12E12: The Robot Revolution with Keerthana Gopalakrishnan of Google Robotics
Nathan Labenz talks to Google Robotics researcher Keerthana Gopalakrishnan (@keerthanpg) about how they train robots at Google, and how robots contextualize their environment and complete tasks through supervised learning. They go deep on integrating language models for commands and how to approach translating them, as well as the importance of robotics safety. Keerthana also shares how we’re using robots to better understand ourselves, personal experiences using AI, and her hopes and fears about AI's impact on society. This episode provides valuable insights into the current state and potential future of robotics and AI, with Keerthana's expertise offering unique perspectives on these fascinating topics. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics (0:00) Preview to episode (0:51) Sponsor (1:09) Intro (5:20) GPT analogy for robotics (6:51) Domestic robots (10:53) Description of Google robotics (15:17) Controlling robots and supervised learning (18:50) How robots complete tasks (26:17) Using data to train robots (30:45) Data operability (36:02) Integrating language models for commands (38:58) How to approach translating commands (42:49) How robots contextualize their environment (47:02) Approach to robotics safety (51:02) Tasks that robots can’t/shouldn’t do (54:08) The hard bounds of robotics (59:17) Frequency of inference (1:03:50) Form factor in robotics (1:08:38) Using robots to better understand ourselves (1:12:23) Having robot friends and spouses (1:17:44) Inference and latency (1:19:17) The Google Robotics team (1:21:07) AI tools Keerthana uses in her personal life SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive *Thank you Omneky* for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @keerthanpg (Keerthana) @labenz (Nathan) Join 1000's of subscribers of our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack Websites: cognitivervolution.ai omneky.com https://research.google/research-areas/robotics/ https://research.google/teams/brain/

S1 Ep 11E11: OpenAI's GPT-4 Discussion with Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg
In this episode, hosts Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg delve into the exciting and concerning aspects of GPT4, the latest large multimodal model from OpenAI. Nathan, who was a Red Teamer for GPT4, shares his experience working with the model, using it for real-life scenarios, and how he found it to be human-level rather than human-like intelligence. Nathan also highlights some of its fundamental weaknesses and limitations and shares the most concerning elements of GPT4. They end the episode pondering the arrival of GPT5 and whether we are in AI's "goldilocks moment." We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics Timestamps for E11: Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg of The Cognitive Revolution Podcast (0:00) Preview of Nathan on this episode (1:13) Upstream: Erik's new interview show (1:41) Intro (5:40) Nathan's experience as a GPT4 Red Teamer (11:22) Catching the AI wave (14:30) Using GPT4 for real-life scenarios (17:33) Sponsor: Omneky (21:00) Human-level, not human-like intelligence (26:00) GPT4 weaknesses (28:14) More real-life use cases for GPT4 (35:25) Teaching AI to communicate within itself (40:25) GPT4’s limitations (44:32) Nathan's learnings from using GPT4 (46:56) Nathan joining the Red Team (47:29) The most concerning thing about GPT4 (1:05:42) GPT5 (1:06:42) Open AI's regulatory breadcrumbs (1:13:52) AI's goldilocks moment SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) Join 1000's of subscribers of our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

S1 Ep 7E10: The AI Voice Revolution with Mahmoud Felfel of Play.ht
The development of ultra-realistic human voices is upon us, and Mahmoud Felfel's company Play.ht is leading the next generation of text-to-voice models. In this episode, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of automating a more human voice, as well as concerns about deep fakes and user safety. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics Timestamps: (0:00) Preview of Mahmoud on this episode (0:55) Sponsor: Omneky.com (1:45) Nathan clones his voice using Play.ht (6:11) Why Mahmoud started Play.ht and the problem they tried to solve (13:08) The job to be done for Play.ht & how they’re thinking about APIs and models (24:45) Mahmoud breaks down the architecture of Play.ht (29:30) How the use cases have evolved (30:00) New markets and opportunities with creators (37:00) Are we all about to become prompt engineers/directors? (44:50) Roadmap to other languages beyond English (48:00) Managing the compute(52:00) If AI-generated voices becomes a commodity, what will happen? (55:00) Why bigger companies are late adopters of AI tools (56:30) The long-term moat of Play.ht and other applications (1:00:00) Controversial voice-cloning and potential for societal abuse (1:10:32) Commonly abused voices (1:12:36) Rapid fire questions SPONSORS: SHOPIFY | OMNEKY Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive *Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off.* Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @_mfelfel (Mahmoud) @labenz (Nathan) Join 1000's of subscribers of our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack Websites: cognitivervolution.ai play.ht omneky.com This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

