Shows
Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 85: Has AI Infra Stabilized, FM Vibe Shift, & What's Next for Coding AgentsThis episode is a wide-ranging conversation between Jacob and Swyx (Shawn Wang), an AI engineer, podcaster, and now operator at Cognition, who sits at a uniquely informed intersection of builder, investor, and community organizer in the AI world. The two cover the current state of the AI engineering zeitgeist: from the stabilization of agent infrastructure and the surprising stickiness of Claude Code, to the competitive dynamics of the AI coding wars, the rise of open models, the threat to traditional SaaS, and the frontier questions around world models, memory, and what it actually means for AI to "understand" something...
2026-04-2354 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 84: OpenAI’s Chief Scientist on Continual Learning Hype, RL Beyond Code, & Future Alignment DirectionsJakub Pachocki, OpenAI's Chief Scientist, sits down with Jacob to cover the full arc of where AI research stands today and where it's headed. The conversation spans the explosive growth of coding agents and what it signals about near-term AI capability, the use of math and physics benchmarks as proxies for general intelligence, how reinforcement learning is being extended beyond easily-verified domains toward longer-horizon tasks, and what it means to run a research organization at the precise moment the models themselves are starting to accelerate the research. Jakub shares a candid take on the competitive landscape, why chain-of-thought monitoring...
2026-04-0958 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 83: Owning the System of Record, AI-Native Org Charts, & Why ITSM is The Most Vulnerable Legacy CategoryServal is one of the fastest-growing AI-native enterprise software companies right now, and this episode is a rare inside look at the deliberate architectural, go-to-market, and talent decisions behind that growth. Jake Stauch breaks down why he made the contrarian bet to build a full system of record rather than layer on top of existing tools, why ITSM is more vulnerable to AI disruption than CRM, ERP, or HRIS, and how Serval is winning Fortune 500 deals against a $14B incumbent with a fraction of the resources. Beyond the product, Jake gets into the organizational decisions that underpin Serval's velocity — wh...
2026-04-0254 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 82: Behind Legora's $550M Raise, Model Competition, Doubling Revenue Every Quarter, & US ExpansionMax Jungestål, CEO of Legora, joins Jacob Effron and Logan Bartlett to discuss the company's $550M Series D and share a candid account of what building an AI-native company at speed actually looks like from the inside.
Max argues that the AI application layer requires a fundamentally different operating model than traditional SaaS, one built on low ego, constant reinvention, and a willingness to watch nine months of work get washed away by a model update. He walks through how step-function improvements in the underlying models, particularly Opus 4.5 and 4.6, have repeatedly forced Legora to rebuild core p...
2026-03-1154 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 81: Ex-OpenAI Researcher On Why He Left, His Honest AGI Timeline, & The Limits of Scaling RLThis episode features Jerry Tworek, a key architect behind OpenAI's breakthrough reasoning models (o1, o3) and Codex, discussing the current state and future of AI. Jerry explores the real limits and promise of scaling pre-training and reinforcement learning, arguing that while these paradigms deliver predictable improvements, they're fundamentally constrained by data availability and struggle with generalization beyond their training objectives. He reveals his updated belief that continual learning—the ability for models to update themselves based on failure and work through problems autonomously—is necessary for AGI, as current models hit walls and become "hopeless" when stuck. Jerry discusses the...
2026-01-291h 02Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronAI Vibe Check: The Actual Bottleneck In Research, SSI’s Mystique, & Spicy 2026 PredictionsAri Morcos and Rob Toews return for their spiciest conversation yet. Fresh from NeurIPS, they debate whether models are truly plateauing or if we're just myopically focused on LLMs while breakthroughs happen in other modalities.They reveal why infinite capital at labs may actually constrain innovation, explain the narrow "Goldilocks zone" where RL actually works, and argue why U.S. chip restrictions may have backfired catastrophically—accelerating China's path to self-sufficiency by a decade. The conversation covers OpenAI's code red moment and structural vulnerabilities, the mystique surrounding SSI and Ilya's "two words," and why the real bottleneck in...
2025-12-181h 18Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 80: CEO of Surge AI Edwin Chen on Why Frontier Labs Are Diverging, RL Environments & Developing Model TasteEdwin Chen is the founder and CEO of Surge AI, the data infrastructure company behind nearly every major frontier model. Surge works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google, providing the high-quality data and evaluation infrastructure that powers their models. Edwin reveals why optimizing for popular benchmarks like LMArena is "basically optimizing for clickbait," how one frontier lab's models regressed for 6-12 months without anyone knowing, and why the industry's approach to measurement is fundamentally broken. Jacob and Edwin discuss what actually makes elite AI evaluators, why "there's never going to be a one size fits al...
2025-12-1548 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 79: OpenAI's Head of Product on How the Best Teams Build, Ship and Scale AI ProductsThis episode features Olivier Godement, Head of Product for Business Products at OpenAI, discussing the current state and future of AI adoption in enterprises, with a particular focus on the recent releases of GPT 5.1 and Codex. The conversation explores how these models are achieving meaningful automation in specific domains like coding, customer support, and life sciences: where companies like Amgen are using AI to accelerate drug development timelines from months to weeks through automated regulatory documentation. Olivier reveals that while complete job automation remains challenging and requires substantial scaffolding, harnesses, and evaluation frameworks, certain use cases like coding are...
2025-12-1056 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 78: Jordan Schneider, Host of China Talk, on AI Race, Key Policy Decisions & Unpacking Geopolitical Chip TensionThis week on Unsupervised Learning, Jacob Effron is joined by Jordan Schneider, host of China Talk, who challenges widespread assumptions about US-China AI competition. China's AI development is driven by private capital and market competition—not central government planning—with companies like DeepSeek, Alibaba, and ByteDance operating more like Silicon Valley startups than state projects. The critical bottleneck is compute: the West maintains a 10-15x advantage in advanced chips, and US export controls implemented one month before ChatGPT created a structural edge favoring America for years. Chinese companies aggressively open-source models from strategic necessity—they couldn't establish a qualit...
2025-12-051h 13Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 77: Anthropic’s Dianne Na Penn on Opus 4.5, Rethinking Model Scaffolding & Safety as a Competitive AdvantageThis episode features Dianne Na Penn, a senior product leader at Anthropic, discussing the launch of Claude Opus 4.5 and the evolution of frontier AI models. The conversation explores how Anthropic approaches model development—balancing ambitious capability roadmaps with user feedback, making strategic bets on areas like agentic coding and computer use while deliberately avoiding others like image generation. Dianne shares insights on the shifting nature of AI evaluation (moving beyond saturated benchmarks like SWE-bench toward more open-ended measures), the evolution of scaffolding from "training wheels" to intelligence amplifiers, and why she believes we're closer to transformative long-running AI than mo...
2025-12-0242 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 76: Sora Creators Bill Peebles, Rohan Sahai & Thomas Dimson on Their Unexpected Viral SuccessThis episode features the core team behind Sora, OpenAI's groundbreaking video generation platform that became the #1 app in the App Store. Bill Peebles (research lead), Rohan Sahai (product lead), and Thomas Dimson (engineering/product lead with Instagram background) discuss the unexpected viral success of Sora's launch, the product journey that led to the breakthrough "cameo" feature (putting yourself in AI-generated videos), and their philosophy of building a creator-first social network that prioritizes human creativity over passive consumption. They reveal the technical milestones in video generation, their small team size (under 50 people total at launch), navigation of content moderation challenges...
2025-11-031h 03Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronAI Round Up: Ari Morcos from Datalogy AI and Rob Toews from Radical VC on Karpathy Reactions, OpenAI’s Dealmaking, & Bubble Reality CheckThis episode features Rob Toews from Radical Ventures and Ari Morcos, Head of Research at Datology AI, reacting to Andrej Karpathy's recent statement that AGI is at least a decade away and that current AI capabilities are "slop." The discussion explores whether we're in an AI bubble, with both guests pushing back on overly bearish narratives while acknowledging legitimate concerns about hype and excessive CapEx spending. They debate the sustainability of AI scaling, examining whether continued progress will come from massive compute increases or from efficiency gains through better data quality, architectural innovations, and post-training techniques like reinforcement learning...
2025-10-241h 16Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronAI Round Up: Ari Morcos from Datalogy AI and Rob Toews from Radical VC on AI Talent Wars, xAI’s $200B Valuation, & Google’s ComebackThis episode features a deep dive into the current state of AI model progress with Ari Morcos (CEO of Datalogy AI and former DeepMind/Meta researcher) and Rob Toews (partner at Radical Ventures). The conversation tackles whether model progress is genuinely slowing down or simply shifting into new paradigms, exploring the role of reinforcement learning in scaling capabilities beyond traditional pre-training. They examine the talent wars reshaping AI labs, Google's resurgence with Gemini, the sustainability of massive valuations for companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, and the infrastructure ecosystem supporting this rapid evolution. The discussion weaves together technical insights on...
