Episode 121 I spoke with Professor Ryan Tibshirani about: * Differences between the ML and statistics communities in scholarship, terminology, and other areas. * Trend filtering * Why you can’t just use garbage prediction functions when doing conformal prediction Ryan is a Professor in the Department of Statistics at UC Berkeley. He is also a Princ…

In episode 120 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Sasha Luccioni. Sasha is the AI and Climate Lead at HuggingFace, where she spearheads research, consulting, and capacity-building to elevate the sustainability of AI systems. A founding member of Climate Change AI (CCAI) and a board member of Women in Machine Learning (WiML), Sasha is …

In episode 119 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Michael Sipser. Professor Sipser is the Donner Professor of Mathematics and member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1980 and joined the MIT faculty that same year. He was Chairman of Applied Mathema…

In episode 118 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Andrew Lee. Andrew is co-founder and CEO of Shortwave, a company dedicated to building a better product experience for email, particularly by leveraging AI. He previously co-founded and was CTO at Firebase. Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know her…

“You get more of what you engage with. Everyone who complains about coverage should understand that every click, every quote tweet, every argument is registered by these publications as engagement. If what you want is really meaty, dispassionate, balanced, and fair explainers, you need to click on that, you need to read the whole thing, you need to…

In episode 116 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Kate Park. Kate is the Director of Product at Scale AI. Prior to joining Scale, Kate worked on Tesla Autopilot as the AI team’s first and lead product manager building the industry’s first data engine. She has also published research on spoken natural language processing and a travel m…

In episode 115 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ben Wellington. Ben is the Deputy Head of Feature Forecasting at Two Sigma, a financial sciences company. Ben has been at Two Sigma for more than 15 years, and currently leads efforts focused on natural language processing and feature forecasting. He is also the author of data science …

“There is this move from generality in a relative sense of ‘we are not as specialized as insects’ to generality in the sense of omnipotent, omniscient, godlike capabilities. And I think there's something very dangerous that happens there, which is you start thinking of the word ‘general’ in completely unhinged ways.” In episode 114 of The Gradient …

In episode 113 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Sasha Rush. Professor Rush is an Associate Professor at Cornell University and a Researcher at HuggingFace. His research aims to develop natural language processing systems that are safe, fast, and controllable. His group is interested primarily in tasks that involve text gen…

In episode 112 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Cameron Jones and Sean Trott. Cameron is a PhD candidate in the Cognitive Science Department at the University of California, San Diego. His research compares how humans and large language models process language about world knowledge, situation models, and theory of mind. Sean is an A…

In episode 111 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Nicholas Thompson. Nicholas is the CEO of The Atlantic. Previously, he served as editor-in-chief of Wired and editor of Newyorker.com. Nick also cofounded Atavist, which sold to Automattic in 2018. Publications under Nick’s leadership have won numerous National Magazine Awards and Puli…

In episode 110 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Subbarao Kambhampati. Professor Kambhampati is a professor of computer science at Arizona State University. He studies fundamental problems in planning and decision making, motivated by the challenges of human-aware AI systems. He is a fellow of the Association for the Advanc…

In episode 109 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Russ Maschmeyer. Russ is the Product Lead for AI and Spatial Commerce at Shopify. At Shopify, he leads a team that looks at how AI can better empower entrepreneurs, with a particular interest in how image generation can help make the lives of business owners and merchants more producti…

In episode 108 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Benjamin Breen. Professor Breen is an associate professor of history at UC Santa Cruz specializing in the history of science, medicine, globalization, and the impacts of technological change. He is the author of multiple books including The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the…

In episode 107 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Ted Gibson. Ted is a Professor of Cognitive Science at MIT. He leads the TedLab, which investigates why languages look the way they do; the relationship between culture and cognition, including language; and how people learn, represent, and process language. Have suggestions …

In episode 106 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Harvey Lederman. Professor Lederman is a professor of philosophy at UT Austin. He has broad interests in contemporary philosophy and in the history of philosophy: his areas of specialty include philosophical logic, the Ming dynasty philosopher Wang Yangming, epistemology, and…

In episode 105 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Eric Jang. Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here or reach us at editor@thegradient.pub Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on Twitter Outline: * (00:00) Intro * (01:25) Updates si…

