Podcasts about deedy

Deedy Das invests at Menlo Ventures in Seed and Series A companies in AI / SaaS / Infra and helps run the $100M Anthology Fund with Anthropic. He was on the founding team of the $4.6B enterprise search and AI company Glean, where he built and led Glean Assistant to $15M+ ARR. Deedy also writes frequently about tech, AI, startups, and immigration on X which have received 400M+ views and been featured frequently in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and more. Discover how Deedy's experience with founding an AI company sparked his passion for supporting budding startups. Gain insights into his work with the $100 million Anthology Fund with Anthropic, which offers a refreshing flexibility compared to traditional venture capital frameworks. Deedy also opens up about his immigration journey from India to the U.S., shedding light on the complex H1B visa process and its impact on talented individuals striving to establish themselves in the U.S. In this episode, you'll hear about: Deedy Das's transition from engineering to venture capital and his role at Menlo Ventures and Glean. Challenges and strategies for navigating the H1B and EB1A visa processes as an immigrant entrepreneur. Insights into the flexibility and structure of the $100 million Anthology Fund with Anthropic. The need for reform in green card pathways and exploring international models for immigration. Strategies for non-citizen entrepreneurs in the U.S., focusing on visa eligibility and fundraising. The importance of customer feedback over investor opinions for startup success. Follow and Review: We'd love for you to follow us if you haven't yet. Click that purple '+' in the top right corner of your Apple Podcasts app. We'd love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast. Supporting Resources: Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/debarghyadas/ Website - https://debarghyadas.com/ https://x.com/AravSrinivas/status/1851700699756925059?lang=en  https://menlovc.com/anthology-fund/  Alcorn Immigration Law: Subscribe to the monthly Alcorn newsletter Sophie Alcorn Podcast: Episode 16: E-2 Visa for Founders and Employees Episode 19: Australian Visas Including E-3 Episode 20: TN Visas and Status for Canadian and Mexican Citizens Immigration Options for Talent, Investors, and Founders Immigration Law for Tech Startups eBook

In this Podcast episode, "Shaping the Future of AI Investments," join us for an insightful discussion with Debarghya (Deedy) Das from Menlo Ventures. We'll explore transformative technologies and sectors, including Generative AI, Enterprise SaaS, Cloud Infrastructure, and AI/ML investing. Discover the opportunities, risks, and ethical considerations of large language models and generative AI systems that can create text, code, and images. Learn about the trends and innovations powering the modern enterprise tech stack, and what's next for SaaS, data infrastructure, and development tools.Dive into the world of VC investment, with an inside look at theses, diligence, and working with AI/ML startups from idea to scale. Hear stories from the trenches about building stellar product and engineering teams, finding product-market fit, and scaling startups sustainably. Whether you're a founder, investor, developer, or just passionate about emerging tech, this is a discussion you can't miss!

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CARINA FELINA is a retelling of a hilarious folktale set in Havana, where Deedy was born. Inspired by a story that she first heard as a child, CARINA FELINA puts a Caribbean twist to “The Cat and the Parrot;” a folktale retold across the world including the Czech Republic and Denmark and with origins traced to India. It is a wickedly funny and inspiring picture book that proves the smallest of creatures can sometimes possess the most surprising strength!

Carmen Agra Deedy is an internationally known storyteller, and the author of twelve books for children. Her latest, CARINA FELINA is a retelling of a hilarious folktale set in Havana, Cuba where Deedy was born. Inspired by a story that Carmen first heard as a child, CARINA FELINA puts a Caribbean twist to “The Cat and the Parrot”; a folktale retold across the world including the Czech Republic and Denmark and with origins traced to India. Merging her talents with award winning illustrator Henry Cole, the duo has created a wickedly funny and inspiring picture book that proves the smallest of creatures can sometimes possess the most surprising strength!

We're ecstatic to celebrate and nominate the phenomenal Amy Poehler for the SNL Hall of Fame! Together with our fantastic guest, Victoria Fronso, we embark on the journey of Amy's illustrious career, from her kazoo-playing ice cream parlor days to her current status as an award-winning actor, producer, writer, director, and comedian. Get ready to be inspired by her amazing accomplishments, including her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, her Golden Globe win, and her friendships with Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, and Keena Faye.Discover the incredible impact Amy Poehler has had on the world of sketch and improv comedy. Reminisce on our favorite moments from the Upright Citizens Brigade Sketch Show and how Amy's trailblazing personality inspired us to chase our comedy dreams. Listen in as we analyze her unforgettable characters and sketches, her chemistry with Maya Rudolph, and her collaboration with guests like Justin Timberlake and Katy Perry, which all contributed to her remarkable SNL legacy.Don't miss out as we discuss Amy's groundbreaking depiction of Hillary Clinton, her hilarious lines like "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go home. I'm going to go home, put my phone on vibrate and call myself." and how she's become an icon and role model for many. Celebrate the one and only Amy Poehler with us and make sure she gets voted into the SNL Hall of Fame!--------- EPISODE CHAPTERS ---------(0:00:08) - Amy Poehler(0:16:38) - Amy Poehler's Comedy Career(0:26:19) - Amy Poehler's SNL Impact(0:35:48) - SNL Characters With Amy Poehler(0:42:46) - SNL Sketches and Character Influences(0:53:37) - Amy Poehler's Impact on SNL(1:01:00) - Celebrating Amy Poehler's SNL Legacy(1:12:11) - Bronx BeatTranscript0:00:08 - Speaker 1It's the SNL Hall of Fame podcast with your host, jamie Dube, chief Librarian Thomas Senna, and featuring Matt Bardille At now. Curator of the Hall, jamie Dube. 0:00:41 - Speaker 2All right, thank you so much, doug Denats. It is great to be here in the SNL Hall of Fame podcast zone. Please come on inside, but before you do, wipe that spring mock off your feet. The SNL Hall of Fame podcast is a weekly affair. Each episode, we take a deep dive into the career of a former cast member, host, musical guest or writer and add them to the ballot for your consideration. Once the nominees have all been announced, we turn to you, the listener, to vote for the most deserving and help determine who will be enshrined for perpetuity in the hall. Folks, it's time. It's absolutely time. The time has come. May 23rd is tomorrow and voting opens up. Have you registered to vote? Go to SNLHofcom, click vote and click register to vote there. Your ballot will be in your hands within 24 hours. Once the 23rd begins and all bets are off, we're going to elect another class in the SNL Hall of Fame. So this is really exciting. And what makes things even more exciting is today's nominee, because if you had your ballot set, it might be thrown asunder when you hear who we are nominating today, and that is Amy Poehler. We are closing out this season by nominating Amy Poehler. This is going to be great. I can't wait to hear what our guest has to say, and really I can't wait to hear what Matt has to say. So let's go and talk to our friend Matt. Hey, matt. 0:02:22 - Speaker 3Hey, jimmy, how are you doing? I'm great. How about you, matt? I am terrific. I'm really looking forward to today's topic of discussion, amy Poehler. Yeah, she's great. Right, she is wonderful 5'2". Born September 16, 1971. So we're starting to get into the cast members that are around my age and making me feel old, since they're already retired from SNL. She has 94 acting credits, 30 producer credits, 19 writing credits, 15 soundtrack credits and six director credits. Yeah, she was born in Newton, massachusetts, to two school teachers. Her dad pushed her from day one to try new things. Prior to going to college, she worked in an old-timey themed ice cream parlor called Chadwix, where she was made to wear a costume and play the kazoo while singing Happy Birthday to customers. And that's actually what helped her realize that she wanted to be a performer, because making people laugh made her feel like a queen. Yeah, so she started improv with my mother's flea bag. While working on her bachelor's in media at Boston College, she took classes at Second City, where she studied with improv. God, del Close. There's so many people I know who are like one degree separated from Del Close. It's bonkers and it's like man. It must have been wild studying with him. But yeah, so while studying with Del, she befriended and began performing alongside Tina Fey at Improv Olympics, and she then went on to co-found Upright Citizens Brigade and helped create the ASCAT format with Matt Besser, ian Roberts and Matt Walsh In 1996, growing from just an improv sketch troupe to a school of its own, sitting side by side with Second City and the groundlings, as one of the most influential improv sketch schools in entertainment. Ucb went on to train luminaries like Aziz Ansari, donald Glover, ed Helms, ellie Kemper, aubrey Plaza, nick Kroll and Zach Woods. Basically, if you see a hot young comedian who's actually no longer that young but still hot ripping up the industry right now, they likely took a UCB class. Now she is, like my wife, a noted fan of bone stugs and harmony. In the early 90s she had a recurring role on Conan O'Brien's late night as Andy Richter's younger sister, with a disturbingly intense crush on Conan. It was a lot to watch. Even back then She brought it all Now. During the first two seasons of Arrested Development she played Willar Nett, god Bluth's accidental wife, before eventually marrying him for real in 2007, before later divorcing. She also played his sister in the film's Blades of Glory with a disturbingly wife-like energy Now while filming the movie Baby Mama with Keena Faye, she was in fact pregnant with her first child, archie. She has formed lasting friendships with both Faye and Seth Meyers, whom she considers her best friends. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, along with a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in Television. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame along with a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series for Parks and Rec, as well as an Emmy and Writers Guild of America Award. The award was the third SNL alumni to give a class day address to the graduating class at Harvard. Alongside Al Franken and Will Ferrell, she started a wine store called Zoolow Wines and Spirits in Brooklyn Park Slope with musician friends Amy Miles and Mike Robertson, where they sell nice bottles of wine for as little as $13. And finally, during the filming of Parks and Rec, polar started a tradition that any time the show was shot on location, the whole cast and crew would have dinner together and she would dedicate a toast to someone, often picking out a cast or crew member, and the toasts would have to continue until everyone was toasted. Mike sure called this the Polar and continued this tradition on the good place. So yeah, she's just a nice human being. Sounds that way. 0:07:21 - Speaker 2Yeah, nice human being who belongs in the SNL Hall of Fame. What do you think? 0:07:25 - Speaker 3Agreed, definitely agreed. 0:07:28 - Speaker 2All right Cool, all right Yes. 0:07:54 - Speaker 4Thank you so much, matt and Jamie and I am to join here today by a wonderful first time guest here on the SNL Hall of Fame. She's a frequent guest on the Saturday Night Networks podcast. Our great friends over there, john Schneider and them Victoria, i actually heard you on John's shows and decided to poach you. That's kind of what I do here and there is all here talent on the Saturday Night Network and then just kind of get you over here on the SNL Hall of Fame, but John doesn't mind. 0:08:26 - Speaker 7No, I'm sure he doesn't mind the double dip. 0:08:29 - Speaker 4No, he does not. We are all good friends, we're all wonderful podcasting communities. So, victoria Fronso, thank you so much for joining us here on the SNL Hall of Fame. 0:08:39 - Speaker 7And thank you for having me. I'm excited to do this. I love debating Hall of Fame people and who's worthy and who may not be worthy, but we're here to discuss who's worthy. 0:08:49 - Speaker 4Yeah, absolutely, and we have a really good one today. But before we get to that, usually I go into more detail about my guest during this intro, but I want you to do it, victoria. So can you talk about your experience as a sketch and improv performer and maybe a little about being a 2023 SNL scholar? 0:09:09 - Speaker 7Yeah, i'd love to, so I always wanted to do comedy. It was kind of second nature, but my parents always told me, to quote get a real job, as a lot of performer parents tell them to do So. After college, probably around 2018, i started taking improv classes at the second city and did a lot of performances there as well, outside of my classes, and then in 2020, i auditioned for the conservatory, which I'll just pair like just for context is kind of like your masters of comedy and improv at the second city, you have to audition to get in and you have to audition to stay in, and then something called the pan pandemic is what it was called happen. 0:09:52 - Speaker 4I've heard about that. 0:09:53 - Speaker 7Yeah, I read about on Twitter and it was like, oh, it was a big deal or something. So I had to pause there. Pause there for a little bit. But last year, while living in Detroit, I was doing comedy at Go Comedy Improv Improv Theater. I don't know why I keep can't say improv for the life of me, even though I do it all the time. I was doing comedy there I was an understudy. I did a couple of sketch shows or a sketch show at the planet Aunt Theater, both theaters founded by Second City Detroit alumni, which is really cool. So you kind of get that training trickle down. And then last year I applied for the Saturday Night Live Scholarship at the second city and was one out of four people who got it, which is really cool. It's a diversity scholarship and it kind of is trying to build a pathway for folks who have a different background, whether that be ethnically racial, if they're part of the LGBTQ plus community, just to get them an opportunity to be in spaces that they may otherwise not have. And what that entails is they pay for my training and what my classes are, And I'm currently in the final stage of my classes at Second City. So it's kind of bittersweet there, But then I get to meet with a few of SNL folks and then hopefully get to audition this time next year. 0:11:12 - Speaker 4Wow, that's awesome And hopefully you won't forget all of us little people who you've interacted with when you're on the show in New York doing that. But that's Victoria, that's so awesome And I just kind of wish you really good luck and wish you well on your venture there. That's so wonderful. 0:11:32 - Speaker 7Thank you so much. I don't expect anything. I'll be very honest. I don't expect to be on SNL. I'm really just grateful to be doing this work. It's been a part of my life for such a long time And now that I'm able to kind of learn from the best and learn all these different techniques whether or not I make a SNL or whatever it is I end up doing I'm just happy to be doing it. And even being on podcasts like this one and just to share my love for comedy in different ways is awesome. 0:12:01 - Speaker 4You bring such a great perspective that we haven't had here. On the SNL Hall of Fame You're not just watching Saturday Night Live and watching sketch performers, you're doing it. You're performing sketch, you're taking the classes, you're making your way through. So I just love that perspective that you bring to this. So that's why I think you're the perfect guest to talk about Amy Poehler, because she was so influential in the sketch and improv world. So her first sketch and improv experience, just real quick, was with Improv Olympic. So can you tell us kind of about Improv Olympic and what Amy's background is with that? 0:12:41 - Speaker 7Yeah, i don't know entirely too much about her time at IO is what it is called But I do know her first class was taught by Sharna Halpern, who is an icon and a staple in the Chicago improv community and just improv everywhere, and so to have your first class in Chicago taught by her is kind of a big deal. You don't see it often. I don't think Sharna is teaching much anymore. She also learned and worked from Del Close, who's also a legend in the comedy world in Chicago and improv as well, and that's actually where she met Tina Fey. So a lot of folks think she met her at Second City, but I think it was actually IO where they met and then they moved on to Second City. But yeah, others at IO, just to name a few, was like Chris Farley was there, and so it's that institution among Second City or where they've built a lot of these great SNL cast members. 