No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups - Conviction

Latest Episodes:

Open AI leadership shuffle, new diffusion models, and starting the cult of Q* Nov 30, 2023

Show notes

OpenAI’s leadership has taken us all on a rollercoaster so it’s great timing for another host-only episode. This week Sarah and Elad get into what has been going on at OpenAI and what the turbulent leadership changes tell us about the importance of good intent and good incentives when building these influential companies. They also talk about innovative products coming out of Pika Labs, why people are moving away from diffusion models to LLMs, and how, in AI investing, the ASP is the opportunity.

Show Notes:

(0:00) Recapping the OpenAI saga

(9:56) AI video products

(16:14) Moving from Diffusion Models to LLMs

(19:47) The beneficial margins of AI investing

AI Agents That Reason and Code with Imbue Co-Founders Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht Nov 16, 2023

Show notes

The future of tech is 25-person companies powered by AI agents that help us accomplish our larger goals. Imbue is working on building AI agents that reason, code and generally make our lives easier. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil sit down with co-founders Kanjun Qiu (CEO) and Josh Albrecht (CTO) to discuss how they define reasoning, the spectrum of specialized and generalized agents, and the path to improved agent performance. Plus, what’s behind their $200M Series B fundraise.

Kanjun Qiu is the CEO and co-founder of Imbue. Kanjun is also a partner at angel fund Outset Capital, where she invests in promising pre-seed companies. Previously, Kanjun was the co-founder and CEO of Sourceress, a machine learning recruiting startup backed by YC and DFJ. She was previously Chief of Staff to Drew Houston at Dropbox, where she helped scale the company from 300 employees to 1200.

Josh Albrecht is the CTO and co-founder of Imbue. He also invests in other founders via his fund, Outset Capital. He has published machine learning papers as an academic researcher; founded an AI recruiting company that went through YC and a 3D injection molding software company that was acquired; helped build Addepar as an early engineer; and served as a Thiel Fellow mentor. He started programming as a kid and began working professionally as a software engineer in high school.

Show Links:

Kanjun’s LinkedIn | Website | Google Scholar
Josh’s LinkedIn | Website | Google Scholar
Imbue raises $200M to build AI systems that can reason and code

Show Notes:

(00:00) - Introduction to Imbue

(04:55) - The Spectrum of Agent Tasks

(08:43) - Specialization and Generalization With Agents

(13:03) - Code and Language in AI Agents

Mistral 7B and the Open Source Revolution With Arthur Mensch, CEO Mistral AI Nov 09, 2023

Show notes

Open Source fuels the engine of innovation, according to Arthur Mensch, CEO and co-founder of Mistral AI. Mistral is a French AI company which recently made a splash with releasing Mistral 7B, the most powerful language model for its size to date, and outperforming much larger models. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil sit down with Arthur to discuss why open source could win the AI wars, their $100M+ seed financing, the true nature of scaling laws, why he started his company in France, and what Mistral is building next.

Arthur Mensch is Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Mistral AI. A graduate of École Polytechnique, Télécom Paris and holder of the Master Mathématiques Vision Apprentissage at Paris Saclay, he completed his thesis in machine learning for functional brain imaging at Inria (Parietal team). He spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow in the Applied Mathematics department at ENS Ulm, where he carried out work in mathematics for optimization and machine learning. In 2020, he joined DeepMind as a researcher, working on large language models, before leaving in 2023 to co-found Mistral AI with Guillaume Lample and Timothee Lacroix.

Show Links:

Show Notes:

(0:00) - Why he co-founded Mistral

(4:22) - Chinchilla and Proportionality

(6:16) - Mistral 7b

(9:17) - Data and Annotations

(10:33) - Open Source Ecosystem

(17:36) - Proposed Compute and Scale Limits

(19:58) - Threat of Bioweapons

(23:08) - Guardrails and Safety

(29:46) - Mistral Platform

(31:31) - French and European AI Startups

What is Digital Life? with OpenAI Co-Founder & Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever Nov 02, 2023

Show notes

Each iteration of ChatGPT has demonstrated remarkable step function capabilities. But what’s next? Ilya Sutskever, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist at OpenAI, joins Sarah Guo and Elad Gil to discuss the origins of OpenAI as a capped profit company, early emergent behaviors of GPT models, the token scarcity issue, next frontiers of AI research, his argument for working on AI safety now, and the premise of Superalignment. Plus, how do we define digital life?