In episode 104 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Nathan Benaich. Nathan is Founder and General Partner at Air Street Capital, a VC firm focused on investing in AI-first technology and life sciences companies. Nathan runs a number of communities focused on AI including the Research and Applied AI Summit and leads Spinout.fyi to improv…

In episode 103 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Dr. Kathleen Fisher. As the director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O), Dr. Kathleen Fisher oversees a portfolio that includes most of the agency’s AI-related research and development efforts, including the recent AI Forward initiative. AI Forward explores new directions f…

In episode 102 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Peter Tse. Professor Tse is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and chair of the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. His research focuses on using brain and behavioral data to constrain models of the neural bases of attention and consciousness, uncons…

In episode 101 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Vera Liao. Vera is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research (MSR) Montréal where she is part of the FATE (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics) group. She is trained in human-computer interaction research and works on human-AI interaction, currently focusing on explai…

In episode 100 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Thomas Dietterich. Professor Dietterich is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University. He is a pioneer in the field of machine learning, and has authored more than 225 refereed publications and two …

In episode 99 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Martin Wattenberg. Professor Wattenberg is a professor at Harvard and part-time member of Google Research’s People + AI Research (PAIR) initiative, which he co-founded. His work, with long-time collaborator Fernanda Viégas, focuses on making AI technology broadly accessible an…

In episode 98 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Laurence Liew. Laurence is the Director for AI Innovation at AI Singapore. He is driving the adoption of AI by the Singapore ecosystem through the 100 Experiments, AI Apprenticeship Programmes and the Generational AI Talent Development initiative. He is the current Co-Chair of the Innov…

In episode 97 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Michael Levin and Adam Goldstein. Professor Levin is a Distinguished Professor and Vannevar Bush Chair in the Biology Department at Tufts University. He also directs the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts. His group, the Levin Lab, focuses on understanding the biophysical mechani…

In episode 96 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Jonathan Frankle. Jonathan is the Chief Scientist at MosaicML and (as of release). Jonathan completed his PhD at MIT, where he investigated the properties of sparse neural networks that allow them to train effectively through his lottery ticket hypothesis. He also spends a portion of hi…

In episode 95 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Nao Tokui. Nao Tokui is an artist/DJ and researcher based in Tokyo. While pursuing his Ph.D. at The University of Tokyo, he produced his first music album and singles using AI, including a 12-inch record with Nujabes, a legendary Japanese hip-hop producer. After completing his Ph.D. res…

In episode 94 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Divyansh Kaushik. Divyansh is the Associate Director for Emerging Technologies and National Security at the Federation of American Scientists where his focus areas include, amongst other things, AI policy, STEM immigration, and US-China strategic competition. He holds a PhD from Carnegi…

In episode 93 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Tal Linzen. Professor Linzen is an Associate Professor of Linguistics and Data Science at New York University and a Research Scientist at Google. He directs the Computation and Psycholinguistics Lab, where he and his collaborators use behavioral experiments and computational m…

In episode 92 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Kevin K. Yang. Kevin is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research (MSR) who works on problems at the intersection of machine learning and biology, with an emphasis on protein engineering. He completed his PhD at Caltech with Frances Arnold on applying machine learning to protein enginee…

In episode 91 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Arjun Ramani and Zhengdong Wang. Arjun is the global business and economics correspondent at The Economist. Zhengdong is a research engineer at Google DeepMind. Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here or reach us at editor@thegradient.pub Subscri…

In episode 90 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Miles Grimshaw. Miles is General Partner at Benchmark. He was previously a General Partner at Thrive Capital, where he helped the firm raise its fourth and fifth funds, and sourced deals in Lattice, Mapbox, Benchling, and Airtable, among others. Have suggestions for future podcast guest…

In episode 89 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Shreya Shankar. Shreya is a computer scientist pursuing her PhD in databases at UC Berkeley. Her research interest is in building end-to-end systems for people to develop production-grade machine learning applications. She was previously the first ML engineer at Viaduct, did research at…

In episode 88 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Stevan Harnad. Stevan Harnad is professor of psychology and cognitive science at Université du Québec à Montréal, adjunct professor of cognitive science at McGill University, and professor emeritus of cognitive science at the University of Southampton. His research is on categ…

