Beyond experimentation: A121 CEO Yoav Shoham on GenAI's future and AI21's journey
Avishai sits down with AI pioneer Yoav Shoham to discuss why Yoav doesn't believe GenAI truly exists, AI21’s mission, and his vision for the future.
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Jan 24, 2024
Beyond experimentation: A121 CEO Yoav Shoham on GenAI's future and AI21's journey
In this episode, Avishai sits down with AI pioneer Yoav Shoham. Yoav was a professor of computer science at Stanford for 28 years, where he was the director of the AI Lab. He is also a serial entrepreneur and has founded various companies across industries. Most recently, he co-founded AI21 labs. AI21 Labs aims to take AI to the next level and builds LLMs for enterprises that make machines thought partners. Join him and Avishai for a great discussion, and hear why Yoav doesn't believe Gen AI truly exists, AI21’s mission, and his vision for the future.
The AI winter is over. AI is at the top of everyone’s mind today, but it has existed for decades. Yoav experienced the ‘AI Winter,’ a period during the 1990s when interest and funding in AI dropped. Yoav says that the effects of the winter have worn off, and that the learnings and changes from the period and beyond have helped us reach the AI boom of today.
"The word trust I think encompasses everything I said. You need to trust your system and to trust them. They need to be reliable. If you don't know what you're going to get, then you can't trust it"
Lots of experiments, little deployment. Yoav says that while there is mass experimentation with AI, there is much less deployment of the technology. Proving the ROI of AI is something companies like AI21 must do to encourage uptake from large enterprises.
Trust is key. Yoav identifies that reliability, predictability and explainability are key for LLMs. These models often don’t know when or why they are wrong. Ensuring that we can trust these models is key to their progression and adoption.