0:13:37 - Speaker 4Yeah, the roots of sketch and improv definitely go back to IO and Del Close especially. Del Close is one of those names that you hear. It's almost like hearing about if you're a baseball fan, like Babe Ruth or something like that, and they name Del Close rings like that amongst these circles. 0:13:54 - Speaker 7I was going to say, if you're a fan of improv and sketch and learning about where it all started, i highly recommend reading the book called Improv Nation, and it goes a little bit deeper. If you're a little nerd about it, like me, it goes a bit a lot deeper into it And it talks about how Chicago has become this for lack of a better term a cesspool of comedic geniuses, and that's where everyone comes to really get their foot in the door. 0:14:23 - Speaker 4I think that book delved into Mike Nichols and maybe his work in two And everybody knows Mike Nichols from his time as a director, a really famous director, but he has roots there. Improv Nation is a really good book. I second that. I suggest Improv Nation as well. So yeah, so Amy Poehler joined in 1995, she then moved on to Upright Citizens Brigade where I think most people who caught the me of the tail end are familiar with her before SNL. They know her with UCB. So she co-founded the UCB Theater in New York City in 1999. That's one of the main training grounds for aspiring and sketch improv and comedians. Like Second City and those others, The groundlings in California and LA, These are like the huge breeding grounds for sketch and improv reformers. So Victoria is someone who's currently a sketch and improv comedian. I know you're most associated with second city but you know we can put into context UCB standing in that world of sketch. So maybe let me tell us about UCB's standing in that world and Particularly Amy's influence. 0:15:34 - Speaker 7Yeah, i just take a step back to. I want to call out that Amy Polar was on second cities touring company, which has been part of second cities since, i think, 1967, and It was a way for if you weren't able to make it a second city, second city was gonna come to you and Not many people are able to do that. So I just want to call out how awesome it is and how you know Seldom it is that you get to see folks on touring company. It's very competitive. Former touring members include, like Julia Louis Dreyfus and Chris Redd, and they, her and Tina Fey, actually auditioned on the same day and got to tour together, which is really cool. But UCB, i think it was she founded in 1996 with Matt Welsh who you may know is like the doctor from the hangover. 0:16:20 - Speaker 4Mm-hmm, Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, he's awesome. 0:16:25 - Speaker 7He's so underrated but we'll talk about him another time Among a few others, and they, you know, really found their footing in New York City and that's where they really created a foundation You know they made appearances with. Back. Then was called late night with Conan O'Brien And they played like some characters in the audience You've seen that and also like late night with Jimmy Fallon and and all that where they sit among the audience. They also had a show on County Central, which is really cool. It was improv driven sketches like hidden camera stunts, and most notable, i think, is what was called the, the prostitute Parista, where she's this like former prostitute who goes and interviews at a coffee shop and Matt Well should we just talked about is the hiring man is like I don't think you're qualified And it's very funny, and then they end up being best friends and he ends up following his dreams. It was really funny. And then eventually she was one of the co-founders of UCB theater in New York And I think they also had it in LA, which unfortunately closed during the pandemic but is reportedly back. I I'm gonna describe a moment where I kind of like you know, people peak in high school Yeah, i peaked. I peaked in this moment and then it's been downhill since. It's been stagnant downhill and stagnant a little bit. But March 2020, right before, like literally two weeks before the world shut down, i Went to New York City and I was standing outside SNL at the what's it called, the, just outside where folks can meet the, the cast members. After the show and Chris read, who I've seen numerous times previously in Chicago, recognized me and said oh hey, victoria, how are you? and He said are you here on Monday, which I was Monday was actually March 2nd, was my birthday And he goes hey, come to UCB, me and Ego are doing an improv show. I was like, uh, okay, and Got tickets. We went and that was my first time at UCB. It was really fun. They did this cool little. They were. I love the format of it. I won't spoil it, just in case they're they're doing it again, but they basically are doing. They ask questions or they do a little bit at the beginning and then it turns into an actual scene. And then afterward I got to talk to him a little bit and meet Ego, new Odom, and that was my birthday and that was the best Birthday ever, yeah, and yeah, i peaked and I'll never get. 0:18:48 - Speaker 4You got, i mean, the personal invite from Chris read for one. He didn't. It's not like you went to the show as a fan and then you happen to meet them afterward like you. You Got the personal invite. So yeah, i would. That would be Damn near the peak for me too. 0:19:04 - Speaker 7Yeah, so and I mean it was just, it was a bit. It's a very cool theater. If you're in New York City I highly recommend you go and check it out. It's you can tell like the comedy and the genius that is Amy Poehler. You know why she's an awesome contender for a Hall of Fame spot, just kind of flows through that space and She's definitely inspired me. Her and Tina Fey when I was younger always inspired me Gilda Radner, of course, but you know from my generation, the folks that I, the women I looked up to, were those two and It was because of them I even signed up for my first second city class. And you know, here We are today, a few years later. 0:19:43 - Speaker 4But yeah, so she's. She's definitely an inspiration for you, and And a lot of people and I thought what one of the things that I find fascinating about her As it relates to her time before SNL was you will, you had mentioned the the upright citizens Brigade Brigade Sketch show that was on Comedy Central. So that ran for three seasons. It was with the aforementioned Matt Walsh, matt Besser and Ian Roberts also made up the UCB and it's interesting because she's one of the few, one of the handful of people who get to SNL who Did sketch on television before that. So of course, like we had, keenan Thompson had sketched experience on TV. Darren Killam, i believe, was on mad TV before SNL. Kate McKinnon was known for for Being on a sketch show, but Amy was like that too and I'd watched the upright citizens Brigade on Comedy Central as it was airing and So cool, yeah, so it was awesome. It was like a spiritual successor. I would say to kids in the hall. It kind of had that weird out there kids in the hall vibe, also a precursor to like I think you should leave Tim Robinson's Netflix show. There was some weird elements there. But just totally up my alley, did you have you gone back or did you get to watch upright citizens Brigade on Comedy Central? 0:21:06 - Speaker 7I Wasn't cool enough to watch it. I don't think even I was allowed to watch Comedy Central. 0:21:11 - Speaker 4I was probably dating myself, because I was plenty old enough to watch it. It was airing live. 0:21:17 - Speaker 7Yeah, it was hit or miss, like sometimes they could watch MTV But like I couldn't watch other things, or like my parents let me watch a godfather with that. It was just very weird what they pick and chose of what I could see, but I don't watch it then. I have gone back a few times and and watch bits and pieces of it just to. Sometimes you just need to like get re-inspired and Remotivated so you go and watch some of the folks that you really look up to and what they did and kind of make yourself feel better About where you're at too. No, i've watched it too, like the. The prostitute Parisone was again probably most notable, but one of my favorites too. It kind of demonstrates her Ability to be so multifaceted. I don't think that some of that content stands the test of time. 0:22:03 - Speaker 4Yeah, I don't think they could push it. 0:22:05 - Speaker 7But if you just look at it like face value for the time it was in it was, it was awesome. 0:22:10 - Speaker 4Yeah, yeah, definitely Something that, like I compared it to kids in the hall, which was a Lorne Michaels produced show, of course. So definitely something that probably would have caught the attention of SNL producers and possibly Lorne her time on the upright citizens brigade show. That's a tongue twister, upright citizens brigade. 0:22:31 - Speaker 7So no, i'm a little side note. I'm really impressed that you know what kids in the hall is. 0:22:36 - Speaker 4Oh, God, no, okay, i watched kids in the hall. I was a weird eight-year-old, okay, watching kids in the hall. So I would watch SNL in the early 90s. So again, dating myself. But so I was. I was probably watching SNL as it was airing probably around 1990, 91, and after SNL finished they would show kids in the hall. So so, yeah, so if I was able to stay awake by then I would maybe catch some kids in the hall. Of course I watched kids in the hall and comedy central when I was like in middle school, high school, so that's, yeah, i don't know. Just people, probably SNL viewers of my age and generation Also love kids in the hall you. 0:23:19 - Speaker 7You know, before the show, just for context for listeners, we were talking about Sterling Heights, michigan, and how very niche it was. But Kevin McDonald of Kids in the hall did a workshop to a go comedy improv theater in Frandale, michigan. So really. Yes, it was very cool. Yeah, and Again, also like didn't realize that a lot of people knew what kids in the hall is, because usually you mentioned. If you're like, what are you talking? 0:23:46 - Speaker 4about. Oh, yeah, i, the kids in the hall theme song was my alarm on my my phone for years. I think I maybe changed it last year, but the but the kids in the hall theme song was was my alarm that I woke up to for like year, like a decade. That's awesome. So, yeah, you're talking to a huge fan right there and it's a huge compliment to Amy that I would compare Her some of her work before SNL to kids in the hall, a show that I love Just so dearly. So we talked about her, her background before SNL Are flexing her muscles, already doing a lot in the sketch comedy world. So she was on SNL from 2001 to 2009. She debuted during a tense and confusing time in the country and SNL. So in her book yes please, which I highly recommend. Since we're recommending books on this episode, i recommend yes please by Amy Polar. So she talked about how difficult it was to start SNL right after 9-11 Because of the mood of the country. She wasn't sure if people were ready to smile, much less laugh, which is something that I remember Is. Well, that was just kind of the mood of the country in general. So, as far as her SNL stuff goes, what stood out to you about Amy as a sketch performer? 0:25:12 - Speaker 7so I know that a lot of the SNL Performers and cast members are able to take, you know, an ordinary thing and kind of exaggerate it, but I think what stood out about her is how she was able to do it and she, i think, a lot of her stuff What's the what's the word? like what? how do I phrase it? It was simple, yet like punchy, you know, like she didn't have to do a lot to get her point across, and we're gonna talk about a few of these characters, you know, coming down. But she was able to take something so ordinary and mundane and turn it into something Wild and funny and, you know, provide a different outlook. And you know she as as a woman, and especially as a woman in comedy, she was able to be a like a full-on feminist and kind of push through barriers. Not that she's the first to do it and not that she perfected it, but again, someone in my generation looking up to folks. She was right there after, you know, especially after the internet, and I think she was ahead of her time to you on some topics. I could talk about her pre SNL days forever, but she did which I'm gonna go back to really quickly here. She did a pilot, i think, with SNL slash IO called RVTV, with Del Close. You should, it's on, it's on YouTube and You know she has a line in there where she kind of calls out the establishment And she calls out the NRA and she goes it's cool to be a Republican, guns are cool, so is the NRA. Murder is hip, like she already had. She knew before we know, and she brought that perspective To SNL and to all of her, her comedy really. And so that to me, while it's general that her POV, is what stood out to me in her characters and what she wrote and how she performed them. 0:27:00 - Speaker 4Yeah, i think you brought up a good point. I think it she had like an economy of words. She didn't like it was just just just little punchy Kind of things. We would see a lot of that on weekend update, a lot of that on her UCB show, on Comedy Central. I can sell. Just kind of going through the previous seasons which I did recently, it was like, oh this is, this is Amy, and I think Victoria, you brought up just what I didn't even Consciously, i guess think that as far as Amy goes, like why did? why is she so appealing to me? Why is why, like when she was on weekend update, like why do I find her jokes more satisfying than like Seth Meyers jokes? And I like Seth Meyers? but there's a reason why I liked Amy's jokes maybe a little bit more. And then you I think what you said Perfectly encapsulates that- I mean in a word She was fearless. 0:27:52 - Speaker 7Yeah she really like she did her thing and I don't think she let much get in the way of her, you know, getting her point across and how she felt about things. It was always her point of view, which is what we need. We can't just have a shared point of view, which in some cases yes, but when she came, you know, to the writer's room or to the screen, she Was uniquely, always herself, which was brilliant. 0:28:17 - Speaker 4Yeah, and with packed with a lot of confidence To and that's the thing you can have a message and you can have ideas and what you think is a point of view. But I think you need to also really relay that with confidence and Amy had that in droves. She was super confident which is inspiring. 0:28:35 - Speaker 7I mean, we I'm, we being me. I'm gonna bring my perspective as as a woman, especially as a minority in comedy. Like we didn't have a lot of that, you know, on TV where a Woman is outspoken Like some of her character. A lot of her characters are outspoken and they weren't really a shy or reserve. She was up and center and, you know, really didn't care what people had to say. And it's inspiring to me to kind of bring That to the table too and it's allowed me to also in my comedy, to be fake confident. You know, fake it till you make it. But Yeah, she's, she's awesome in that way. 0:29:16 - Speaker 4Yeah, so as far as specific Characters and sketches from her time at SNL, where should we start? 0:29:25 - Speaker 7My goodness, that's a loaded question. I Think the most obvious is probably like what do you think Hillary Clinton? 0:29:33 - Speaker 5It has been such an honor to serve you, the citizens of my home state of New York. Oh, my kidding, this is not my home state. It never was my home state. Pack up the house a chap, a quad bill. What's that We never unpacked? 0:29:50 - Speaker 4even better, Yeah, that was one of her first recurring characters, especially she. She started that in her third season. So her depiction of Hillary Clinton. So we talked about what Amy brought to the table as a sketch performer. You saw some of that in her depiction of Hillary Clinton. 0:30:10 - Speaker 7Yes, she played, of course, an exaggerated caricature of Hillary Clinton, but again, it was this fearless confident. You know I'm calling out the sexism in politics. You know I'm calling out how insane like, especially with her. You know, with Tina Feyess, sarah Palin, calling out how kind of ludicrous it is that Sarah Palin has gotten a little well in 2008, got a little bit further in politics. And she did. And you know she brought her personality to Hillary Clinton and, you know, made it, made it really funny. 0:30:49 - Speaker 4Yeah, and as far as doing impressions and everything like that I'm preaching to the choir, probably here, but you got to find that hook right. As a performer, and I've heard, i've heard some of the masters, like Daryl Hammond, dana Carvey, love, they love talking about how they conjure up impressions. But you have to find that hook And I think with her, hillary Clinton, with Amy Pollars, hillary Clinton she started you know her mannerisms, that laugh, because Hillary didn't really laugh like that, to be honest with you, but it was something that Amy was able to grab onto and say this is an element of this character that I'm creating and let's work from there. 