Ep 9E9: The AI Assistant Revolution with Flo Crivello of Lindy.AI
People have long been imagining AI assistants. Flo Crivello (founder of Teamflow) is turning that dream into a reality with the ambitious project Lindy. Flo sits down with Nathan on Lindy's announcement day to talk about this unique moment in AI, Lindy's capabilities, single-use apps, and how he sees the global impact that AI-powered employees can have on the future of work. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. Anyone who mentions "The Cognitive Revolution" when signing up for the Lindy beta will get priority access. (0:00) Preview (1:05) Sponsor: Omneky (4:50) Flo demos Lindy (9:21) Security and user experience (11:55) How this AI moment compares to the Industrial Revolution and single use apps (15:00) The dream AI assistant (19:54) Competition and advantages of startups (24:28) Cost vs Quality (31:19) How Lindy uses user data (32:37) Context and data injection (28:11) Comfort with ambiguity (43:10) Use of guardrails and trust concerns (47:26) AI safety and edge cases (49:16) Impact on labor markets (50:27) Economic resilience (52:09) Future of work (55:49) Rapid fire questions SPONSORS: SHOPIFY | OMNEKY Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive *Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. Join 1000's of subscribers of our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack Websites: lindy.ai *mention "The Cognitive Revolution" when you sign up for the waitlist to get priority access* thecognitiverevolution.ai Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @Altimor (Flo) RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

Ep 8E8: GPT4 - AI Unleashed on ChinaTalk Podcast
How will GPT4 change the world? How will US-China 'racing dynamics' play out and what are the implications for AI safety? Nathan Labenz was invited to record a special "emergency" episode of ChinaTalk podcast this week to discuss the implications GPT4 will have for policy, economics, and society. Thanks to Jordan Schneider of ChinaTalk, and fellow "AI justice league" guests Zvi Mowshowitz of 'Don't Worry About the Vase' and Matthew Mittelsteadt of Mercatus. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. (0:00) Intro (2:09) GPT-4 emergency podcast (9:26) GPT-4 use cases (22:51) What GPT-4 can and can’t do (35:50) AI safety (45:38) OpenAI v. Anthropic (48:54) Governments’ role in AI (55:50) AI will improve physical health and healthcare the most (59:19) Facebook’s LLaMA model (01:05:55) VR/AR (01:08:59) Concerns with GPT4 (01:15:26) GPT-5 and GPT-6 (01:18:45) Optimism in the AI revolution SPONSOR: SHOPIFY | OMNEKY Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real time advertising data, to generate personalized experiences at scale. Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @jordanschnyc (Jordan) Websites: cognitivervolution.ai RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

Ep 7E7: In Search of Truth with Aravind Srinivas of Perplexity AI
We talked to Aravind Srinivas about competing with the tech giants, Perplexity's product philosophy and obsession with maximizing value delivered to the user per unit time, and the features that makes Perplexity unique. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. (0:00) Preview (1:31) Introduction & Context (08:06) Aravind’s vision for Perplexity as the world’s most truth-centric company (9:29) Raising the average IQ of the world (12:00) Aravind’s favorite tech entrepreneur (15:12) “Anthropics” - Building your own model vs user experience (33:00) Why is perplexity free (43:00) Talking shop: Perplexity’s tech stack and speed (1:06:00) Perplexity’s stance on guardrails on search (1:19:48) Forecasting weakly general AGI: The four criteria (1:28:00) Aravind’s perspective on OpenAI and the future of AGI (1:39:00) The Cognitive Revolution’s rapid fire questions: Neuralink implant? Most used AI tools? AI hopes and fears? Twitter handles: @CogRev_Podcast @AravSrinivas (Aravind) @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) SPONSOR: SHOPIFY: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Join 1000's of subscribers of our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/ References & Shownotes: Flamingo: https://www.deepmind.com/blog/tackling-multiple-tasks-with-a-single-visual-language-model Decision Transformer Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.01345 Aravind on TalkRL Podcast: https://www.talkrl.com/episodes/aravind-srinivas-2 Weakly General AGI Criteria: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3479/date-weakly-general-ai-is-publicly-known/ RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