2025-09-241h 02Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 75: Nano Banana’s Oliver Wang and Nicole Brichtova - Behind the Breakthrough as Gemini Tops the ChartsFill out this short listener survey to help us improve the show: https://forms.gle/bbcRiPTRwKoG2tJx8This week on Unsupervised Learning, Jacob sits down with Nicole Brichtova and Oliver Wang, the Google researchers behind "Nano Banana" - the breakthrough AI image model that achieved unprecedented character consistency and took over social media.The conversation covers how their model fits into creative workflows, why we're still in the early innings of image AI development despite impressive current capabilities, and how image and video generation are converging toward unified models. They also share honest perspectives on...
2025-09-1741 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 74: Chief Scientist of Together.AI Tri Dao On The End of Nvidia's Dominance, Why Inference Costs Fell & The Next 10X in SpeedFill out this short listener survey to help us improve the show: https://forms.gle/bbcRiPTRwKoG2tJx8 Tri Dao, Chief Scientist at Together AI and Princeton professor who created Flash Attention and Mamba, discusses how inference optimization has driven costs down 100x since ChatGPT's launch through memory optimization, sparsity advances, and hardware-software co-design. He predicts the AI hardware landscape will shift from Nvidia's current 90% dominance to a more diversified ecosystem within 2-3 years, as specialized chips emerge for distinct workload categories: low-latency agentic systems, high-throughput batch processing, and interactive chatbots. Dao shares his surprise at A...
2025-09-1058 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 73: General Partner of Felicis Peter Deng on on AI Pricing Tactics, Reaction to GPT-5 & Why Voice is UnderratedIn this episode, Jacob sits down with Peter Deng, General Partner at Felicis and former Product Leader at OpenAI, Facebook, and Uber. Peter shares his insider perspective on building ChatGPT Enterprise in just seven weeks and leading voice mode development at OpenAI. The conversation covers everything from why traditional SaaS pricing models are broken for AI products to how evals became the new product specs, the "AI under your fingernails" test for founding teams, and why current agents are massively overhyped.They also explore how consumer AI will fragment across multiple winners rather than consolidate into a...
2025-08-261h 04Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 72: Co-Founder of Chai Discovery Joshua Meier on 99% Faster Drug Discovery, BioTech’s AlphaGo Moment, Building Photoshop for MoleculesIn this episode, Jacob sits down with Joshua Meier, co-founder of Chai Discovery and former Chief AI Officer at Absci, to explore the breakthrough moment happening in AI drug discovery. They discuss how the field has evolved through three distinct waves, with the current generation of companies finally achieving success rates that seemed impossible just years ago. The conversation covers everything from moving drug discovery out of the lab and into computers, to why AI models think differently than human chemists, to the strategic decisions around open sourcing foundational models while keeping design capabilities proprietary. It...
2025-08-1357 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 71: CEO of TurboPuffer Simon Eskildsen on Building Smarter Retrieval, AI App Must-Have Features & Current State of Vector DBsFill out this short listener survey to help us improve the show: https://forms.gle/bbcRiPTRwKoG2tJx8In this episode, Simon Eskildsen, co-founder and CEO of TurboPuffer, lays out a compelling vision for how AI-native infrastructure needs to evolve in an era where every application wants to connect massive amounts of context to large language models. He breaks down why traditional databases and even large context windows fall short—especially at scale—and why object-storage-native search is the inevitable next step. Drawing on his experience from Shopify and Readwise, Simon introduces the SCRAP framework to explain the limi...
2025-07-2251 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 70: Karol Hausman and Danny Driess (Physical Intelligence) Unpack the Most Recent Breakthroughs & Path to Generalist RobotsIn this episode, Jacob sits down with Karol Hausman (Co-Founder) and Danny Driess (Research Scientist) from Physical Intelligence, two of the minds behind some of the most exciting advances in robotics. They unpack the last decade of progress in AI robotics, from early skepticism to the breakthroughs powering today’s generalist robot models. The conversation covers everything from folding laundry with robots to building scalable data pipelines, the limits of simulation, and what it’ll take to bring robot assistants into everyday homes. It's a wide-ranging and thoughtful look at where robotics is headed, as well a...
2025-07-081h 09Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 69: Co-Founder of Databricks & LMArena on Current Eval Limitations, Why China is Winning Open Source and Future of AI InfrastructureIon Stoica helped define the modern data stack. Now he’s coming for AI evaluation. From co-founding Databricks and Anyscale to launching LMArena, Ion has shaped the infrastructure underlying some of the biggest shifts in computing. In this conversation, he unpacks what most people get wrong about model evaluation, the infrastructure challenges ahead for agents and heterogeneous compute, and why he believes the U.S. is structurally disadvantaged in open-source AI compared to China. (0:00) Intro(0:49) Launching a New Startup: LMArena(1:01) The Origin of the Vicuna Model(1:54) Challenges in Model Evaluation(6:33) Becoming a C...
2025-06-1754 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 68: CEO of Mercor Brendan Foody on Evals Replacing Knowledge Work, AI x Hiring Today & the Future of Data LabelingBrendan Foody is the co-founder and CEO of Mercor, a company building the infrastructure for AI-native labor markets. Mercor’s platform is already used by top AI labs to label data, evaluate human and AI candidates, and make performance-driven hiring decisions. They’re operating at the intersection of recruiting, evals, and foundation model development—helping companies shift from intuition to measurable prediction. Brendan and his team recently raised $100M and are working with some of the most advanced players in the AI ecosystem today. (0:00) Intro(1:17) State of AI in Talent Ev...
2025-06-0444 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 67: Max Junestrand (CEO, Legora) on Differentiating and Pricing AI Apps & How the Legal Industry Will EvolveJacob and Logan sit down with Max Junestrand, founder and CEO of Legora - a rapidly growing legal AI platform (and Redpoint portfolio company). After announcing their Series B last week, Max joined the show to discuss why law is uniquely suited for AI, what it takes to scale an enterprise-ready product across global markets, and a few crazy moments from Legora’s journey so far. They dig into product strategy, lessons on evolving alongside foundational models, and how AI is reshaping the future of law firms. Whether you're building in AI or just curious how it’s being appl...
2025-05-2744 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 66: Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic Sholto Douglas on Claude 4, Next Phase for AI Coding, and the Path to AI CoworkersSholto Douglas, a Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic, joined Unsupervised Learning to break down why coding is the clearest early signal of model progress, how AI agents are already accelerating research, and what it’ll take to unlock real-world breakthroughs in fields like biology and robotics. (0:00) Intro(0:48) Claude 4(1:30) Capabilities and Improvements(2:29) Practical Applications and Advice(3:04) Future of AI in Coding(4:38) Managing Multiple AI Models(11:20) The Barrier to Agents is Reliability(16:35) Agents Conducting Research(19:54) Impact of Models on World GDP(25:14) Most Important Metrics in Model Improvement
2025-05-2257 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 65: Co-Authors of AI-2027 Daniel Kokotajlo and Thomas Larsen On Their Detailed AI Predictions for the Coming YearsThe recent AI 2027 report sparked widespread discussion with its stark warnings about the near-term risks of unaligned AI.Authors @Daniel Kokotajlo (former OpenAI researcher now focused full-time on alignment through his nonprofit, @AI Futures, and one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in AI) and @Thomas Larsen joined the show to unpack their findings.We talk through the key takeaways from the report, its policy implications, and what they believe it will take to build safer, more aligned models. (0:00) Intro(1:15) Overview of AI 2027(2:32) AI Development Timeline(4:10) Race and Slo...
2025-05-141h 23Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 64: GPT 4.1 Lead at OpenAI Michelle Pokrass: RFT Launch, How OpenAI Improves Its Models & the State of AI Agents TodayIn this episode, I sit down with Michelle Pokrass, who leads a research team at OpenAI within post-training focused on improving models for power users: developers using OpenAI models in the API and power users in ChatGPT. We unpack how OpenAI prioritized instruction-following and long context, why evals have a 3-month shelf life, what separates successful AI startups, and how the best teams are fine-tuning to push past the current frontier.If you’ve ever wondered how OpenAI really decides what to build, and how it affects what you should build, this one’s for you.
