Gradient Descent - Podcast about AI and Data

About Gradient Descent - Podcast about AI and Data

“Gradient Descent" is a podcast that delves into the depths of artificial intelligence and data science. Hosted by Vishnu Vettrivel (Founder of Wisecube AI) and Alex Thomas (Principal Data Scientist), the show explores the latest trends, innovations, and practical applications in AI and data science. Join us to learn more about how these technologies are shaping our future.

Publisher

Wisecube AI

Category

technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

6 Mar 2025

Latest episode

3 Jun 2025

Latest episodes

6 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   3 Jun 2025

   A History of NLP and Wisecube’s AI Journey

   Vishnu and Alex recount Wisecube's AI journey, highlighting milestones in NLP development, knowledge graphs, and healthcare applications, while reflecting on the evolution of AI; this is an interview.

2. 

   13 May 2025

   LLM Fine-Tuning: RLHF vs DPO and beyond

   In this episode of Gradient Descent, we explore two competing approaches to fine-tuning LLMs: Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) and Direct Preference Optimization (DPO). Dive into the mechanics of RLHF, its computational challenges, and how DPO simplifies the process by eliminating the need for a separate reward model. We also discuss supervised fine-tuning, emerging methods like Identity Preference Optimization (IPO) and Kahneman-Tversky Optimization (KTO), and their real-world applications in models like Llama 3 and Mistral. Learn practical LLM optimization strategies, including task modularization to boost performance without extensive fine-tuning. Timestamps: Intro - 0:00 Overview of LLM Fine-Tuning - 00:48 Understanding RLHF Deep Dive into RLHF - 02:46 Supervised Fine-Tuning vs. RLHF - 10:38 DPO and Other RLHF Alternatives - 14:43 Real-World Applications in Frontier Models - 22:23 Practical Tips for LLM Optimization - 25:18 Closing Thoughts - 36:05 References: [1] Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.02155 [2] Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.18290 [3] Hugging Face Blog on DPO: Simplifying Alignment: From RLHF to Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) https://huggingface.co/blog/ariG23498/rlhf-to-dpo [4] Comparative Analysis: RLHF and DPO Compared https://crowdworks.blog/en/rlhf-and-dpo-compared/ [5] YouTube Explanation: How to fine-tune LLMs directly without reinforcement learning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2pD3k1485A Listen on: • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gradient-descent-podcast-about-ai-and-data/id1801323847 • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1nG58pwg2Dv6oAhCTzab55 • Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/79f6ed45-ef49-4919-bebc-e746e0afe94c/gradient-descent---podcast-about-ai-and-data Our solutions: - https://askpythia.ai/ - LLM Hallucination Detection Tool - https://www.wisecube.ai - Wisecube AI platform for large-scale biomedical knowledge analysis Follow us: - Pythia Website: https://askpythia.ai/ - Wisecube Website: https://www.wisecube.ai - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wisecube/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wisecubeai - Twitter: https://x.com/wisecubeai - Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/pythia/ - GitHub: https://github.com/wisecubeai #FineTuning #LLM #DeepLearning #RLHF #DPO #AI #MachineLearning #AIDevelopment

3. 