Ep 6E6: The Computer Vision Revolution with Junnan Li and Dongxu Li of BLIP and BLIP2
As recently as January 2021, the challenge of "interpreting what is going on in a photograph" was considered "nowhere near solved." Today's guests Junnan Li and Dongxu Li changed that with their publication and open-sourcing of BLIP, which delivered state-of-the-art performance on image captioning and other vision-language tasks. BLIP became the #18 most-cited AI paper of 2022, and now Junnan and Dongxu are back with BLIP-2, this time showing how small models can harness the power of existing foundation models to do multi-modal tasks. We talked to Junnan and Dongxu about their research and how they see the trend toward connector models shaping the future. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. Timestamps: (00:00) Preview (01:17) Sponsor (01:35) Intro (05:50) Convergence of AI techniques (07:33) Evolution of BLIP to BLIP-2 (08:12) How BLIP-2 unlocked multimodal functionality (12:43) The size, training dynamics, and optimization function of BLIP (20:15) Practical/Business applications of BLIP (29:43) Efficiency of BLIP-2 compared to other models (41:52) Two-stage pre-training (47:11) Architecture of Blip-2’s connector model (58:52) Language models as the executive function of the brain (01:07:32) Vision for an ultimate multimodal system and democratized pre-training for models (01:12:59) Useful AI tools in these researchers’ day-to-day (01:14:56) Upcoming projects SPONSORS: SHOPIFY | OMNEKY Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive *Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @LiJunnan0409 (Junnan Li) @DongxuLi_(Dongxu Li) @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) Join 1000's of subscribers of our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com Websites: Episode transcript at Cognitivervolution.ai huggingface.co/spaces/Salesforce/BLIP huggingface.co/spaces/Salesforce/BLIP2 Show Notes: - Original BLIP demo - BLIP 2 demo - BLIP is the #18 most highly-cited paper in AI - Image captioning comparison tool - Understanding images with AI - for use in language models and image generation - Image Aesthetics - Product & Model Reviews This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

Ep 5E5: The Embedding Revolution: Anton Troynikov on Chroma, Stable Attribution, and future of AI
We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. (0:00) Preview (1:17) Sponsor (4:00) Anton breaks down the advantages of vector databases (4:45) How embeddings have created an AI-native way to represent data (11:50) Anton identifies the watershed moment and step changes in AI (12:55) Open AI’s pricing (18:50) How chroma works (33:04) Stable Attribution and systematic bias (36:48) How latent diffusion models work (51:26) How AI is like the early days of aviation (56:01) How Disney inspired the release of Stable Attribution (59:53):Why noise can lead to generalization (1:01:04) Nathan’s KPI for The Cognitive Revolution (1:01:59) Other use cases for embedding (1:03: 19) Anton touches on the applications for biotech (1:04:35) Anton on doomerism hysteria and what actually worries him (1:11:43) - Nathan sums up a plausible doomer scenario (1:20:17)What AI tools does Anton use and why? (1:22:55) Anton’s hopes SPONSORS: SHOPIFY | OMNEKY Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive *Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @atroyn (Anton) @labenz (Nathan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) Join 1000's of subscribers of our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/ Websites: cognitivervolution.ai trychroma.com/ omneky.com Show Notes & references: -https://same.energy/ (Beta) -Wright Brothers Bio (https://www.amazon.com/Wright-Brothers-David-McCullough/dp/1476728755) -Ajeya Cotra article in Less Wrong (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pRkFkzwKZ2zfa3R6H/without-specific-countermeasures-the-easiest-path-to) RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].
Ep 4E4: The AI Moment with Amjad Masad, Flo Crivello, Dan Romero, and Antonio Garcia Martinez
We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. (0:00) Preview of the debate (2:23) Sponsor (3:10) Flo’s take on the AI moment and AGI (5:45) Amjad’s take on the AI moment (8:03) Antonio's skepticism about transhumanism (9:10) Human tendencies color the debate about agency (11:25) The inflection point is a jump in generality (13:14) AI's effect on coding (16:57) Weakness in current models (19:18) Bounties and the future of work (21:48) Antonio's skepticism around bounties (25:00) Who will capture value, incumbents or startups? (27:26) "All knowledge work will be automated in 20 years" (30:10) Who will be the biggest beneficiaries of this shift? (31:50) What AI companies should VCs invest in? (32:26) Sponsor SPONSORS: SHOPIFY | OMNEKY Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data, to generate personalized experiences at scale. Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @amasad (Amjad) @antoniogm (Antonio) @altimor (Flo) @dwr (Dan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @labenz (Nathan) Subscribe to our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/ Websites: cognitivervolution.ai replit.com teamflowhq.com omneky.com Show Notes & references: Eliezer Yudkowsky: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FKNtgZrGYwgsz3nHT/bankless-podcast-159-we-re-all-gonna-die-with-eliezer Paul Christiano: https://paulfchristiano.com/ AI Feedback: https://www.anthropic.com/constitutional.pdf RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

