High Agency: The Podcast for AI Builders

Latest Episodes:

How to build great AI products with Vanta Software Developer Noam Rubin Dec 18, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Noam Rubin, a Software Developer at Vanta reveals how his team uses data-driven strategies to design, test, and improve cutting-edge AI features. Learn how customer insights, rapid prototyping, and iterative development transform raw ideas into tools that make compliance and security easier for businesses everywhere.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction
02:47 - The process of building AI products at Vanta
04:51 - The role of customer feedback in product development
06:59 - Integrating AI into security and compliance workflows
08:06 - Using data specifications to guide product development
10:10 - Collaborating with subject matter experts to refine AI models
12:14 - Iterative testing and refining AI features
14:10 - Quality control and ensuring AI accuracy
16:00 - The importance of dogfooding and internal feedback loops
18:23 - Scaling AI features and rolling them out to wider audiences
20:50 - Educating engineers and democratizing AI at Vanta
22:20 - Key lessons learned from building AI products
24:12 - Maintaining AI quality through continuous feedback
26:00 - The future of AI in business and product development

Predictions for AI in 2025 I Ex-OpenAI, Ex-Stripe researcher Stanislav Polu Dec 11, 2024

Show notes

In this episode of High Agency, former OpenAI researcher Stan Polu shares his journey from AI research to founding Dust, an enterprise AI platform. Stan offers a contrarian view on the future of AI, suggesting we may be hitting a plateau in model capabilities since GPT-4. He discusses why startups should focus on product-market fit before investing in GPUs, shares practical lessons for building AI products, and predicts increased competition between AI labs and API developers.

Chapters:
00:00 - Introducing Dust: an enterprise AI platform
06:07 - From Stripe to OpenAI: Stan's journey
10:29 - Why research wasn't enough: building Dust
15:10 - Best practices for building an AI product
20:50 - Is prompt engineering here to stay
23:40 - Understanding language models and their limitations
32:56 - Predictions for AI in 2025
39:53 - Measuring progress toward AGI
42:26 - The true value of AI technology

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Humanloop is the LLM evals platform for enterprises. We give you the tools that top teams use to ship and scale AI with confidence. To find out more go to humanloop.com

How Replicate is Democratizing AI with Open-Source Resources Nov 13, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, we explore how Replicate is breaking down barriers in AI development through its open-source platform. CEO Ben Firshman shares how Replicate enables developers without machine learning expertise to run AI models in the cloud.

00:00 Introduction
00:29 Overview of Replicate
03:13 Replicate's user base
05:45 Enterprise use cases and lowering the AI barrier
07:45 The complexity of traditional AI deployment
10:24 Simplifying AI with Replicate's API
13:50 ControlNets and the challenges of image models
19:42 Fragmentation in AI models: images vs. language
25:05 Customization and multi-model pipelines in production
26:33 Learning by doing: skills for AI engineers
28:44 Applying AI in governments
31:12 Iterative development and co-evolution of AI specs
33:13 Final reflections on AI hype
35:18 Conclusion

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Humanloop is an Integrated Development Environment for Large Language Models. It enables product teams to develop LLM-based applications that are reliable and scalable. To find out more go to humanloop.com

The Principles for Building Excellent AI Features with Superhuman’s Lorilyn McCue Nov 07, 2024

Show notes

How do you build AI tools that actually meet users’ needs? In this episode of High Agency, Raza speaks with Lorilyn McCue, the driving force behind Superhuman’s AI-powered features. Lorilyn lays out the principles that guide her team’s work, from continuous learning to prioritizing user feedback. Learn how Superhuman’s "learning-first" approach allows them to fine-tune features like Ask AI and AI-driven summaries, creating practical solutions for today’s professionals.

00:00 - Introduction
04:20 - Overview of the Superhuman
06:50 - Instant Reply and Ask AI
10:00 - Building On-Demand vs. Always-On AI Features
13:45 - Prompt Engineering for Effective Summarization
22:35 - The Importance of Seamless AI Integration in User Workflows
25:10 - Developing Advanced Email Search with Contextual Reasoning
29:45 - Leveraging User Feedback
32:15 - Balancing Customization and Scalability in AI-Generated Emails
36:05 - Approach to Prioritization
39:30 - Real-World Use Cases: The Versatility of Current AI Capabilities
43:15 - Learning and Staying Updated in the Rapidly Evolving AI Field
46:00 - Is AI Overhyped or Underhyped?
49:20 - Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

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Humanloop is an Integrated Development Environment for Large Language Models. It enables product teams to develop LLM-based applications that are reliable and scalable. To find out more go to humanloop.com

Jeff Huber of Chroma: Building the open-source toolkit for AI Engineering Oct 24, 2024

Show notes

This week on High Agency, Raza Habib is joined by Chroma founder Jeff Huber. They cover the evolution of vector databases in AI engineering, challenge common assumptions about RAG and share insights from Chroma's journey. Jeff shares insights from Chroma's development, including their focus on developer experience and observations about real-world usage patterns. They also get into whether or not we can expect a super AI any time soon and what is over and under hyped in the industry today.

00:00 - Introduction
02:30 - Why vector databases matter for AI
06:00 - Understanding embeddings and similarity search
12:00 - Chroma early days
15:45 - Problems with existing vector database solutions
19:30 - Workload patterns in AI applications
23:40 - Real-world use cases and search applications
27:15 - The problem with RAG terminology
31:45 - Dynamic retrieval and model interactions
35:30 - Email processing and instruction management
39:15 - Context windows vs vector databases
42:30 - Enterprise adoption and production systems
45:45 - The journey from GPT-3 to production AI
48:15 - Internal vs customer-facing applications
51:00 - Advice for AI engineers

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Humanloop is an Integrated Development Environment for Large Language Models. It enables product teams to develop LLM-based applications that are reliable and scalable. To find out more go to humanloop.com

How to Create AI Strategy in Enterprises with Peter Gostev from Moonpig Oct 16, 2024

Show notes

In this episode of High Agency podcast, Peter Gostev shares his experiences implementing LLMs at NatWest and Moonpig. He discusses creating an AI strategy, talks about challenges in deploying LLMs in large organizations, and shares thoughts on underappreciated AI developments.

