Practical AI - podcast cover

Practical AI

Practical AI LLCpracticalai.fm
Making artificial intelligence practical, productive & accessible to everyone. Practical AI is a show in which technology professionals, business people, students, enthusiasts, and expert guests engage in lively discussions about Artificial Intelligence and related topics (Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, GANs, MLOps, AIOps, LLMs & more). The focus is on productive implementations and real-world scenarios that are accessible to everyone. If you want to keep up with the latest advances in AI, while keeping one foot in the real world, then this is the show for you!

Episodes

Licensing & automating creativity

AI is increasingly being applied in creative and artistic ways, especially with recent tools integrating models like Stable Diffusion. This is making some artists mad. How should we be thinking about these trends more generally, and how can we as practitioners release and license models anticipating human impacts? We explore this along with other topics (like AI models detecting swimming pools 😊) in this fully connected episode. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get clos...

Sep 06, 202244 minEp. 192

Privacy in the age of AI

In this Fully-Connected episode, Daniel and Chris discuss concerns of privacy in the face of ever-improving AI / ML technologies. Evaluating AI’s impact on privacy from various angles, they note that ethical AI practitioners and data scientists have an enormous burden, given that much of the general population may not understand the implications of the data privacy decisions of everyday life. This intentionally thought-provoking conversation advocates consideration and action from each listener ...

Aug 30, 202243 minEp. 191

Practical, positive uses for deep fakes

Differentiating between what is real versus what is fake on the internet can be challenging. Historically, AI deepfakes have only added to the confusion and chaos, but when labeled and intended for good, deepfakes can be extremely helpful. But with all of the misinformation surrounding deepfakes, it can be hard to see the benefits they bring. Lior Hakim, CTO at Hour One, joins Chris and Daniel to shed some light on the practical uses of deepfakes. He addresses the AI technology behind deepfakes,...

Aug 24, 202243 minEp. 190

CMU's AI pilot lands in the news 🗞

Daniel and Chris cover the AI news of the day in this wide-ranging discussion. They start with Truss from Baseten while addressing how to categorize AI infrastructure and tools. Then they move on to transformers (again!), and somehow arrive at an AI pilot model from CMU that can navigate crowded airspace (much to Chris’s delight). Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Featuring: Chris Benson – Website , GitHub ,...

Aug 16, 202241 minEp. 189

AlphaFold is revolutionizing biology

AlphaFold is an AI system developed by DeepMind that predicts a protein’s 3D structure from its amino acid sequence. It regularly achieves accuracy competitive with experiment, and is accelerating research in nearly every field of biology. Daniel and Chris delve into protein folding, and explore the implications of this revolutionary and hugely impactful application of AI. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! F...

Aug 09, 202245 minEp. 188

AI IRL & Mozilla's Internet Health Report

Every year Mozilla releases an Internet Health Report that combines research and stories exploring what it means for the internet to be healthy. This year’s report is focused on AI. In this episode, Solana and Bridget from Mozilla join us to discuss the power dynamics of AI and the current state of AI worldwide. They highlight concerning trends in the application of this transformational technology along with positive signs of change. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get...

Aug 02, 202243 minEp. 187

The geopolitics of artificial intelligence

In this Fully-Connected episode, Chris and Daniel explore the geopolitics, economics, and power-brokering of artificial intelligence. What does control of AI mean for nations, corporations, and universities? What does control or access to AI mean for conflict and autonomy? The world is changing rapidly, and the rate of change is accelerating. Daniel and Chris look behind the curtain in the halls of power. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make...

Jul 26, 202246 minEp. 186

DALL-E is one giant leap for raccoons! 🔭

In this Fully-Connected episode, Daniel and Chris explore DALL-E 2, the amazing new model from Open AI that generates incredibly detailed novel images from text captions for a wide range of concepts expressible in natural language. Along the way, they acknowledge that some folks in the larger AI community are suggesting that sophisticated models may be approaching sentience, but together they pour cold water on that notion. But they can’t seem to get away from DALL-E’s images of raccoons in spac...

Jul 19, 202241 minEp. 185

Cloning voices with Coqui

Coqui is a speech technology startup that making huge waves in terms of their contributions to open source speech technology, open access models and data, and compelling voice cloning functionality. Josh Meyer from Coqui joins us in this episode to discuss cloning voices that have emotion, fostering open source, and how creators are using AI tech. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Featuring: Josh Meyer – Git...