2025-05-0847 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 63: Khan Academy Founder/CEO on Salman Khan on Classrooms in 20 years, Rolling out to 1.4M Users & Sal’s Hopes for AI EducationWhen Khan Academy launched Khanmigo, Salman Khan thought they might reach 100k users by 2025. Today, they’re at 1.4 million. 🎧 Sal joined us on Unsupervised Learning to talk about AI's role in education— from the vantage point of someone deploying it at scale. As founder of Khan Academy, he’s overseen the rollout of AI tools to over a million teachers and students, giving him a front-row seat to what’s actually working in classrooms. (0:00) Intro(1:17) The Vision for Future Classrooms(4:28) Khan Academy's AI Initiatives(7:06) Proactive AI and Engagement(10:33) Teacher and Student E...
2025-04-2950 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 62: CEO of Cohere Aidan Gomez on Scaling Limits Emerging, AI Use-cases with PMF & Life After TransformersAidan joined this week’s Unsupervised Learning for a wide-ranging conversation on model architectures, enterprise adoption, and what’s breaking in the foundation model stack. If you’re building or investing in AI infrastructure, Aidan is worth listening to. He co-authored the original Transformer paper, leads one of the most advanced model labs outside of the hyperscalers, and is now building for real-world enterprise deployment with Cohere’s agent platform, North. Cohere serves thousands of customers across sectors like finance, telco, and healthcare — and they’ve made a name for themselves by staying model-agnostic, privacy-forward, and deeply international...
2025-04-1550 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 61: Redpoint’s AI Investors Break Down What Separates Enduring AI Companies from the HypeAt Redpoint’s annual meeting with investors, Redpoint partners Scott Raney, Alex Bard, Patrick Chase and Jacob Effron shared unfiltered thoughts on some of the most topical questions in AI today, where value will accrue, which industries are best positioned for defensibility at the application layer, and more. (0:00) Intro(0:39) AI Investment Landscape(1:30) Market Projections(3:25) Strategic Imperatives in AI(6:04) AI Model Layer Insights(10:06) Infrastructure Layer(11:46) Application Layer(15:04) Vertical AI SaaS Opportunities(21:45) Evaluating Early-Stage Founders(23:39) First Mover Advantage and Competitive Dynamics(25:28) Domain Expertise vs. AI Expertise(26:58) Why...
2025-04-0943 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 60: Swyx and Alessio (Latent Space) on What has PMF Today, Google is Cooking & GPT Wrappers are WinningTo unpack some of the most topical questions in AI, I’m joined by two fellow AI podcasters: Swyx and Alessio Fanelli, co-hosts of the Latent Space podcast. We’ve been wanting to do a cross-over episode for a while and finally made it happen.Swyx brings deep experience from his time at AWS, Temporal, and Airbyte, and is now focused on AI agents and dev tools. Alessio is an investor at Decibel, where he’s been backing early technical teams pushing the boundaries of infrastructure and applied AI. Together they run Latent Space, a technical newsletter and po...
2025-03-281h 01Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 59: OpenAI Product & Eng Leads Nikunj Handa and Steve Coffey on OpenAI’s New Agent Development ToolsTwo weeks ago, OpenAI released its set of tools to help developers build agentic systems. Today on Unsupervised Learning, Nikunj Handa (Product Lead) and Steve Coffey (Eng Lead) answer some of the biggest questions around how developers should be thinking about building in the agentic paradigm in 2025. (0:00) Intro(0:53) OpenAI’s Vision for Consumer Interaction(4:51) Building Multi-Agent Systems for Business Solutions(6:53) Challenges and Innovations in AI Fine-Tuning(13:20) Exploring Computer Use Cases and Applications(17:20) Advanced Use Cases and Developer Insights(25:29) Challenges with Context Storage and Chat Completions(26:09) Introducing the Responses API...
2025-03-2544 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 58: Google Researchers Noam Shazeer and Jack Rae on Scaling Test-time Compute, Reactions to Ilya & AGIOn the latest episode of Unsupervised Learning, Jacob is joined by two of the most influential minds in AI today. 🔹 Noam Shazeer, co-inventor of the Transformer🔹 Jack Rae, Research Director at DeepMind and one of the leads behind Gemini’s Flash ThinkingWe got to ask them all of the top-of-mind questions in AI today about where we are, where we’re headed and what it means for businesses and the world. Some key take-aways: (0:00) Intro(1:30) Exploring Gemini 2.0(4:04) Challenges with Evals and Benchmarks(6:14) Reinforcement Loops and AI Productiv...
2025-03-171h 09Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 57: Former CTO of Meta Mike Schroepfer on the Path to Powering the AI RevolutionOn today’s Unsupervised Learning, Mike Schroepfer (ex-CTO of Meta and founder of Gigascale Capital) reveals why energy is a key bottleneck holding AI progress back. Mike discusses how we can scale energy production to democratize AI globally and explores AI’s role in climate change. He also reflects on a decade as Meta’s CTO and how AI coding is transforming the CTO role. Finally, he offers predictions on the future of AI developer tools, VR, and open-source models. (0:00) Intro(0:43) AI's Role in Energy and Climate Change(4:32) Innovative Energy Solutions(14:50) Open Source...
2025-03-0544 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 56: Distinguished Engineer at Waymo Vincent Vanhoucke Unpacks the Breakthroughs and Bottlenecks of Self-DrivingWaymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the world's most trusted driver. The company operates a 24/7 public ride-hail service and provides over 150,000 trips each week across San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin, making mobility more accessible, sustainable, and safer for everyone.In this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we dive deep into the frontier where AI meets hardware — and there’s no better guide than Vincent Vanhoucke, Distinguished Engineer at Waymo and former Head of Robotics at DeepMind. [0:00] Intro[0:50] Waymo's Technological Evolution[2:40] The Rol...
2025-02-261h 13Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 55: Head of Amazon AGI Lab David Luan on DeepSeek’s Significance, What’s Next for Agents & Lessons from OpenAIDavid is an OG in AI who has been at the forefront of many of the major breakthroughs of the past decade. His resume: VP of Engineering at OpenAI, a key contributor to Google Brain, co-founder of Adept, and now leading Amazon’s SF AGI Lab. In this episode we focused on how far test-time compute gets us, the real implications of DeepSeek, what agents milestones he’s looking for and more.[0:00] Intro[1:14] DeepSeek Reactions and Market Implications[2:44] AI Models and Efficiency[4:11] Challenges in Building AGI[7:58] Research Problems in AI Development[11:17] The Futu...
2025-02-1943 min
The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 130: Matt Mullenweg (Co-Founder WordPress): WordPress Controversy, Future of Open Source AI, and Navigating BacklashThe recent controversy between WordPress and WP Engine put Matt Mullenweg (Co-Founder of WordPress, CEO of Automattic) under intense online scrutiny. In our conversation, he shared lessons from the controversy and managing through crisis, as well as this thoughts on the future of open source AI and more.(00:00) Intro(01:17) Controversy with WP Engine(03:36) Understanding Open Source and Trademarks(04:36) Automattic's Role and Contributions(08:26) Navigating Legal Battles and Community Relations(18:27) Leadership and Personal Resilience(21:49) The Impact of Social Media on CEOs(31:22) Future Outlook and Reflections
2025-02-071h 04Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 54: Princeton Researcher Arvind Narayanan on the Limitations of Agent Evals, AI’s Societal Impact & Important Lessons from HistoryArvind Narayanan is one of the leading voices in AI when it comes to cutting through the hype. As a Princeton professor and co-author of AI Snake Oil, he’s one of the most thoughtful voices cautioning against both unfounded fears and overblown promises in AI. In this episode, Arvind dissects the future of AI in education, its parallels to past tech revolutions, and how our jobs are already shifting toward managing these powerful tools. Some of our favorite take-aways: [0:00] Intro[0:46] Reasoning Models and Their Uneven Progress[2:46] Challenges in AI Benchmarks and Real-World App...
2025-01-3057 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 53: SemiAnalysis Founder Dylan Patel on New AI Regulations, Future of Chinese AI & xAI’s Scrappy Surge to HyperscaleIn this episode of Unsupervised Learning, we sit down with Dylan Patel, Chief Analyst at SemiAnalysis, to break down what these sweeping changes really mean. From how they consolidate power among Big Tech to China's narrowing options for AI dominance, we unpacked the impact of this regulatory shift.Follow SemiAnalysis: https://semianalysis.com/ [0:00] Intro[1:07] Grading the AI Diffusion Rule[3:48] What Will Happen to the Malaysian Data Centers?[7:23] How do the Regulations Favor Giant Tech Companies?[9:07] Pre-Regulation AI Landscape[13:00] Where Does Chinese AI Go From Here?[22:00] The Goldie L...