In episode 87 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Terry Winograd. Professor Winograd is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University. His research focuses on human-computer interaction design and the design of technologies for development. He founded the Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Group, where he dir…

In episode 86 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Gil Strang. Professor Strang is one of the world’s foremost mathematics educators and a mathematician with contributions to finite element theory, the calculus of variations, wavelet analysis, and linear algebra. He has spent six decades teaching mathematics at MIT, where he w…

In episode 85 of The Gradient Podcast, Andrey Kurenkov speaks to Anant Agarwal Anant Agarwal is the chief platform officer of 2U, and founder of edX. Anant taught the first edX course on circuits and electronics from MIT, which drew 155,000 students from 162 countries. He has served as the director of CSAIL, MIT's Computer Science and Artificial In…

In episode 84 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Raphaël Millière. Professor Millière is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Previously, he was the 2020 Robert A. Burt Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience in Columbia Universit…

In episode 83 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Peli Grietzer. Peli is a scholar whose work borrows mathematical ideas from machine learning theory to think through “ambient” and ineffable phenomena like moods, vibes, cultural logics, and structures of feeling. He is working on a book titled Big Mood: A Transcendental-Computational E…

In episode 82 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ryan Drapeau. Ryan is a Staff Software Engineer at Stripe and technical lead for Stripe’s Payment Fraud organization, which uses machine learning to help prevent billions of dollars of credit card and payments fraud for business every year. Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or…

In episode 81 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Shiv Rao. Shiv Rao, MD is the co-founder and CEO of Abridge, a healthcare conversation company that uses cutting-edge NLP and generative AI to bring context and understanding to every medical conversation. Shiv previously served as an Executive Vice President at UPMC Enterprises, managi…

In episode 80 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Hugo Larochelle. Professor Larochelle leads the Montreal Google DeepMind team and is adjunct professor at Université de Montréal and a Canada CIFAR Chair. His research focuses on the study and development of deep learning algorithms. Have suggestions for future podcast guests …

In episode 79 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Jeremie Harris. Jeremie is co-founder of Gladstone AI, author of the book Quantum Physics Made Me Do It, and co-host of the Last Week in AI Podcast. Jeremy previously hosted the Towards Data Science podcast and worked on a number of other startups after leaving a PhD in physics. Have su…

In episode 78 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Antoine Blondeau. Antoine is a serial AI entrepreneur and Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Alpha Intelligence Capital. He was chief executive at Dejima when the firm worked on CALO, one of the biggest AI projects in US history and precursor to Apple’s Siri. Later, he co-founded Sentie…

In episode 77 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Joon Park. Joon is a third-year PhD student at Stanford, advised by Professors Michael Bernstein and Percy Liang. He designs, builds, and evaluates interactive systems that support new forms of human-computer interaction by leveraging state-of-the-art advances in natural language proces…

In episode 76 of The Gradient Podcast, Andrey Kurenkov speaks to Dr Christoffer Holmgård Dr. Holmgård is a co-founder and the CEO of Modl.ai, which is building AI Engine for game development. Before starting the company, Christoffer was director of the indie game studio Die Gute Fabrik (which is German for "The Good Factory"), and has also done ext…

In episode 75 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Riley Goodside. Riley is a Staff Prompt Engineer at Scale AI. Riley began posting GPT-3 prompt examples and screenshot demonstrations in 2022. He previously worked as a data scientist at OkCupid, Grindr, and CopyAI. Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us …

In episode 74 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Talia Ringer. Professor Ringer is an Assistant Professor with the Programming Languages, Formal Methods, and Software Engineering group at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Their research leverages proof engineering to allow programmers to more easily build forma…

In episode 72 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Brigham Hyde. Brigham is Co-Founder and CEO of Atropos Health. Prior to Atropos, he served as President of Data and Analytics at Eversana, a life sciences commercialization service provider. He led the investment in Concert AI in the oncology real-world data space at Symphony AI. Brigha…

In episode 72 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Scott Aaronson. Scott is the Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin and director of its Quantum Information Center. His research interests focus on the capabilities and limits of quantum computers and computational complexity the…