Beste This Machine podcaster (2024)

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AI for Network Management with Shirley Wu - #710 53:44

12h ago53:44

53:44

Today, we're joined by Shirley Wu, senior director of software engineering at Juniper Networks to discuss how machine learning and artificial intelligence are transforming network management. We explore various use cases where AI and ML are applied to enhance the quality, performance, and efficiency of networks across Juniper’s customers, including…

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379. The Booming Prison Tech Industry (ft. Susan Li, Alec Karakatsanis) 1:16:03

1d ago1:16:03

1:16:03

[This interview was recorded before the election; we’ll talk about that in the next premium episode] We are joined by Susan Li and Alec Karakatsanis who work at Civil Rights Corps to talk about their important legal work against the prison tech industry—an extraordinarily predatory, extractive, and profitable industry dominated by private equity fi…

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Why Your RAG System Is Broken, and How to Fix It with Jason Liu - #709 58:03

8d ago58:03

58:03

Today, we're joined by Jason Liu, freelance AI consultant, advisor, and creator of the Instructor library to discuss all things retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). We dig into the tactical and strategic challenges companies face with their RAG system, the different signs Jason looks for to identify looming problems, the issues he most commonly en…

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An Agentic Mixture of Experts for DevOps with Sunil Mallya - #708 1:15:09

15d ago1:15:09

1:15:09

Today we're joined by Sunil Mallya, CTO and co-founder of Flip AI. We discuss Flip’s incident debugging system for DevOps, which was built using a custom mixture of experts (MoE) large language model (LLM) trained on a novel "CoMELT" observability dataset which combines traditional MELT data—metrics, events, logs, and traces—with code to efficientl…

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TMK on Holiday 0:49

16d ago0:49

0:49

Just a quick note – TMK is on holiday for a couple weeks! Jathan is enjoying his honeymoon totally disconnected from all work, while Ed and Jereme are taking a much needed break. We'll back later in November with more exciting episodes. Until then – later!Av This Machine Kills

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Patreon Preview – 378. BYD’s Green Tech Red Scare 8:05

20d ago8:05

8:05

We bullshit about ICP, the Joker, and Megalopolis for the first 33 minutes. So jump a bit into the episode if you wanna skip the verbal shit posting and get to the analytical discussion of BYD. We chat broadly about the background and rapid rise of BYD, the Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer. We explain why BYD is such a fascinating company that…

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Building AI Voice Agents with Scott Stephenson - #707 1:01:44

22d ago1:01:44

1:01:44

Today, we're joined by Scott Stephenson, co-founder and CEO of Deepgram to discuss voice AI agents. We explore the importance of perception, understanding, and interaction and how these key components work together in building intelligent AI voice agents. We discuss the role of multimodal LLMs as well as speech-to-text and text-to-speech models in …

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377. The Real Cost of Uber/Lyft’s Driver Lockouts 1:33:12

25d ago1:33:12

1:33:12

First we have an update on an old startup as Worldcoin changes its name to World and redesigns its Orb to be more than just an eyeball scanner but also now an identification service called Deep Face. Repeat the satanic mantra after me: World, Orb, Deep Face. We then sit back as Prof Ed walks us through an in-depth investigation into how Uber and Ly…

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Is Artificial Superintelligence Imminent? with Tim Rocktäschel - #706 55:52

28d ago55:52

55:52

Today, we're joined by Tim Rocktäschel, senior staff research scientist at Google DeepMind, professor of Artificial Intelligence at University College London, and author of the recently published popular science book, “Artificial Intelligence: 10 Things You Should Know.” We dig into the attainability of artificial superintelligence and the path to …

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Patreon Preview – 376. Silicon Valley’s Political Machine 7:18

1M ago7:18

7:18

We chat about a great investigation into the powerful networks of political influence and intimidation that tech companies are bankrolling to ensure that politicians at local, state, and federal levels advance the interests of Silicon Valley—or at least not stand in their way. For example, one recently created pro-crypto super PAC has $170 million …

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375. Of Vampires and Empires (ft. Paris Marx) 1:13:05