2025-01-211h 24Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 51: Former Chief Research Officer of OpenAI Bob McGrew - What Comes Next for AI?In our new world of AI, few minds shine as brightly as Bob McGrew's. Until November Bob was the Chief Research Officer at OpenAI, and before that led Palantir’s engineering and product management for the first decade of its existence. He’s seen it all and we were fortunate to get his insights and vision for the future in one of my favorite episodes of Unsupervised Learning to date: [0:00] Intro[0:44] Debating AI Model Capabilities[0:57] Inside vs Outside Perspectives on AI Progress[1:39] Challenges in AI Pre-Training[3:02] Reinforcement Learning and Future Models...
2024-12-181h 07Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 50: Fireworks CEO Lin Qiao on Why There Won’t be a Single Model, Will Hyperscalers Win Inference & AI Use-cases with PMFLin Qiao, the co-founder of Fireworks.ai, sits down for a deep dive into the future of AI. Lin ran the PyTorch team at Meta, which developed some of the most fundamental open-source AI software in use today. She’s got a riveting perspective on the AI landscape that is a must-listen. [0:00] Intro[1:06] Fireworks: Revolutionizing AI Inference[2:12] Challenges in AI Model Development[4:05] The Future of AI: Compound Systems[4:32] Designing Effective AI Tools[10:26] Customization and Fine-Tuning in AI[14:06] Human-in-the-Loop Automation[16:38] Evaluating AI Mod...
2024-12-1655 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 49: OpenAI Researcher Noam Brown Unpacks the Full Release of o1 and the Path to AGINoam Brown, renowned AI researcher and key figure at OpenAI, joins us for a deep dive into the o1 release. Recorded just one day before o1’s full public debut, this episode explores the groundbreaking advancements and challenges behind this innovative test-time compute model.We discuss the technical breakthroughs that set o1 apart, its unique capabilities compared to previous models, and how it disrupts traditional paradigms in AI development. Noam also shares insights into OpenAI’s approach to innovation, the economic realities of scaling AI, and what the future holds for the field. [0:00] Intro...
2024-12-0647 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 48: Co-Founder/CEO of LiveKit Russ d'Sa on the Best ChatGPT Voice Use-Cases, New UX Paradigms in AI, and When Voice Makes SenseFor this episode of Unsupervised Learning we spoke with Russ d'Sa, co-founder of LiveKit, a company at the forefront of voice AI technology. Russ thinks of LiveKit as a “nervous system,” powering the sensory interfaces humans use to interact with AI – including the Advanced Voice feature in ChatGPT as well as applications like Character.ai, Spotify and many more. Russ talked about when voice makes sense as an interface, the exciting new UX paradigms on the horizon, the intersection of voice and robotics and Anthropic's Computer Use API. [0:00] Intro[0:24] Using ChatGPT Voice in...
2024-11-1945 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 47: Chief AI Scientist of Databricks Jonathan Frankle on Why New Model Architectures are Unlikely, When to Pre-Train or Fine Tune, and Hopes for Future AI PolicyJonathan Frankle is the Chief AI Scientist at Databricks ($43B), which he joined through the acquisition of MosaicML in July 2023. Databricks has over 12,000 customers on the cutting edge of AI; Jonathan works to anticipate their needs and offer solutions even as the tech is rapidly evolving. [0:00] Intro[0:52] Incentives and Team Motivation at Databricks[2:40] The Evolution of AI Models: Transformers vs. LSTMs[5:27] Mosaic and Databricks: A Strategic Merger[7:31] Guidance on AI Model Training and Fine-Tuning[11:11] Building Effective AI Evaluations[16:02] Domain-Specific AI Models and Their I...
2024-11-121h 04Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 46: CEO of DeepL Jarek Kutylowski on Specialized vs. General Models, Beating Google and a Future with Synchronous TranslationI sat down with DeepL cofounder Jarek Kutylowski. DeepL is a comprehensive Language AI platform that enables organizations to communicate effectively across languages, cultures, and markets. Jarek shared a treasure trove of insights on the past, present, and future of AI translation. Here were some standout moments: [0:00] Intro[0:38] The Rise of AI and DeepL's Journey[1:41] DeepL's Competitive Edge and Market Impact[2:41] Innovations in AI Translation[4:39] DeepL's Product and Use Cases[7:35] Challenges and Strategies in AI Translation[14:29] Human Translators and Data Labeling[24:39] Building and Scaling AI Infrastructure[32:52] Evaluating A...
2024-10-2956 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 45: Founder & CEO of HeyGen Josh Xu on TikTok’s GenAI Dilemma, Trust and Safety and the Path to Interactive AvatarsJoshua Xu is co-founder and CEO of HeyGen -- the fast-growing AI video creation and translation platform. You can upload a video, or create a new one from a script using an AI avatar as your star, and HeyGen will translate it into 175 languages. HeyGen now serves over 40,000 customers and is generating $35+ million in revenue. [0:00] Intro [0:37] HeyGen's Viral Moments [1:23] Creating Magic with AI [3:30] The Future of AI in Video Production [9:29] HeyGen's Use Cases and Customer Base [13:15] AI Avatars [25:46] The Future of Content [26:43...
2024-10-1551 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 44: Co-Founder of Together.AI Percy Liang on What’s Next in Research, Reaction to o1 and How AI will Change SimulationPercy Liang is a Stanford professor and co-founder of Together AI, driving some of the most critical advances in AI research. Percy is also a trained classical pianist, which clearly influences the way he thinks about technology. We explored the evolution of AI from simple token prediction to autonomous agents capable of long-term problem-solving, the problem of interpretability, and the future of AI safety in complex, real-world systems. [0:00] Intro[0:46] Discussing OpenAI's O1 Model [2:21] The Evolution of AI Agents [3:27] Challenges and Benchmarks in AI [4:38] Compatibility and Integ...
2024-10-031h 06Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 43: CEO/Co-Founder of Contextual AI Douwe Kiela Reaction to o1, What’s Next in Reasoning and Innovations in Post-TrainingDouwe’s contributions to AI are truly a part of its bedrock foundations. He wrote the first paper on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and has raised over $100 million to help enterprises build contextual language models that fit their use cases. Before Contextual he was the head of research at Hugging Face, worked on the Facebook AI research team (i.e. Llama) and remains a professor at Stanford. Douwe was incredibly open about his take on AI’s recent history and where he thinks it’s going. [0:00] Intro[0:51] Exploring the Impact of Systems Thinking in AI[1...
2024-09-1857 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 42: CEO of Grammarly Rahul Roy-Chowdhury on the Future of Communication, Impact of LLMs and How Grammarly Does EvalIf you don’t know Grammarly, it’s a personalized AI assistant for writing that has over 30 Million Daily Active Users. Grammarly has been building AI productivity tooling long before the most recent GenAI wave and has raised over $400M, with a current valuation of $13B. Rahul believes AI will enable everyone to focus on more meaningful, creative interactions by automating the "drudgery" of daily tasks. It was interesting to hear him talk about how he thinks about competition and his longer-term perspective on how AI will be adopted by the enterprise. [0:00] Intro[1:03] The Futur...
2024-09-0651 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronBonus Episode: Trunk Tools CEO Sarah Buchner is Building Trunk Tools to Simplify the $13T Construction IndustrySarah Buchner is the Founder and CEO of Trunk Tools (https://trunktools.com/). She is a one-of-a-kind founder, having spent her young life as a carpenter in Austria and then working her way up the ranks of the construction industry. She’s also earned several graduate degrees including an MS in Civil Eng, a PHD in Data Science and an MBA from Stanford.Trunk Tools is an AI Tool for the $13T construction industry aimed at enhancing project management and addressing the skilled Labor shortage.We wanted to have Sarah on to share her experience in...
2024-09-0421 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 41: Head of AI at Snowflake Baris Gultekin on Why They Built Their Own LLM, Governance as a Moat, and the Most Common Enterprise Use-CasesSnowflake sits in a unique position in the AI landscape: They enable fast, secure, and scalable proprietary data access for thousands of customers, many of whom are building AI tools. They also maintain their own suite of AI products, increasing the utility of their platform and empowering customers who may not have the resources to build their own.That’s why it was so fascinating to speak with Baris Gultekin, Snowflake’s Head of AI, on our latest Unsupervised Learning. Baris has helped Snowflake launch several key products, including Cortex, AI Data Cloud, and even Snowflake’s own LL...
