Machine learning operations ( mlops)

Oct 01, 2026

The Caveman Prompting Challenge

James Barney, Head of Forward Labs at MetLife, discusses the operational challenges and strategic considerations for AI enablement in a large enterprise. Key topics include FinOps approaches to model selection based on cost, speed, and accuracy, optimizing LLM token usage through 'caveman prompting' and the proposed 'CaveBench' benchmark, and navigating volatile model release pricing. The conversation delves into measuring AI's value beyond cost, differentiating R&D from production token spend, and establishing robust AI governance using policy as code. A significant shift from traditional UIs to chat-based interfaces is explored, alongside the critical 'latent shopper problem' – the challenge of serendipitous data discovery in an AI-driven, query-focused world.

Jul 29, 2026

SimulationMaxxing: How Nubank ships agents 20× faster with simulations — Shreya Rajpal, Snowglobe

Nubank, serving 135 million customers, uses AI agents for support. The talk reveals how simulated data for evaluations (evals) has enabled them to ship AI agents 20x faster. By addressing the bottleneck of multi-turn, stateful eval data, Snowglobe's grounded simulations create realistic customer interactions, allowing rapid testing, derisking, and significant improvements in customer satisfaction and self-service rates, even for open-source model experimentation.

Jun 30, 2026

Plenary Talk 3​: Challenges and research opportunities for global hyperscale services

Jim Kleewein's talk outlines the immense challenges and critical research opportunities in building and operating global hyperscale services like Microsoft 365 and Azure. He emphasizes that at this scale, traditional approaches fail, necessitating a "new golden age of applied research" across areas like continuous availability, data management, security, and sustainability. Kleewein also discusses AI's powerful but limited role, stressing the ongoing need for human expertise, and highlights the ethical imperative to prevent failures that can have life-or-death consequences.