1M ago1:13:05

1:13:05

We are joined by a dear friend of the show, Paris Marx, to talk about his new series on Tech Won’t Save Us called “Data Vampires” – which provides an excellent deep dive into the politics, ideologies, and consequences of the global expansion of data centers by big tech giants. Data Vampires is full of original research and interviews, plus excellen…

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ML Models for Safety-Critical Systems with Lucas García - #705 1:16:06

1M ago1:16:06

1:16:06

Today, we're joined by Lucas García, principal product manager for deep learning at MathWorks to discuss incorporating ML models into safety-critical systems. We begin by exploring the critical role of verification and validation (V&V) in these applications. We review the popular V-model for engineering critical systems and then dig into the “W” ad…

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Patreon Preview – 374. Bigger is Not Better in AI 8:10

1M ago8:10

8:10

Bringing together a few news items, we analyze the politics of scale in AI. First, OpenAI has one of the largest funding rounds ever at $6.6 billion raised for a valuation of $157 billion—with our boy Masayoshi finally getting his taste of OpenAI by investing $500 million. Second, CA Governor Gruesome Newsom vetoed an AI safety bill, which would ha…

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AI Agents: Substance or Snake Oil with Arvind Narayanan - #704 54:22

1M ago54:22

54:22

Today, we're joined by Arvind Narayanan, professor of Computer Science at Princeton University to discuss his recent works, AI Agents That Matter and AI Snake Oil. In “AI Agents That Matter”, we explore the range of agentic behaviors, the challenges in benchmarking agents, and the ‘capability and reliability gap’, which creates risks when deploying…

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373. Press X to Start Revolution (ft. Marijam Did) 1:17:31

1M ago1:17:31

1:17:31

We chat with Marijam Did, author of the new book Everything to Play For, which bridges radical leftist politics and video games through a real material analysis of video games as an industry, art form, and social space. Marijam lays out the case for why these two communities of radical leftists and gamers—which have largely been distinct and even a…

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Patreon Preview – 372. The Sin-Eater of Zero Interest Rates 7:34

2M ago7:34

7:34

With the news of interest rates dropping again, we refocus our attention on Masayoshi Son, the man who perhaps most embodies the pathologies of technological capitalism. Thanks to a new biography, we learn fascinating color about Masa’s character which further support what we already to know to be true: he is an ambitious disrupter who is burdened …

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371. Optimizing for Planetary Crisis 1:11:12

2M ago1:11:12

1:11:12

Jumping off a spate of recent reporting, we revisit the deep relations between the tech sector and fossil fuel industry and discuss how companies like Microsoft are turning to oil and gas companies as a solution for AI’s profit problem. How are tech companies going to offset their trillion dollars of capital investment into AI infrastructure? One r…

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AI Agents for Data Analysis with Shreya Shankar - #703 48:24

2M ago48:24

48:24

Today, we're joined by Shreya Shankar, a PhD student at UC Berkeley to discuss DocETL, a declarative system for building and optimizing LLM-powered data processing pipelines for large-scale and complex document analysis tasks. We explore how DocETL's optimizer architecture works, the intricacies of building agentic systems for data processing, the …

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Patreon Preview – 370. Paranoid Android 5:23

2M ago5:23

5:23

We dive into a weird but revealing article about the phalanx of private security that Elon Musk has amassed around him, spending a small fortune on ex-operators who plan escape routes for his events, clear rooms before he enters, and assess (perceived) threats to his personal safety. His “mushrooming security apparatus” has caused a feedback loop o…

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369. The Third Most Amazing Race (ft. Gaby Del Valle) 1:11:52

2M ago1:11:52

1:11:52

We are joined by Gaby Del Valle who has written a great—and distressingly relevant—essay for The Baffler, which reports on the “eugenic foundations of the war on woke.” We dig into the beliefs of innate biological hierarchy and genetic superiority that underpin so much of mainstream right-wing politics. Whether it’s the convergence of Christian nat…

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Stealing Part of a Production Language Model with Nicholas Carlini - #702 1:03:30

