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.
Zevi Arnovitz, a non-technical Product Manager at Meta, shares his complete workflow for building and shipping sophisticated applications using AI tools like Cursor. He details a structured, multi-step process that leverages different AI models for specific tasks, including a novel "peer review" technique where models critique each other's code.
![Why Every Brain Metaphor in History Has Been Wrong [SPECIAL EDITION]](https://img.youtube.com/vi/pO0WZsN8Oiw/maxresdefault.jpg)
An exploration of scientific simplification, questioning the metaphors we use to understand the brain and intelligence. This summary delves into the tension between creating useful models and mistaking them for reality, featuring insights on the mind-as-software debate, the limits of prediction versus understanding, and the philosophical underpinnings of our quest for AGI.
Thomas Wolf, co-founder of Hugging Face, discusses his journey from physics to AI, the power of open-source models to accelerate innovation, the practical challenges of productionalizing AI demos, and why the biggest opportunities for founders now lie in the application layer on top of powerful foundation models.
Jeff Crume and Patrick Fussell from IBM's X-Force team share a real-world ethical hacking war story, demonstrating an attack from an 'assume breach' perspective. They break down how vulnerabilities in Identity and Access Management (IAM) and legacy systems can lead to a full compromise, starting from an insider threat and escalating to domain administrator privileges through advanced C2 attacks and lateral movement.
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.
Eric Peter from Databricks outlines the evolution from the traditional MLOps lifecycle to the more complex Agent Ops lifecycle. He details the five essential components of a successful agent development platform and introduces MLflow 3.0, a new release designed to provide a comprehensive, open-standard solution for building, evaluating, and deploying AI agents.
The Western mining industry is broken, hampered by a talent drain, slow technology adoption, and misaligned incentives. A new, vertically integrated, software-first approach leveraging Reinforcement Learning (RL) and LLMs can build and operate mines and refineries faster, cheaper, and more flexibly, addressing critical geopolitical supply chain risks.
Sherwood Callaway of 11X discusses the architecture of "Alice," an AI Sales Development Representative. He covers the practical decision to use LangGraph for its reliability in production, the challenges of infrastructure and observability when using hosted agent platforms, and their methodology for running Evals to mitigate hallucinations by comparing generated content against source data.
Developing general-purpose robots requires a shift from specialized, single-task systems to broad foundation models. This is achieved through a combination of large-scale, diverse, real-world data collection and a specific training methodology: pre-training on all available data and then fine-tuning on a curated, high-quality subset of demonstrations. This recipe, combined with architectural innovations to preserve the capabilities of Vision-Language Model (VLM) backbones, enables robots to perform complex, long-horizon tasks, generalize to unseen environments, and respond to open-ended human instructions.
Zohar Bronfman discusses why current LLMs are not on a path to AGI, contrasting their combinatorial creativity with the transformational, domain-general intelligence of humans. He argues that predictive models, not generative ones, deliver the most business value and explains how his platform, Pecan AI, automates the critical data preparation bottleneck to democratize predictive analytics for all businesses.
The OpenAI team details the creation of a new, powerful AI agent in ChatGPT, achieved by unifying the Deep Research and Operator models. They cover its unified architecture with shared state across tools, the reinforcement learning techniques used for training, and the critical safety measures required for an agent that can take real-world actions.
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