2024-08-2846 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 40: CEO of Speak.com Connor Zwick on How AI Will Change the Way we LearnWe’re excited to bring you Connor Zwick, CEO and cofounder of Speak, on the podcast this week! Speak helps people learning a language have conversations with an AI speaking partner, which is critical to gaining fluency. It’s backed by OpenAI and most recently raised at a $500M valuation. Since launching in its inaugural market of South Korea in 2019, Speak has grown to over 10 million users and now has customers in more than 40 countries. We learned so much about how language works and how Connor has built this startup. Some of our favorite bits: ...
2024-08-131h 09Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 39: Github CEO Thomas Dohmke on Building Copilot, Scaling to 1.2M Users and the Future of CodeIt was very special to have Github CEO Thomas Dhomke on the pod for many reasons, not the least of which is that my partner Erica Brescia was COO at Gitlab just before joining Redpoint! Thomas has been at Github for almost 6 years, and has been CEO for almost 3 of those years. He has a pulse on what engineers around the world are looking for from the world’s leading developer platform, and incredible vision and empathy in making Github delivers it. [0:00] Intro[1:08] The Magic of GitHub Copilot [2:07] AI's Impact on Soft...
2024-07-301h 04Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 38: Runway CEO Cristobal Valenzuela on the Next Frontiers for AI Media and The Role of Human Taste in AI FilmmakingCris is the co-founder and CEO of Runway, which builds breathtakingly real video AI tools, including the incredible Gen-3 Alpha foundation model. Cris sits right at the intersection of technology and creativity, and in 2023 was named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI. Runway is reported to be in talks to raise capital at a $4 Billion valuation. (0:00) intro(0:37) how early are we in the AI for creative tools space(3:01) how Cris tests new models(8:21) who uses Runway?(10:37) how Runway teaches new users(14:08) does UI matter?(29:09) what are the nex...
2024-07-1657 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 37: Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai Krish Ramineni on How AI Catalyzed Fireflies to 16M UsersAccording to Ramp’s (ramp.com) quarterly spend report, Fireflies was the 4th highest AI platform by spend. With over 300,000 customers worldwide and 16M users, Fireflies.ai is operating at some of the largest scale amongst AI companies today. This week on Unsupervised Learning we had Krish Ramineni, Co-founder & CEO of Fireflies on to talk about how he sees AI changing the way we work and conduct meetings, and share his biggest learnings around AI in building Fireflies. (0:00) intro(1:01) how will AI change meetings going forward(4:03) Fireflies’ capabilities(8:1...
2024-07-011h 08Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 36: Adobe CPO Scott Belsky on How AI Will Transform Creative WorkflowsScott Belsky is the founder of Behance, a creative platform sold to Adobe in 2012. He’s since gone on to take on the role of Chief Product Officer at Adobe leading design for all products across Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and the Digital Experience business. This week on Unsupervised Learning Scott shares his thoughts on the future of creative tools with AI, a future where hyper-personalization wins and what humans will do when content is commoditized. (0:00) intro(2:27) Adobe’s new AI tools(4:40) best uses of Adobe’s AI features(7:22) educati...
2024-06-1135 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 35: CEO of Suno Mikey Shulman on Future of Music with AI, Tactics for Model Eval and Solving the Blank Canvas ProblemLast week, Suno announced $125M in funding, marking a significant milestone in their journey to reshape the music creation landscape. On this week's episode of Unsupervised Learning, we caught up with Suno's founder, Mikey Shulman, to dive into their approach to multiplayer music collaboration, how they got Suno to be so fast and the future of digital concerts (and workshopped new intro music for the pod 👀). (0:00) intro(0:31) Mikey’s favorite Suno songs(5:17) who uses Suno?(7:50) teaching people how to use Suno(9:57) new ways to prompt models(13:24) the social aspect of Suno
2024-05-301h 02Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 34: Eric Ries and Jeremy Howard (Answer.ai) on the Biggest Mistakes AI Founders are Making and Building the Bell Labs of AIIn this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we delve into the forefront of AI innovation with Eric Ries and Jeremy Howard. Eric Ries, renowned for pioneering the Lean Startup movement, has consistently influenced modern entrepreneurial strategies with his emphasis on agile, sustainable growth through innovation. Jeremy Howard is known for his contributions to deep learning and data science, co-founding the fast.ai educational initiative that democratizes access to cutting-edge AI learning. Eric's new podcast and newsletter:https://www.ericriesshow.com/https://ericries.carrd.co/ (0:00) intro (0...
2024-05-2200 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronBonus Episode: Sam Altman (CEO, OpenAI) Talks GPT-4o and Predicts the Future of AIIn this cross-over episode, Sam Altman sat down with Logan on the day of the ChatGPT-4o announcement to share behind-the-scenes details of the launch and offer his predictions for the future of AI. Altman delves into OpenAI’s vision, discusses the timeline for achieving AGI, and explores the societal impact of humanoid robots. He also expresses his excitement and concerns about AI personal assistants, highlights the biggest opportunities and risks in the AI landscape today, and much more.(0:00) Intro(00:41) The Personal Impact of Leading OpenAI(01:35) Unveiling Multimodal AI: A Leap in Technology(02:38) The Su...
2024-05-2053 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 33: CTO and Co-Founder of Sourcegraph on Current Landscape and Future of Software Development, How to Make RAG Better, and Building Towards the Agentic FutureOn this week’s Unsupervised Learning, Pat and I sat down with CTO and Co-Founder of Sourcegraph, Beyang Liu. Sourcegraph is a leader in the AI coding space, and recently launched AI coding assistant, Cody. Beyang shared with us his view on the current landscape of AI coding and the future of coding and software development. He also shared how Sourcegraph has tried to make RAG better, and their model eval approaches. (0:00) intro(0:47) advice for young coders(3:34) AI products at Sourcegraph(6:17) the current state of AI coding(12:33) what happens when a new...
2024-04-301h 36Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 32: CEO and Founder of Pinecone Edo Liberty on Pioneering Vector Databases, Barriers to Productionalizing Models and Why What’s Happening with GPUs is Not SustainablePinecone has raised over $130 million and was most recently valued at $750 million. On this week’s Unsupervised Learning, we sat down with CEO and Founder of Pinecone, Edo Liberty. Pinecone is arguably one of the most important elements in today's modern datastack. Edo shared with us the most common use cases of Pinecone, the evolving landscape of vector databases, challenges in building vector databases, the "painful" launch of serverless model, and what people get wrong the most about Pinecone. (0:00) intro(0:33) what was it like when ChatGBT came out?(6:29) Edo’s favorite appli...
2024-04-161h 01
The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 98: Sanjit Biswas (CEO, Samsara) on Building to $20B: The CEO Behind One of The Fastest Growing Startups EverIn less than 8 years, Sanjit Biswas scaled Samsara from 0 to over $1B ARR. In our latest conversation, Sanjit shares all the lessons he’s learned about running a hyper-growth organization, including all the changes he’s made since growing and selling his first company Meraki to Cisco for $1.2B and going on to scale Samsara to $20B. A great episode for anyone who wants to continuously reinvent themselves within a rapidly changing workplace. (00:00) Intro(01:28) Samsara's Journey: From Startup to Billion-Dollar Valuation(06:50) The Evolution of Samsara's Product Line: From Temperature Sensors to AI
2024-04-051h 24Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 31: CEO and Co-Founder of Mistral Arthur Mensch on the Next Frontiers for LLMs, Why Open Source Will Prevail and AI SafetyMistral AI is often seen as the startup challenging OpenAI and incumbents developing LLMs. On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we sat down with CEO and Co-Founder at Mistral AI, Arthur Mensch. Arthur shared with us his view on why open-source will prevail, how Mistral gets LLMs into the hands of enterprises, the build vs. partnership decisions, the competitive landscape and future of LLMs, and how he’d regulate AI safety. (0:00) intro(0:46) origins of the name “Mistral”(2:20) logo origins(3:06) closed-source vs open-source models(6:31) “training models is what we d...
2024-03-2839 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 30: Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra on the Future of Email with AI and the Role Agents Will PlaySuperhuman recently launched AI-powered Summarize and Instant Reply features, and has since processed 4 billion emails. On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we sat down with CEO and Founder at Superhuman, Rahul Vohra. Rahul shared with us what email will look like in the future, the internal product design decisions in building Summarize and Instant Reply, why he’s bullish on the agentic future, and why and how startups should go after incumbents. (0:00) intro (1:20) why email will never die(10:46) how ChatGBT changed Superhuman (17:01) making design decisions (24:34) how Supe...
2024-03-191h 11
The Logan Bartlett ShowIndustry Episode with Zach Weinberg: Market Trends, Avoiding Hiring Bulls***ers, and Who Will Win In AIZach Weinberg is the Co-Founder and CEO of Curie.Bio, which has raised over $500 million to combine early-stage investing in biotech and drug discovery copiloting. He is also the co-founder of Flatiron Health, which sold to Roche for $1.9B, and Invite Media, which sold to Google when he was 21.In the episode, Zach dives into the current venture market landscape, private company valuation and funding trends, and the art of reshaping company culture. Zach unveils his unique blueprint for interviewing top-tier candidates and holding them accountable, as well as the case study tactics he uses to make...
2024-03-151h 16Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 29: Salesforce AI CEO Clara Shih on Future of Slack, How Gucci Uses AI and Working with Marc BenioffThere’s an ongoing debate about where the most value will accrue in AI between incumbents and startups. Of the incumbents, few have shipped product faster than SalesforceAI. Today on Unsupervised Learning we had on Clara Shih, CEO of SalesforceAI and one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI. (0:00) intro(0:50) work practices that will become irrelevant(1:37) revolutionizing reply recommendations and case summaries(4:57) newest Salesforce products(5:53) structuring teams(7:22) engineering trust into AI products(11:58) combining in-house models with ChatGBT(13:33) Gucci’s AI adopt...
2024-03-0652 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 28: LangChain CEO Harrison Chase on the Current State of Eval and Agents and The LLM Apps that Will Define 2024Last week LangChain announced a $20M Series A led by Sequoia and released the paid version of LangSmith, which has already been used by 1K+ teams and driven 80K signups. On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we sat down with LangChain Co-Founder and CEO Harrison Chase to talk about the current state of LLM evaluation, observability, and the agent landscape. (0:00) intro (1:07) applications of AI in the sports world (3:26) what does LangChain do? (7:51) building with LangSmith (10:00) best AI eval practices (16:51) to what extent is eval gen...
2024-02-201h 04Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 27: Oscar Co-Founder Mario Schlosser on How LLMs Can Be Used in Healthcare Today and The Path to AI DoctorsOscar Health is a $4B public healthcare company, providing healthcare insurance to nearly 1 million members. Oscar is at the forefront of AI adoption, continuously developing new AI use cases in healthcare. On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we sat down with Oscar Health Co-Founder, former CEO, and now President of Technology Mario Schlosser to talk about where AI will have the biggest impact in healthcare, top AI use cases at Oscar today, AI adoption challenges Oscar is facing, and limitations of GPT-4 in healthcare. Mario also shared his takes on open-source vs. off-the-shelf vs. healthcare-specific LLMs, and wh...
2024-02-131h 03Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 26: Replit Founder Amjad Masad on the 1000x Engineer, ChatBots are Overhyped and Why We Don’t Really Have True Open-Source ModelsReplit raised nearly $100M at $1.2B valuation last April and powers over 20M developers. On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we sat down with Replit Founder and CEO Amjad Masad to talk about the future of software development, how Replit is empowering young users, how Replit developed its own models, and the data advantage Replit has. Amjad also shared his takes on why he’s bullish on agents, where the value in AI will most likely accrue and why open-source models might not be truly open today. (0:00) intro(0:45) advice for new coder...
2024-02-061h 10Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 25: Intercom Co-Founder Des Traynor on Building Winning AI Strategy and Where We Are in the AI Adoption CurveIntercom is one of the earliest adopters of AI - its AI product Fin has generated over two million answers and been used by thousands of users since it was launched last March. On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we sat down with Intercom Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Des Traynor to talk about how AI is incorporated into Intercom, structuring its AI team, using RAG vs. fine-tuning techniques, where we are in the AI adoption curve, and his advice for startups building on top of AI. (0:00) intro (0:31) Intercom reaction to ChatG...
2024-01-2457 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 24: OpenAI Head of DevRel Logan Kilpatrick on The Best ChatGPT Use Cases, Future of Agents, and Google GeminiOpenAI's inaugural DevDay sparked excitement in the AI community, with several product releases and ChatGPT hitting the milestone of reaching 100M weekly active users. On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we sat down with the Head of Developer Relations at OpenAI, Logan Kilpatrick. Logan shared with us how OpenAI prioritizes product builds internally, the interesting use cases he's seen for several OpenAI products, where OpenAI is headed, and what the Gemini release means for the ecosystem. (0:00) intro(0:33) how Logan uses ChatGBT(1:36) underrated OpenAI products(6:08) when is using GPT...
2024-01-091h 06
The Logan Bartlett ShowBest of 2023: 15 Untold Stories From Tech’s Inner CircleIt’s been a wild year for The Logan Bartlett Show, starting with a rebranding and ending with our 50th episode of the year. We’ve pieced together the top 12 most unforgettable moments from 2023, including our favorite wacky untold stories from tech’s inner circle & the most profound insights of 2023.(0:00) Intro(1:30) Satish and Scott (Partners, Redpoint) roasting Logan for becoming a media personality(2:22) Matthew Prince (CEO, Cloudflare) exposing Cloudflare’s 1st customers: Turkish escorts(8:37) Dario Amodei (CEO, Anthropic) predicts the future of AI(23:47) Dev Ittycheria (CEO, MongoDB) gives 3 steps for hold...
2023-12-221h 32Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 23: Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas on the future of Search, OpenAI Wrappers and Using AI to Talk to Loved OnesPerplexity is a next-gen search tool going after Google, with 1M Android app installs and 1M iOS installs within only 8 months of product launch. On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we sat down with the CEO and Co-Founder of Perplexity AI, Aravind Srinivas. Aravind shared with us the behind-the-scenes stories of how Perplexity AI was born (37:19), how he thinks about Perplexity being viewed as a "wrapper" (24:01), where search will be in 10 years (23:08), and where Perplexity is headed. (0:00) intro(0:48) the simplicity of Perplexity(5:16) how Perplexity allocates resources(7:09) don’t was...
2023-12-141h 06Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronSpecial Episode: A Full Breakdown of the OpenAI Saga and What It Means for AI FoundersIn light of one of the biggest news stories in AI, we’ve put together a special episode to discuss the ramifications of Sam Altmans’ firing from OpenAI. Regardless of what happens between now and when you’re listening to this, the implications of the events that happened over the past few days are certainly worth unpacking. About our guests: Alex Konrad, a journalist at Forbes covering Venture Capital and Tech Jason Warner, former CTO at GitHub, partner at Redpoint, and now Founder of AGI start-up Poolside (https://www.poolside.ai/)We go over what the impli...
2023-11-2247 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 22: Notion AI Engineer Linus Lee: Behind the Scenes of Notion AILinus Lee is an AI engineer at Notion, one of the earliest and most effective adopters of AI. In the episode, Linus shares how Notion developed its AI products, including Writer, Autofill, and Q&A, which just launched on Tuesday. It was fascinating to learn how Notion structures its AI team and dogfoods its development process. Linus also explores the hardest to anticipate when going to market with new AI features, and how Notion thinks of its LLM partnerships. Overall, a wide-ranging conversation about the behind-the-scenes stories of one of the most widely used AI tools today.
2023-11-161h 01Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 21: Modal CEO Erik Bernhardsson on Bringing Development to the Cloud, the GPU Market, and GenAI MusicJacob and Pat sit down with Erik Bernhardsson, the founder of Modal Labs, a data infrastructure company providing GPU compute to data teams. On this episode we discussed Erik’s thoughts on the AI chip market, the most popular GenAI use cases on Modal, and even Oracle Cloud’s resurgence in the AI start-up market. 0:00 intro0:45 motivation for founding Modal6:35 advantages that Modal gives developers9:21 early applications built with Modal11:58 challenges for AI developers16:31 GPU access today20:09 Vector DB companies24:55 why is cl...
2023-10-3153 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 20: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on the Future of AGI, Leading Anthropic, and AI Doom ChancesSpecial Crossover Episode: We're excited to share this conversation from "The Logan Bartlett Show," another Redpoint podcast that focuses on untold stories from tech's inner circle. In the episode, Logan Bartlett interviews Dario Amodei (CEO, Anthropic) on the future of AI.In the episode, Dario gives detailed predictions on the AI industry for 2024, 2025, and beyond. He discusses his days at OpenAI, leaving to start Anthropic, why he doesn’t like the term AGI, what AI developments he’s most excited about right now, and much more. Sharing here because we believe our AI enthusiasts will find this...