0:31:32 - Speaker 7Yeah, and it's funny that you mentioned that, because when she was with Hillary, which is, i think it was March, march 1st 2008. I think I forgot what season that was, but she does a call open with Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton asked her I don't laugh like that, do I? And she was well like, yeah, you know it was. It was just very funny that she you get to call impressions of yourself. You don't really see that And then, of course, in a cold open, which is even more rare, in Second City Saturday Night Live. So I mean, it's just iconic. She's done things that others have never done on that show. 0:32:08 - Speaker 4Yeah, she played Hillary Clinton 13 times throughout the years, from season 29 all the way up to her last season. It was season 34. So she played Hillary Clinton quite a few times. One of the sketches and I don't know if you remember this one, but it's it's what I kind of go back to as far as when Amy first announced herself with confidence something that she first led, it was in her second episode and it's it's a sketch that she wrote with Sean Williams Scott. It was the porn star sketch. 0:32:39 - Speaker 8Hey, can I ask you a question? 0:32:42 - Speaker 1You can ask me anything. You know that. 0:32:48 - Speaker 9When do you think it's a good time to mention in a relationship that you've done some porn? 0:32:56 - Speaker 10What Just like? how long do you think like in a relationship you should wait before you tell somebody you did a little porn? 0:33:05 - Speaker 7Like, first of all, what an era It was. It was again right after, you know, september 11th, unfortunately, but like those early 2000s, like when it comes to comedy, they were so out there It was almost the Wild West. 0:33:21 - Speaker 4Yeah, yeah, people were taking chances, it was. I mean, some of the bad stuff was like it was. I think it was the height of like edge lord kind of comedy which wasn't so wonderful, but then. But you also had people taking chances and delving into ideas that that that maybe are taboo or risque. 0:33:39 - Speaker 7Yeah, I mean Sean Williams, scott himself was in what American Pie Like again wouldn't go so well if it was released as is for the first time today. But yeah, i mean just having him there and then, you know, having her. Like I said, she takes simple things, which I guess being a porn star, dating is something you don't usually see, but it's a simple thing. 0:34:04 - Speaker 4She takes every day right. 0:34:06 - Speaker 7Yeah, and it is a slice of life. Yeah, and it's a different POV. We don't usually see that POV, but you know I love that. She was like downplaying. I know I was, i was in a porn movie and he's like, well, i don't care about your past. There's like, well, this afternoon I guess was my past And then you know, it was just very funny. I think again, really cool that she got to be she was fresh to SNL in the second episode, got to be in, got to be a main character with the host, her second episode. It just I don't know, man, do I? I'm preaching, i'm also preaching to the choir, but like she is doing things that are essentially unheard of in at SNL. Yeah, that's soon. Yeah, that's soon And it's your own sketch that you have co-written. But yeah, I mean, if you wanted to walk through, I guess how it how it went for the rest of folks, I don't want to ruin it for you if that's where you're going. 0:35:05 - Speaker 4Oh, no, yeah, go ahead. 0:35:06 - Speaker 7No, so I mean she's you know having I thought it was a dinner with a boyfriend or it's like. 0:35:12 - Speaker 4Yeah, And she was like Or just like it seemed like a they've maybe a first date or they were in the early stages of dating. 0:35:19 - Speaker 7Yes, Early stages of dating She's like oh, when is it a good time to mention that I've done a porn movie? And he was like what? And then you know she's like, oh, it's. She kind of does like, oh, it was like a one time thing, but she's been in multiple. And he finds out She's like oh, it's your past. And she's like well, this afternoon, i guess, is my past. And yeah, he's like I thought I thought it'd be cool to date a porn star, but it's now that I'm am. It's not fun. She was, i'm not a porn star yet. 0:35:51 - Speaker 4And I think she crossed her fingers to her. She had the mannerism like I'm not a porn star yet, Like yes, I might be looking soon And you know what? 0:36:01 - Speaker 7That's how you want to get your bag. Get your bag, like, not shaming Women for their choices. And then, of course, seth Meyers, who, like I think, was probably her top collaborator throughout her time on SNL, you know, comes in as the waiter. He's like, oh, i think I know you from somewhere, and then it turns out he casted one of her movies and then he goes and rushes to the kitchen and tell his friends And then at the end of it she's signing autographs. So, you know, josh, aka Sean Williams Scott, is just at the end, i guess, accepting of her career. 0:36:37 - Speaker 4Yeah, and I'm sure viewers at the time who knew Amy from her Comedy Central days were waiting for some kind of showcase like that And it came really soon. So she does cite that in her book too. It was just something that of course, was one of the more memorable experiences for her on the time from her time at the show. So that was, like her, basically the first Amy Polar led sketch on SNL. That was from season 27, episode two, sean Williams, scott, go check that out. I think it's a fun episode, just kind of overall. But that I think, and I think this porn star sketch I call it porn it's like porn star date sketch. I think it was like a 10 to one. So I think they kind of just put it at the end of the show. Yes, and it fit perfectly, yeah, so I'm glad it made air. 0:37:27 - Speaker 7I will plug Peacock. It's on Peacock if you want to watch it. So everything, mostly everything, is on Peacock, if I'm not mistaken. 0:37:34 - Speaker 4Yeah, So sometimes when you get to seasons like 30, 31 or so, you find like 15 minute episodes on Peacock. But I think season 27, we're still you can find mostly full episodes. 0:37:46 - Speaker 7Yeah, so go check that out If you're looking for musical performances. I think they cut a lot of those out. But other than that, if you Michael Jordan episodes on there, so just go for it and watch it. 0:37:58 - Speaker 4Another great episode as well. Yeah, and the LeBron James episodes on there too, just if you're more of a LeBron person. 0:38:05 - Speaker 7Oh, you can't say that to me. I literally live in Chicago. I know I was born in the 90s, lived in Chicago during Michael Jordan's era. What are you doing? I got it. I'm just going to start a different podcast about that. 0:38:23 - Speaker 4So what other sketches or characters could we not do the show without talking about? 0:38:32 - Speaker 7Bronx beat. 0:38:33 - Speaker 4Bronx beat Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph Just great chemistry. 0:38:38 - Speaker 7Yeah, they were like I'm surprised it was brought. I mean Bronx. I don't listen, i don't want to offend culture here. I don't know if it's a Bronx or Staten Island. I didn't realize that it was Bronx. I thought it was like the Italians were in Staten Island. But again, i don't want to be wrong, i don't want to offend any New Yorkers. I make it ignore me, but I really loved it. They were like these disgusted, outspoken, sassy women. 0:39:06 - Speaker 10Let me ask you something, frank. You married Well. 0:39:08 - Speaker 7I have a girlfriend. 0:39:09 - Speaker 10Why haven't you asked your girlfriend to marry you? You know what? Don't get married. Listen to us. Don't get married. Your life is over Over. 0:39:15 - Speaker 11She is right. You know what? My husband? I want to kill him. I want to strangle him while he's asleep. I want to kill him. You know what I love him. 0:39:23 - Speaker 10He's in love with my life. Here we go with the waterworks. He gave me my two dollars. What am I going to do? So emotional these days, it's true, i can't help it. He gave me my two dollars. I would die without him. You know what Frank Do. Whatever you want, what am I an expert? 0:39:35 - Speaker 7Who like fond over male guests and would flirt with them. There was a line I don't know if I'm allowed to say on this podcast Go ahead and say it, and if I feel I need to cut it, i will. Okay, she, amy Poehler, was with Jake Gyllenhaal, i believe, was it Jake? No, it was with Justin Timberlake and Andy Sandberg, and she was. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go home. I'm going to go home, put my phone on vibrate and call myself Like so gross but like so funny, like again, kind of talking about that confidence and that fearlessness and all of her characters, like I don't know that I'd be ever confident enough to say that. And then she's like now leave before I change my mind. 0:40:19 - Speaker 4Total Amy Poehler. Just we were talking about how confident she is And these characters both the characters that both she and Maya played in these sketches were sassy, aggressive, just shameless. Yeah, absolutely Just. And they played against most of the male. It was usually a host that would come in. They were shy and just trying to. You could tell they were maybe interns on their show, just trying to learn the ropes or whatever guests who were kind of shy. So they played really well off of these sassy, aggressive women. So I think perfect Amy was like one of the perfect people to play this. 0:40:56 - Speaker 7Yeah, i think the most I mean. Correct me if I'm wrong. I would think the most notable and beloved sketch of that is with Katy Perry, where she comes in in that Elmo t-shirt and they're like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, like you know, today's episode is brought to you by the number 38 in the letter D And just like, very funny and she was in but also very empowering for women. This, this feminist POV, comes in, she goes they go never be embarrassed by your body, never, ever. And so it just yeah, it was very funny. Betty Caruso has a piece of my heart. She's America's, america's mom. 0:41:36 - Speaker 4Just wonderful, yeah, and it seemed like this Bronx beat show for these characters was like their outlet, because they do allude to just their moms and they have families at home. So it almost seems like this is their outlet just to kind of say what they want and flirt with who they want. So, yeah, the Bronx beat we don't have to tell our listeners to I'm sure they've checked this out so many times Definitely, as far as Amy Polar goes, part of her canon for sure. Yeah, so, and one another recurring character that we're volleying over here. So another recurring character that I want to mention is Caitlin Rick. 0:42:18 - Speaker 8Rick, rick, listen, rick, i know it's 16 hours until Uncle Scott's wedding And I know that you told me it was too early to put my dress on. But as co-junior bridesmaid, i really feel like I need to walk around and practice in my dress, with the heels and the head thing, and I'll be like dum dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum dum. 0:42:42 - Speaker 4Oh God Which. And Amy says this character, it was the hyperchild who hung out with her uncle. I think it was usually Horatio Sands was the uncle. Yeah, and Amy says that this character was an homage to Gilda Radner and her Judy Miller character. From now And it's kind of funny when I just had that in my mind this reminds me of like the Gilda character. And Amy says that it was an homage to that Judy Miller character from Gilda's I didn't realize that. Yeah, so we're seeing Gilda's influence to an SNL Hall of Famer in her own right. She got voted in Yeah. So, yeah, we're seeing Gilda's influence And Amy, just I love that. She's paying homage to her heroes, essentially, and this was a fun character. 0:43:28 - Speaker 7No, now that you say that, that makes total sense And it comes out in the mannerisms. I mean, Caitlyn is such great birth control if you're debating whether or not you want kids. 0:43:40 - Speaker 4I just took a drink of water. I almost did a spit take. 0:43:44 - Speaker 7No, i just that's. When I think of Caitlyn, i think of great birth control. I was like, oh, i don't know if I want kids, just watch Caitlyn, you know if you're leaning. No, that'll solidify, solidify your decision there. No, i mean, she's like annoying kid with braces. I love the one with. Oh man, he retired twice. What's his name? Tom Brady, and you know, just, she puts on a dress. She's just so annoying, she's hyperactive, she's overly annoying, but that's the point. That's the whole point. 0:44:14 - Speaker 4Yeah, yeah, and I usually yeah, i usually don't love a lot of shouting in sketches. That's why I don't know, that's why I've had to. I've had to come around on Sarah Sherman. I love Sarah now and I love most of her stuff, but a lot I've had to really come around to her more shouty types of pieces that she does on SNL. But I still enjoy these Caitlyn sketches because of her interplay with her ratio And then the character feels fleshed out to me Like there's some hints for a sad home life, forcing Yeah, she's like always just kind of hints at that that she has a really sad home life. 0:44:55 - Speaker 7I think the best characters no matter if it's Saturday Night Live or Key and Peele or whatever it is always have a fleshed out POV And you can tell exactly who they are, where they came from. You can visualize their life outside of the scene that you're seeing. I think those are always made for the best characters. You don't really have to guess who they are outside of the scene. I think that was Caitlyn And I agree The shouty stuff is hard for me too, and I agree with you with Sarah Sherman. I think she's funny, yeah, And I think what she does is so unique and so niche. This is Sarah Sherman we're talking about, but yeah, no, those those louder ones are take a little bit more time for me to warm up to them, but I eventually do, and I think this was at that time, one of the few that were. So it worked because it wasn't constant. I don't think they've ever done constant shouting characters or something that I could be wrong, but I think it worked for her time there. 0:45:57 - Speaker 4Yeah, yeah, i agree, and I think part of her character which I find funny and it's, you know, hinting at how she is outside of the sketch is like her references are old. So she referenced like Dennis Leary Like what little kid references Dennis Leary? or Amadeus, the like the Amadeus? And it tells me that maybe, and this was probably by design by the writers and Amy for this character. It tells me that that that Caitlyn grew up being babysat by the TV and she probably watched a lot of adult content that she shouldn't have been in, not not like sex and violence, but just adult stuff, like like that. That's how I was when I was a kid and yeah, like I said, i'm not talking about like when I was a kid, i would watch movies with nudity. I would watch movies that had like themes of divorce and like finding yourself in midlife crisis, and I was like seven years old Sitting in front of the TV eating cocoa puffs just in my pajamas, watching like Kramer vs Kramer. Yeah, and I kind of think that's how Caitlin was with her homidaeus and Dennis Leary types of references. 0:47:09 - Speaker 7I wonder if her reference to Dennis Leary was kind of an homage to her Massachusetts upbringing as well, since they're both from Massachusetts. 0:47:17 - Speaker 4That's a good point. I'm gonna go ahead and say it was. 0:47:20 - Speaker 7Yeah, i mean, i don't know how close. I think she's from Newton, he's from Warchester, warchester. 0:47:27 - Speaker 4I don't know. You're not a person from Massachusetts, apparently Warester. 0:47:32 - Speaker 7I am a Midwestern gal, through and through from Chicago and Detroit. I call myself a chitroiter. 0:47:39 - Speaker 4Don't let somebody from Massachusetts hear you pronounce it, warchester. 0:47:44 - Speaker 7Okay, listen, i love. 0:47:44 - Speaker 4Duncan. 0:47:46 - Speaker 7I love Duncan, i love Winter, i love the movie Feverpitch Oh yeah, okay With Jimmy Fallon. Yeah, sorry, sorry to the Massachusetts community. You can't see my face. 0:48:06 - Speaker 4So I brought up. Caitlin, so I believe it's your turn. What characters sketch kind of stands out to you? 0:48:14 - Speaker 7Do we want to talk about the needlers? 0:48:16 - Speaker 4We can talk about the needlers. 0:48:18 - Speaker 8Does everyone know what they're getting? Yeah, i think I'm gonna get this beet salad. What. 0:48:24 - Speaker 2The beet salad Bee salad. 0:48:29 - Speaker 10Beet salad. Well, the first two times you said bee salad. 0:48:34 - Speaker 8Yeah, honey, i have a real craving for putting some bees in my mouth. 0:48:38 - Speaker 7I mean, we all know that couple in real life And sometimes I think that they perhaps solved those sketches back in like what 2005. And copy them on purpose, just to make all of us sad and mad. 0:48:54 - Speaker 4Yeah, just to make everybody uncomfortable for their own amusement. 0:48:57 - Speaker 7Yeah, it was. Just it was very like toxic, like the kids today would call that relationship toxic, i think I don't know. Maybe you know this. I have a question because I don't know everything about SNL. Was there a previous version of that called Dan and Sally Harrison, the couple that should be divorced? 0:49:16 - Speaker 4Yeah, so that was the first sketch. They were called Sally and Dan Harrison, the couple that should be divorced. I think they had a theme song. 0:49:24 - Speaker 1You're the horn in my side, you're the face that makes me angry. 