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.
A discussion on the state of technical infrastructure, focusing on how AI and Large Language Models represent a new, fourth foundational pillar alongside compute, network, and storage. The talk covers how AI is disrupting software itself, the investment landscape, and the future of the developer profession.
This research explores the distillation and pruning of large, self-supervised speech quality assessment models into compact and efficient versions. Starting with the high-performing but large XLSR-SQA model, the work details a process of knowledge distillation using a teacher-student framework with a diverse, on-the-fly generated dataset. The resulting compact models successfully close over half the performance gap to the teacher, making them suitable for on-device and production applications where model size is a critical constraint.
Ben Mann, co-founder of Anthropic, discusses the accelerating progress in AI, forecasting superintelligence by 2028. He details Anthropic's safety-first mission, the "Economic Turing Test" for AGI, the mechanisms of Constitutional AI, and why focusing on alignment created Claude's unique personality.
Sagar Batchu, CEO of Speakeasy, discusses the pivotal shift in API development as AI agents become primary consumers. The conversation covers the rise of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the challenges in building agent-ready APIs, and how Speakeasy provides a toolchain for creating, managing, and securing MCP servers.
Dan Shipper, CEO of Every, shares how his 15-person team operates on the bleeding edge of AI, shipping products without writing code, using a team of specialized AI agents, and pioneering new AI-first workflows. This summary covers Every's operational playbook, their AI stack, and Dan's predictions on how AI will reshape jobs, skills, and companies.
Misha Laskin, co-founder of Reflection AI and former researcher at Google DeepMind, discusses the company's mission to build superhuman autonomous systems. He introduces Asimov, a code comprehension agent designed to solve the 80% of an engineer's time spent on understanding complex systems, rather than just code generation. Laskin delves into the intricacies of co-designing product and research, the critical role of customer-driven evaluations, the bottlenecks in scaling reinforcement learning (RL) — particularly the "reward problem" — and why he believes the future is one of "jagged superintelligence" emerging in specific, high-value domains like coding.
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