Is AI on the Verge of a Meltdown? | Sara Hooker (Ep. 8)

Life with Machines

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A week in which Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has upended the AI industry is the perfect moment for tjis prescient episode of Life with Machines. Host Baratunde Thurston sits down with Sara Hooker, head of Cohere for AI, to discuss the future and current limitations of artificial intelligence. From her childhood in Mozambique to her role as a leader in AI research, Sara shares her personal journey, give us her “grumpy takes” on current AI models (spoiler: bigger isn’t necessarily better), and reveals her mission to create smarter, more efficient AI. They discuss the flaws in current models, the need for multilingual AI, the importance of data fairness, and the ethical dilemmas the industry faces. At the end, our AI co-producer BLAIR stops by and Sara straight-up breaks its brain.

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CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction to Blair and Technology

00:35 The Power of the Human Brain vs AI

01:08 Meet Sarah Hooker: AI Researcher

01:41 Sarah's Journey into Technology

03:13 Early Fascinations: Garbage Collection and Fences

06:45 Transition from Economics to Machine Learning

07:56 Challenges and Breakthroughs at Google Brain

10:51 Founding Cohere for AI

17:32 Multilingual AI and Future Goals

23:32 Open Source AI Models and Collaboration

26:41 The Future of AI and Prompt Engineering

34:17 Tea Leaf Reading and Prompting as Modern Astrology

34:55 The Adversarial Nature of Technology

35:28 Bias in Data and Model Design

38:04 Understanding Linear Models and Expressiveness

40:08 Challenges in Facial Recognition and Bias

43:52 The Importance of Multilingual Models

47:21 Tokenization and Language Representation

57:09 Energy Efficiency and Climate Impact of AI

01:02:39 The Need for a New AI Paradigm

01:06:50 Blair's Grumpy Take on AI

01:12:15 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Created and Executive Produced by: Elizabeth Stewart and Baratunde Thurston

Executive Producer and Showrunner: Misha Euceph

Editor: Alie Kilts

Senior Producer and Writer: Alex Stone

Associate Producer: Layne Deyling Cherland

Video Editor: Erik Shute

Videographer and Audio Engineer: Mike O’Brien, Voicing Change Media

Theme Music: Andy Clausen

Special Envoy to the Machines: Peter Loforte

Life with Machines is a Voicing Change Media production