Which AI Applications Should You Build? Here's How to Decide: AI isn't ideal for everything. How can you decide which use cases to build? Think about tasks, not jobs.
Letters

Which AI Applications Should You Build? Here's How to Decide: AI isn't ideal for everything. How can you decide which use cases to build? Think about tasks, not jobs.

While AI is a general-purpose technology that’s useful for many things, it isn’t good for every task under the sun. How can we decide which concrete use cases to build? If you’re helping a business figure out where to apply AI, I’ve found the following recipe useful as a brainstorming aid…

September 20, 20234 min read
Where Are the Opportunities in AI? Here's Where to Look: Generative AI opens the way to create valuable products, especially in the application layer.
Letters

Where Are the Opportunities in AI? Here's Where to Look: Generative AI opens the way to create valuable products, especially in the application layer.

I recently spoke about “Opportunities in AI” at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. I'd like to share a few observations from that presentation, and I invite you to watch the video (37 minutes).

September 13, 20232 min read
Where Are the Opportunities in AI? Here's Where to Look: Generative AI opens the way to create valuable products, especially in the application layer.
Letters

Where Are the Opportunities in AI? Here's Where to Look: Generative AI opens the way to create valuable products, especially in the application layer.

I recently spoke about “Opportunities in AI” at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. I'd like to share a few observations from that presentation, and I invite you to watch the video (37 minutes).

September 13, 20232 min read
Unlocking AI's Potential for Positive Impact: AI can make a difference when stakes are high and lives hang in the balance. Learn how in our new specialization, AI for Good.
Letters

Unlocking AI's Potential for Positive Impact: AI can make a difference when stakes are high and lives hang in the balance. Learn how in our new specialization, AI for Good.

Amidst rising worry about AI harms both realistic (like job loss) and unrealistic (like human extinction), It’s critical to understand AI’s potential to do tremendous good. Our new specialization is designed to empower people to identify, scope, and build impactful AI projects.

September 6, 20232 min read
Unlocking AI's Potential for Positive Impact: AI can make a difference when stakes are high and lives hang in the balance. Learn how in our new specialization, AI for Good.
Letters

Unlocking AI's Potential for Positive Impact: AI can make a difference when stakes are high and lives hang in the balance. Learn how in our new specialization, AI for Good.

Amidst rising worry about AI harms both realistic (like job loss) and unrealistic (like human extinction), It’s critical to understand AI’s potential to do tremendous good. Our new specialization is designed to empower people to identify, scope, and build impactful AI projects.

September 6, 20232 min read
The Unlikely Roots of Large Language Models: U.S. military funding helped build the foundation for ChatGPT and other innovations in natural language processing.
Letters

The Unlikely Roots of Large Language Models: U.S. military funding helped build the foundation for ChatGPT and other innovations in natural language processing.

I’d like to share a part of the origin story of large language models that isn’t widely known. A lot of early work in natural language processing (NLP) was funded by U.S. military intelligence agencies that needed machine translation and speech recognition capabilities.

August 30, 20233 min read
The Unlikely Roots of Large Language Models: U.S. military funding helped build the foundation for ChatGPT and other innovations in natural language processing.
Letters

The Unlikely Roots of Large Language Models: U.S. military funding helped build the foundation for ChatGPT and other innovations in natural language processing.

I’d like to share a part of the origin story of large language models that isn’t widely known. A lot of early work in natural language processing (NLP) was funded by U.S. military intelligence agencies that needed machine translation and speech recognition capabilities.

August 30, 20233 min read
The Hidden Value of Deep Technical Knowledge: What's the best way to prompt a large language model? Understand the technology.
Letters

The Hidden Value of Deep Technical Knowledge: What's the best way to prompt a large language model? Understand the technology.

Machine learning development is an empirical process. It’s hard to know in advance the result of a hyperparameter choice, dataset, or prompt to a large language model (LLM).

August 23, 20232 min read
The Hidden Value of Deep Technical Knowledge: What's the best way to prompt a large language model? Understand the technology.
Letters

The Hidden Value of Deep Technical Knowledge: What's the best way to prompt a large language model? Understand the technology.

Machine learning development is an empirical process. It’s hard to know in advance the result of a hyperparameter choice, dataset, or prompt to a large language model (LLM).

August 23, 20232 min read
Tips for Taking Advantage of Open Large Language Models: Prompting? Few-Shot? Fine-Tuning? Pretraining from scratch? Open LLMs mean more options for developers.
Letters

Tips for Taking Advantage of Open Large Language Models: Prompting? Few-Shot? Fine-Tuning? Pretraining from scratch? Open LLMs mean more options for developers.

An increasing variety of large language models (LLMs) are open source, or close to it. The proliferation of models with relatively permissive licenses gives developers more options for building applications.

August 16, 20233 min read
Tips for Taking Advantage of Open Large Language Models: Prompting? Few-Shot? Fine-Tuning? Pretraining from scratch? Open LLMs mean more options for developers.
Letters

Tips for Taking Advantage of Open Large Language Models: Prompting? Few-Shot? Fine-Tuning? Pretraining from scratch? Open LLMs mean more options for developers.

An increasing variety of large language models (LLMs) are open source, or close to it. The proliferation of models with relatively permissive licenses gives developers more options for building applications.

August 16, 20233 min read
Does AI Understand the World?: There's no scientific test for understanding, but there is evidence that large language models understand the world to some extent.
Letters

Does AI Understand the World?: There's no scientific test for understanding, but there is evidence that large language models understand the world to some extent.

Do large language models understand the world? As a scientist and engineer, I’ve avoided asking whether an AI system “understands” anything. There’s no widely agreed-upon, scientific test for whether a system really understands — as opposed to appearing to understand —

August 9, 20233 min read
Does AI Understand the World?: There's no scientific test for understanding, but there is evidence that large language models understand the world to some extent.
Letters

Does AI Understand the World?: There's no scientific test for understanding, but there is evidence that large language models understand the world to some extent.

Do large language models understand the world? As a scientist and engineer, I’ve avoided asking whether an AI system “understands” anything. There’s no widely agreed-upon, scientific test for whether a system really understands — as opposed to appearing to understand —

August 9, 20233 min read
Generative AI = Huge Opportunities: Businesses, governments, and investors worldwide want to take advantage of generative AI. Developers, it's your time to shine!
Letters

Generative AI = Huge Opportunities: Businesses, governments, and investors worldwide want to take advantage of generative AI. Developers, it's your time to shine!

Last week, I returned home from Asia, where I spoke at Seoul National University in Korea, the National University of Singapore, and the University of Tokyo in Japan and visited many businesses.

August 2, 20233 min read
Generative AI = Huge Opportunities: Businesses, governments, and investors worldwide want to take advantage of generative AI. Developers, it's your time to shine!
Letters

Generative AI = Huge Opportunities: Businesses, governments, and investors worldwide want to take advantage of generative AI. Developers, it's your time to shine!

Last week, I returned home from Asia, where I spoke at Seoul National University in Korea, the National University of Singapore, and the University of Tokyo in Japan and visited many businesses.

August 2, 20233 min read

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