Unsupervised Learning with Jacob Effron

Latest Episodes:

Ep 31: CEO and Co-Founder of Mistral Arthur Mensch on the Next Frontiers for LLMs, Why Open Source Will Prevail and AI Safety Mar 28, 2024

Show notes

Mistral 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 do best”

(7:50) Mistral’s partnership strategy

(10:12) the next frontiers for LLMs

(11:47) Meta’s GPU announcement

(13:03) when will Mistral catch up to ChatGPT?

(16:00) NVIDIA chips

(16:55) AI regulation and EU AI Act

(20:07) who should handle AI safety?

(20:51) policy changes that Arthur would make

(22:52) foundation models around the world

(25:50) starting Mistral

(26:54) releasing Le Chat

(30:19) over-hyped/under-hyped

(30:32) surprises while building Mistral

(31:55) AI startups Arthur is excited about

(32:19) what application would Arthur build

(33:46) Jacob and Jordan debrief

With your co-hosts:

@jacobeffron

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health

@patrickachase

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn

@ericabrescia

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)

@jordan_segall

- Partner at Redpoint

Jacob is an AI investor at Redpoint Ventures. He's led Redpoint's investments in companies like Abridge, Physical Intelligence & Legora. Follow Jacob on Twitter (@jacobeffron).
On Unsupervised Learning we probe the sharpest minds in AI in search for the truth about what's real today, what will be real in the future and what it all means for businesses and the world. If you're a builder, researcher or investor navigating the AI world, this podcast will help you deconstruct and understand the most important breakthroughs and see a clearer picture of reality. Subscribe to this show to stay up to date on our latest episodes.

Ep 30: Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra on the Future of Email with AI and the Role Agents Will Play Mar 19, 2024

Show notes

Superhuman 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 Superhuman personalizes email voices

(28:35) choosing which models to use

(31:00) how does cost play into decision-making

(34:10) teaching users how to use AI

(46:27) competing with incumbents

(56:57) how work has evolved

(59:02) how Rahul would redesign Slack / Slack Agent

(1:04:54) Jacob and Pat debrief

With your co-hosts:

@jacobeffron

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health

@patrickachase

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn

@ericabrescia

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)

@jordan_segall

- Partner at Redpoint

Ep 29: Salesforce AI CEO Clara Shih on Future of Slack, How Gucci Uses AI and Working with Marc Benioff Mar 06, 2024

Show notes

There’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 adoption

(16:01) how does Salesforce choose who to share their data with?

(20:29) AI costs

(26:29 creating unique voices for brands

(27:45) AI incumbents vs. startups

(29:54) what Clara would build if she had the time

(32:28) the future of Slack

(35:55) what percent of customer support questions can be answered by AI?

(38:37) over-hyped/under-hyped

(39:32) working with Mark Benioff

(40:46) Jacob and Pat debrief

(44:42) Slack is the perfect interface for generative AI

(46:10) Abridge investment

(48:15) Ideogram investment

With your co-hosts:

@jacobeffron

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health

@patrickachase

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn

@ericabrescia

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)

@jordan_segall

- Partner at Redpoint

Ep 28: LangChain CEO Harrison Chase on the Current State of Eval and Agents and The LLM Apps that Will Define 2024 Feb 20, 2024

Show notes

Last 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 generalizable?

(21:11) the current agent landscape

(29:35) balancing present and future at LangChain

(36:27) using LangServe to deploy LangChain applications

(41:37) more complex chatbots are coming

(45:51) current AI practices that will become obsolete

(48:55) over-hyped/under-hyped

(49:25) bigger surprise in building LangChain

(51:50) how ubiquitous will open-source models be in the future?

(52:43) most exciting AI startups

(56:07) being an AI “celebrity”

(58:09) Jacob and Jordan debrief

With your co-hosts:

@jacobeffron

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health

@patrickachase

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn

@ericabrescia

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)

@jordan_segall

- Partner at Redpoint

Ep 27: Oscar Co-Founder Mario Schlosser on How LLMs Can Be Used in Healthcare Today and The Path to AI Doctors Feb 13, 2024

Show notes

Oscar 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 why can't we have robot doctors today.

(0:00) intro

(1:26) how will AI change healthcare in the next decade

(9:29) how Oscar uses AI

(19:00) how to build around healthcare requirements

(26:06) when would GPT-4 fail "miserably" and fundamental limitations of LLMs

(36:48) we shouldn’t piss off our smartest robots

(38:35) sharing AI knowledge between companies

(42:10) developing healthcare-specific models

(44:55) hackathons and karaoke nights at Oscar

(49:27) the need for a safety layer in LLMs

(51:53) best commercial opportunities in healthcare

(55:39) will their be AI doctors this decade?

