An expert overview of post-training techniques for language models, covering the entire workflow from data generation and curation to advanced algorithms like Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), and Reinforcement Learning (RL), along with practical advice on evaluation and iteration.
This talk introduces Anaximander, a system designed to bridge the gap between traditional, GUI-driven Geographic Information System (GIS) workflows and modern, code-heavy machine learning practices. Anaximander integrates geospatial foundation models directly into QGIS, allowing experts to interactively orchestrate, run, and evaluate models for tasks like semantic segmentation and object detection on satellite imagery.
At Applied Compute, efficient Reinforcement Learning is critical for delivering business value. This talk explores the transition from inefficient synchronous RL to a high-throughput asynchronous 'Pipeline RL' system. The core challenge is managing 'staleness'—a side effect of in-flight weight updates that can destabilize training. The speakers detail their first-principles systems model, based on the Roofline model, used to simulate and find the optimal allocation of GPU resources between sampling and training, balancing throughput with algorithmic stability and achieving significant speedups.
Aishwarya Naresh Reganti and Kiriti Badam, with experience from OpenAI, Google, and Amazon, share a framework for building successful enterprise AI products. They detail why AI development differs from traditional software, emphasizing the challenges of non-determinism and the agency-control trade-off, and introduce their 'Continuous Calibration, Continuous Development' (CC/CD) lifecycle to build reliable, value-driven AI systems.
A deep dive into the key takeaways from CES 2026, covering the surge in humanoid robotics and the evolution of software-defined vehicles, followed by a nuanced analysis of the shifting US-China export controls on advanced AI chips.
Robert from OpenAI discusses the critical role of structured evaluations (evals) and graders for developing advanced collaborative agents. He explores the limitations of 'vibe-based' assessments, introduces a maturity model for evals, and presents a comprehensive rubric for measuring agent performance beyond simple accuracy, connecting these concepts to the power of Reinforcement Fine-Tuning (RFT).
Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, shares his unconventional journey and leadership philosophy. He provides a masterclass in building a multi-platform company through strategic M&A, explains why founders should sometimes ignore customers, and reveals how to lead with conviction while managing imposter syndrome.
Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Slack and Flickr, shares the product frameworks and leadership principles that guided his success. He delves into concepts like "utility curves" for feature investment, the "owner's delusion" in product design, and why focusing on "comprehension" is often more important than reducing friction. He also introduces powerful mental models for organizational effectiveness, such as combating "hyper-realistic work-like activities" and applying Parkinson's Law to team growth.
Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi discusses the operational playbook for reinventing a 40-year-old company, from its slow transition to SaaS to its early adoption of AI. He shares insights on winning the SMB market by treating small businesses like consumers, building effective channel partnerships, and developing a platform strategy. Goodarzi also details his leadership philosophy, emphasizing that grit and curiosity are more critical than raw talent.
Robin Bordoli of Weights & Biases explores AI's exponential growth, from past achievements to the current agentic landscape. He discusses the rise of reinforcement learning, the challenge of productionizing reliable agents, and highlights how foundational issues in AI development persist even as model capabilities soar.
A summary of the keynote by Lukas Biewald (Weights & Biases) and Camille Fournier (CoreWeave) at Fully Connected London 2025. They discuss recent product updates for W&B Models and Weave, the synergy behind the CoreWeave acquisition, and a deep dive into building and automating an autonomous software engineer agent.
Epoch AI researchers discuss the AI landscape, arguing against a bubble due to strong enterprise spending and profitability. They forecast significant economic shifts, including a potential 30% GDP growth with advanced AI and the automation of 10% of current jobs this decade. The summary covers the unlikelihood of a software-only singularity, the reality of data center buildouts (with Anthropic surprisingly in the lead), and why energy 'bottlenecks' are economic trade-offs, not hard limits. Also explored are timelines for AI solving major mathematical problems and why robotics remains primarily a hardware challenge.
![AI That Can Change Its Mind? (New Architecture) [w/ Sakana CTO]](https://img.youtube.com/vi/DtePicx_kFY/maxresdefault.jpg)
Llion Jones, a co-inventor of the Transformer, and his colleague Luke Darlow from Sakana AI argue that the AI industry is trapped in a local minimum by the Transformer's success. They discuss the architecture's fundamental limitations using the 'spiral problem' analogy and introduce their new, biology-inspired Continuous Thought Machine (CTM), an architecture designed for more human-like, sequential reasoning and adaptive computation.
Jeff Huber, CEO of Chroma, discusses "context rot," the degradation of AI performance in large context windows, and outlines a new vision for retrieval infrastructure. He covers the evolution of search, the importance of a two-stage recall-then-precision pipeline, and the challenges of agentic memory, advocating for a shift from AI "alchemy" to reliable engineering.
Zhang Yuxuan from Z.ai details the technical roadmap behind the GLM-4.6 model series, which has achieved top performance on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena. The summary covers their 15T token data recipe, the SLIME framework for efficient agent RL, key lessons in single-stage long-context training, and the architecture of the multimodal GLM-4.5V model.
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