Practically Intelligent

In this episode of Practically Intelligent, we sit down with Aman Khan, Director of Product at Arize AI, to unpack what “AI product management” really means. We dig into how tools like Cursor and Claude Code are changing the way PMs prototype, making disposable, working prototypes a core part of the craft again. From there, we go deep on evals and the three common workflows teams fall into, how th...

We sit down with Katelyn Donnelly, founder & Managing Director of Avalanche VC. A longtime operator in education and social-impact consulting, Katelyn now backs early-stage AI and ed-tech startups reshaping how—and why—we learn. We cover: - Ed-tech vs. learning tech. Why the biggest breakthroughs often skip the classroom and go straight to the consumer. - Motivation over personalization. The r...

In this episode of Practically Intelligent , we chat with Mike Dick — designer, builder, and co-founder of Gather — whose career spans from Age of Empires fan sites to leading design at Meta, Twitch, and Brex. Mike shares how AI is transforming the craft of UX, why generalists are making a comeback, and how tools like ChatGPT and Figma are changing the way teams collaborate. Whether you're a desig...

We sit down with Arian Agrawal, a partner at South Park Commons, where bold ideas turn into reality. As a former YC founder, Arian shares down-to-earth advice on validating startup ideas and avoiding common pitfalls with a refreshing look at the intersection of AI and entrepreneurship. Discover how cutting-edge AI insights can help you refine your product-market fit, navigate the idea maze, and ac...

Sinan and Akshay sit down with Sudhir Hasbe, Chief Product Officer at Neo4j and a leading expert in graph databases and analytics. Sudhir shares insights from his career, including his time leading Google's analytics product lines and managing multi-million dollar data and ML initiatives. We explore why 2024 is a breakout year for graph databases and their role in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (R...

In this insightful episode of Practically Intelligent , we sit down with Professor Philip Treleaven , Director of the UK Financial Computing Centre at UCL, to discuss the complex relationship between AI, finance, and regulation . From the early days of algorithmic trading to today’s pressing cybersecurity concerns, Professor Treleaven offers a unique perspective on how AI innovations are reshaping...

In this special episode of Practically Intelligent, we're trying something new! Sinan is opening his doors to answer your burning questions about AI, machine learning, data science, and more during our very first Office Hours episode. Do you wonder if prompt engineering is dying? Or maybe you're curious about what exactly an AI agent is and how it can be useful? Sinan tackles your questions, provi...

In this episode of Practically Intelligent, Sinan and Akshay sit down with Rich Skrenta, the Executive Director of the Common Crawl Foundation. Rich shares his extensive experience in data aggregation and AI and how that ties into the history, mission, and future of Common Crawl—a nonprofit organization responsible for one of the largest open-source web data repositories in the world. The three di...

The advent of Generative AI presents a significant challenge for security in the enterprise. Join us as we deep dive into the common threat vectors with Sanjay Kalra, product leader at Zscaler and former CPO of Lacework. Sanjay offers insights into new threats generative AI creates for data security, access control, compliance, and more.

Dive into the intricate world of AI and open source with Rajiv Shah in the latest episode of "Practically Intelligent." Rajiv, with his extensive experience at DataRobot, Hugging Face, and now Snowflake, offers invaluable insights into how enterprises can leverage AI and data effectively. The conversation explores the current trends in open source LLMs, the dynamics of AI licensing and governance,...

Join us as we talk with Curtis Northcutt, founder and CEO of CleanLab.ai . Curtis shares his expert insights on the crucial role of data preparation and curation in enhancing AI model reliability. Discover how CleanLab.ai is pioneering no-code solutions to streamline data curation, making AI more accessible and effective across various industries. Learn about the challenges and innovative approach...

In episode 11 of Practically Intelligent, we take a look at the dynamic and intricate world of business intelligence (BI) with the esteemed Donald Farmer, a pioneer in BI and the driving force behind Power BI. This episode takes us on a journey through the evolution of BI, from its roots in decision support systems to the burgeoning era of machine learning and the transformative potential of langu...

Dr. Nathan Lambert is back! Episode 10 of Practically Intelligent has us diving headfirst into a the tsunami of AI advancements and the hype cycles surrounding them. With the field evolving at breakneck speed, it's easy to oscillate between awe and skepticism. Join us in a thought-provoking conversation with Nathan Lambert as we explore how to navigate this complex landscape. This episode is tailo...

What were the biggest trends in AI in 2023 that will accelerate into 2024? What will change/what is overhyped? In this episode, we go through charts and reports from Coatue's recent AI report to dissect the key assertions made about the future of AI, from its transformative impact on technology to the burgeoning role of open-source. We'll highlight the most compelling insights, challenge hyperbole...

Join us in episode eight of Practically Intelligent as we welcome Jacob Solawetz, CTO at arcee.ai and former founding engineer at Roboflow. Jacob, a trailblazer in computer vision and AI, discusses the evolution and impact of multimodal AI technologies. Delving into the challenges of developing large-scale vision applications, he offers insights from his rich experience in both vision models and d...

In this enlightening seventh episode of Practically Intelligent, we take a look at the pivotal role of benchmarking in advancing AI with Praveen Paritosh, a leading figure in AI research. Discover why shared benchmarks are not just important, but critical in pushing the boundaries of AI technology. Praveen enlightens us on the legacy benchmarks like SQuAD, instrumental in testing early question-an...

In the sixth episode of Practically Intelligent, join us as we delve deep into the intricacies of AI ethics and data governance with Giada Pistilli, Principal Ethicist at Huggingface. We explore the unpredictable implications of training data inconsistencies and discuss the tough societal questions surrounding potential biases in AI. Giada underscores the importance of ethical training guidelines,...

We chatted with Adam Azzam, PhD - AI Product Lead at Prefect - about the challenges of merging traditional software engineering with AI engineering. We go over why integrating LLMs present such a challenge to many developers and how Marvin AI - a new open source tool - can help.

On the fourth episode of Practically Intelligent, Sinan and Akshay sit down with the esteemed Nathan Lambert, a prominent Machine Learning researcher and analyst. With his keen goal of understanding and developing safe and societally beneficial autonomous systems, Nathan shares valuable insights from his experience as a Research Scientist at HuggingFace 🤗. We dive deep into the nuances of evaluat...

On the newest episode of Practically Intelligent, Sinan and Akshay discuss all the hype behind vector databases and the future of how developers will work with embeddings. We also dissect how to compare different vector database options available on the market today. Congrats to Weavite, Pinecone, Qdrant and Chroma on their funding rounds!!We also have Leo Dirac, founder and CEO of Groundlight. AI...

Curious how the best founders are building with LLMs? In Episode two of Practically Intelligent (and on the heels of YC Demo Day) - we feature three YC W23 founders and chat through how they're building with LLMs, the architectural tradeoffs they've made, how they're navigating discussions with customers and much more. Sinan and I also cover the blistering pace of news in the AI ecosystem int he p...

In our first episode, we chat about the ChatGPT API release, Defensibility in AI Business Models, and explores Reinforcement Learning for Human Feedback (RLHF) - an essential aspect of working with and improving AI models. This is just the beginning - we have a line-up of impressive guests and fascinating topics, so stay tuned for more insightful and practically intelligent discussions.