Vanishing Gradients

Episode 48: HOW TO BENCHMARK AGI WITH GREG KAMRADT

May 23rd, 2025  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 4 mins

agi, ai, data science, machine learning

Hugo talks with Greg Kamradt, President of the ARC Prize Foundation, about ARC-AGI: a benchmark built on Francois Chollet’s definition of intelligence as “the efficiency at which you learn new things.” Unlike most evals that focus on memorization or task completion, ARC is designed to measure generalization—and expose where today’s top models fall short.

Episode 47: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch of Code Slop with Joe Reis

April 7th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 19 mins

ai, data science, genai, llms, machine learning, vibe coding

What if the cost of writing code dropped to zero — but the cost of understanding it skyrocketed?

In this episode, Hugo sits down with Joe Reis to unpack how AI tooling is reshaping the software development lifecycle — from experimentation and prototyping to deployment, maintainability, and everything in between.

Episode 46: Software Composition Is the New Vibe Coding

April 3rd, 2025  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 8 mins

ai, data science, genai, llms, machine learning, vibe coding

What if building software felt more like composing than coding?

In this episode, Hugo and Greg explore how LLMs are reshaping the way we think about software development—from deterministic programming to a more flexible, prompt-driven, and collaborative style of building. It’s not just hype or grift—it’s a real shift in how we express intent, reason about systems, and collaborate across roles.

Hugo speaks with Greg Ceccarelli—co-founder of SpecStory, former CPO at Pluralsight, and Director of Data Science at GitHub—about the rise of software composition and how it changes the way individuals and teams create with LLMs.

Episode 44: The Future of AI Coding Assistants: Who’s Really in Control?

February 4th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 34 mins

ai, data science, llms, machine learning

AI coding assistants are reshaping how developers write, debug, and maintain code—but who’s really in control? In this episode, Hugo speaks with Tyler Dunn, CEO and co-founder of Continue, an open-source AI-powered code assistant that gives developers more customization and flexibility in their workflows.

Episode 43: Tales from 400+ LLM Deployments: Building Reliable AI Agents in Production

January 17th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 1 min

ai, data science, llms, machine learning

Hugo speaks with Alex Strick van Linschoten, Machine Learning Engineer at ZenML and creator of a comprehensive LLMOps database documenting over 400 deployments. Alex's extensive research into real-world LLM implementations gives him unique insight into what actually works—and what doesn't—when deploying AI agents in production.

Episode 42: Learning, Teaching, and Building in the Age of AI

January 4th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 20 mins

ai, data science, genai, llms, machine learning

The tables turn as Hugo sits down with Alex Andorra, host of Learning Bayesian Statistics. Hugo shares his journey from mathematics to AI, reflecting on how Bayesian inference shapes his approach to data science, teaching, and building AI-powered applications.

Episode 40: What Every LLM Developer Needs to Know About GPUs

December 24th, 2024  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 43 mins

ai, data science, llms, machine learning

Hugo speaks with Charles Frye, Developer Advocate at Modal and someone who really knows GPUs inside and out. If you’re a data scientist, machine learning engineer, AI researcher, or just someone trying to make sense of hardware for LLMs and AI workflows, this episode is for you.

Charles and Hugo dive into the practical side of GPUs—from running inference on large models, to fine-tuning and even training from scratch.

Episode 39: From Models to Products: Bridging Research and Practice in Generative AI at Google Labs

November 26th, 2024  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 43 mins

ai, data science, llms, machine learning

From building rockets at SpaceX to advancing generative AI at Google Labs, Ravin Kumar has carved a unique path through the world of technology. In this episode, we explore how to build scalable, reliable AI systems, the skills needed to work across the AI/ML pipeline, and the real-world impact of tools like open-weight models such as Gemma. Ravin also shares insights into designing AI tools like Notebook LM with the user journey at the forefront.

Episode 18: Research Data Science in Biotech

May 25th, 2023  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 12 mins

ai, biotech, data science, machine learning, open source, python

Machine learning, deep learning, Bayesian inference for drug discovery, OSS, and accelerating discovery science to the speed of thought!

Episode 7: The Evolution of Python for Data Science

May 2nd, 2022  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 2 mins

ai, data science, machine learning, python

Hugo speaks with Peter Wang, CEO of Anaconda, about how Python became so big in data science, machine learning, and AI. They jump into many of the technical and sociological beginnings of Python being used for data science, a history of PyData, the conda distribution, and NUMFOCUS.