Ilya Sutskever is Co-founder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI. He leads research at OpenAI and is one of the architects behind the GPT models. He co-leads OpenAI's new "Superalignment" project, which tries to solve the alignment of superintelligences in 4 years. Prior to OpenAI, Ilya was co-inventor of AlexNet and Sequence to Sequence Learning. He earned his Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Toronto.

Show Links:

Ilya Sutskever | LinkedIn

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Show Notes:

(00:00) - Early Days of AI Research

(06:51) - Origins of Open Ai & CapProfit Structure

(13:46) - Emergent Behaviors of GPT Models

(17:55) - Model Scale Over Time & Reliability

(22:23) - Roles & Boundaries of Open-Source in the AI Ecosystem (28:22) - Comparing AI Systems to Biological & Human Intelligence (30:52) - Definition of Digital Life

(32:59) - Super Alignment & Creating Pro Human AI

(39:01) - Accelerating & Decelerating Forces

AI Threats & Opportunities in Cyber Security With Material Security Co-Founder Ryan Noon Oct 26, 2023

Show notes

Cyber Security is going to change significantly in the era of AI, according to Ryan Noon, cofounder of Material Security, a security company that makes cloud-based Google and Microsoft email a safe place for sensitive data. Elad Gil and Ryan talk about how Material Security started to use LLMs, potential security threats from AI hacks, and the role of the government in securing the Internet. Ryan also shares his advice for founders.

Ryan co-founded Material Security in 2017 after seeing high profile email hacks in the 2016 Presidential election. Previously, he led various engineering teams at Dropbox after it acquired his first company, Parastructure. Prior to Parastructure, he led engineering at a data analysis company spun out of Stanford by DARPA. He holds both an MS in Computer Networks and Security and a BS in Computer Science from Stanford.

Show Links:

Ryan Noon LinkedIn
Material Security Website
The Market for Silver Bullets by Ian Grigg

Show Notes:

(00:00) - How 2016 Election Hacking Inspired Ryan to Start Material Security

(05:00) - Generative AI Use Cases in Cyber Security & Fine Tuning

(11:36) - Predictions on Effective Threat Levels from AI Hacks

(14:45) - Democracy, the Department of Defence, DARPA and Cyber Security

(20:14) - Is there room for startups in the Cyber Security industry?

(26:40) - New Challenges On Horizon After 7 Years as Cofounder

(32:30) - Advice to Founders

What Google Cloud Can Teach Enterprises Developing & Rolling Out AI Tools, With Kawal Gandhi Oct 23, 2023

Show notes

As the Lead for Generative AI in the Office of the CTO for Google Cloud, Kawal Gandhi has a unique vantage point on enterprise AI rollout. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil sit down with Gandhi this week to discuss his insights on how enterprises can effectively invest in AI development, the importance of TPUs, and Google’s internal AI applications. Plus, when will email get more intelligent?

Kawal Gandhi has worked at Google for nearly a decade in search and ad roles before focusing on the development and marketing of AI tools.

Show Links:

Show Notes:

(00:00) - Generative AI in Google Cloud

(09:05) - AI Adoption in the Enterprise

(13:31) - Multi-Modal AI Models

(16:19) - AI Adoption, return-on-investment, anti-patterns

(24:43) - Google's TPU and NVIDIA GPU shortage

(31:00) - Data Marketplace and Model Training

From App to Suite to Platform, with HubSpot's Co-Founder Brian Halligan Oct 12, 2023

Show notes

Startups aren't the only companies racing to build the new world of AI. This week, Sarah Guo talks with Brian Halligan, the co-founder, longtime CEO and now executive chairperson of HubSpot, the fastest growing CRM. He talks about category creation, coining the term ‘inbound marketing,’ lessons in scaling from an app to a suite to a platform, staying innovative at scale, and how they're navigating the AI disruption. Brian also describes the life-threatening moment he decided to step back from the CEO role. Plus, what he’s up to at Propeller Ventures and why he’s banking on the ocean to save us from climate change.