2023-10-161h 49
The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 82: Dario Amodei’s (CEO, Anthropic) AI Predictions Through 2030Dario Amodei is the Co-Founder and CEO of Anthropic. In the episode, we discuss detailed predictions on the AI industry for 2024, 2025, and beyond. Dario discusses his days at OpenAI, leaving to start Anthropic, why he doesn’t like the term AGI, what AI developments he’s most excited about right now, and much more. Overall, an enlightening conversation for anyone interested in the future of AI. (0:00) Intro(1:20) Joining OpenAI(14:31) Are scaling and AI safety intertwined?(20:31) Anthropic Early Days(24:04) Amazon's Investment in Anthropic(24:19) FTX investment in Anthropic(25...
2023-10-061h 49Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 19: Tome CEO Keith Peiris on Disrupting Powerpoint and Scaling To Millions of UsersJacob and Pat sit down with Tome Co-Founder and CEO Keith Peiris to discuss Tome’s go-to market strategy, deciphering through the “AI tourists” to identify their ideal customer profile (ICP), and the different hardware cost considerations when reaching enterprise scale. 0:00 intro1:35 founding Tome5:05 designing Tome10:30 how users want to interact with AI12:26 teaching users how to use Tome20:13 partnering with model providers vs. building your own28:43 model evaluation31:23 building an enterprise product37:48 thinking about pricing43:43 Keith’s favorit...
2023-09-2846 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 18: LlamaIndex CEO Jerry Liu on Trends in LLM ApplicationsJacob and Pat sit down with LlamaIndex CEO Jerry Liu to discuss his motivations for building LlamaIndex, thoughts on building enterprise-ready LLM applications and agents, and when fine-tuning makes sense. 0:00 intro1:02 the evolution of LlamaIndex3:48 apps being built with LlamaIndex6:39 making agents more effective12:58 retrieval augmented generation16:49 what’s the right level of abstraction for LlamaIndex?19:42 balancing reasoning and knowledge30:46 storage for embeddings36:03 underutilized features of LlamaIndex40:38 over-hyped/under-hyped With your co-hosts:@e...
2023-09-1947 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 17: Nomic AI Co-Founder Andriy Mulyar on "GPT-4-All", LLMs in Video Games, and Apple's AI StrategyJordan and Erica sit down with Andriy Mulyar, Founder & CTO of Nomic AI, and discuss his motivation for creating GPT4ALL, the importance of data-centric AI, the use of LLMs in video games, and which technology companies are well positioned to “win” in the GenAI market long term. 0:00 intro0:59 getting into AI and meeting Brandon2:27 starting Nomic7:43 how people are using Atlas10:31 hallucinations in LLMs13:05 gpt4all17:25 building LLMs into video games26:31 where does Nomic go from here?37:39 Apple’s role...
2023-09-1245 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 16: VP of Generative AI at Adobe Alexandru Costin on The Future of Content CreationPatrick and Jacob sit down with Alexandru Costin, the VP of Generative AI and Sensei at Adobe, and discuss how Adobe’s early projects with generative AI in 2019 helped them move quickly upon the release of LLMs and diffusion models. Before leading Adobe’s generative AI efforts he founded InterAKT, a web development company, and led Adobe Romania for 10 years. 00:00 intro01:44 Adobe Romania and background02:26 AI projects at Adobe10:03 incorporating AI into existing products16:34 educating Adobe’s user base25:13 avoiding copyright issues with Ai-generated content32...
2023-08-2952 min
Redpoint Audio InsightsRedpoint Audio Insights: IntroductionIntroducing the Redpoint Audio Insights series. Get everything you love about Redpoint's online insights in an
easy-to-listen-to, accessible audio series.
2023-08-2501 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 15: Snorkel AI CEO Alex Ratner on What's Needed for Wider-Spread Enterprise AI AdoptionJacob sits down with Alex to discuss how Snorkel grew from an open-source project in a Stanford AI lab to a $1B company. Alex shares his thoughts on why data development is at the heart of AI development, why enterprises are slow to deploy LLM applications, and the importance of academia in the future of AI development. 00:00 intro 01:03 moving from academia to Snorkel 05:08 the evolution of Snorkel 18:33 improving pre-training 21:37 avoiding hallucinations and other errors 33:00 barriers to enterprises deploying AI 36:59 the Snorkel footprint of the futu...
2023-08-1846 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 14: Chroma CEO Jeff Huber on Vector Databases, Multimodal Embeddings & Building an AI StartupOn today’s episode we talk with Jeff Huber, the CEO and Co-founder of Chroma. We talk about what sets Chroma apart from its competitors, new developments in AI technology, and advice for listeners who want to get started in AI. 0:00 intro 1:02 starting chroma 6:08 vector databases 10:03 interesting use cases for vector databases 13:14 what sets chroma apart? 23:00 unresolved questions in LLMs 32:45 multiple agents vs. one agent to rule them all 34:50 chroma’s future 38:00 embedding models 43:00 over-hyped/under-hyped 44:30 AI regu...
2023-08-0148 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 13: PathAI CEO Dr. Andy Beck on the Future of AI in Medical DiagnosisJacob sits down with PathAI Ceo Dr. Andy Beck to discuss the state of AI adoption in diagnosis, why Path acquired their own lab, pathologists' jobs in the future and nailing GTM to reach a ~$1B valuation. 00:00 intro 01:01 pathology and AI 13:30 nailing go-to-market strategy 19:47 how pathology labs can go digital 25:36 regulatory frameworks and roadblocks 33:05 do improvements in foundation models impact PathAI? 36:26 standardizing diagnosis 40:05 how will the job of a pathologist change going forward? 42:35 NASH 47:30 working in Daphne Koller’s la...
2023-07-2550 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 12: EleutherAI's Aran Komatsuzaki on Open-Source Models' Future and Thought CloningJacob and Jordan sit down with EleutherAI's Aran Komatsuzaki to discuss the future of open-source models, thought cloning, his work on GPT-J and more. 0:00 intro01:06 Aran’s background02:58 starting work on gpt-j05:49 gathering data for Lion and gpt-j08:51 history of EleutherAI11:16 open vs. closed-source models19:06 how will open-source models be used going forward21:33 thought cloning25:51 building AI models that understand video29:35 one model to rule them all31:58 influence of academia in the LLM space3...
2023-07-1943 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 11: Stanford Professor Tatsu Hashimoto on AI Biases and Improving LLM PerformancePatrick and Jacob sit down with Tatsu Hashimoto, Professor of AI at Stanford, to discuss the incredible open source projects from his research group like Alpaca and AlpacaFarm, whether data, algorithms, fine-tuning or RLHF is most important for performance, if AI is liberal or conservative, and much more! (0:00) - intro(1:05) - journey to Stanford(2:50) - origins of Alpaca(6:08) - capabilities of the Alpaca model(16:39) - the future of AI(20:07) - AlpacaFarm(21:37) - how to improve language models(29:15) - do language models f...
2023-07-0550 minUnsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 9: Open AI VP of Product Peter Welinder on OpenAI’s Strategy and AI’s FutureJacob sits down with OpenAI VP of Product & Partnerships Peter Welinder and guest host Rob Toews (Radical VC Partner) to discuss OpenAI’s strategy, how they think about what they will/won’t build, the future of open source models and when we’ll reach AGI. (00:00) - intro(00:42) - where is the value in AI?(07:51) - how OpenAI prioritizes projects(14:15) - open-source AI(25:49) - gaps in AI(29:36) - risks and downsides(34:02) - when will we reach super-intellegence?(40:40) - super-intellegence safety(43:37...
2023-06-0750 min
The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 60: Scott Raney and Satish Dharmaraj (Investors, Redpoint) Breakdown Venture Capital and Why AI Will Be Bigger Than MobileScott Raney and Satish Dharmaraj are Redpoint's most senior investors and both appeared on the Forbes Midas List in 2022. Having invested in companies like Stripe, HashiCorp, Snowflake, and Sonos - they go through their perspectives on where everything's headed, AI, the venture ecosystem as it stands, how our partnership works, and more.(0:00) Intro(1:24) Welcome Satish and Scott(7:27) Venture firm structures(19:02) Partner dynamics(27:31) Operating with imperfect information(32:52) How do you think about pricing?(37:10) Great managers vs great leaders(40:16) Getting into venture(48:32) Thoughts...
2023-04-141h 10Unsupervised Learning with Jacob EffronEp 4: Fixie.ai CEO Matt Welsh on How LLMs Will Change the Way We WorkJordan and Erica chat with Fixie.ai co-founder and former Harvard CS professor on the journey from researcher to Google eng leader and then to startup life prior to founding Fixie, a new platform for building LLM-based apps (a Redpoint portfolio company). We also talk about having Mark Zuckerberg in his CS class, ChatGPT Plugins and the AI ecosystem, and what the future might look like for our kids with AGI. You can find Matt on Twitter (@mdwelsh) and learn more about Fixie at https://www.fixie.ai/(1:06) - Matt talks about his early days at Berklee an...