2M ago1:03:30

1:03:30

Today, we're joined by Nicholas Carlini, research scientist at Google DeepMind to discuss adversarial machine learning and model security, focusing on his 2024 ICML best paper winner, “Stealing part of a production language model.” We dig into this work, which demonstrated the ability to successfully steal the last layer of production language mode…

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Patreon Preview – 368. Building the Most Lethal University 8:46

2M ago8:46

8:46

Keeping with our recent theme of exploring the relations between the military and tech sector, we jump off a great essay in The Baffler to discuss a crucial part of this complex: university research. Universities – especially, academics in STEM faculties – must be understood as defense contractors who are partners with the military (and adjacent ag…

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367. A Brief History of Apocalypse 1:19:58

2M ago1:19:58

1:19:58

To mark the occasion of his new best selling airport book, we take a deeper look at Yuval Noah Harari’s impoverished thought and intellectual style via a great review essay by Daniel Immerwahr. We see how Harari’s doomsday scenarios are based on an extreme form of technological determinism + a romanticized humanism-as-critique + a disinterest in ma…

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Supercharging Developer Productivity with ChatGPT and Claude with Simon Willison - #701 1:14:15

2M ago1:14:15

1:14:15

Today, we're joined by Simon Willison, independent researcher and creator of Datasette to discuss the many ways software developers and engineers can take advantage of large language models (LLMs) to boost their productivity. We dig into Simon’s own workflows and how he uses popular models like ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude to write and test hundr…

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Preview – 366. American Dynamism: Or, Libertarian Fascism with Silicon Valley Characteristics 7:33

2M ago7:33

7:33

We do a deep dive into Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism Strategy and Little Tech Agenda, which together lay out a clear ideology of how tech startups are integral to the American empire. All this venture capital firm asks for is your belief in a16z as a conduit for the spirit of innovation, your trust in America as a vessel for the progressi…

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365. The Pentagon Primes in Silicon Valley (ft. Michael Richardson) 1:29:26

2M ago1:29:26

1:29:26

We chat with friend of the show Michael Richardson—author of the new book Nonhuman Witnessing—about the ongoing, deepening relationships between Silicon Valley and the US military. We check up on new activities from old enemies—Y Combinator, Anduril, Palantir, among others—and get into the changing cultures on both sides as they converge around def…

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Automated Design of Agentic Systems with Shengran Hu - #700 59:30

3M ago59:30

59:30

Today, we're joined by Shengran Hu, a PhD student at the University of British Columbia, to discuss Automated Design of Agentic Systems (ADAS), an approach focused on automatically creating agentic system designs. We explore the spectrum of agentic behaviors, the motivation for learning all aspects of agentic system design, the key components of th…

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Patreon Preview - 364. CopGPT 7:49

3M ago7:49

7:49

We chat about a heinous crossover as Axon – major police tech firm, maker of tasers and body cameras – creates a new AI product with ChatGPT that automates police reports using audio recordings from body cameras. We get into this whole political economy of cop power and carceral tech. Then we talk about how all the economists are Big Mad because of…

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363. Go Directly to Jail. Do Not Pass Go. 1:25:16

3M ago1:25:16

1:25:16

{Producer’s note: this episode has an electronic buzz in parts due to a dying microphone. I cleaned it up as much as possible, but it couldn’t be totally removed. So it goes!}We go deep on the recent federal antitrust case against Google, which ruled that the company is a monopoly (obviously). We get into the details of the case, before spinning of…

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The EU AI Act and Mitigating Bias in Automated Decisioning with Peter van der Putten - #699 45:34

3M ago45:34

45:34

Today, we're joined by Peter van der Putten, director of the AI Lab at Pega and assistant professor of AI at Leiden University. We discuss the newly adopted European AI Act and the challenges of applying academic fairness metrics in real-world AI applications. We dig into the key ethical principles behind the Act, its broad definition of AI, and ho…

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Patreon Preview - 362. Alex Karp’s Freak Flag Flies 7:12

