Large language models

The Constraint Your LLM Will Quietly Ignore (with Gurobi's Jerry Yurchisin)

The Constraint Your LLM Will Quietly Ignore (with Gurobi's Jerry Yurchisin)

Jerry Yurchisin from Gurobi Optimization explains mathematical optimization as an AI technology where constraints are hard guarantees, unlike LLMs which may ignore critical constraints. He outlines the three core building blocks of any optimization model: decision variables, constraints, and an objective function. The discussion highlights where optimization fits in the agentic AI era, with agents framing problems and generating code, then handing off to solvers like Gurobi via MCP servers. Jerry also covers advancements in non-linear solving, strategies for pitching optimization to stakeholders, and diverse case studies including energy grids, retirement planning, and USA Cycling's Paris 2024 gold medal.

Alexandr Wang: From Los Alamos to Superintelligence

Alexandr Wang: From Los Alamos to Superintelligence

Alexandr Wang discusses his journey from Scale AI to Meta's superintelligence lab, emphasizing the importance of conviction, systems thinking, and identifying exponential growth opportunities in AI. He highlights Meta's vision for 'personal superintelligence,' the strategic role of open-source and affordable models, and the immense potential of agentic looping for driving innovation and outcompeting incumbents. His core advice for young entrepreneurs is to develop an unshakeable internal compass for the future, embracing vision and ambition as the new scarce resources.

AI tools for Forward Deployed Engineering — Vasuman Moza, Varick Agents

AI tools for Forward Deployed Engineering — Vasuman Moza, Varick Agents

Varick Agents tackles the enterprise AI adoption challenge by deploying Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) who map, re-engineer, and automate complex workflows directly on top of existing systems, avoiding costly migrations. The company develops specialized internal AI tooling, including 'Engagement' and 'Workflow' agents, and employs custom model training with RL environments to overcome frontier model limitations in context extraction and clarity, enabling department-wide AI transformation.

Boris Cherny: Building Claude Code

Boris Cherny: Building Claude Code

Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code, discusses the transformative capabilities of Opus 5, highlighting its prompt injection resistance and long-task execution. He delves into Claude Code's empirical development philosophy of "unhobbling" AI by constantly adapting to new model generations, and shares insights on how to build advanced AI products using higher-level tasks, self-verification, and dynamic workflows to orchestrate thousands of agents.

Why AI Makes the Humanities More Important Than Ever

Why AI Makes the Humanities More Important Than Ever

Jeff Crume explores why humanities are crucial in an AI-driven world. While AI generates sophisticated answers, it lacks human understanding, purpose, and judgment. He argues that STEM fields explain 'how' but not 'why,' making humanities essential for ethical decision-making, interpreting AI outputs, understanding bias, and effective prompt engineering. Ultimately, AI amplifies the need for human critical thinking and judgment.

The Messy Reality of Scale: Synthetic Data and Pre-Training — Marah Abdin & Robert McHardy, poolside

The Messy Reality of Scale: Synthetic Data and Pre-Training — Marah Abdin & Robert McHardy, poolside

Poolside discusses their innovative approaches to synthetic data generation, pre-training validation, and distributed training challenges. They highlight how modular data pipelines, rigorous replica hash checks, and numerical stability fixes enabled them to scale their LLMs, culminating in the 118B parameter Laguna S model designed for agentic coding, which shows strong early results against leading open-weight models.