   29 Apr 2025

   The Future of Prompt Engineering: Prompts to Programs

   Explore the evolution of prompt engineering in this episode of Gradient Descent. Manual prompt tuning — slow, brittle, and hard to scale — is giving way to DSPy, a framework that turns LLM prompting into a structured, programmable, and optimizable process. Learn how DSPy’s modular approach — with Signatures, Modules, and Optimizers — enables LLMs to tackle complex tasks like multi-hop reasoning and math problem solving, achieving accuracy comparable to much larger models. We also dive into real-world examples, optimization strategies, and why the future of prompting looks a lot more like programming. Listen to our podcast on these platforms: • YouTube (https://youtube.com/@WisecubeAI/podcasts): https://youtube.com/@WisecubeAI/podcasts • Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gradient-descent-podcast-about-ai-and-data/id1801323847): https://apple.co/4kPMxZf • Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/1nG58pwg2Dv6oAhCTzab55): https://open.spotify.com/show/1nG58pwg2Dv6oAhCTzab55 • Amazon Music (https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/79f6ed45-ef49-4919-bebc-e746e0afe94c/gradient-descent---podcast-about-ai-and-data): https://bit.ly/4izpdO2 Mentioned Materials: • DSPy Paper (https://youtube.com/@WisecubeAI/podcasts) - https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.03714 • DSPy official site (https://dspy.ai/ ) - https://dspy.ai/ • DSPy GitHub (https://github.com/stanfordnlp/dspy) - https://github.com/stanfordnlp/dspy • LLM abstractions guide (https://www.twosigma.com/articles/a-guide-to-large-language-model-abstractions/) - https://www.twosigma.com/articles/a-guide-to-large-language-model-abstractions/ Our solutions: - https://askpythia.ai/ - LLM Hallucination Detection Tool (https://askpythia.ai/ ) - https://www.wisecube.ai - Wisecube AI (https://www.wisecube.ai) platform for large-scale biomedical knowledge analysis Follow us: - Pythia Website (https://askpythia.ai/): https://askpythia.ai/ - Wisecube Website (https://www.wisecube.ai): https://www.wisecube.ai - LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/wisecube/): https://www.linkedin.com/company/wisecube/ - Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/wisecubeai): https://www.facebook.com/wisecubeai - Twitter (https://x.com/wisecubeai): https://x.com/wisecubeai - Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/pythia/): https://www.reddit.com/r/pythia/ - GitHub (https://github.com/wisecubeai): https://github.com/wisecubeai #AI #PromptEngineering #DSPy #MachineLearning #LLM #ArtificialIntelligence #AIdevelopment

4. 

   12 Apr 2025

   Agentic AI – Hype or the Next Step in AI Evolution?

   Let’s dive into Agentic AI, guided by the "Cognitive Architectures for Language Agents" (CoALA) paper. What defines an agentic system? How does it plan, leverage memory, and execute tasks? We explore semantic, episodic, and procedural memory, discuss decision-making loops, and examine how agents integrate with external APIs (think LangGraph). Learn how AI tackles complex automation — from code generation to playing Minecraft — and why designing robust action spaces is key to scaling systems. We also touch on challenges like memory updates and the ethics of agentic AI. Get actionable insight… 🔗 Links to the CoALA paper, LangGraph, and more in the description. 🔔 Subscribe to stay updated with Gradient Descent! Listen on: • ⁠YouTube (https://youtube.com/@WisecubeAI/podcasts)⁠: https://youtube.com/@WisecubeAI/podcasts • ⁠Apple Podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gradient-descent-podcast-about-ai-and-data/id1801323847)⁠: https://apple.co/4kPMxZf • ⁠Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/1nG58pwg2Dv6oAhCTzab55)⁠: https://open.spotify.com/show/1nG58pwg2Dv6oAhCTzab55 • ⁠Amazon Music (https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/79f6ed45-ef49-4919-bebc-e746e0afe94c/gradient-descent---podcast-about-ai-and-data)⁠: https://bit.ly/4izpdO2 Mentioned Materials: • Cognitive Architectures for Language Agents (CoALA) (https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.02427) - https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.02427 • Memory for agents (https://blog.langchain.dev/memory-for-agents/) - https://blog.langchain.dev/memory-for-agents/ • LangChain (https://python.langchain.com/docs/introduction/) - https://python.langchain.com/docs/introduction/ • LangGraph (https://langchain-ai.github.io/langgraph/) - https://langchain-ai.github.io/langgraph/ Our solutions: - https://askpythia.ai/ - LLM Hallucination Detection Tool (https://askpythia.ai/) - https://www.wisecube.ai - Wisecube AI platform (https://www.wisecube.ai) can analyze millions of biomedical publications, clinical trials, protein and chemical databases. Follow us: - Pythia Website (https://askpythia.ai/ ): https://askpythia.ai/ - Wisecube Website (https://www.wisecube.ai): https://www.wisecube.ai - LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/wisecube/): https://www.linkedin.com/company/wisecube/ - Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/wisecubeai ): https://www.facebook.com/wisecubeai - X (https://x.com/wisecubeai ): https://x.com/wisecubeai - Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/pythia/ ): https://www.reddit.com/r/pythia/ - GitHub (https://github.com/wisecubeai): https://github.com/wisecubeai #AgenticAI #FutureOfAI #AIInnovation #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #DeepLearning #LLM

5. 