0:49:30 - Speaker 5Nothing you ever say or do is right. Sally, and then Harrison, the couple that should be divorced. 0:49:39 - Speaker 4In SNL canon. I consider that the first Needler sketch was that, sally and Dan Harrison. I think their names are Sally and Dan Needler. Possibly going forward They changed the last name from Harrison to Needler, which of course they're needling each other, so there's a bit on the nose, but you want to remember. Sometimes it's on the nose, but yeah, we all know that couple. 0:50:03 - Speaker 7I don't know why I wrote that down when you said it. I wrote it down in my notes as if I'm going to have to retain that for a later day. 0:50:11 - Speaker 4You might. 0:50:12 - Speaker 7You might be on some SNL trivia show and it might come up, maybe that's like if I ever get to audition, they're like, hey, what was the first Needler sketch? I'm going to have to know it. 0:50:24 - Speaker 4Most people don't know that if you audition for SNL, there's a written test to go along with it. We hear stories about what it's like to be up there not getting laughs and still doing the thing, but then what we don't know is that there's a written test. Thorne Michaels is the proctor for the test and he's walking around, so this might be on SNL's written test, victoria. 0:50:46 - Speaker 7Okay, that's so good to know. I'm going to also, after this goes live, download it and like memorize everything we've said word for word, just in case. 0:50:55 - Speaker 4Yeah, just commit it to memory. So this sketch I love that you brought it up because Amy and Seth, they go from aggressive to passive aggressive just in an instant and they have really good chemistry here, that which we've seen a lot throughout SNL, throughout them in particular. 0:51:13 - Speaker 7They're a great duo. Hey, always comparing her to Tina Fey, but they were kind of each other's counterparts at the time but, like Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon, i think, have the same energy as Seth and Amy. they just worked really well together. I think they co collaborated a lot during, you know, their time in SNL. So you see, that which we'll talk about hopefully, i mean which I'm sure we'll talk about later is, you know, we can update and the needlers and and other things that they've, you know, written together and just they did that so well together. I really couldn't see her doing that sketch with anyone else. I love the fertility, fertility clinic one with Natalie Portman because it's like it describes those quote toxic and quote couples so perfectly. we're fighting all the time and then they end up like doing it Like they were doing it in the, in the waiting room, and Jason Sudeik has come and he's like I don't think we'll have any more patients for the day and she's like why is that he goes there doing it? 0:52:16 - Speaker 4Yeah, of course, that's like often the the button to those sketches. The first one, johnny Knoxville, is the one that walks in on them and yeah, that's just perfect, and that's that's how it is with those couples. It's so intense and passionate and it's in past. It's passionate negatively and sometimes passionate very positively. 0:52:35 - Speaker 7Yeah, oh, that's maybe a good word passionate versus toxic and that's what those couples will tell you. 0:52:41 - Speaker 4We're not talks, we're just passionate. 0:52:43 - Speaker 7Yeah, you don't know him like I know him okay. Okay, yeah, like they're like little lines of like, oh, we're late because he thought it was better to take the back roads instead of, oh, the highway. And then they were at dinner and she's like oh, be salad, be salad. He's like beat salad, yeah, because I wanted a bunch of bees in my mouth, just like. Very like. We know those couples, unfortunately, and if you think you're in that couple now and you're listening, please break up and find peace, please do everybody. Yeah, for the sake of society. 0:53:21 - Speaker 4So, yeah, you brought up weekend update, so I want to talk about that now. Actually, good segue. So she, yeah, started weekend update in her fourth season. So she did it season 30 to season 34, final update. Final update was in the middle of season 34. So what did you? and I know they say comparison is the thief of joy, but that's almost Kind of what we do here. Even if we don't do it overtly, it's almost applied that we're comparing cast members and errors and all of that. So I mean, what did you think of Amy on weekend update? 0:53:55 - Speaker 7Of course, to be reckoned with. You know she was part of the first and only female duo to host week and update with Tina Fey. Then, of course, she had a successful run with Seth Myers and she's just had like really great bits. You know, one that stands out to me was you know her and Tina Fey mentoring Lindsay Lohan at the time, who was like that was such a great mean girls era and you know, for folks who are younger, like millennials, i should say that was kind of like our Like the comedy growing up of was you know mean girls and and you know the Tina Fey and Amy Polars growing up. So it was really awesome. You know it was very like. I'm confronting her about rumors they've heard about her which, like at the time everyone had a rumor was very. I think as a side we've done a little bit better, not too much better, but we've progressed a little bit how we treat women and people who are famous but just like saying, you know you have me to Barton arms. You're too skinny, are you eating? I went to the club and then The fun part of the you know the twist of Lindsay Lohan throwing it back on them. She's like well, you slept with people for Tanta movies, are you know? you're drunk right now. And Amy Polars like, yes, i am, no, i mean, she was great. She brought a lot of originality to it again. It's that POV of I am myself, i am me, i'm fearless, i'm confident, and you better listen to me, and this is what I've got to say. She brought that there too. 0:55:26 - Speaker 4Yeah, amy, on update to me, that really allowed her to display her wit and charm on the show she was out of character. Well, kind of out of character, but it was. You know she. She straddled the line is weekend update anchors Do, but she really was allowed to display her wit and charm. She did like playful crowd work in spots. That was really entertaining. She and Tina did a lot of bits amongst themselves outside of the update jokes, like you mentioned that Lindsay Lohan mentorship bit. They would rap, they would sing songs, they would have bits like the The nutbird news quiz, the bitch news quiz, kind of different things like that. So I like that she and Tina When outside of we're just gonna take turns doing jokes and then have like a cast member do a week a bit with us or whatever, like they would do bits amongst themselves, which I think, yeah, really interesting. 0:56:25 - Speaker 7Yeah, i mean out of the wraps, which was your favorite. 0:56:29 - Speaker 4Oh man, not to put you on the spot. Yeah, they did one. It was either the one that I remember most and I went back and rewatched kind of Her weekend update stuff here and there and the one that always stood in my mind was I ended up being the first one that she did in season 30. And that stood out to me to watching it in sequential order because that was one of the first kind of bits that they did outside of the update jokes, so you never really saw like Kevin Niel and rapping. Or like Chevy Chase yeah yeah, jane and Bill Murray rapping together, so yeah, so I did like that first one because I maybe it was just because of the significance, as as if you are watching it how I did, but that one for sure stood out to me. 0:57:24 - Speaker 7And I'd be remiss if I didn't give Jane Curtin a shout out for being the first female weekend host. But no, the one that stood up to me wraps wise is the Sarah Palin rap. I don't know if you remember that. 0:57:53 - Speaker 5Smile, because that smile be creepy. But when I'm being all the leaders in the world gonna finally meet me, how's it go, eskimo? 0:58:02 - Speaker 7Tell me, tell me what you know Eskimo, how you feel Eskimo, tell me, tell me what you feel Eskimo Again. like that era of SNL, like 2000, like the 2008 election specifically, was so awesome to see the actual candidates come on to that show. I think now people would be like we're in such a crisis. what are you doing on SNL situation? so it's cool that we got that from then while we, while we could, and you know, sarah Palin joins the weekend update desk and then kind of like Amy Poehler kind of brings, brings the house down with a wrap about you know, about Sarah Palin like delivering her message and then Andy Sandberg and Fred Armisen as her backup. just really with like the fur coats and you know. Yeah, that was one that stood out to me. I she just man. Again, she's in a lot of things on that show that not many people got to do. I mean, i think I don't know if we're gonna end with a why she deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. But yeah, she was well, we'll get to it, but I had to, yeah, yeah, we'll get to it. So I'll leave my the rest of my thoughts there. I'll pause them for now. 0:59:10 - Speaker 4Yeah. 0:59:10 - Speaker 7so before we move on to what maybe she did after SNL and to your appeal to the voters, what else on SNL should we talk about as far as Amy Poehler goes, I would just love to give a quick honorable mention to two sketches, again also in a in the 2008 ish, you know, near the end of her time is the Bush twin secret language sketch. 0:59:38 - Speaker 8Jenna, we're twins. We have to share our most secret thoughts about everything. It's disrespectful. Just answer me in our secret twin language. 0:59:52 - Speaker 10Barbara, we haven't used that language since. We were like 19. 0:59:56 - Speaker 8Do be you, but think, but dance, but good. but president, but yes, i think, but he's, but really good. 1:00:09 - Speaker 7Like so funny there was, like you know they slapped on some Southern accents and they were drunk and you know they were using their, the secret, the language, to Figure out I'm trying to do it to figure out, like if their dad is actually like smart enough and competent enough to be president, which like was funny because I guess at the time when the rest of America was like what Is is he? and then another one was to love, honor and stock with John McCain hello, gillian. 1:00:45 - Speaker 10The conference wish cut short, so I rushed back to see you. 1:00:49 - Speaker 9David You shouldn't sneak up on people like that. You scared me half to death. 1:00:54 - Speaker 10Forgive me, darling, you know I'd never hurt you. 1:00:59 - Speaker 7That was so funny. It was just like her husband, her older husband, who was like very in love with her, invades her privacy and she's just like he's always in my space and like tries to sue him and so like you're literally married, like She's just a marriage, Yeah he's like he's just a poet and it's like kind of funny because it's like They also bring up again this feminism, feminist point of view of like if you were, if it was a rose reverse, it would be a big deal. Like we'd all be like, you know, leave him alone if she was the one doing it to him. But yeah, i think the amount of times she's gotten to play with you know politicians, especially during these Really important I mean she came during important time in in the US. I feel like that kind of set the tone for, like what she was gonna do in the years after. So I just wanted to give a shout out to those two. I now that I'm like we're talking about it. She did a lot of a lot of political stuff and good for her. I mean, she's involved politically in her personal life, so it just makes sense that she again is enough, is is authentic and genuine and says to herself, even when she's being someone else. 1:02:08 - Speaker 4Yeah, and I don't know if those lifetime movies Exist in that fashion anymore, but that was such a good parody of a lifetime movie from that area. So, that to love, honor and stock the the Jillian Woodward story, that's what that was called. It was in her second season, so that would have been about 2000, late 2002, when that's aired, and that was just Such a perfect parody of a lifetime movie from that era. They captured it so well and I don't know if there's anything Comparable now. Lifetime, does it exist? 1:02:42 - Speaker 7I think it might, but I haven't watched a lifetime movie since like 2006, yeah, so Sorry to say watched in 2006. 1:02:52 - Speaker 4This is, i'm sure. Yeah the reason why you appreciate something like that. So I think those are two excellent choices and really great examples of of her work on SNL. I also highlighted her Dakota fanning show that she did three times. That was a good one. She just was hilarious depiction of a precocious young girl. Amy, amy played that so well. Yeah, when she had Drew Barrymore Barrymore on and Drew Barrymore was playing The Abigail Breslin is a little miss. Yes, and then yeah yeah, Amy played that so well. 1:03:25 - Speaker 7How old were you when you first Scott your, when you got your first nomination? 1:03:28 - Speaker 4and she's like And she's like oh, i didn't know you were that young. 1:03:34 - Speaker 7Yeah, that's so funny. That's a good call out. That was such a. You know, dakota fanning, if you're watching this or if you're listening to this and I know that you are I hope you're doing well And I hope that you felt justice was served in your impersonation of you by Amy polar because it was done out of love. 1:03:53 - Speaker 4So yeah, and I think I think she knows that. So after SNL Amy polar, her main gig was playing Leslie nope in Parks and Recreation. I was a big fan. I imagine you were to Victoria. 1:04:09 - Speaker 7Yeah, i think it was. It just calls out a lot of the nonsense that we may or may not see in Politics, but especially, you know, local politics. A lot of like, a lot of pop culture and societal phrases that we used to like treat yourself, came from that and it's, it's made an impact on on TV and on how we speak to each other. And you know, you know again her and Tina Fey, i Think, are probably one of the few who had these successful TV shows after leaving SNL. Not only that, like producing and directing and and writing and being so successful at it and where it's So ingrained into our society, like. Another example would be like bridesmaids, you know with with Kristen Wiig and how, after SNL, you know she created this really awesome piece of piece of comedy for us to enjoy. And you know we Like I always say shit that is fresh. I pull that from from bridesmaids, but I always pull like treat yourself and you know it's, it's. They're not enough words and maybe they are, but I'm not smart enough to know them. I have a limited vocabulary. But she is Amy Poehler is She's not the first to do it. We like it. We've mentioned Gilda Radner and you know we also mentioned Jane Curtin. They're not the first but they are today's. You know they stand on shoulders but us after them are standing on their shoulders too. So We've been with, you know, parks and rec. She's opened some other doors and avenues for us to be creative and, you know, freed us a little bit to be Open about ourselves in our comedy and how we write and how we look at comedy. 1:05:58 - Speaker 4So after a very successful run on parks and recreation She returned to SNL numerous cameos throughout the years, especially at the weekend up

