Microsoft Research introduces MagenticLite, an agentic framework powered by two new small, open-weight models: Magentic Orchestrator for planning and coding, and Fara-1.5 for browser automation. The talk details the novel synthetic data generation techniques and training strategies used to achieve state-of-the-art performance in small models, enabling them to compete with much larger ones.
Nick Vasiloglou, VP of Research at Relational AI, analyzes the key trends from NeurIPS 2025, highlighting the most impactful and under-the-radar developments for industry professionals. The discussion covers the rise of data markets through real-time attribution, the sophisticated engineering behind capable small language models (SLMs), the explosion of AI for science, and the shift towards post-training models with real-world tools.
Maxime Labonne from Liquid AI shares a playbook for post-training frontier small models (under 1GB) for on-device deployment. The talk breaks down the LFM2.5 recipe, which includes on-policy preference alignment and agentic reinforcement learning, and addresses unique challenges at the 1B scale, such as capability interference and 'doom loops', offering concrete solutions to build efficient models for tasks like data extraction and tool use.
Experts discuss an OpenAI paper that reframes hallucinations as a feature driven by training incentives, not just a bug. The panel also revisits Dario Amodei's prediction on AI coding, explores AI's chaotic impact on the job market, and imagines the future of running LLMs on business-card-sized devices.