43–AI–1 of 2 - a podcast by Bertrand Schmitt & Nuno G. Pedro

The truth about Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI. This is the first of two episodes on AI.

Navigation:Intro (01:33)
What is AI and AGI? Why now? (02:07)Setting the Record Straight (08:55)
Verticals (20:30)Other AIs (28:48)
The Big Guys (31:20)Conclusion (38:38)

Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt
Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news
Subscribe To Our PodcastIntro (01:34)

Bertrand SchmittWelcome to Tech DECIPHERED Episode 43. This would be the first of a series of two episodes on AI, AGI, generative AI. A lot has been happening in the past six months and we felt it was a great time where not everything is clear yet. The fog of war is still intense. There is probably a little bit more visibility into where things are going. It would be with pleasure that we'll talk about this deeply fascinating topic and for sure one of the topics most discussed today in tech.

What is AI? What is AGI? Why now? (02:07)Bertrand Schmitt

Nuno, maybe we should start with trying to define what is AI, what is AGI, what is generative AI?Nuno G. Pedro

Easy task. AI is what is in the name. It's artificial intelligence. It's typically seen as a branch of computer science that is looking at creating mechanisms within machines that, in some ways, are similar to human intelligence or practically speaking, would refer to human intellect.

Nuno G. PedroNow, as we know, machines can't think. That's still true today. So they do this through very complex mathematical models that get implemented normally through software and hardware combinations. Then within artificial intelligence there are different fields of artificial intelligence.

Nuno G. PedroIn the good old days, people used to talk about weak AI versus strong AI, which is more general intelligence, where weak AI is normally more focused within a specific field of solution set. General AI and strong AI will eventually become our overlord and think better than us. Nowadays you will hear a lot of different things around artificial intelligence. You'll hear machine learning, you'll hear deep learning, you'll hear about natural language processing, computer vision, et cetera.

Nuno G. PedroAll of these fields are fields of artificial intelligence that intend to emulate what we as human beings do. So computer vision basically would look at the automatic analysis of things that get processed through vision. Could be video, could be pictures.

Nuno G. PedroNatural language processing is looking at the interaction of machines and computers with natural languages and human languages, the language that we have. Deep learning, I would allege, is a subfield of machine learning. There's still a huge argument on that or whether deep learning is a different field or not.

Nuno G. PedroI normally see it as a subfield of machine learning where deep learning normally uses things like neural networks—we'll talk about neural networks later on—which are trying to emulate how our brain structures thinking effectively. In a nutshell, AI is a field of computer science. It's an evolution of computer science. Machines can't think for themselves, so they do this through very complex algorithms and techniques that normally use a lot of mathematics and quite a bit of data.

Nuno G. PedroAlthough we'll also have a discussion today on how much data do you really need. Are we past the times where you need massive amounts of data or not? In some cases, these techniques and algorithms also need to be trained.

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