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The most recent YCombinator W23 batch graduated 59 companies building with Generative AI for everything from sales, support, engineering, data, and more:Many of these B2B startups will be seeking to establish an AI foothold in the enterprise. As they look to recent success, they will find Glean, started in 2019 by a group of ex-Googlers to finally solve AI-enabled enterprise search. In 2022 Sequoia led their Series C at a $1b valuation and Glean have just refreshed their website touting new logos across Databricks, Canva, Confluent, Duolingo, Samsara, and more in the Fortune 50 and announcing Enterprise-ready AI features including AI answers, Expert detection, and In-context recommendations.We talked to Deedy Das, Founding Engineer at Glean and a former Tech Lead on Google Search, on why he thinks many of these startups are solutions looking for problems, and how Glean's holistic approach to enterprise probllem solving has brought so much success. Deedy is also just a fascinating commentator on AI current events, being both extremely qualified and great at distilling insights, so we also went over his many viral tweets diving into Google's competitive threats, AI Startup investing, and his exposure of Indian University Exam Fraud!Show Notes* Deedy on LinkedIn and Twitter and Personal Site* Glean* Glean and Google Moma* Golinks.io* Deedy on Google vs ChatGPT* Deedy on Google Ad Revenue* Deedy on How much does it cost to train a state-of-the-art foundational LLM?* Deedy on Google LaMDA cost* Deedy's Indian Exam Fraud Story* Lightning Round* Favorite Products: (covered in segment)* Favorite AI People: AI Pub* Predictions: Models will get faster for the same quality* Request for Products: Hybrid Email Autoresponder* Parting Takeaway: Read the research!Timestamps* [00:00:21] Introducing Deedy* [00:02:27] Introducing Glean* [00:05:41] From Syntactic to Semantic Search* [00:09:39] Why Employee Portals* [00:12:01] The Requirements of Good Enterprise Search* [00:15:26] Glean Chat?* [00:15:53] Google vs ChatGPT* [00:19:47] Search Issues: Freshness* [00:20:49] Search Issues: Ad Revenue* [00:23:17] Search Issues: Latency* [00:24:42] Search Issues: Accuracy* [00:26:24] Search Issues: Tool Use* [00:28:52] Other AI Search takes: Perplexity and Neeva* [00:30:05] Why Document QA will Struggle* [00:33:18] Investing in AI Startups* [00:35:21] Actually Interesting Ideas in AI* [00:38:13] Harry Potter IRL* [00:39:23] AI Infra Cost Math* [00:43:04] Open Source LLMs* [00:46:45] Other Modalities* [00:48:09] Exam Fraud and Generated Text Detection* [00:58:01] Lightning RoundTranscript[00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome to the Latent Space Podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO and residence at Decibel Partners. I'm joined by my, cohost swyx, writer and editor of[00:00:19] Latent Space. Yeah. Awesome.[00:00:21] Introducing Deedy[00:00:21] And today we have a special guest. It's Deedy Das from Glean. Uh, do you go by Deedy or Debarghya? I go by Deedy. Okay.[00:00:30] Uh, it's, it's a little bit easier for the rest of us to, uh, to, to spell out. And so what we typically do is I'll introduce you based on your LinkedIn profile, and then you can fill in what's not on your LinkedIn. So, uh, you graduated your bachelor's and masters in CS from Cornell. Then you worked at Facebook and then Google on search, specifically search, uh, and also leading a sports team focusing on cricket.[00:00:50] That's something that we, we can dive into. Um, and then you moved over to Glean, which is now a search unicorn in building intelligent search for the workplace. What's not on your LinkedIn that people should know about you? Firstly,[00:01:01] guys, it's a pleasure. Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.[00:01:04] What's not on my LinkedIn is probably everything that's non-professional. I think the biggest ones are I'm a huge movie buff and I love reading, so I think I get through, usually I like to get through 10 books ish a year, but I hate people who count books, so I should say the number. And increasingly, I don't like reading non-fiction books.[00:01:26] I actually do prefer reading fiction books purely for pleasure and entertainment. I think that's the biggest omission from my LinkedIn.[00:01:34] What, what's, what's something that, uh, caught your eye for fiction stuff that you would recommend people?[00:01:38] Oh, I recently, we started reading the Three Body Problem and I finished it and it's a three part series.[00:01:45] And, uh, well, my controversial take is I did not really enjoy the second part, and so I just stopped. But the first book was phenomenal. Great concept. I didn't know you could write alien fiction with physics so Well, and Chinese literature in particular has a very different cadence to it than Western literature.[00:02:03] It's very less about the, um, let's describe people and what they're all about and their likes and dislikes. And it's like, here's a person, he's a professor of physics. That's all you need to know about him. Let's continue with the story. Um, and, and I, I, I, I enjoy it. It's a very different style from, from what I'm used.[00:02:21] Yeah, I, I heard it's, uh, very highly recommended. I think it's being adapted to a TV show, so looking forward[00:02:26] to that.[00:02:27] Introducing Glean[00:02:27] Uh, so you spend now almost four years at gle. The company's not unicorn, but you were on the founding team and LMS and tech interfaces are all the reach now. But you were building this before.[00:02:38] It was cool, so to speak. Maybe tell us more about the story, how it became, and some of the technological advances you've seen. Because I think you started, the company started really close to some of the early GPT models. Uh, so you've seen a lot of it from, from day one.[00:02:53] Yeah. Well, the first thing I'll say is Glean was never started to be a.[00:02:58] Technical product looking for a solution. We were always wanted to solve a very critical problem first that we saw, not only in the companies that we'd worked in before, but in all of the companies that a lot of our, uh, a lot of the founding team had been in past their time at Google. So Google has a really neat tool that already kind of does this internally.[00:03:18] It's called MoMA, and MoMA sort of indexes everything that you'd use inside Google because they have first party API accessed who has permissions to what document and what documents exist, and they rank them with their internal search tool. It's one of those things where when you're at Google, you sort of take it for granted, but when you leave and go anywhere else, you're like, oh my God, how do I function without being able to find things that I've worked on?[00:03:42] Like, oh, I remember this guy had a presentation that he made three meetings ago and I don't remember anything about it. I don't know where he shared it. I don't know if he shared it, but I do know the, it was a, something about X and I kind of wanna find that now. So that's the core. Information retrieval problem that we had set out to tackle, and we realized when we started looking at this problem that enterprise search is actually, it's not new.[00:04:08] People have been trying to tackle enterprise search for decades. Again, pre two thousands people have been trying to build these on-prem enterprise search systems. But one thing that has really allowed us to build it well, A, you now have, well, you have distributed elastic, so that really helps you do a lot of the heavy lifting on core infra.[00:04:28] But B, you also now have API support that's really nuanced on all of the SaaS apps that you use. So back in the day, it was really difficult to integrate with a messaging app. They didn't have an api. It didn't have any way to sort of get the permissions information and get the messaging information. But now a lot of SaaS apps have really robust APIs that really let.[00:04:50] Index everything that you'd want though though. That's two. And the third sort of big macro reason why it's happening now and why we're able to do it well is the fact that the SaaS apps have just exploded. Like every company uses, you know, 10 to a hundred apps. And so just the urgent need for information, especially with, you know, remote work and work from home, it's just so critical that people expect this almost as a default that you should have in your company.[00:05:17] And a lot of our customers just say, Hey, I don't, I can't go back to a life without internal search. And I think we think that's just how it should be. So that's kind of the story about how Glean was founded and a lot of the LLM stuff. It's neat that all, a lot of that's happening at the same time that we are trying to solve this problem because it's definitely applicable to the problem we're trying to solve.[00:05:37] And I'm really excited by some of the stuff that we are able to do with it.[00:05:41] From Syntactic to Semantic Search[00:05:41] I was talking with somebody last weekend, they were saying the last couple years we're going from the web used to be syntex driven. You know, you siegal for information retrieval, going into a symantics driven where the syntax is not as important.[00:05:55] It's like the, how you actually explain the question. And uh, we just asked Sarah from Seek.ai on the previous episode and instead of doing natural language and things like that for enterprise knowledge, it's more for business use cases. So I'm curious to see, you know, The enterprise of the future, what that looks like, you know, is there gonna be way less dropdowns and kind of like, uh, SQL queries and stuff like that.[00:06:19] And it's more this virtual, almost like person that embodies the company that is like a, an LLM in a way. But how do you do that without being able to surface all the knowledge that people have in the organization? So something like Lean is, uh, super useful for[00:06:35] that. Yeah, I mean, already today we see these natural language queries as well.[00:06:39] I, I will say at, at this point, it's still a small fraction of the queries. You see a lot of, a lot of the queries are, hey, what is, you know, just a name of a project or an acronym or a name of a person or some someone you're looking for. Yeah, I[00:06:51] think actually the Glean website explains gleans features very well.[00:06:54] When I, can I follow the video? Actually, video wasn't that, that informative video was more like a marketing video, but the, the actual website was showing screenshots of what you see there in my language is an employee portal. That happens to have search because you also surface like collections, which proactively show me things without me searching anything.[00:07:12] Right. Like, uh, you even have Go links, you should copy it, I think from Google, right? Which like, it's basically, uh, you know, in my mind it's like this is ex Googlers missing Google internal stuff. So they just built it for everyone else. So,[00:07:25] well, I can, I can comment on that. So a, I should just plug that we have a new website as of today.[00:07:30] I don't know how, how it's received. So I saw it yesterday, so let, let me know. I think today we just launch, I don't know when we launched a new one, I think today or yesterday. Yeah,[00:07:38] it's[00:07:38] new. I opened it right now it's different than yesterday.[00:07:41] Okay. It's, it's today and yeah. So one thing that we find is that, Search in itself.[00:07:48] This is actually, I think, quite a big insight. Search in itself is not a compelling enough use case to keep people drawn to your product. It's easy to say Google search is like that, but Google Search was also in an era where that was the only website people knew, and now it's not like that. When you are a new tool that's coming into a company, you can't sit on your high horse and say, yeah, of course you're gonna use my tool to search.[00:08:13] No, they're not gonna remember who you are. They're gonna use it once and completely forget to really get that retention. You need to sort of go from being just a search engine to exactly what you said, Sean, to being sort of an employee portal that does much more than that. And yeah, the Go Links thing, I, I mean, yes, it is copied from Google.[00:08:33] I will say there's a complete other startup called Go links.io that has also copied it from Google and, and everyone, everyone misses Go Links. It's very useful to be able to write a document and just be like, go to go slash this. And. That's where the document is. And, and so we have built a big feature set around it.[00:08:50] I think one of the critical ones that I will call out is the feed. Just being able to see, not just, so documents that are trending in your sub-organization documents that you, we think you should see are a limited set of them, as well as now we've launched something called Mentions, which is super useful, which is all of your tags across all of your apps in one place in the last whatever, you know, time.[00:09:14] So it's like all of the hundred Slack pings that you have, plus the Jira pings, plus the, the, the email, all of that in one place is super useful to have. So you did GitHub. Yeah, we do get up to, we do get up to all the mentions.[00:09:28] Oh my God, that's amazing. I didn't know you had it, but, uh, um, this is something I wish for myself.[00:09:33] It's amazing.[00:09:34] It's still a little buggy right now, but I think it's pretty good. And, and we're gonna make it a lot better as as we go.[00:09:39] Why Employee Portals[00:09:39] This[00:09:39] is not in our preset list of questions, but I have one follow up, which is, you know, I've worked in quite a few startups now that don't have employee portals, and I've worked at Amazon, which had an employee portal, but it wasn't as beautiful or as smart as as glean.[00:09:53] Why isn't this a bigger norm in all[00:09:56] companies? Well, there's several reasons. I would say one reason is just the dynamics of how enterprise sales happens is. I wouldn't say broken. It is, it is what it is, but it doesn't always cater to employees being happy with the best tools. What it does cater to is there's different incentive structures, right?[00:10:16] So if I'm an IT buyer, I have a budget and I need to understand that for a hundred of these tools that are pitched to me all the time, which ones really help the company And the way usually those things are evaluated is does it increase revenue and does it cut cost? Those are the two biggest ones. And for a software like Glean or a search portal or employee portal, it's actually quite difficult when you're in, generally bucketed in the space of productivity to say, Hey, here's a compelling use use case for why we will cut your cost or increase your revenue.[00:10:52] It's just a softer argument that you have to make there. It's just a fundamental nature of the problem versus if you say, Hey, we're a customer support tool. Everyone in SaaS knows that customer support tools is just sort of the. The last thing that you go to when you're looking for ideas, because it's easy to sell.[00:11:08] It's like, here's a metric. How many tickets can your customer support agent resolve? We've built a thing that makes it 20% better. That means it's 1,000 thousand dollars cost savings. Pay us 50 k. Call it a deal. That's a good argument. That's a very simple, easy to understand argument. It's very difficult to make that argument with search, which you're like, okay, you're gonna get see about 10 to 20 searches that's gonna save about this much time, uh, a day.[00:11:33] And that results in this much employee productivity. People just don't buy it as easily. So the first reaction is, oh, we work fine without it. Why do we need this now? It's not like the company didn't work without this tool, and uh, and only when they have it do they realize what they were missing out on.[00:11:50] So it's a difficult thing to sell in, in some ways. So even though the product is, in my opinion, fantastic, sometimes the buyer isn't easily convinced because it doesn't increase revenue or cut cost.[00:12:01] The Requirements of Good Enterprise Search[00:12:01] In terms of technology, can you maybe talk about some of the stack and you see a lot of companies coming up now saying, oh, we help you do enterprise search.[00:12:10] And it's usually, you know, embedding to then do context for like a LLM query mostly. I'm guessing you started as like closer to like the vector side of thing maybe. Yeah. Talk a bit about that and some learning siva and as founders try to, to build products like this internally, what should they think[00:12:27] about?[00:12:28] Yeah, so actually leading back from the last answer, one of the ways a lot of companies who are in the enterprise search space are trying to tackle the problem of sales is to lean into how advance the technology is, which is useful. It's useful to say we are AI powered, LLM powered vector search, cutting edge, state-of-the-art, yada, yada, yada.[00:12:47] Put it all your buzzwords. That's nice, but. The question is how often does that translate to better user experience is sort of, a fuzzy area where it, it's really hard for even users to tell, to be honest. Like you can have one or two great queries and one really bad query and be like, I don't know if this thing is smart.[00:13:06] And it takes time to evaluate and understand how a certain engine is doing. So to that, I think one of the things that we learned from Google, a lot of us come from an ex Google search background, and one of the key learnings is often with search, it's not about how advanced or how complex the technology is, it's about the rigor and intellectual honesty that you put into tuning the ranking algorithm.[00:13:30] That's a painstaking long-term and slow process at Google until I would say maybe 20 17, 20 18. Everything was run off of almost no real ai, so to speak. It was just information retrieval at its core, very basic from the seventies, eighties, and a bunch of these ranking components that are put stacked on top of it that do various tasks really, really well.[00:13:57] So one task in search is query understanding what does the query mean? One task is synonymous. What are other synonyms for this thing that we can also match on? One task is document understanding. Is this document itself a high quality document or not? Or is it some sort of SEO spam? And admittedly, Google doesn't do so well on that anymore, but there's so many tough sub problems that it breaks search down into and then just gets each of those problems, right, to create a nice experience.[00:14:24] So to answer your question, also, vector search we do, but it is not the only way we get results. We do a hybrid approach both using, you know, core IR signal synonymy. Query accentuation with things like acronym expansion, as well as stuff like vector search, which is also useful. And then we apply our level of ranking understanding on top of that, which includes personalization, understanding.[00:14:50] If you're an engineer, you're probably not looking for Salesforce documents. You know, you're probably looking for documents that are published or co-authored by people in your team, in your immediate team, and our understanding of all of your interactions with people around you. Our personalization layer, our good work on ranking is what makes us.