Brian coined the term "inbound marketing" and together with Dharmesh Shah built a movement around the concept, which included organizing the industry-leading INBOUND event and co-authoring the book Inbound Marketing. Now, as the founder of Propeller Ventures, Brian directs a $100 million climate tech venture fund, specializing in ocean investments. He also serves on the boards of Navier and Aquatic Labs. Brian developed MIT’s popular Scaling Entrepreneurial Ventures class, which he’s taught for over a decade.

Show Links:

Brian Halligan | LinkedIn
Propeller VC
WHOI Partnership
HubSpot Culture Code
Read his books: Inbound Marketing and Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead

Show Notes:

(0:00:00) - HubSpot's Journey from Unlikely Startup to Industry Incumbent

(0:05:32) - The End of Cold Calling (and the Birth of Inbound)

(0:16:40) - Building a Multi-Product Company

(0:22:07) - How to Stay Innovative and Hungry after Going Public

(0:29:12) - AI Workflows in CRM and the Incumbent Data Advantage

(0:36:09) - Creating a Culture Code for HubSpot

(0:40:24) - Propeller Venture Fund, Ours Oceans and Climate Investing

Model Quality, Fine Tuning & Meta Sponsoring Open Source Ecosystem Oct 09, 2023

Show notes

What Does it Take to Improve by 10x or 100x? This week is another host-only episode. Sarah and Elad talk about the path to better model quality, the potential for fine tuning to different use cases, retrieval systems (RAG), feedback systems (RLHF, RLAIF) and Meta’s sponsorship of the open source model ecosystem. Plus Sarah and Elad ask if we’re finally at the beginning of a new set of consumer applications and social networks.

Show Notes:

0:03:00 - AI Models and Open AI Advances

0:08:59 - Addressing Hallucinations in AI Models

0:13:22 - Open Source Models in Consumer Engagement

0:16:23 - New Trends in Social Content Creation

0:21:53 - Balancing Ambition With Realistic Customer Expectations

If DNA is Code, Can AI Help Write It? Scaling Cell Programming and Synthetic Biology, with Ginkgo Bioworks Co-founder and CEO Jason Kelly Sep 28, 2023

Show notes

Ginkgo Bioworks is using DNA as code to digitize the cell programming revolution. Ginkgo is using AI and synthetic biology to keep the next pandemic at bay, and accelerate our production capabilities for medicine, food, and agriculture. Ginkgo’s co-founder and CEO Jason Kelly joins hosts Sarah Guo and Elad Gil to discuss bioengineering protein as a foundational model, specialized data learning from an evolutionary perspective, what we need to prepare for a future pandemic, and more.

Jason has served as a member of our board of directors since Ginkgo’s founding in 2008. He has also served as a director of CM Life Sciences II Inc. (Nasdaq: CMII), a special purpose acquisition company with a focus on the life sciences sector, since its initial public offering in February 2021. Jason holds a Ph.D. in Biological Engineering and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Show Links:

Show Notes:

(0:00:00) - The Difference Between Software Engineering and Biological Engineering

(0:06:51) - Abstractions and Infrastructure in Synthetic Bio

(0:09:23) - The Role of AI, Foundation Models that Speak Biology

(0:13:17) - AWS for Cell Engineering

(0:17:52) - Where are the AI-discovered Drugs? And Data at Gingko

(0:19:12) - Pandemic Response and Biosecurity in the Age of AI

(0:22:47) - The Likelihood of Existential AI Risk from Lone Actors Harnessing Viruses, and The Need for Defense-in-Depth

(0:31:47) - Will Progress in AI Be Biologically Inspired? And Evolution

How Replit’s AI Tools are Changing Software Development with Co-founder and CEO Amjad Masad Sep 21, 2023

Show notes

Replit’s develop-to-deploy platform and new AI tool, Ghostwriter, are breaking down the barriers to entry for beginner programmers. Replit’s CEO, co-founder, and head engineer Amjad Masad joins hosts Sarah Guo and Elad Gil to discuss how AI can change software engineering, the infrastructure we still need, open source foundation models, and what to expect from AI agents.

Before co-founding Replit, Amjad Masad worked at Facebook as a software engineer, where he worked on infrastructure tooling. He was a founding engineer at CodeAcademy. Throughout his career, Masad has been an advocate for open-source software.

Show Links: