AI-podden

In our first ever live recording at Epicenter Stockholm, Ather and Mimi Billing open with Kai-fu Lee's prediction that AI will take 50% of jobs by 2027 and the market's projected growth to $184 billion by 2024. Despite major investments, the profitability of large language models (LLMs) remains uncertain. OpenAI's financial success is noted, but high development costs are a concern. Privacy issues with Microsoft's new AI hardware and Google's challenges with its AI overview feature are highlighted. Ethical concerns arise from Scarlett Johansson's lawsuit threat against OpenAI for voice theft. They also discuss recent AI reasoning research and the need for more efficient training methods.

In this episode, Ather interviews Anastasia Varava, Research Lead at SEBX, SEB Banken, about AI in banking. Anastasia's work at KTH and SEB Banken focuses on machine learning, robotics, and AI applications to enhance employee efficiency, decision-making, crime prevention, and customer experience. She discusses data sensitivity, the shift to cloud services, and security measures. Anastasia sees potential in simulating financial markets with AI, combining classical computer science with deep learning, and opportunities for startups. She highlights neurosymbolic systems and recommends Chris Bishop's AI texts.

In this episode host Ather interviews Mikael Huss, co-founder and Principal Data Scientist at Codon. They discuss the evolution of AI, noting the shift from traditional data science to large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. Mikael highlights the overshadowing of other AI applications by LLMs and generative AI. They emphasize the importance of deeply understanding business problems before applying AI solutions and the potential of open-source LLMs. The conversation also covers the challenges of causal inference in AI, the need for better explainability, and the future of artificial general intelligence (AGI).

This week our guest host, Sifted's Mimi Billing and Ather discuss April's AI developments, including; implications in geopolitics and business, highlighting Microsoft's warning about AI's potential use to disrupt elections in the US, South Korea, and India. They explore China's advancements in AI, the impact of quantum computing on AI development, and recent innovations in human behaviour modeling and reasoning algorithms in large language models. The episode also touches on AI's role in the food and beverage industry, exemplified by an AI-developed coffee blend in Finland, while acknowledging the technological hurdles in mimicking human sensory experiences. 

In this episode, Ather hosts guest Alex Baker, global retail strategist, entrepreneur, and Principal at Nordic Retail Hub. They discuss the evolution of AI in retail, highlighting its shift from backend applications to enhancing customer-facing experiences with technologies like dynamic pricing and personalized promotions. They also explore various AI applications that are transforming retail operations, from supply chain management to targeted advertising via retail media networks. The conversation also touches on AI's broader impact on personal productivity and corporate efficiency, underscoring the technology's potential to augment human capabilities. 

Ather interviews Vilhelm von Ehrenheim, co-founder and CAIO of QA Tech, discussing the use of AI in automating quality assurance for web applications. Wilhelm details how their AI agents test web functionality to ensure reliability before launch, leveraging large language models for enhanced decision-making. He also addresses the challenges of adapting AI to different platforms and anticipates future AI capabilities in broader applications, including the potential developments towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

In this episode, Ather interviews Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, AI director at ManageEngine, who clarifies AI's role as a practical tool for pattern recognition and productivity in IT management, rather than a threat to human jobs. Ram discusses how ManageEngine has integrated AI across their product suite since 2011 to optimize IT operations and customer service, enabling proactive management decisions. He emphasizes the evolution of AI from a hyped technology to a crucial component in streamlining business processes and enhancing decision-making capabilities within the IT sector.

This week our guest host, Sifted's Mimi Billing and Ather discuss February's AI developments, including OpenAI's new video tool, Sora, and its careful release strategy amidst ethical concerns. They explore the bias issues in Google's Gemini AI and contrast different AI philosophies, highlighting the debate between practical AI applications and the pursuit of genuine intelligence. The conversation also covers NVIDIA's significant market valuation, the concept of an AI bubble, and Google's approach to AI-written content for publishers. Investments in robotics by NVIDIA and OpenAI are mentioned as forward-looking strategies. Finally, the hosts ponder the hype around AI compared to past excitement in the crypto industry.

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Salman Avestimehr, USC professor and FedML co-founder, discusses AI, federated learning, and large language models. This week's topics include; AI definition, distributed and federated systems research, current challenges in generative AI, and trustworthiness in ML. Ather and Salman explore the future of accessible LLMs on personal devices, stress the importance of data, and discuss challenges like distinguishing machine-generated outcomes. The conversation touches on enforcing regulations in the era of open-source tools and recommends the book "Life 3.0”

In this episode of the AI Podcast, host Ather Gattami interviews Michal Sustr, co-founder of EquiLibre, a company that uses game theory and reinforcement learning for trading.

Michal discusses the company's approach to trading, which is based on the idea that markets can be modelled as games. He explains that EquiLibre uses game theory to develop algorithms which can predict the behaviour of other traders and make profitable trades.

Ather and Michal also discuss the future of AI, and Sustr predicts that large language models (LLMs) will continue to be a major area of research in the coming years. Michal believes that LLMs will eventually be able to reason and solve problems in a way that is indistinguishable from human intelligence.

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Reinforcement learning is a type of machine learning that allows agents to learn by interacting with their environment. DeepMind researcher, David Abel is interested in using reinforcement learning to understand and build intelligent agents. One of the big questions in AI is what exactly "intelligence" is. Another big question is how to build intelligent agents that can reason and solve problems. Abel believes that it is important to achieve conceptual clarity in AI.  

Abel's research focuses on AI's core scientific questions, emphasizing the need for conceptual clarity about intelligent behavior and agents. David express skepticism about creating AI with certain reward functions, suggesting that multi-criteria objectives could better align AI with human interests. 

In this episode, Mimi and Ather delve into the impact of AI on elections and political communication as well as deepfakes and cybercrime.

They address OpenAI's suspension of a developer for creating a politician-impersonating chatbot and an AI-generated robocall falsely imitating President Biden, demonstrating AI's potential misuse in politics. They also discuss McAfee's Project Mockingbird, an AI technology introduced at CES 2024 to combat deepfake audio and cybercrime.

Edward Hu, Researcher at OpenAI, known for his invention of LoRA, a widely used machine learning method to fine-tune Large Language Models (LLMs) which he co-invented at Microsoft, shares his views on LoRa. Together with Ather he also discusses the development of GFlowNets as a promising tool for the development of reasoning and planning AI systems. 

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Mimi Billing, European editor at Shifted and Ather highlight the latest news in AI in December and take a look back at 2023.

In this episode, you will hear the latest on the release of Google DeepMind's Gemini in its Ultra, Pro, and Nano versions. How European Union policymakers have reached a provisional agreement on AI rules under the EU AI ACT. Additionally, the episode also cover developments in robotics, provides a review of AI in 2023, and offers predictions for what we might see in the field of AI in 2024.

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Andy Karvonen, Prof. of Urban Design and Planning at Lund University talks of  the “Urban Brain", where we have some kind of smart city control room managing all aspects, from traffic to transportation and the management of facilities. Andy and Ather discuss the pros and cons of such a future, delving into the hard but important questions of privacy, surveillance, and so on. Andy and Ather also discuss the future of an AI-driven society, policymaking, and how to deal with the challenge of big tech dominating in the AI tech field.

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Mika Gustafsson, Prof., and David Martinez, PhD student, both at Linköping University conduct research in Bioinformatics and precision medicine. They are exploring how to use complex patient data, both clinical and environmental (such as the lifestyle) to develop personalized treatments and to help understand diseases more in depth in order to take preventive measures. David and Mika explain why bioinformatics and precision medicine is so complex, given the number of parameters affecting the human body and their complex interplay. The challenge of data acquisition is another challenge. For that challenge, they are working on federated learning to train AI systems without requiring private data to be shared. Ather, Mika, and David discuss the trade-offs of using federated learning, and the performance degradation that one might get for not sharing the data to a central unit directly. David and Mika go on and tell us about the greatest impacts of AI on medicine in the near future, from personalized medicine to helping less wealthy countries. 

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Let’s start with the company behind chatGPT, OpenAI. No one has missed the last couple of weeks' happenings at OpenAI, where the CEO and cofounder Sam Altman was fired on Friday the 17th and then on Monday evening reinstated as CEO. There have been a lot of rumours of why he was fired in the first place but I think we need to focus on something different. Usually, when you kick out your CEO and cofounder, your investors get a heads-up at the very least. In the case of Open AI, the investors include Microsoft, Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and Sequoia — these are big firms. All of them were kept in the dark. The reason for this is that none of these investors sits on the OpenAI board of directors since the company has a different structure — it is run like a non-profit company. I believe this was set up as a part of safety measures since OpenAI is working on AGI (artificial general intelligence) and if the CEO diverged from the safest path, the board could fire him. So after that TDLR, is this a good way to govern an AI company? Amazon’s new 2 trillion parameters LLM Olympus (double what GPT4 has) puts it in competition with OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, Google, and others. Earlier this month, I read in Reuters that Amazon is investing millions in training an ambitious large language model (LLMs), hoping it could rival OpenAI, Google and Meta. The model, codenamed “Olympus”, has 2 trillion parameters, sources said, which could make it one of the largest models being trained. OpenAI's GPT-4 model is reported to have one trillion parameters. So, it seems the more parameters the better, however, then I read about this Japanese LLM by NEC, which has reduced the size to “only” 13 billion parameters. This LLM is, which is said to achieve high performance while reducing the number of parameters through unique innovations. This not only reduces power consumption but also enables operation in cloud and on-premises environments due to its lightweight and high-speed. There is this understanding that the better the LLM is at language, the more persuasive it can be and also more innovative. Is this the reason why there is so much work being done on having LLMs taught on specific languages? Samsung AI race over Apple – how will the AI development be visible in our smartphones? https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/8/23953198/samsung-galaxy-ai-live-translate-call Some say that AI-powered features seem like they’re becoming the next battleground for smartphone makers. And Samsung has come out this month with a feature that use artificial intelligence to translate phone calls in real-time, it is calling it “AI Live Translate Call,” and will be built into the company’s native phone app. Samsung says “audio and text translations will appear in real-time as you speak”. But Samsung is not alone, Google, for example, has a suite of AI-powered tools to help you edit and improve photos with its Pixel 8 lineup. Apple is reportedly spending a lot of money every day to train AI, and I have to imagine all that investment will show up in some AI-powered features for iPhones. So, what will this mean for our smartphones?

