E46: AI Scouting Report - Part 2 of 3: Implementation Trends [Bonus YouTube Episode]

Head over to YouTube to watch Part 2 of The AI Scouting Report (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovm4MbQ4G9E), supported by slides and visual aides. In Part 2, Nathan Labenz builds on Part 1: AI Fundamental and delves into recent trends and practical applications for AI. Nathan's aim is to impart the equivalent of a high school AP course understanding to listeners in 90-minute installments. 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 Listener comments on Part 1: "Incredible summary! I’ve watched probably 20 videos like this and I’ve always been left with unanswered questions." "This is a really excellent overview! Enjoyed going through this and looking forward to episode 2. Thank you for sharing it on here for free!" "Best 90 minutes this old PhD physicist has spent in a long time!" LINKS: Part 1: https://youtu.be/0hvtiVQ_LqQ Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovm4MbQ4G9E Part 3 released later this week! Questions or topics you want us to review on the podcast? 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].

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nathan Labenz?

  Welcome back Weekend Warriors to the AI Scanning Report Part Two. What's up, Eric? Hey Nathan, stoked to get into part two. Just to kind of set ourselves up for where we left off. Part one was all about setting up how we got to this AI moment. And I've really come to believe more and more recently that given the existence of web-scale data and web-scale compute, that it was really only a matter of time before somebody figured out an algorithm that was really going to work. And the algorithm that we figured out first that seems to be generalizing to just about everything that we try to use it for

• 0:41Nathan Labenz?

  is the transformer. And we went through the architecture of the transformer and the parts and covered a lot of the jargon. And then for me, the most interesting part was getting into what we can really say about what they do and don't know. And obviously, that led us to a discussion of Grokking, which is this generalization and apparently very real, even if sometimes alien, conceptual understanding that is definitely more than just memorization. And we can see that because we're able to kind of, in some cases, even reverse engineer the algorithm that the transformer has learned and break it down and show that this really is a general solution to the problem.

• 1:25Nathan Labenz?

  So that brings us to this interesting moment where these frontier language models like a GPT-4, they know a lot of stuff and it's unclear in many cases whether they know that because they've kind of memorized statistical correlations and they're still operating in the stochastic paradigm, or whether they've truly Grokked conceptually whatever the subject matter is and have really learned something in a robust way. So that debate rages on. And I think every month as we look at updating this already since the publication of part one, there have been some incremental Grokking results.

• 2:06Nathan Labenz?

  And people continue to really explore what do they and don't they know? Where are they guessing and where are they really coming to understand conceptually what we're asking them to do? But today, part two is going to be much more practical, much more applied. Now that we've got these large scale language models like a GPT-4, what can we do with them? And how do we overcome the weaknesses that they have so that they can actually start to do really useful stuff for us? And that is where this recent trends part kicks off. How's that sound? Sounds great. Let's get into it. You will need to watch the video to get the full experience. Now, without further ado, follow the link to our YouTube channel for my AI scouting report.