00:00 - Introduction
00:44 - OpenAI dev day reactions
03:47 - Using AI to automate customer service
10:43 - Impact of AI products
13:41 - Who are the users of LLMs
14:47 - Challenges building with AI in a large enterprise
21:22 - AI use cases at Moonpig
24:34 - How to create an AI strategy
28:10 - Underappreciated AI developments

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Humanloop is an LLM evals platform for enterprises. It enables product teams to develop LLM-based applications that are reliable and scalable. To find out more go to humanloop.com

Ex-Coinbase CPO's Next Big Thing: AI Employees I Surojit Chatterjee Oct 02, 2024

Show notes

In this episode of High Agency, we're joined by Surojit Chatterjee, former CPO of Coinbase and now CEO of Ema. Surojit unveils his audacious plan to create universal AI employees and revolutionize Fortune 1000 workforce. Drawing from his career at tech giants like Google and Coinbase, he shares how these experiences fueled his vision for Ema. Surojit dives into the challenges of building AI agents, explores the concept of artificial humans, and predicts how this technology could transform the future of SaaS

(00:00:00) Introduction and Surojit’s background

(00:03:00) Founding story of Ema (Universal AI Employee)

(00:04:53) How the Universal AI Employee works

(00:08:39) Ema’s data integration and security

(00:12:57) AI employee use cases in enterprises

(00:15:02) Challenges with building AI agents

(00:16:45) Evaluations, hallucinations, customizing models

(00:19:52) Artificial human metaphor

(00:25:42) AI employee vs humans

(00:31:25) Advice for AI builders

(00:37:14) Is AI overhyped or underhyped?

(00:39:28) How the business model of SaaS will change

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Humanloop is an Integrated Development Environment for Large Language Models. It enables product teams to develop LLM-based applications that are reliable and scalable. To find out more go to humanloop.com

Why Your AI Product Needs Evals with Hamel Husain and Swyx Sep 25, 2024

Show notes

Hamel Husain is a seasoned AI consultant and engineer with experience at companies like GitHub, DataRobot, and Airbnb. He is a trailblazer in AI development, known for his innovative work in literate programming and AI-assisted development tools. Shawn Wang (aka Swyx) is the host of the Latent Space podcast, the author of the essay 'Rise of the AI Engineer,' and the founder of the AI Engineer World Fair. In this episode, Hamel and Swyx share their unique insights on building effective AI products, the critical importance of evaluations, and their vision for the future of AI engineering.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction and recent AI advancements

06:14 - The critical role of evals in AI product development

15:33 - Common pitfalls in AI product development

26:33 - Literate programming: A new paradigm for AI development

39:58 - Answer AI and innovative approaches to software development

51:56 - Integrating AI with literate programming environments

58:47 - The importance of understanding AI prompts

01:00:37 - Assessing the current state of AI adoption

01:07:10 - Challenges in evaluating AI models

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Humanloop is an Integrated Development Environment for Large Language Models. It enables product teams to develop LLM-based applications that are reliable and scalable. To find out more go to humanloop.com

How AI is Changing Product Management with Raz Nussbaum from Gong AI Sep 17, 2024

Show notes

Raz Nussbaum is a Senior Product Manager in AI at Gong — the leading AI platform for revenue teams. He is an absolute legend when it comes to building and scaling AI products that genuinely deliver value. In this episode, he opens up about what it takes to build successful AI products in an era where things change at lightning speed.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:16 - How LLMs Changed Product Development at Gong AI
08:32 - Including Product Managers in Development Process
13:05 - Testing and Monitoring Pre vs Post-deployment
17:53 - New Challenges in the Face of Generative AI
19:39 - Shipping Fast and Interacting with the Market
23:25 - What's Next For Gong AI
25:13 - The Psychology of Trusting AI
28:19 - Is AI Overhyped or Underhyped?

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Humanloop is an Integrated Development Environment for Large Language Models. It enables product teams to develop LLM-based applications that are reliable and scalable. To find out more go to humanloop.com

From Fiction to Reality: Sudowrite's Journey in AI-Assisted Creative Writing Sep 11, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, we dive deep into the world of AI-assisted creative writing with James Yu, founder of Sudowrite. James shares the journey of building an AI assistant for novelists, helping writers develop ideas, manage complex storylines, and avoid clichés. James gets into the backlash the company faced when they first released Story Engine and how they're working to build a community of users.

00:00 - Introduction and Background of Sudowrite
02:26 - The Early Days: Concept, Skepticism, and User Adoption
05:20 - Sudowrite's Interface, Features, and User Base
10:23 - Developing and Iterating Features in Sudowrite
17:29 - The Evolution of Story Bible and Writing Assistance
24:27 - Challenges in Maintaining Coherence and AI-Assisted Writing
29:12 - Evaluating AI Features and the Role of Prompt Engineering
33:35 - Handling Tropes, Clichés, and Fine-Tuning for Author Voice
40:43 - The Controversy and Future of AI in Creative Work
51:37 - Predictions for AI in the Next Five Years

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Humanloop is an Integrated Development Environment for Large Language Models. It enables product teams to develop LLM-based applications that are reliable and scalable. To find out more go to humanloop.com

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