(59:38) over-hyped/under-hyped

With your co-hosts:

@jacobeffron

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health

@patrickachase

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn

@ericabrescia

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)

@jordan_segall

- Partner at Redpoint

Ep 26: Replit Founder Amjad Masad on the 1000x Engineer, ChatBots are Overhyped and Why We Don’t Really Have True Open-Source Models Feb 06, 2024

Show notes

Replit 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 coders

(6:20) how Replit uses AI

(10:36) AI’s coding capabilities

(15:49) what makes the best data

(20:52) educating new Replit AI users

(23:46) structuring AI teams

(27:02) building an in-house model

(36:54) “the world is gonna get way weirder”

(38:10) Kim and Taylor teaching calculus

(44:19) usage based pricing is going to get more prevalent

(51:05) will Microsoft win it all?

(55:00) Llama and vibe-checking AI models

(57:35) chatbots are overhyped

(58:18) latency matters

(59:50) why Sam Altman is the GOAT

(1:01:16) over 10 years we’ll see companies really shrink in size

(1:03:51) Jacob and Pat debrief

(1:05:27) training coding models on random data

(1:06:36) Amjad’s take on agents

With your co-hosts:

@jacobeffron

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health

@patrickachase

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn

@ericabrescia

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)

@jordan_segall

- Partner at Redpoint

Ep 25: Intercom Co-Founder Des Traynor on Building Winning AI Strategy and Where We Are in the AI Adoption Curve Jan 24, 2024

Show notes

Intercom 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 ChatGBT

(3:18) how AI is incorporated into Intercom products

(6:33) guardrails preventing hallucinations 9:49 exploration versus optimizing cost

(19:00) structuring AI teams

(31:17) fine-tuning for customers vs RAG

(37:03) solving the 'actions' problem

(38:38) lessons learned from transitioning into AI

(44:28) over-hyped/under-hyped

(45:53) companies that have implemented AI well/poorly

(48:27) Jacob and Jordan debrief

With your co-hosts:

@jacobeffron

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health

@patrickachase

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn

@ericabrescia

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)

@jordan_segall

- Partner at Redpoint

Ep 24: OpenAI Head of DevRel Logan Kilpatrick on The Best ChatGPT Use Cases, Future of Agents, and Google Gemini Jan 09, 2024

Show notes

OpenAI'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-4 necessary?

(7:22) custom GPT models

(9:05) are we at peak need for custom models in 2024?

(11:45) how does OpenAI prioritize products

(13:31) OpenAI’s text-to-speech model

(14:31) benefits of using open-source models

(21:00) what kind of company would Logan start if he left OpenAI?

(23:40) Google Gemini

(24:41) assistants API

(30:00) the need for a text-first AI-assistant experience

(35:18) putting limitations on agents

(42:18) the future of DALL-E and art generation

(48:00) over-hyped/under-hyped

(48:30) rare disappointments for OpenAI

(49:25) surprise successes for OpenAI

(50:03) how has OpenAI’s team developed?

(58:22) debrief with Pat

With your co-hosts:

@jacobeffron

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health

@patrickachase

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn

@ericabrescia

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)

@jordan_segall

- Partner at Redpoint

Ep 23: Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas on the future of Search, OpenAI Wrappers and Using AI to Talk to Loved Ones Dec 14, 2023

Show notes

Perplexity 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 waste your time building your own models

(11:39) being a “wrapper” for OpenAI

(14:37) the future of Quora and Wikipedia

(19:38) what does it take to compete with Google

(23:08) what does search look like in 10 years

(24:01) showing users that Perplexity is more than a “wrapper”

(27:28) RAG solutions and solving hallucinations

(30:13) guiding users’ questions

(32:44) discover tab

(35:48) attracting new users vs. pleasing “power users”

(37:19) how Perplexity landed on search

(53:01) should AI be regulated?

(54:56) what other company would Aravind work at

(56:56) OpenAI

(58:42) Jacob and Pat debrief

With your co-hosts:

@jacobeffron

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health

@patrickachase

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn

@ericabrescia

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)

@jordan_segall

- Partner at Redpoint

Special Episode: A Full Breakdown of the OpenAI Saga and What It Means for AI Founders Nov 22, 2023

Show notes

In 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 implications are for AI Startups, who came away as the biggest winners, what’s going on behind the scenes and more. Hopefully you enjoy this episode.

With your co-hosts:

@ericabrescia

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)

@patrickachase

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn

@jacobeffron

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health

@jordan_segall

- Partner at Redpoint