Jerome Pesenti — Large Language Models, PyTorch, and Meta

Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI

Jerome Pesenti is the former VP of AI at Meta, a tech conglomerate that includes Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, and one of the most exciting places where AI research is happening today.

Jerome shares his thoughts on Transformers-based large language models, and why he's excited by the progress but skeptical of the term "AGI". Then, he discusses some of the practical applications of ML at Meta (recommender systems and moderation!) and dives into the story behind Meta's development of PyTorch. Jerome and Lukas also chat about Jerome's time at IBM Watson and in drug discovery.

Show notes (transcript and links): http://wandb.me/gd-jerome-pesenti

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⏳ Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

0:28 Jerome's thought on large language models

12:53 AI applications and challenges at Meta

18:41 The story behind developing PyTorch

26:40 Jerome's experience at IBM Watson

28:53 Drug discovery, AI, and changing the game

36:10 The potential of education and AI

40:10 Meta and AR/VR interfaces

43:43 Why NVIDIA is such a powerhouse

47:08 Jerome's advice to people starting their careers

48:50 Going back to coding, the challenges of scaling

52:11 Outro

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Connect with Jerome:

📍 Jerome on Twitter: https://twitter.com/an_open_mind

📍 Jerome on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpesenti/

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💬 Host: Lukas Biewald

📹 Producers: Riley Fields, Angelica Pan, Lavanya Shukla

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