[00:15:09] Good. It's not sort of, Hey, drop in LLM and embeddings and we become amazing at search. That's not how we think it[00:15:16] works. Yeah. I think there's a lot of polish that mix into quality products, and that's the difference that you see between Hacker News, demos and, uh, glean, which is, uh, actual, you know, search and chat unicorn.[00:15:26] Glean Chat?[00:15:26] But also is there a glean chat coming? Is is, what do you think about the[00:15:30] chat form factor? I can't say anything about it, but I think that we are experi, my, my politically correct answer is we're experimenting with many technologies that use modern AI and LLMs, and we will launch what we think users like best.[00:15:49] Nice. You got some media training[00:15:51] again? Yeah. Very well handed.[00:15:53] Google vs ChatGPT[00:15:53] We can, uh, move off of Glean and just go into Google search. Uh, so you worked on search for four years. I've always wanted to ask what happens when I type something into Google? I feel like you know more than others and you obviously there's the things you cannot say, but I'm sure Google does a lot of the things that Glean does as well.[00:16:08] How do you think about this Google versus ChatGPT debate? Let's, let's maybe start at a high level based on what you see out there, and I think you, you see a lot of[00:16:15] misconceptions. Yeah. So, okay, let me, let me start with Google versus ChatGPT first. I think it's disingenuous, uh, if I don't say my own usage pattern, which is I almost don't go back to Google for a large section of my queries anymore.[00:16:29] I just use ChatGPT I am a paying plus subscriber and it's sort of my go-to for a lot of things. That I ask, and I also have to train my mind to realize that, oh, there's a whole set of questions in your head that you never realize the internet could answer for you, and that now you're like, oh, wait, I could actually ask this, and then you ask it.[00:16:48] So that's my current usage pattern. That being said, I don't think that ChatGPT is the best interface or technology for all sets of queries. I think humans are obviously very easily excited by new technology, but new technology does not always mean the previous technology was worse. The previous technology is actually really good for a lot of things, and for search in particular, if you think about all the queries that come into Google search, they fall into various kinds of query classes, depending on whatever taxonomy you want to use.[00:17:24] But one sort of way of, of of understanding broad, generally, the query classes is something that is information seeking or exploratory. And for information for exploratory queries. I think there are uses where Google does really well. Like for example, let's say you want to just know a list of songs of this artist in this year.[00:17:49] Google will probably be able to add a hundred percent, tell you that pretty accurately all the time. Or if you want to say understand like what showtimes of movies came out today. So fresh queries, another query class, Google will be really good at that chat, not so good at that. But if you look at information seeking queries, you could even argue that if I ask for information about Donald Trump, Maybe ChatGPT will spit out a reasonable sounding paragraph and it makes sense, but it doesn't give me enough stuff to like click on and go to and navigate to in a news article here.[00:18:25] And I just kind wanna see a lot of stuff happening. So if you really break down the problem, I think it's not as easy as saying ChatGPT is a silver bullet for every kind of information need. There's a lot of information needs, especially for tail queries. So for long. Un before seen queries like, Hey, tell me the cheat code in Doom three.[00:18:43] This level, this boss ChatGPTs gonna blow it out the water on those kind of queries cuz it's gonna figure out all of these from these random sparse documents and random Reddit threads and assemble one consistent answer for you where it takes forever to find this kind of stuff on Google. For me personally, coding is the biggest use case for anything technical.[00:19:02] I just go to ChatGPT cuz parsing through Stack Overflow is just too mentally taxing and I don't care about, even if ChatGPT hallucinates a wrong answer, I can verify that. But I like seeing a coherent, nice answer that I can just kind of good starting point for my research on whatever I'm trying to understand.[00:19:20] Did you see the, the statistic that, uh, the Allin guys have been saying, which is, uh, stack overflow traffic is down 15%? Yeah, I did, I did.[00:19:27] See that[00:19:28] makes sense. But I, I, I don't know if it's like only because of ChatGPT, but yeah, sure. I believe[00:19:33] it. No, the second part was just about if some of the enterprise product search moves out of Google, like cannot, that's obviously a big AdWords revenue driver.[00:19:43] What are like some of the implications in terms of the, the business[00:19:46] there?[00:19:47] Search Issues: Freshness[00:19:47] Okay,[00:19:47] so I would split this answer into two parts. My first part is just talking about freshness, cuz the query that you mentioned is, is specifically the, the issue there is being able to access fresh information. Google just blanket calls his freshness.[00:20:01] Today's understanding of large language models is that it cannot do anything that's highly fresh. You just can't train these things fast enough and cost efficiently enough to constantly index new, new. Sources of data and then serve it at the same time in any way that's feasible. That might change in the future, but today it's not possible.[00:20:20] The best thing that you can get that's close to it is what, you know, the fancy term is retrieval, augmented generation, but it's a fancy way of saying just do the search in the background and then use the results to create the actual response. That's what Bing does today. So to answer the question about freshness, I would say it is possible to do with these methods, but those methods all in all involve using search in the backend to, to sort of get the context to generate the answer.[00:20:49] Search Issues: Ad Revenue[00:20:49] The second part of the answer is, okay, talk about ad revenue. A lot of Google's ad revenue just comes from the fact that over the last two decades, it's figured out how to put ad links on top of a search result page that sometimes users click. Now the user behavior on a chat product is not to click on anything.[00:21:10] You don't click on stuff you just read and you move on. And that actually, in my opinion, has severe impacts on the web ecosystem, on all of Google and all of technology and how we use the internet in the future. And, and the reason is one thing we also take for granted is that this ad revenue where everyone likes to say Google is bad, Google makes money off ads, yada, yada, yada, but this ad revenue kind of sponsored the entire internet.[00:21:37] So you have Google Maps and Google search and photos and drive and all of this great free stuff basically because of ads. Now, when you have this new interface, sure it, it comes with some benefits, but if users aren't gonna click on ads and you replace the search interface with just chat, that can actually be pretty dangerous in terms of what it even means.[00:21:59] To have to create a website, like why would I create a website if no one's gonna come to my. If it's just gonna be used to train a model and then someone's gonna spit out whatever my website says, then there's no incentive. And that kind of dwindles the web ecosystem. In the end, it means less ad revenue.[00:22:15] And then the other existential question is, okay, I'm okay with saying the incumbent. Google gets defeated and there's this new hero, which is, I don't know, open AI and Microsoft. Now reinvent the wheel. All of that stuff is great, but how are they gonna make money? They can make money off, I guess, subscriptions.[00:22:31] But subscriptions is not nearly gonna make you enough. To replace what you can make on ad revenue. Even for Bing today. Bing makes it 11 billion off ad revenue. It's not a society product like it's a huge product, and they're not gonna make 11 billion off subscriptions, I'll tell you that. So even they can't really replace search with this with chat.[00:22:51] And then there are some arguments around, okay, what if you start to inject ads in textual form? But you know, in my view, if the natural user inclination is not to click on something or chat, they're clearly not gonna click on something. No matter how much you try to inject, click targets into your result.[00:23:10] So, That's, that's my long answer to the ads question. I don't really know. I just smell danger in the horizon.[00:23:17] Search Issues: Latency[00:23:17] You mentioned the information augmented generation as well. Uh, I presumably that is literally Bing is probably just using the long context of GPT4 and taking the full text of all the links that they find, dumping it in, and then generating some answer.[00:23:34] Do you think like speed is a concern or people are just people willing to wait for smarter?[00:23:40] I think it's a concern. We noticed that every, every single product I've worked on, there's almost a linear, at least for some section of it, a very linear curve. A linear line that says the more the latency, the less the engagement, so there's always gonna be some drop off.[00:23:55] So it is a concern, but with things like latency, I just kind of presume that time solves these things. You optimize stuff, you make things a little better, and the latency will get down with time. And it's a good time to even mention that. Bard, we just came out today. Google's LLM. For Google's equivalent, I haven't tried it, but I've been reading about it, and that's based off a model called LamDA.[00:24:18] And LamDA intrinsically actually does that. So it does query what they call a tool set and they query search or a calculator or a compiler or a translator. Things that are good at factual, deterministic information. And then it keeps changing its response depending on the feedback from the tool set, effectively doing something very similar to what Bing does.[00:24:42] Search Issues: Accuracy[00:24:42] But I like their framing of the problem where it's just not just search, it's any given set of tools. Which is similar to what a Facebook paper called Tool Former, where you can think of language as one aspect of the problem and language interfaces with computation, which is another aspect of the problem.[00:24:58] And if you can separate those two, this one just talks to these things and figures out what to, how to phrase it. Yeah, so it's not really coming up with the answer. Their claim is like GPT4, for example. The reason it's able to do factual accuracy without search is just by memorizing facts. And that doesn't scale.[00:25:18] It's literally somewhere in the whole model. It knows that the CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk. It just knows that. But it doesn't know that this is a competition. It just knows that. Usually I see CEO, Tesla, Elon, that's all it knows. So the abstraction of language model to computational unit or tool set is an interesting one that I think is gonna be more explored by all of these engines.[00:25:40] Um, and the latency, you know, it'll.[00:25:42] I think you're focusing on the right things there. I actually saw another article this morning about the memorization capability. You know how GPT4 is a lot of, uh, marketed on its ability to answer SAT questions and GRE questions and bar exams and, you know, we covered this in our benchmarks podcast Alessio, but like I forgot to mention that all these answers are out there and were probably memorized.[00:26:05] And if you change them just, just a little bit, the model performance will probably drop a lot.[00:26:10] It's true. I think the most compelling, uh, proof of that, of what you just said is the, the code forces one where somebody I think tweeted, tweeted, tweeted about the, yeah, the 2021. Everything before 2021. It solves everything after.[00:26:22] It doesn't, and I thought that was interesting.[00:26:24] Search Issues: Tool Use[00:26:24] It's just, it's just dumb. I'm interested in two former, and I'm interested in react type, uh, patterns. Zapier just launched a natural language integration with LangChain. Are you able to compare contrast, like what approaches you like when it comes to LMS using[00:26:36] tools?[00:26:37] I think it's not boiled down to a science enough for me to say anything that's uh, useful. Like I think everyone is at a point of time where they're just playing with it. There's no way to reason about what LLMs can and can't do. And most people are just throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks.[00:26:57] And if anyone claims to be doing better, they're probably lying because no one knows how these things behaves. You can't predict what the output is gonna be. You just think, okay, let's see if this works. This is my prompt. And then you measure and you're like, oh, that worked. Versus the stint and things like react and tool, form are really cool.[00:27:16] But those are just examples of things that people have thrown at a wall that stuck. Well, I mean, it's provably, it works. It works pretty, pretty well. I will say that one of the. It's not really of the framing of what kind of ways can you use LLMs to make it do cool things, but people forget when they're looking at cutting edge stuff is a lot of these LLMs can be used to generate synthetic data to bootstrap smaller models, and it's a less sexy space of it all.[00:27:44] But I think that stuff is really, really cool. Where, for example, I want to tag entities in a sentence that's a very simple classical natural language problem of NER. And what I do is I just, before I had to gather training data, train model, tune model, all of this other stuff. Now what I can do is I can throw GPT4 at it to generate a ton of synthetic data, which looks actually really good.[00:28:11] And then I can either just train whatever model I wanted to train before on this data, or I can use something called like low rank adaptation, which is distilling this large model into a much smaller, cost effective, fast model that does that task really well. And in terms of productionable natural language systems, that is amazing that this is stuff you couldn't do before.[00:28:35] You would have teams working for years to solve NER and that's just what that team does. And there's a great red and viral thread about our, all the NLP teams at Big Tech, doomed and yeah, I mean, to an extent now you can do this stuff in weeks, which is[00:28:51] huge.[00:28:52] Other AI Search takes: Perplexity and Neeva[00:28:52] What about some of the other kind of like, uh, AI native search, things like perplexity, elicit, have you played with, with any of them?[00:29:00] Any thoughts on[00:29:01] it? Yeah. I have played with perplexity and, and niva. Everyone. I think both of those products sort of try to do, again, search results, synthesis. Personally, I think Perplexity might be doing something else now, but I don't see the, any of those. Companies or products are disrupting either open AI or ChatGPT or Google being whatever prominent search engines with what they do, because they're all built off basically the Bing API or their own version of an index and their search itself is not good enough and there's not a compelling use case enough, I think, to use those products.[00:29:40] I don't know how they would make money, a lot of Neeva's way of making money as subscriptions. Perplexity I don't think has ever turned on the revenue dial. I just have more existential concerns about those products actually functioning in the long run. So, um, I think I see them as they're, they're nice, they're nice to play with.[00:29:56] It's cool to see the cutting edge innovation, but I don't really understand if they will be long lasting widely used products.[00:30:05] Why Document QA will Struggle[00:30:05] Do you have any idea of what it might take to actually do like a new kind of like, type of company in this space? Like Google's big thing was like page rank, right? That was like one thing that kind of set them apart.[00:30:17] Like people tried doing search before, like. Do you have an intuition for what, like the LM native page rank thing is gonna be to make something like this exist? Or have we kinda, you know, hit the plateau when it comes to search innovation?[00:30:31] So I, I talk to so many of my friends who are obviously excited about this technology as well, and many of them who are starting LLM companies.[00:30:38] You know, how many companies in the YC batch of, you know, winter 23 are LM companies? Crazy half of them. Right? Right. It's, it's ridiculous. But what I always, I think everyone's struggling with this problem is what is your advantage? What is your moat? I don't see it for a lot of these companies, and, uh, it's unclear.[00:30:58] I, I don't have a strong intuition. My sense is that the people who focus on problem first usually get much further than the people who focus solution first. And there's way too many companies that are solutions first. Which makes sense. It's always been the, a big achilles heel of the Silicon Valley.