Ep 3E3: The Empathy Revolution with Eugenia Kuyda of Replika
We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. (01:08) Sponsor (01:37) Introducing Eugenia (03:25) Replika’s controversial choice to limit erotic roleplay functionality (04:25) Eugenia's vision for Replika (05:58) Augmented Reality is the Ultimate Modality (07:52) Using Replika (13:11) Profound stories about virtual assistants (15:55) Eugenia on why Replika is more than just a painkiller or vitamin (28:50) Replika's business model and profitability (34:12) Users want their Replika to surprise them (36:12) Why ChatGPT is not a conversational model (49:26) Eugenia's prediction for the "next Iphone of personal AI" (1:03:00) Eugenia’s AI tools/stack (1:15:00) Eugenia comes back to discuss Erotic Roleplay controversy (1:18:00) Replika’s first reaction to users ERP (1: 22:00) How the product evolved from 90% scripts & retrieval models (1:24:00) The definitive focus for Replika to stay in a PG13 zone (1:26:00) “Normal” evolution given sci-fi depictions of AI romances (1:30:00) Current AI ethics on sexuality (1:37:07) Response to journalists misportrayal (1:40:29) Sponsor SPONSORS: SHOPIFY | OMNEKY Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real time advertising data, to generate personalized experiences at scale. Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @eriktorenberg (Erik) @labenz (Nathan) @ekuyda (Eugenia) Websites: cognitivervolution.ai https://replika.ai/ RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

Ep 2E2: Why AI Will Cause a Cognitive Revolution with Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg
We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. 00:00 Coming Up 01:00 The Cognitive Revolution 01:20 Sponsor 01:39 Intro 02:09 Nathan’s path to AI 04:27 Founding Waymark 06:56 The future of AI is just starting 10:00 AI dramatically enhances human capabilities 10:50 Why we started The Cognitive Revolution and what to expect 14:55 Which guests will appear on the show and topics that will be discussed 18:59 Being replaced by an AI host 20:42 Unpacking the future of AI with “no new breakthroughs” 32:21 What’s underhyped and overhyped 43:46 The dangers of AI 44:51 Applying AI safely 52:19 Losing faith in technology 53:38 A new AI ecology 55:14 Facebook, Google and Open AI 58:00 Upside and downside case for AI 58:18 Sam Altman’s case for AI 01:09:25 Starting an AI company 01:18:22 Closing 01:18:46 Sponsor SPONSORS: SHOPIFY | OMNEKY Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real time advertising data, to generate personalized experiences at scale. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @eriktorenberg (Erik) @labenz (Nathan) Websites: cognitivervolution.ai waymark.com This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

Ep 1E1: The Pixel Revolution with Playground AI 's Suhail Doshi
We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. 00:00 Intro 00:30: Image technology breakthroughs 00:45 The Cognitive Revolution 03:10 Intro to Suhail 03:43 Sponsor 07:04 Suhail’s path to AI 12:57 Suhail’s vision for Playground 17:58 Suhail’s cancellation on Twitter 19:06 AI artists are artists 20:25 Non-AI artists feel threatened by AI 26:47 Suhail on defensibility at AI companies 30:30 Playground’s product roadmap 33:01 Suhail on good design 35:55 Latent space 44:04 Building Playground with lessons learned from Mighty 53:55 Monitoring led to 2x improvement in the product 55:53 How people use Playground 1:03:48 AI is having it’s mobile moment 01:15:12 Finding, investing and building durable AI companies 01:22:06 Suhail’s kid’s best friends may be AI characters 01:23:20 AI religion 01:24:16 Conclusion RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics SPONSORS: SHOPIFY | OMNEKY Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real time advertising data, to generate personalized experiences at scale. Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @eriktorenberg (Erik) @suhail (Suhail) @labenz (Nathan) Websites: playgroundai.com mixpanel.com waymark.com This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].