   22 Mar 2025

   LLM as a Judge: Can AI Evaluate Itself?

   In the second episode of Gradient Descent, Vishnu Vettrivel (CTO of Wisecube) and Alex Thomas (Principal Data Scientist) explore the innovative yet controversial idea of using LLMs to judge and evaluate other AI systems. They discuss the hidden human role in AI training, limitations of traditional benchmarks, automated evaluation strengths and weaknesses, and best practices for building reliable AI judgment systems. Timestamps: 00:00 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYB_RCxQ_YI&list=PLEBj677AOh-TTcqBwLQtc8G274BeGnruX&index=1) – Introduction & Context 01:00 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYB_RCxQ_YI&list=PLEBj677AOh-TTcqBwLQtc8G274BeGnruX&index=1&t=60s) – The Role of Humans in AI 03:58 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYB_RCxQ_YI&list=PLEBj677AOh-TTcqBwLQtc8G274BeGnruX&index=1&t=238s) – Why Is Evaluating LLMs So Difficult? 09:00 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYB_RCxQ_YI&list=PLEBj677AOh-TTcqBwLQtc8G274BeGnruX&index=1&t=540s) – Pros and Cons of LLM-as-a-Judge 14:30 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYB_RCxQ_YI&list=PLEBj677AOh-TTcqBwLQtc8G274BeGnruX&index=1&t=870s) – How to Make LLM-as-a-Judge More Reliable? 19:30 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYB_RCxQ_YI&list=PLEBj677AOh-TTcqBwLQtc8G274BeGnruX&index=1&t=1170s) – Trust and Reliability Issues 25:00 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYB_RCxQ_YI&list=PLEBj677AOh-TTcqBwLQtc8G274BeGnruX&index=1&t=1500s) – The Future of LLM-as-a-Judge 30:00 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYB_RCxQ_YI&list=PLEBj677AOh-TTcqBwLQtc8G274BeGnruX&index=1&t=1800s) – Final Thoughts and Takeaways Listen on: • ⁠YouTube⁠ (https://youtube.com/@WisecubeAI/podcasts): https://youtube.com/@WisecubeAI/podcasts • ⁠Apple Podcast⁠ (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gradient-descent-podcast-about-ai-and-data/id1801323847): https://apple.co/4kPMxZf • ⁠Spotify⁠ (https://open.spotify.com/show/1nG58pwg2Dv6oAhCTzab55): https://open.spotify.com/show/1nG58pwg2Dv6oAhCTzab55 • ⁠Amazon Music⁠ (https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/79f6ed45-ef49-4919-bebc-e746e0afe94c/gradient-descent---podcast-about-ai-and-data): https://bit.ly/4izpdO2 Follow us: • ⁠Pythia Website⁠ (https://askpythia.ai/): www.askpythia.ai • ⁠Wisecube Website⁠ (www.wisecube.ai): www.wisecube.ai • ⁠Linkedin⁠ (www.linkedin.com/company/wisecube): www.linkedin.com/company/wisecube • ⁠Facebook⁠ (www.facebook.com/wisecubeai): www.facebook.com/wisecubeai • ⁠Reddit⁠ (www.reddit.com/r/pythia/): www.reddit.com/r/pythia/ Mentioned Materials: - Best Practices for LLM-as-a-Judge (https://www.databricks.com/blog/LLM-auto-eval-best-practices-RAG): https://www.databricks.com/blog/LLM-auto-eval-best-practices-RAG - LLMs-as-Judges: A Comprehensive Survey on LLM-based Evaluation Methods (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.05579v2): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.05579v2 - Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena (https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.05685): https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.05685 - Guide to LLM-as-a-Judge (https://www.evidentlyai.com/llm-guide/llm-as-a-judge): https://www.evidentlyai.com/llm-guide/llm-as-a-judge - Preference Leakage: A Contamination Problem in LLM-as-a-Judge (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.01534): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.01534 - Large Language Models Are Not Fair Evaluators (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.17926): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.17926 - Is LLM-as-a-Judge Robust? Investigating Universal Adversarial Attacks on Zero-shot LLM Assessment (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.14016v2): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.14016v2 - Optimization-based Prompt Injection Attack to LLM-as-a-Judge (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.17710v4): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.17710v4 - AWS Bedrock: Model Evaluation (https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/llm-as-a-judge-on-amazon-bedrock-model-evaluation/ ): https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/llm-as-a-judge-on-amazon-bedrock-model-evaluation/ - Hugging Face: LLM Judge Cookbook (https://huggingface.co/learn/cookbook/en/llm_judge): https://huggingface.co/learn/cookbook/en/llm_judge

