I hosted Manav from Glean for a guest lecture on enterprise search and fine-tuning embedding models. This session revealed a surprisingly underutilized approach that can dramatically improve RAG system performance - building custom embedding models for each customer rather than using generic solutions.
I hosted a session featuring John Berryman, who shared his expertise on lexical search and its application in RAG systems. John, who previously worked at GitHub and co-authored books on prompt engineering and information retrieval, provided valuable insights on how traditional search techniques can complement modern vector-based approaches for more effective retrieval augmented generation.
I hosted a lightning lesson featuring Ben from Raindrop and Sid from Oleve to discuss AI monitoring, production testing, and data analysis frameworks. This session explored how to effectively identify issues in AI systems, implement structured monitoring, and develop frameworks for improving AI products based on real user data.
I recently hosted a session featuring Anton Troynikov from ChromaDB who shared critical insights about organizing data for retrieval systems. This often-overlooked aspect of RAG implementation can significantly impact retrieval accuracy and overall system performance. Here's a breakdown of the key concepts and best practices for structuring your data to optimize query routing.
I hosted a Lightning Lesson with Skylar Payne, an experienced AI practitioner who's worked at companies like Google and LinkedIn over the past decade. Skylar shared valuable insights on common RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) anti-patterns he's observed across multiple client engagements, providing practical advice for improving AI systems through better data handling, retrieval, and evaluation practices.
I hosted a discussion with Nik Pash, head of AI at Cline, about his viral essay "Why I No Longer Recommend RAG for Autonomous Coding Agents." We explored why embedding-based retrieval systems are being abandoned by leading coding agent companies in favor of more direct, agentic approaches to code exploration.
I hosted a session with Michael Struwig, Head of AI at OpenBB, who shared a fascinating approach to RAG systems that leverages the browser as a data layer. This conversation explored how financial data platforms can connect agents to sensitive data without traditional APIs, creating more secure and flexible AI-powered analysis tools.
I hosted a session with Adit, CEO of Reducto, to explore the challenges and solutions in document ingestion for AI systems. This conversation covered parsing complex documents, handling tables and forms, optimizing data representation for language models, and addressing the long tail of edge cases that make production-ready AI systems difficult to build.
I hosted a session with Will Bryk from Exa who shared insights about the evolution of search technology, how AI is changing search requirements, and the technical challenges of building a semantic search engine. This session explores how traditional search engines like Google differ from next-generation semantic search systems designed for AI applications rather than human users.
I hosted a session with Beyang Liu, CTO of Sourcegraph, to explore how the evolution of AI models has fundamentally changed how we should approach building agent systems. This discussion revealed why many best practices from the chat LLM era are becoming obsolete, and how the architecture of effective agents requires rethinking context management, tool design, and model selection from first principles.