Becoming an AI Evangelist // Alex Volkov // #215

Alex Volkov serves as the AI Evangelist with Weights & Biases, Host of ThursdAI, Founder and CEO Targum and AI Consultant GPU POOR Def. not an owl. MLOps podcast #215 with Alex Volkov, AI Evangelist at Weights & Biases, Becoming an AI Evangelist. // Abstract Follow Alex's journey into the world of AI, from being interested in running his first AI models to founding an AI startup, running a successful weekly AI news podcast & newsletter, and landing a job with  @WeightsBiases . // Bio Alex Volkov is an AI Evangelist at Weights & Biases, celebrated for his expertise in clarifying the complexities of AI and advocating for its beneficial uses. He is the founder and host of ThursdAI, a weekly newsletter and podcast that explores the latest in AI, its practical applications, open-source and innovation. With a solid foundation as an AI startup founder and 20 years in full-stack software engineering, Alex offers a deep well of experience and insight into AI innovation. // MLOps Jobs board https://mlops.pallet.xyz/jobs // MLOps Swag/Merch https://mlops-community.myshopify.com/ // Related Links Evaluation Survey: https://hq.yougot.us/primary/WebInterview/3AW6LW5D/Start Website: https://thursdai.news Alex on X (+X spaces also are also there) - https://twitter.com/altryne/ ThursdAI podcast/newsletter - https://sub.thursdai.news Denver local AI tinkerers meetup - https://denver-boulder.aitinkerers.org/ Weights & Biases Growth Team hack week review - https://www.youtube.com/watchInterview w/ Crew AI creator Joao Moura - https://sub.thursdai.news/p/jan14-sunday-special-deep-dives The Future of Search in the Era of Large Language Models // Saahil Jain // MLOps Podcast #150: https://youtu.be/hMoMvK89iogDSPy: Transforming Language Model Calls into Smart Pipelines // Omar Khattab // MLOps Podcast #194: https://youtu.be/NoaDWKHdkHg --------------- ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ------------- Join our slack community: https://go.mlops.community/slack Follow us on Twitter: @mlopscommunity Sign up for the next meetup: https://go.mlops.community/register Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://mlops.community/ Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/ Connect with Alex on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-volkov-/ Timestamps: [00:00] Alex's preferred beverage [00:17] Takeaways [03:19] Take the Evaluation Survey! [03:55] Alex's journey for the past 15 years [08:10] Career moves [15:15] Building communities [20:02] AI/MLOps Growth in COVID [27:23] Recent developments and insights [31:58 - 33:03] WandB Ad [33:54] Multimodal RAG and Lucid Dreaming [39:55] Evaluation Practices in MLOps [43:27] Evaluating AI models effectively [52:52] Embedding models and updates [56:14] AI model trade-offs [1:01:13] Optimizing LLM user experience [1:03:56] Perceived performance optimization [1:05:45] Agents' hype and reality [1:11:31] Exploring DSPy for evaluation [1:14:13] Wrap up