Jul 12, 202252 minEp. 184

AI's role in reprogramming immunity

Drausin Wulsin, Director of ML at Immunai , joins Daniel & Chris to talk about the role of AI in immunotherapy, and why it is proving to be the foremost approach in fighting cancer, autoimmune disease, and infectious diseases. The large amount of high dimensional biological data that is available today, combined with advanced machine learning techniques, creates unique opportunities to push the boundaries of what is possible in biology. To that end, Immunai has built the largest immune datab...

Jun 28, 202249 minEp. 183

Machine learning in your database

While scaling up machine learning at Instacart, Montana Low and Lev Kokotov discovered just how much you can do with the Postgres database. They are building on that work with PostgresML, an extension to the database that lets you train and deploy models to make online predictions using only SQL. This is super practical discussion that you don’t want to miss! Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Featuring: Mont...

Jun 22, 202249 minEp. 182

Digital humans & detecting emotions

Could we create a digital human that processes data in a variety of modalities and detects emotions? Well, that’s exactly what NTT DATA Services is trying to do, and, in this episode, Theresa Kushner joins us to talk about their motivations, use cases, current systems, progress, and related ethical issues. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Featuring: Theresa Kushner – LinkedIn , X Daniel Whitenack – Website ...

Jun 14, 202242 minEp. 181

Generalist models & Iceman's voice

In this “fully connected” episode of the podcast, we catch up on some recent developments in the AI world, including a new model from DeepMind called Gato. This generalist model can play video games, caption images, respond to chat messages, control robot arms, and much more. We also discuss the use of AI in the entertainment industry (e.g., in new Top Gun movie). Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Featuring:...

Jun 07, 202241 minEp. 180

🤗 The AI community building the future

Hugging Face is increasingly becomes the “hub” of AI innovation. In this episode, Merve Noyan joins us to dive into this hub in more detail. We discuss automation around model cards, reproducibility, and the new community features. If you are wanting to engage with the wider AI community, this is the show for you! Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Featuring: Merve Noyan – GitHub , X Chris Benson – Website , ...

May 31, 202247 minEp. 179

Active learning & endangered languages

Don’t all AI methods need a bunch of data to work? How could AI help document and revitalize endangered languages with “human-in-the-loop” or “active learning” methods? Sarah Moeller from the University of Florida joins us to discuss those and other related questions. She also shares many of her personal experiences working with languages in low resource settings. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Featuring:...

May 17, 202249 minEp. 178

Learning the language of life

AI is discovering new drugs. Sound like science fiction? Not at Absci! Sean and Joshua join us to discuss their AI-driven pipeline for drug discovery. We discuss the tech along with how it might change how we think about healthcare at the most fundamental level. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Changelog++ – You love our content and you want to take it to the next level by showing your support. We...

May 03, 202248 minEp. 177

MLOps is NOT Real

We all hear a lot about MLOps these days, but where does MLOps end and DevOps begin? Our friend Luis from OctoML joins us in this episode to discuss treating AI/ML models as regular software components (once they are trained and ready for deployment). We get into topics including optimization on various kinds of hardware and deployment of models at the edge. Join the discussion Changelog++ members save 2 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Changelog...

Apr 26, 202246 minEp. 176

🌍 AI in Africa - Agriculture

In the fourth “AI in Africa” spotlight episode, we welcome Leonida Mutuku and Godliver Owomugisha, two experts in applying advanced technology in agriculture. We had a great discussion about ending poverty, hunger, and inequality in Africa via AI innovation. The discussion touches on open data, relevant models, ethics, and more. Join the discussion Changelog++ members save 2 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly ...

Apr 19, 202251 minEp. 175

Quick, beautiful web UIs for ML apps

Abubakar Abid joins Daniel and Chris for a tour of Gradio and tells them about the project joining Hugging Face. What’s Gradio? The fastest way to demo your machine learning model with a friendly web interface, allowing non-technical users to access, use, and give feedback on models. Join the discussion Changelog++ members get a bonus 2 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today! Sponsors: Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experienc...

Apr 05, 202242 minEp. 174

It's been a BIG week in AI news 🗞

This last week has been a big week for AI news. BigScience is training a huge language model (while the world watches), and NVIDIA announced their latest “Hopper” GPUs. Chris and Daniel discuss these and other topics on this fully connected episode! Join the discussion Changelog++ members get a bonus 2 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today! Sponsors: Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delive...