[00:31:16] We're a bunch of nerds that live in a whole different dimension, which nobody else can relate to, but nobody else. The problem is nobody else can relate to them and we can't relate to their problems either. So we look at tech first, not problem first a lot. And I see a lot of companies just, just do that.[00:31:32] Where I'll tell you one, this is quite entertaining to me. A very common theme is, Hey, LMS are cool, that, that's awesome. We should build something. Well, what should we build? And it's like, okay, consumer, consumer is cool, we should build consumer. Then it's like, ah, nah man. Consumers, consumer's pretty hard.[00:31:49] Uh, it's gonna be a clubhouse gonna blow up. I don't wanna blow up, I just wanna build something that's like, you know, pretty easy to be consistent with. We should go enter. Cool. Let's go enterprise. So you go enterprise. It's like, okay, we brought LMS to the enterprise. Now what problem do we tackle? And it's like, okay, well we can do q and A on documents.[00:32:06] People know how to do that, right? We've seen a couple of demos on that. So they build it, they build q and a on documents, and then they struggle with selling, or they're like, or people just ask, Hey, but I don't ask questions to my documents. Like, you realize this is just not a flow that I do, like I, oh no.[00:32:22] I ask questions in general, but I don't ask them to my documents. And also like what documents can you ask questions to? And they'll be like, well, any of them is, they'll say, can I ask them to all of my documents? And they'll be like, well, sure, if you give them, give us all your documents, you can ask anything.[00:32:39] And then they'll say, okay, how will you take all my document? Oh, it seems like we have to build some sort of indexing mechanism and then from one thing to the other, you get to a point where it's like we're building enterprise search and we're building an LM on top of it, and that is our product. Or you go to like ML ops and I'm gonna help you host models, I'm gonna help you train models.[00:33:00] And I don't know, it's, it seems very solution first and not problem first. So the only thing I would recommend is if you think about the actual problems and talk to users and understand what this can be useful for. It doesn't have to be that sexy of how it's used, but if it works and solves the problem, you've done your job.[00:33:18] Investing in AI Startups[00:33:18] I love that whole evolution because I think quite a few companies ha are, independently finding this path and, going down this route to build a glorified, you know, search spot. We actually interviewed a very problem focused builder, Mickey Friedman, who's very, very focused on products placement, image generation.[00:33:34] , and, you know, she's not focused on anything else in terms of image generation, like just focused on product placement and branding. And I think that's probably the right approach, you know, and, and if you think about like Jasper, right? Like they, they're out of all the other GPT3 companies when, when GPT3 first came out, they built focusing on, you know, writers on Facebook, you know, didn't even market on Twitter.[00:33:56] So like most people haven't heard of them. Uh, I think it's a timeless startup lesson, but it's something to remind people when they're building with, uh, language models. I mean, as a, as an investor like you, you know, you are an investor, you're your scout with me. Doesn't that make it hard to invest in anything like, cuz.[00:34:10] Mostly it's just like the incumbents will get to the innovation faster than startups will find traction.[00:34:16] Really. Like, oh, this is gonna be a hot take too. But, okay. My, my in, in investing, uh, with people, especially early, is often for me governed by my intuition of how they approach the problem and their experience with the technology, and pretty much solely that I don.[00:34:37] Really pretend to be an expert in the industry or the space that's their problem. If I think they're smart and they understand the space better than me, then I mostly convinced as if they've thought through enough of the business stuff, if they've thought through the, the market and everything else. I'm convinced I typically stray away from, you know, just what I just said.[00:34:57] Founders who are like LMS are cool and we should build something with them. That's not like usually very convincing to me. That's not a thesis. But I don't concern myself too much with pretending to understand what this space means. I trust them to do that. If I'm convinced that they're smart and they've thought about it, well then I'm pretty convinced that that they're a good person to, to, to[00:35:20] back.[00:35:21] Cool.[00:35:21] Actually Interesting Ideas in AI[00:35:21] Kinda like super novel idea that you wanna shout.[00:35:25] There's a lot of interesting explorations, uh, going on. Um, I, I, okay, I'll, I'll preface this with I, anything in enterprise I just don't think is cool. It's like including, like, it's just, it's, you can't call it cool, man. You're building products for businesses.[00:35:37] Glean is pretty cool. I'm impressed by Glean. This is what I'm saying. It's, it's cool for the Silicon Valley. It's not cool. Like, you're not gonna go to a dinner party with your parents and be like, Hey mom, I work on enterprise search. Isn't that awesome? And they're not all my, all my[00:35:51] notifications in one place.[00:35:52] Whoa.[00:35:55] So I will, I'll, I'll start by saying, for in my head, cool means like, the world finds this amazing and, and it has to be somewhat consumer. And I do think that. The ideas that are being played with, like Quora is playing with Poe. It's kind of strange to think about, and may not stick as is, but I like that they're approaching it with a very different framing, which is, Hey, how about you talk to this, this chat bot, but let's move out of this, this world where everyone's like, it's not WhatsApp or Telegram, it's not a messaging app.[00:36:30] You are actually generating some piece of content that now everybody can make you use of. And is there something there Not clear yet, but it's an interesting idea. I can see that being something where, you know, people just learn. Or see cool things that GPT4 has said or chatbots have said that's interesting in the image space.[00:36:49] Very contrasted to the language space. There's so much like I don't even begin to understand the image space. Everything I see is just like blows my mind. I don't know how mid journey gets from six fingers to five fingers. I don't understand this. It's amazing. I love it. I don't understand what the value is in terms of revenue.[00:37:08] I don't know where the markets are in, in image, but I do think that's way, way cooler because that's a demo where, and I, and I tried this, I showed GPT4 to, to my mom and my mom's like, yeah, this is pretty cool. It does some pretty interesting stuff. And then I showed the image one and she is just like, this is unbelievable.[00:37:28] There's no way a computer could write do this, and she just could not digest it. And I love when you see those interactions. So I do think image world is a whole different beast. Um, and, and in terms of coolness, lot more cool stuff happening in image video multimodal I think is really, really cool. So I haven't seen too many startups that are doing something where I'm like, wow, that's, that's amazing.[00:37:51] Oh, 11 labs. I'll, I'll mention 11 labs is pretty cool. They're the only ones that I know that are doing Oh, the voice synthesis. Have you tried it? I've only played with it. I haven't really tried generating my own voice, but I've seen some examples and it looks really, really awesome. I've heard[00:38:06] that Descript is coming up with some stuff as well to compete, cuz yeah, this is definitely the next frontier in terms of, podcasting.[00:38:13] Harry Potter IRL[00:38:13] One last thing I I will say on the cool front is I think there is something to be said about. A product that brings together all these disparate advancements in ai. And I have a view on what that looks like. I don't know if everyone shares that view, but if you bring together image generation, voice recognition, language modeling, tts, and like all of the other image stuff they can do with like clip and Dream booth and putting someone's actual face in it.[00:38:41] What you can actually make, this is my view of it, is the Harry Potter picture come to life where you actually have just a digital stand where there's a person who's just capable of talking to you in their voice, in, you know, understandable dialogue. That is how they speak. And you could just sort of walk by, they'll look at you, you can say hi, they'll be, they'll say hi back.[00:39:03] They'll start talking to you. You start talking back to it. That's sort of my, that's my my wild science fiction dream. And I think the technology exists to put all of those pieces together and. The implications for people who are older or saving people over time are huge. This could be a really cool thing to productionize.[00:39:23] AI Infra Cost Math[00:39:23] There's one more part of you that also tweets about numbers and math, uh, AI math essentially is how I'm thinking about it. What gets you into talking about costs and math and, and you know, just like first principles of how to think about language models.[00:39:39] One of my biggest beefs with big companies is how they abstract the cost away from all the engineers.[00:39:46] So when you're working on a Google search, I can't tell you a single number that is cost related at all. Like I just don't know the cost numbers. It's so far down the chain that I have no clue how much it actually costs to run search, and how much these various things cost aside from what the public knows.[00:40:03] And I found that very annoying because when you are building a startup, particularly maybe an enterprise startup, you have to be extremely cognizant about the cost because that's your unit economics. Like your primary cost is the money you spend on infrastructure, not your actual labor costs. The whole thesis is the labor doesn't scale, but the inf.[00:40:21] Does scale. So you need to understand how your infra costs scale. So when it comes to language models, given that these things are so compute heavy, but none of the papers talk about cost either. And it's just bothers me. I'm like, why can't you just tell me how much it costs you to, to build this thing?[00:40:39] It's not that hard to say. And it's also not that hard to figure out. They give you everything else, which is, you know, how many TPUs it took and how long they trained it for and all of that other stuff, but they don't tell you the cost. So I've always been curious because ev all everybody ever says is it's expensive and a startup can't do it, and an individual can't do it.[00:41:01] So then the natural question is, okay, how expensive is it? And that's sort of the, the, the background behind. Why I started doing some more AI math and, and one of the tweets that probably the one that you're talking about is where I compare the cost of LlaMA, which is Facebook's LLM, to PaLM with, uh, my best estimates.[00:41:23] And, uh, the only thing I'll add to that is it is quite tricky to even talk about these things publicly because you get rammed in the comments because by people who are like, oh, don't you know that this assumption that you made is completely BS because you should have taken this cost per hour? Because obviously people do bulk deals.[00:41:42] And yeah, I have two 80 characters. This is what I could have said. But I think ballpark, I think I got close. I, I'd like to imagine, I think I was off maybe by, by by two x on the lower side. I think I took an upper bound and I might have been off by, by two x. So my quote was 4 million for LlaMA and 27 for PaLM.[00:42:01] In fact, later today I'm going to do, uh, one on Bard. So. Oh oh one bar. Oh, the exclusive is that It's four, it's 4 million for Bard two.[00:42:10] Nice. Nice. Which is like, do you think that's like, don't you think that's actually not a lot, like it's a drop in the bucket for these[00:42:17] guys. One, and one of the, the valuable things to note when you're talking about this cost is this is the cost of the final training step.[00:42:24] It's not the cost of the entire process. And a common rebuttal is, well, yeah, this is your cost of the final training process, but in total it's about 10 x this amount cost. Because you have to experiment. You have to tune hyper parameters, you have to understand different architectures, you have to experiment with different kinds of training data.[00:42:43] And sometimes you just screw it up and you don't know why. And you have, you're just spend a lot of time figuring out why you screwed it up. And that's where the actual cost buildup happens, not in the one final last step where you actually train the final model. So even assuming like a 10 x on top of this, I think is, is, is fair for how much it would actually cost a startup to build this from scratch?[00:43:03] I would say.[00:43:04] Open Source LLMs[00:43:04] How do you think about open source in this then? I think a lot of people's big 2023 predictions are an LLM, you know, open source LLM, that is comparable performance to the GPT3 model. Who foots the bill for the mistakes? You know, like when when somebody opens support request that it's not good.[00:43:25] It doesn't really cost people much outside of like a GitHub actions run as people try entering these things separately. Like do you think open source is actually bad because you're wasting so much compute by so many people trying to like do their own things and like, do you think it's better to have a centralized team that organizes these experiments or Yeah.[00:43:43] Any thoughts there? I have some thoughts. I. The most easy comparison to make is to image generation world where, you know, you had Mid Journey and Dolly come out first, and then you had Imad come out with stability, which was completely open source. But the difference there is I think stability. You can pretty much run on your machine and it's okay.[00:44:06] It works pretty fast. So it, so the entire concept of, of open sourcing, it worked and people made forks that fine tuned it on a bunch of different random things and it made variance of stability that could. A bunch of things. So I thought the stability thing, agnostic of the general ethical concerns of training on everyone's art.[00:44:25] I thought it was a cool, cool addition to the sort of trade-offs in different models that you can have in image generation for text generation. We're seeing an equivalent effect with LlaMA and alpaca, which LlaMA being, being Facebook's model, which they didn't really open source, but then the weights got leaked and then people clone them and then they tuned them using GPT4 generated synthetic data and made alpaca.[00:44:50] So the version I think that's out there is only the 7,000,000,001 and then this crazy European c plus plus God. Came and said, you know what, I'm gonna write this entire thing in c plus plus so you can actually run it locally and and not have to buy GPUs. And a combination of those. And of course a lot of people have done work in optimizing these things to make it actually function quickly.[00:45:13] And we can get into details there, but a function of all of these things has enabled people to actually. Semi-good models on their computer. I don't have that much, I don't have any comments on, you know, energy usage and all of that. I don't really have an opinion on that. I think the fact that you can run a local version of this is just really, really cool, but also supremely dangerous because with images, conceivably, people can tell what's fake and what's real, even though there, there's some concerns there as well. But for text it's, you know, like you can do a lot of really bad things with your own, you know, text generation algorithm. You know, if I wanted to make somebody's life hell, I could spam them in the most insidious ways with all sorts of different kinds of text generation indefinitely, which I, I can't really do with images.[00:46:02] I don't know. I find it somewhat ethically problematic in terms of the power is too much for an individual to wield. But there are some libertarians who are like, yeah, why should only open AI have this power? I want this power too. So there's merits to both sides of the argument. I think it's generally good for the ecosystem.[00:46:20] Generally, it will get faster and the latency will get better and the models may not ever reach the size of the cutting edge that's possible, but it could be good enough to do. 80% of the things that bigger model could do. And I think that's a really good start for innovation. I mean, you could just have people come up with stuff instead of companies, and that always unlocks a whole vector of innovation that didn't previously exist.[00:46:45] Other Modalities[00:46:45] That was a really good, conclusion. I, I, I want to ask follow up questions, but also, that was a really good place to end it. Was there any other AI topics that you wanted to[00:46:52] touch on? I think Runway ML is the one company I didn't mention and that, that one's, uh, one to look out for.