2023-04-0432 min
The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 52: Jason Warner & Jacob Effron (Redpoint Ventures) - Former GitHub CTO Explains AI for DummiesIn the 52nd episode of the Logan Bartlett Show, Redpoint’s Jason Warner and Jacob Effron join to discuss the quickly expanding AI landscape, what the AI models are, and why we should be paying attention.(0:00) Welcome Jason Warner and Jacob Effron(8:30) Why does the AI boom feel like it’s come out of nowhere?(12:30) How does it actually work?(16:02) Compounding on itself through usage & training reward models(18:08) Two most mainstream AI models(22:20) Why do people care about open source vs closed source?(30:45) Companies at the...
2023-02-171h 10
The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 27: Convo with Lux’s Josh Wolfe and Our Best/Worst Crypto Debate with Slow Venture’s Sam LessinLux Capital’s Josh Wolfe joins to discuss startups in the current market, and the long-awaited release of the crypto debate between Zach Weinberg and Slow Venture’s Sam Lessin that got so heated we weren’t sure we could publish it.(0:00) - Intro(1:27) – Welcome Josh Wolfe(3:10) – Market updates(13:21) – Anti-bubble(16:28) – Consolidation(19:57) – Everything times pi(22:35) – Welcome Sam Lessin(25:43) – NY tech founders in ‘07(30:44) – Slow Ventures(33:12) – The crypto debate begins(41:57) – On chain real estate(49:19) – Legal protections(1:03:10) – Does it hold up in court?...
2022-07-292h 23The Logan Bartlett ShowBonus Episode: Logan Bartlett’s Guest Appearance on Ordinary Astronauts: Talking the Why Behind Cartoon Avatars and the State of VCLogan Bartlett joined the Ordinary Astronauts podcast to talk Cartoon Avatars, the current state of venture capital, how startups can raise in this environment and paths for company building.Listen to Ordinary Astronauts: https://t.co/6bVExMcSVFTime Stamps:(0:00) - Intro(1:18) – Private vs public markets(4:31) – Finding your investor(7:47) – Valuations in the current market(12:52) – Few buyers at $1B valuation(14:12) – VC conspiracy theories(18:56) – Founder decisions(23:50) – Work/life balance(27:21) – Seeing through to the exit(30:04) – Origins of Cartoon Avatars(35:01) – The...
2022-07-281h 04The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 26: Chaos Monkey’s author Antonio García Martínez talks book, Facebook conspiracy theories, and a Web3 debateIn the 26th episode author of Chaos Monkeys and former Facebook PM Antonio García Martínez joins to discuss his experiences visiting Ukraine during the current crisis, debunking the biggest Facebook conspiracy theories, announces his new Web3 company, and then debates Zach about it!(0:00) - Intro(1:27) – Welcoming Antonio García Martínez (AGM)(4:04) – AGM’s greatest hits(7:45) – Ad tech(10:04) – Why AGM wrote Chaos Monkey(14:50) – His character in Chaos Monkey(17:19) – Bringing your whole self to work(19:14) – Politics in social media(26:17) – Converting to Judaism(30:5...
2022-07-231h 36The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 25: Braze’s Bill Magnuson talks the “aha moment” and advice for entrepreneurs, plus Rashad Assir’s path to Redpoint TikTokIn the 25th episode of Cartoon Avatars Logan talks with friend and Braze CEO Bill Magnuson about his start, his success, and the joke stocking stuffer worth 20k. Plus Redpoint’s Rashad Assir is back once again to discuss his own background, and how it led to his TikTok success and work with Redpoint.(0:00) Intro(0:22) Introducing Rashad(3:05) Rashad’s background(5:45) Redpoint’s TikTok(10:45) Introducing Bill Magnuson(16:27) How big is Braze?(17:36) Bill’s Background(20:48) Taking college classes as a high school freshman(25:11) Applying...
2022-07-161h 30The Logan Bartlett ShowBonus Episode: The Elon Musk Twitter Saga w/ Axios' Dan PrimackIn a special bonus episode due to Elon Musk’s announcement that he’ll be backing out of the Twitter deal, Logan is joined by Axios Business Editor Dan Primack to cover the whole story. What happened, how we got here, and can Elon actually just do this? (The answer is not really, no) Mixed and edited: Justin HrabovskyProduced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad AssirExecutive Producer: Josh MachizMusic Griff Lawson 🎙 Listen to the showApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...Spot...
2022-07-0953 minThe Logan Bartlett ShowEP 24: QED’s Frank Rotman Talks Crypto and Capital One Origins, Plus Redpoint’s Own TikTok Guy RevealedIn the 24th episode of Cartoon Avatars, QED Investors Co-Founder and CIO Frank Rotman joins the crypto debate with Zach, and discusses Capital One’s unique origins and structure with Logan. Plus the “Redpoint TikTok Guy” Rashad Assir is finally revealed in his first appearance on the pod.(0:00) Intro(0:44) Introducing Rashad Assir(3:25) Introducing Frank Rotman(6:36) History of Capital One(14:40) Building the infrastructure(16:25) Starting QED(18:29) Frank’s Web3 journey(24:15) Where’s the substance?(28:37) What in crypto makes the most sense?(30:48) Lending vs...
2022-07-091h 42The Logan Bartlett ShowBonus Episode: Logan and Zach on the "Best Business Show w/ Anthony Pompliano - Episode: 239"Logan and Zach are the featured guests on the "Best Business Show w/ Anthony Pompliano - Episode: 239" in this bonus episode of Cartoon Avatars. 🎙 Listen to the showApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb...Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0... Follow on Socials📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/cartoonavatars🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/cartoonavatars🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@cartoonavatars About the Show
2022-07-041h 14The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 23: Non-Crypto Talk with Zach Weinberg plus Interview with Acquired Podcast’s Ben Gilbert and David RosenthalTime Stamps:(1:18) Introducing Zach Weinberg(2:44) Web2 celebrity status(7:22) Frozen tech market(10:33) Investor perspective(14:06) Current market state(25:07) Advising founders(34:24) Bill Magnuson Story(38:13) Founder characteristics)(42:37) Zach vs Keith Rabois(49:13) Acquired FM intro(50:09) Acquired FM history(1:04:43) The state of podcasts(1:08:48) Logan’s backstory(1:23:52) Creating episodes(1:33:55) Three priorities of Acquired(1:46:28) Acquired’s best moments(1:49:10) Production process(1:54:36) Increasing blast radius(2:00:29 State of venture(2:08:14) The Tige...
2022-07-012h 21The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 20: Interview with Ramp’s Eric Glyman (+ explaining Cartoon Avatars’ origins) and a Crypto Debate with Mike Dudas and Zach Weinberg(01:14) Introducing Zach Weinberg and Mike Dudas(06:06) Mike’s background(19:02) Exciting about crypto(24:18) Zach vs crypto(32:04) Inflation hedge(38:25) Does Zach own Crypto(41:00) Banking in foreign countries(53:59) Stablecoin vs wire transfer(59:00) KYC(1:03:57) Crypto insurance(1:09:24) Eric Glyman: Welcome(1:11:32) Eric Glyman: Background(1:16:57) Eric Glyman: Mandarin Debate video(1:20:28) Eric Glyman: Starting Paribus(1:24:51) Eric Glyman: Selling to Capital One(1:28:57) Eric Glyman: Fintech’s success(1:33:49) Eric Glyman: What is Ramp?(1:43:10) Eric Glyman: Lear...
2022-06-112h 29The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 19: Matt Levine, Meme Stocks, Crypto Crash and Terrible Attempts at Crime(00:00) Intro (00:13) Intro Zach and Packy (01:07) Solana (05:14) Crypto Ecosystem (13:00) Crypto Use Cases (18:02) Crypto Investments (21:45) Elon’s Ultimatum (27:43) Billionaire Senate Run (32:04) VC Firm’s Scam & Media War (37:39) Sheryl Sandberg Steps Down (48:03) Matt Levine Intro (49:39) Leaving Goldman Sachs (52:26) Joining Deal Breaker (55:04) Choosing Topics (1:01:08) Crypto as a Lab for Financial Institutions (1:02:08) Deal Breaker to Bloomberg (1:07:00) Finance Bro Groupies (1:08:14) r/WallStreetBets (1:12:31) Insider Trading (1:15:17) Crypto (1:22:13) Elon and Twitter ...
2022-06-041h 35