Mar 29, 202241 minEp. 173

"Foundation" models

The term “foundation” model has been around since about the middle of last year when a research group at Stanford published the comprehensive report On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models . The naming of these models created some strong reactions, both good and bad. In this episode, Chris and Daniel dive into the ideas behind the report. Join the discussion Changelog++ members get a bonus 2 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today! Sponsors: Fastly – Our bandwidth...

Mar 23, 202241 minEp. 172

Clothing AI in a data fabric

What happens when your data operations grow to Internet-scale? How do thousands or millions of data producers and consumers efficiently, effectively, and productively interact with each other? How are varying formats, protocols, security levels, performance criteria, and use-case specific characteristics meshed into one unified data fabric? Chris and Daniel explore these questions in this illuminating and Fully-Connected discussion that brings this new data technology into the light. Join the di...

Mar 16, 202246 minEp. 171

Creating a culture of innovation

Daniel and Chris talk with Lukas Egger, Head of Innovation Office and Strategic Projects at SAP Business Process Intelligence. Lukas describes what it takes to bring a culture of innovation into an organization, and how to infuse product development with that innovation culture. He also offers suggestions for how to mitigate challenges and blockers. Join the discussion Changelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Fastly – Our bandw...

Mar 08, 202252 minEp. 170

Deploying models (to tractors 🚜)

Alon from Greeneye and Moses from ClearML blew us away when they said that they are training 1000’s of models a year that get deployed to Kubernetes clusters on tractors. Yes… we said tractors, as in farming! This is a super cool discussion about MLOps solutions at scale for interesting use cases in agriculture. Join the discussion Changelog++ members save 2 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secu...

Mar 01, 202251 minEp. 169

One algorithm to rule them all?

From MIT researchers who have an AI system that rapidly predicts how two proteins will attach, to Facebook’s first high-performance self-supervised algorithm that works for speech, vision, and text, Daniel and Chris survey the AI landscape for notable milestones in the application of AI in industry and research. Join the discussion Changelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secu...

Feb 15, 202245 minEp. 168

🌍 AI in Africa - Voice & language tools

In the third of the “AI in Africa” spotlight episodes, we welcome Kathleen Siminyu, who is building Kiswahili voice tools at Mozilla. We had a great discussion with Kathleen about creating more diverse voice and language datasets, involving local language communities in NLP work, and expanding grassroots ML/AI efforts across Africa. Join the discussion Changelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fas...

Feb 09, 202244 minEp. 167

Exploring deep reinforcement learning

In addition to being a Developer Advocate at Hugging Face, Thomas Simonini is building next-gen AI in games that can talk and have smart interactions with the player using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). He also created a Deep Reinforcement Learning course that takes a DRL beginner to from zero to hero. Natalie and Chris explore what’s involved, and what the implications are, with a focus on the development path of the new AI data scientist. Join the disc...

Feb 01, 202241 minEp. 166

The world needs an AI superhero

From drug discovery at the Quebec AI Institute to improving capabilities with low-resourced languages at the Masakhane Research Foundation and Google AI, Bonaventure Dossou looks for opportunities to use his expertise in natural language processing to improve the world - and especially to help his homeland in the Benin Republic in Africa. Join the discussion Changelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Fastly – Our bandwidth partne...

Jan 25, 202243 minEp. 165

Democratizing ML for speech

You might know about MLPerf, a benchmark from MLCommons that measures how fast systems can train models to a target quality metric. However, MLCommons is working on so much more! David Kanter joins us in this episode to discuss two new speech datasets that are democratizing machine learning for speech via data scale and language/speaker diversity. Join the discussion Changelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Changelog++ – You lo...

Jan 19, 202245 minEp. 164

Eliminate AI failures

We have all seen how AI models fail, sometimes in spectacular ways. Yaron Singer joins us in this episode to discuss model vulnerabilities and automatic prevention of bad outcomes. By separating concerns and creating a “firewall” around your AI models, it’s possible to secure your AI workflows and prevent model failure. Join the discussion Changelog++ members get a bonus 2 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today! Sponsors: Me, Myself, and AI – A podcast on artificial intellig...

Jan 11, 202242 minEp. 163
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