3M ago7:12

7:12

We get into a new profile of Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, which is written by Maureen Dowd, one of the NYT’s most credulous opinion writers, and thus the perfect person to coax Karp into being as weird as he wants to be. This piece reveals a lot of core lore about Karp and shines light on a man who is riddled with contradictions and has turned that …

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Funny Business: Does humour sell in B2B marketing? 19:23

3M ago19:23

19:23

Is B2B marketing missing a huge opportunity by not appealing to people’s sense of humor? 'Funny' could cut through, get you remembered, and greatly influence a buyer’s committee. Is there a risk? Should you trust your agency to know how to pitch the funny? Listen to find out more. In this episode of Quiet Part Loud, This Machine Content Director Ni…

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361. The Artists vs. the Machines (ft. Brian Merchant) 1:00:49

3M ago1:00:49

1:00:49

We’re joined by Brian Merchant to chat about his reporting on the frontlines of labor exploitations in video games development and animation studios where companies are using AI to replace and degrade jobs, fracture and disempower the workforce, and push the quality of artistic works down even further. When executives explicitly say they are going …

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The Building Blocks of Agentic Systems with Harrison Chase - #698 59:17

3M ago59:17

59:17

Today, we're joined by Harrison Chase, co-founder and CEO of LangChain to discuss LLM frameworks, agentic systems, RAG, evaluation, and more. We dig into the elements of a modern LLM framework, including the most productive developer experiences and appropriate levels of abstraction. We dive into agents and agentic systems as well, covering the “sp…

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Patreon Preview – 360. Bubbles and Black Markets 8:26

3M ago8:26

8:26

We get into the collapse of investor confidence in the AI boom, then turn to the thriving black markets for smuggling vast quantities of AI microchips into China and the geopolitics of technological progress and economic sanctions as AI becomes a site of proxy wars by other means.••• Burst Damage https://www.wheresyoured.at/burst-damage/ ••• With S…

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Simplifying On-Device AI for Developers with Siddhika Nevrekar - #697 46:37

3M ago46:37

46:37

Today, we're joined by Siddhika Nevrekar, AI Hub head at Qualcomm Technologies, to discuss on-device AI and how to make it easier for developers to take advantage of device capabilities. We unpack the motivations for AI engineers to move model inference from the cloud to local devices, and explore the challenges associated with on-device AI. We dig…

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359. We Are All Cyborgs (ft. Danya Glabau, Laura Forlano) 1:13:11

3M ago1:13:11

1:13:11

We are joined by Danya Glabau and Laura Forlano, authors of Cyborg, a new book that explores how this archetype of sci-fi stories is also a critical theory for understanding the tangle of socio-technical relations that constitute our lives. The cyborg helps us think in terms of embodiment and environments, break down boundaries and barriers, and tr…

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Patreon Preview – 358. Se7en Voice What’s in the Benchmark? 8:52

3M ago8:52

8:52

We first get an update on regulatory arbitrage in the weed vape industry, then discuss how the benchmarks used to rank AI models—and make claims about their "intelligence" relative to humans—are largely low quality, out-of-date, not fit for purpose, or just meaningless and deceptive. Yet they are widely treated by industry as authoritative standard…

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Genie: Generative Interactive Environments with Ashley Edwards - #696 46:51

4M ago46:51

46:51

Today, we're joined by Ashley Edwards, a member of technical staff at Runway, to discuss Genie: Generative Interactive Environments, a system for creating ‘playable’ video environments for training deep reinforcement learning (RL) agents at scale in a completely unsupervised manner. We explore the motivations behind Genie, the challenges of data ac…

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357. CrowdStrike ClusterFuck 1:14:43

4M ago1:14:43

1:14:43

We first talk about how all news stories, even the most world historic ones, feel ephemeral and disposable, and how this is the perverse effect of a (news/social/cultural) media ecosystem that is designed around logics of optimizing for content production and audience attention. Then we get into the CrowdStrike outage and how it reveals (and requir…

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Bridging the Sim2real Gap in Robotics with Marius Memmel - #695 57:21