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Agnes Lindell, Head of Data Driven Business at Elvenite shares her experience in building data driven tools in the food industry, all from some of their most successful use cases to how they managed to do it. She mentioned the biggest challenges and how they managed to tackle them. A few examples include inventory optimization with over 10% of savings, to using AI to efficiently grow various types of seeds in different environments. Agnes Lindell walks us through simple steps that she follows in order to become data driven and check the AI readiness, that is all from the level of digitalization to the availability of data, checking data quality, starting small to build a proof of concept, etc. She does also share her favorite AI tools (Hint: it's not a Chatbot!). 

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Kye Andersson, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Canucci and also author of the recently published Sifted article on the technological, and especially AI gap, between the EU and the US and China. Kye argues that we have too much focus on regulations, especially on less likely scenarios, and we are making the innovation in the EU more difficult. He underlines the fact that there are more urgent topics to discuss when it comes to regulations and societal impacts, rather than the focus of making it extremely difficult to innovate in the field of AI. Kye and Ather discuss how the EU should approach AI developments and regulations, what benefits we may get in the future, and what a future society might look like. 

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In this special episode of AI-podden, we have the pleasure to introduce Mimi Billing from Sifted who will be co-hosting AI-podden in this special format where we get updates of the recent AI developments. In this episode, we are discussing why Nvidia is using AI to train a robot how to spin a pen between its fingers, China’s claim that they have built an LLM as good as Chat GPT4 and the newest developments in the space of regulating AI - these are some of the topics discussed in this episode of the AI podcast with Ather Gattami and Mimi Billing. 

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The AI Swede of the year (2023) is Max Gordon, and he is also our (returning) guest in this episode of AI-podden! Max is an orthopedic surgeon and Associate professor at Karolinska Institute. Max Gordon shares with us his story of applying AI in Healthcare, how he got into it, where he started, and how he dealt with acquiring data, testing, building the user interface, and having a prototype transforming into a product at Danderyd Hospital where he does his clinical work. 

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Nastaran Baleng-Soultani, co-founder of Space Academy and RadCap Ventures shares with us her thoughts about the “AI hype” and the trends of AI startup investments. She describes the ultimate startup settings where she would be interested in investing. In particular, Nastaran expresses her interest in ideas where AI could help us solve climate challenges and be more sustainable, and she provides a couple of examples. Beyond the idea, Nastaran's focus is on the team and the passion of the team to solve the problems they are tackling. What makes female-founded AI startups different? This is a question that Nastaran answers. While her observations don't show any difference between companies with and without female founders, she notices that female founders tend to focus on sustainability. Ather asks Nastaran whether she would ever invest in an AI company based on a presentation only. Tune in to hear Nastaran’s thoughts!

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Ather’s guest in this episode is Eva Fors, Managing Director of Google Cloud Nordics. Eva and Ather discuss the most recent developments in the AI services provided by Google Cloud and how Google Cloud is feeling the sentiment around AI developments. Eva shares her thoughts on the balance between AI developments and regulations. She provides examples of what she sees as the biggest challenges with AI. She goes on and compares with the benefits that we could gain from AI. If you want to hear Eva’s conclusions and notifications, don’t miss out on this episode! Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on Linkedin.

 Carl-Axel Wahlström, AI Artist and Creator of the AI fashion magazine Copy hares with us his experience and journey of using AI in his creative work, where he describes the AI tools he is using as “friends” that he enjoys working with. He tells us how he came about to create Copy and the journey that led him to create a magazine that is the first of its kind, with really fascinating images that look so real.

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Lars Albertsson, founder of Scling and one of Scandinavia’s most skilled data engineers, with experience from Google and Spotify shares his experience as a pioneer in the data engineering field, what his learnings has been, and the approach he takes in solving data architecture and engineering problems.

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Johan Toll, CTO för IP Soft Sverige gästar AI-podden och berättar om deras chat-bot Amelia som bland annat används av SEB och Nordnet. Johan Toll diskuterar både möjligheter och utmaningar för dagens och framtidens chat-bottar, och ger flera exempel på hur klurigt det kan vara för en dator att hantera språk. Han trycker även på vikten av att ett AI beter sig som en människa – om inte bättre: – Utmaningen för AI är att vara bättre än människan emotionellt, säger Johan Toll i avsnittet. Läs mer: https://ai-podden.se/