6. 

   6 Mar 2025

   AI Scaling Laws, DeepSeek’s Cost Efficiency & The Future of AI Training

   In this first episode of Gradient Descent, hosts Vishnu Vettrivel (CTO of Wisecube AI) and Alex Thomas (Principal Data Scientist) discuss the rapid evolution of AI, the breakthroughs in LLMs, and the role of Natural Language Processing in shaping the future of artificial intelligence. They also share their experiences in AI development and explain why this podcast differs from other AI discussions. Chapters: 00:00 – Introduction 01:56 – DeepSeek Overview 02:55 – Scaling Laws and Model Performance 04:36 – Peak Data: Are we running out of quality training data? 08:10 – Industry reaction to DeepSeek 09:05 – Jevons' Paradox: Why cheaper AI can drive more demand 11:04 – Supervised Fine-Tuning vs Reinforcement Learning (RLHF) 14:49 – Why Reinforcement Learning helps AI models generalize 20:29 – Distillation and Training Efficiency 25:01 – AI safety concerns: Toxicity, bias, and censorship 30:25 – Future Trends in LLMs: Cheaper, more specialized AI models? 37:30 – Final thoughts and upcoming topics Listen on: • YouTube (https://youtube.com/@WisecubeAI/podcasts): https://youtube.com/@WisecubeAI/podcasts • Apple Podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gradient-descent-podcast-about-ai-and-data/id1801323847): https://apple.co/4kPMxZf • Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/1nG58pwg2Dv6oAhCTzab55): https://open.spotify.com/show/1nG58pwg2Dv6oAhCTzab55 • Amazon Music (https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/79f6ed45-ef49-4919-bebc-e746e0afe94c/gradient-descent---podcast-about-ai-and-data): https://bit.ly/4izpdO2 Follow us: • Pythia Website (https://askpythia.ai/): www.askpythia.ai • Wisecube Website (www.wisecube.ai): www.wisecube.ai • Linkedin (www.linkedin.com/company/wisecube): www.linkedin.com/company/wisecube • Facebook (www.facebook.com/wisecubeai): www.facebook.com/wisecubeai • Reddit (www.reddit.com/r/pythia/): www.reddit.com/r/pythia/ Mentioned Materials: - Jevons’ Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox - Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models (https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361): https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361 - Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network (https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.02531): https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.02531 - SFT Memorizes, RL Generalizes: A Comparative Study of Foundation Model Post-training (https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17161 ): https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17161 - DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning (https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.12948): https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.12948 - Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction (Sutton & Barto) (https://web.stanford.edu/class/psych209/Readings/SuttonBartoIPRLBook2ndEd.pdf): https://web.stanford.edu/class/psych209/Readings/SuttonBartoIPRLBook2ndEd.pdf

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Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

2.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 26 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

51

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0

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