4M ago57:21

57:21

Today, we're joined by Marius Memmel, a PhD student at the University of Washington, to discuss his research on sim-to-real transfer approaches for developing autonomous robotic agents in unstructured environments. Our conversation focuses on his recent ASID and URDFormer papers. We explore the complexities presented by real-world settings like a c…

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Patreon Preview – 356. Car Dealerships Are an Affront to God 6:11

4M ago6:11

6:11

We talk about that paragon of capitalism, car dealerships, and the deceptive, manipulative, extractive tactics they have perfected to make the experience as hellish as possible — particularly by turning the dealership’s finance and insurance department into an engine of 100 percent pure parasitic profit.••• Escape From the Box https://prospect.org/…

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Building Real-World LLM Products with Fine-Tuning and More with Hamel Husain - #694 1:20:05

4M ago1:20:05

1:20:05

Today, we're joined by Hamel Husain, founder of Parlance Labs, to discuss the ins and outs of building real-world products using large language models (LLMs). We kick things off discussing novel applications of LLMs and how to think about modern AI user experiences. We then dig into the key challenge faced by LLM developers—how to iterate from a sn…

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355. The Rise of Shadow Finance 1:24:27

4M ago1:24:27

1:24:27

We are a bit ahead with recording, but we had to talk about the Trump assassination attempt and JD Vance being tapped for vice president (for like the first 30 minutes). Then we get into a great essay on how private financial markets — or the shadow finance system that is unregulated, unaccountable, and undemocratic — have become the dominant form …

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Premium – 354. Capital Questions Gen AI 10:03

4M ago10:03

10:03

We take a look at recent reports where venture capitalists like Sequoia and the investment banks like Goldman Sachs are starting to wonder out loud whether AI will ever be able to generate enough revenue and consumer demand to make the bubble feel solid. The returns on AI necessary for this massive infrastructure buildout to make sense are looking …

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Mamba, Mamba-2 and Post-Transformer Architectures for Generative AI with Albert Gu - #693 57:54

4M ago57:54

57:54

Today, we're joined by Albert Gu, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, to discuss his research on post-transformer architectures for multi-modal foundation models, with a focus on state-space models in general and Albert’s recent Mamba and Mamba-2 papers in particular. We dig into the efficiency of the attention mechanism and its limi…

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Vernon Wright - Ratcatcher 12:19

4M ago12:19

12:19

Form #MP0871692090. === Credits === Produced by Halfwit Podcasts ( https://www.HalfwitPodcasts.com ). Written by Matt Spaziani ( https://vocal.media/authors/matt-spaziani ). Vernon Wright is voiced by Jonathan Swenson ( https://www.jgswenson.com ). Based on the journal role-playing game "The Machine" by Adira & Fen Slattery ( https://adira.itch.io/…

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353. Slaughterbots, Roll Out! 1:17:47

4M ago1:17:47

1:17:47

We refocus on the war in Ukraine and the country’s pivot toward being the “Silicon Valley for autonomous drones and other weaponry.” Thanks to a combination of foreign investment, entrepreneurial governance, DIY scrappiness, and a ‘by any means necessary’ attitude, the future of cheap, lethal, autonomous warfare is being forged and tested in Ukrain…

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Decoding Animal Behavior to Train Robots with EgoPet with Amir Bar - #692 43:16

4M ago43:16

43:16

Today, we're joined by Amir Bar, a PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University and UC Berkeley to discuss his research on visual-based learning, including his recent paper, “EgoPet: Egomotion and Interaction Data from an Animal’s Perspective.” Amir shares his research projects focused on self-supervised object detection and analogy reasoning for general c…

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Vernon Wright - December 3rd, 2008 (III) 10:36

4M ago10:36

10:36

Its hold on me is finally dissipating, and my life will be mine again. Thank you. === Credits === Produced by Halfwit Podcasts ( https://www.HalfwitPodcasts.com ). Written by Matt Spaziani ( https://vocal.media/authors/matt-spaziani ). Vernon Wright is voiced by Jonathan Swenson ( https://www.jgswenson.com ). Based on the journal role-playing game …

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