[00:46:58] I think doing really cool stuff in terms of video editing with generative techniques. So people often talk about the open AI and the Googles of the world and philanthropic and clo and cohere and big journey, all the image stuff. But I think the places that people aren't paying enough attention to that will get a lot more love in the next couple of years.[00:47:19] Better whisper, so better streaming voice recognition, better t t s. So some open source version of 11 labs that people can start using. And then the frontier is sort of multi-modality and videos. Can you do anything with videos? Can you edit videos? Can you stitch things together into videos from images, all sorts of different cool stuff.[00:47:40] And then there's sort of the long tail of companies like Luma that are working on like 3D modeling with generative use cases and taking an image and creating a 3D model from nothing. And uh, that's pretty cool too, although the practical use cases to me are a little less clear. Uh, so that's kind of covers the entire space in my head at least.[00:48:00] I[00:48:00] like using the Harry Potter image, like the moving and speaking images as a end goal. I think that's something that consumers can really get behind as well. That's super cool.[00:48:09] Exam Fraud and Generated Text Detection[00:48:09] To double back a little bit before we go into the lining round, I have one more thing, which is, relevant to your personal story, but then also relevant to our debate, which is a nice blend.[00:48:18] You're concerned about the safety of everyone having access to language models and you know, the potential harm that you can do there. My guess is that you're also not that positive on watermarking. Techniques from internal languages, right? Like maybe randomly sprinkling weird characters so that people can see like that this is generated by an AI model, but also like you have some personal experience with this because you found manipulation in the Indian Exam Board, which, uh, maybe you might be a similar story.[00:48:48] I, I don't know if you like, have any thoughts about just watermarking manipulation, like, you know, ethical deployments of, of, uh,[00:48:55] generated data.[00:48:57] Well, I think those two things are a little separate. Okay. One I would say is for watermarking text data. There is a couple of different approaches. I think there is actual value to that because from a pure technical perspective, you don't want models to train on stuff they've generated.[00:49:13] That's kind of bad for models. Yes. And two is obviously you don't want people to keep using Chatt p t for i, I don't know if you want this to use it for all their assignments and never be caught. Maybe you don't. Maybe you don't. But it, it seems like it's valuable to at least understand that this is a machine generated text versus not just ethically that seems, seems like something that should exist.[00:49:33] So I do think watermarking is, is. A good direction of research and it's, and I'm fairly positive on it. I actually do think people should standardize how that water marketing works across language models so that everyone can detect and understand language models and not just, OpenAI does its own models, but not the other ones and, and so on.[00:49:51] So that's my view on that. And then, and sort of transitioning into the exam data, this is really old one, but it's one of my favorite things to talk about is I. In America, as you know. Usually the way it works is you give your, you, you take your s a t exam, uh, you take a couple of aps, you do your school grades, you apply to colleges, you do a bunch of fluff.[00:50:10] You try to prove how you're good at everything. And then you, you apply to colleges and then it's a, a weird decision based on a hundred other factors. And then they decide whether you get in or not. But if you're rich, you're basically gonna get in anyway. And if you're a legacy, you're probably gonna get in and there's a whole bunch of stuff going on.[00:50:23] And I don't think the system is necessarily bad, but it's just really complicated. And some of the things are weird in India and in a lot of the non developed world, people are like, yeah, okay, we can't scale that. There's no way we can have enough people like. Non rigorously evaluate this cuz there's gonna be too much corruption and it's gonna be terrible at the end cuz people are just gonna pay their way in.[00:50:45] So usually it works in a very simple way where you take an exam that is standardized and sometimes you have many exams, sometimes you have an exam for a different subject. Sometimes it's just one for everything. And you get ranked on that exam and depending on your rank you get to choose the quality and the kind of thing you want to study.[00:51:03] Which this, the kind of thing always surprises people in America where it's not like, oh it's glory land, where you walk in and you're like, I think this is interesting and I wanna study this. Like, no, in the most of the world it's like you're not smart enough to study this, so you're probably not gonna study it.[00:51:18] And there's like a rank order of things that you need to be smart enough to do. So it's, it's different. And therefore these exams. Much more critical for the functioning of the system. So when there's fraud, it's not like a small part of your application going wrong, it's your entire application going wrong.[00:51:36] And that's why, that's just me explaining why this is severe. Now, one such exam is the one that you take in school. There's a, it's called a board exam. You take one in the 10th grade, which doesn't really matter for much, but, and then you take one in the 12th grade when you're about to graduate and that.[00:51:53] How you, where you go to college for a large set of colleges, not all, but a large set of colleges, and based on how much you get on your top five average, you're sort of slotted into a different stream in a d in a, in a different college. And over time, because of the competition between two of the boards that are a duopoly, there's no standardization.[00:52:13] So everyone's trying to like, give more marks than the, the, the other person to attract more students into their board because oh, that means that you can then claim, oh, you're gonna get into a better college if you take our exam and don't go to a school that administers the other exam. What? So it's, and that's, that's the, everyone knew that was happening ish, but there was no data to back it.[00:52:34] But when you actually take this exam as I did, you start realizing that the numbers, the marks make no sense because you're looking at. Kid who's also in your class and you're like, dude, this guy's not smart. How did he get a 90 in English? He's not good at English. Like, you can't speak it. You cannot give him a 90.[00:52:54] You gave me a 90. How did this guy get a 90? So everyone has like their anecdotal, this doesn't make any sense me, uh, moments with, with this exam, but no one has access to the data. So way back when, what I did was I realized they have very little security surrounding the data where the only thing that you need to put in to get access is your role number.[00:53:15] And so as long as you predict the right set of role numbers, you can get everybody's results. So unlike America, also exam results aren't treated with a level of privacy. In India, it's very common to sort of the entire class's results on a bulletin board. And you just see how everyone did and you shamed the people who are stupid.[00:53:32] That's just how it works. It's changed over time, but that's fundamentally a cultural difference. And so when I scraped all these results and I published it, and I, and I did some analysis, what I found was, A couple of very insidious things. One is that in, if you plot the distribution of marks, you generally tend to see some sort of skewed, but pseudo normal distribution where it's a big peak and a, and it falls off on both ends, but you see two interesting patterns.[00:54:01] One that is just the most obvious one, which is Grace Marks, which is the pass grade is 33. You don't see nobody got between 29 and 32 because what they did for every single exam is they just made you pass. They just rounded up to 33, which is okay. I'm not that concerned about whether you give Grace Marks.[00:54:21] It's kind of messed up that you do that, but okay, fine. You want to pass a bunch of people who deserve to fail, do it. Then the other more concerning thing was between 33 and 93, right? That's about 60 numbers, 61 numbers, 30 of those numbers were just missing, as in nobody got 91 on this exam. In any subject in any year.[00:54:44] How, how does that happen? You, you don't get a 91, you don't get a 93, 89, 87, 85, 84. Some numbers were just missing. And at first when I saw this, I'm like, this is definitely some bug in my code. There's no way that, like, there's 91 never happened. And so I started, I remember I asked a bunch of my friends, I'm like, dude, did you ever get a 9 81 in anything?[00:55:06] And they're like, no. And it just unraveled that this is obviously problematic cuz that means that they're screwing with your final marks in some way or the other. Yeah. And, and they're not transparent about how they do it. Then I did, I did the same thing for the other board. We found something similar there, but not, not, not the same.[00:55:24] The problem there was, there was a huge spike at 95 and then I realized what they were doing is they'd offer various exams and to standardize, they would blanket add like a, a, a, a raw number. So if you took the harder math exam, everyone would get plus 10. Arbitrarily, no one. This is not revealed or publicized.[00:55:41] It's randomly, that was the harder exam you guys all get plus 10, but it's capped at 95. That's just this stupid way to standardize. It doesn't make any sense. Ah, um, they're not transparent about it. And it affects your entire life because yeah, this is what gets you into college. And yeah, if you add the two exams up, this is 1.1 million kids taking it every year.[00:56:02] So that's a lot of people's lives that you're screwing with by not understanding numbers and, and not being transparent about how you're manipulating them. So that was the thesis in my view, looking back on it, 10 years later, it's been 10 years at this point. I think the media never did justice to it because to be honest, nobody understands statistics.[00:56:23] So over time it became a big issue then. And then there was a big Supreme court or high court ruling, which said, Hey, you guys can't do this, but there's no transparency. So there's no way of actually ensuring that they're not doing it. They just added a, a level of password protection, so now I can't scrape it anymore.[00:56:40] And, uh, they probably do the same thing and it's probably still as bad, but people aren't. Raising an issue about it. It's really hard to make this people understand the significance of it because people are so compelled to just go lean into the narrative of exams are b******t and we should never trust ex

To stay up to date checkout thestartupproject.io & follow us on twitter: @natarajsindam Deedy & Nataraj talk about Why is there no criticism about Indian startups in Indian media? What are the insidious loops in Indian startup ecosystem? Don't forget to follow Deedy's opinions at ⁠@debarghya_das⁠! -------- Past guests of Startup Project podcast include Ali Moiz (stonks.com), Kirby Winfield (Ascend.vc), Eric Bahn (Hustle Fund), and others. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/startupproject/message

To stay up to date checkout thestartupproject.io & follow Nataraj on twitter: @natarajsindam ----- In this episode Spoke to Deedy who writes amazing twitter threads on immigration, Indian startups and more. Topic covered include: Tweet threads on Indian startups Shark Tank India vs U.S Generative AI, LLMs & Search Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon & a lot more. Don't forget to follow Deedy's opinions at @debarghya_das! ----- Past guests of Startup Project podcast include Ali Moiz (stonks.com), Kirby Winfield (Ascend.vc), Eric Bahn (Hustle Fund), and others. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startupproject/message

Deedy Das is a founding engineer at Glean, an enterprise search startup. Previously, he was a Tech Lead at Google Search working on query understanding and the sports product in New York, Tel Aviv, and Bangalore. Before that, he was an engineer at Facebook New York and graduated from Cornell University. Outside of work, Deedy writes on his blog. He published a viral resume template and his work on exposing grading flaws in the Indian education system. He also enjoys running marathons, road cycling, and playing cricket. Today we'll talk about the search projects he worked on at Google, why he left Google, his current work at Glean, and his thoughts on whether Google is doomed because of ChatGPT. If you enjoy the show, subscribe to the channel and leave a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com for more on data science. Deedy's Twitter: https://twitter.com/debarghya_das?s=20 Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu (00:00:00) Introduction (00:01:52) What is search (00:04:33) Query understanding (00:12:46) Google vs ChatGPT (00:18:24) Fixing bug for Sundar Pichai (00:27:33) Why he left google (00:30:32) How to get into search (00:34:38) Enterprise search at Glean (00:46:55) Advice for people who got laid off (00:48:41) What do search engineers do (00:51:37) How he evaluates candidates (00:53:58) Future of search (00:57:16) Why the web is declining (00:59:25) Copilot and AI-powered developer tools (01:03:46) Indian startup ecosystem (01:07:45) India vs Silicon Valley (01:09:48) How he grew 30k followers on Twitter (01:13:28) Daliana and Deedy's challenge with social media (01:19:31) Career mistakes he made

Today's guest is Deedy Das, Founding Engineer at Glean in Palo Alto, CA. Founded in 2019, Glean are on a mission to bring people the knowledge they need to make a difference in the world. Glean was founded by a seasoned team of former Google search and Facebook engineers, who wondered why we don't have an easier way of finding what we need at work. In our personal lives, we have tools to help us find pretty much whatever we need. They wondered why don't we have that at work and that was the beginning of Glean. As an engineering leader at Glean, Deedy's team works on Search & Intelligence problems which need dedicated end-to-end engineering thinking - indexing, processing, retrieval, ranking, serving, product - and power structured search (people, teams, customers, knowledge), chat search and code search. Prior to Glean, Deedy has been a Tech Lead at Google Search working on query understanding and the sports product in New York, Tel Aviv and Bangalore. Previously, he was also an engineer at Facebook in New York. In the episode, Deedy will chat about: The interesting work they do at Glean, Benefits they bring to customers compared to traditional consumer search, The day-to-day life of the engineering team, What attracted him to the company, Why Glean is a great place to work and What excites him for the future at Glean

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The extremely bright CFA, equity analyst, and investor Ryan Deedy joins Josh & Dan to discuss the magnificence of both Bitcoin the asset and Bitcoin the network. This Episode Covers: A summation of the last 100 years of economic history The risks of ignoring Bitcoin How technologies grow exponential on application layers  Zoomed in dollar strengthening and zoomed out dollar devaluation The differences between types of QE Liposuction and the cure for fat butt disease Ryan's jaw dropping BTC price prediction SHOW SPONSORS: **COINKITE** - Makers or the best Bitcoin security hardware in the world. Use PROMO CODE "BCB" for 5% off ColdCard Mk3 purchases at coinkite.com. Coinkite is the producer of the iconic ColdCard.  ColdCard is widely regarded as the MOST secure signing device in existence, and can be used by beginners all the way up to the most advanced users (The 2 of us have relied on this device for years.) If you wanna get frisky, check out the BlockClock Mini, this beauty sits on a bookshelf or hangs on the wall and displays any metric about Bitcoin you can think of.  BlockClock Mini is a lust worthy addition to any Bitcoiners home. Other Coinkite products include the OPENDIME, the SATSCARD, the TAPSIGNER, the SEEDPLATE, COLDPOWER and sweet hats. All available at coinkite.com. ColdCard Guides (ultra quick - intermediate - advanced) **LEDN** - A Bitcoin forward financial services company that has chosen to mirror and embrace the transparency, accountability, and auditability of Bitcoin itself by undergoing Proof of Reserves. Use Bitcoin as collateral and access dollar loans with Ledn Bitcoin backed loans. Harness your Bitcoin holdings to buy a new property or finance the home you already own with the upcoming Ledn Bitcoin Mortgage Product. Save Bitcoin and USDC and have access to Ledn's Dollar Loans and trading service. You can look into Ledn's well architected menu of services at Ledn.io (All products and services subject to availability & jurisdiction.)   SUPPORT THE BCB PODCAST: ⇨TIPS: strike.me/bcb (tips also open on Twitter) ⇨PODCAST 2.0 STREAMING: You can stream us fractions of a cent via Bitcoin sats on the Lightning Network!  We are live on Podcast 2.0 apps & wallets. BREEZ Wallet is a great way to get started→HERE is an easy tutorial that demonstrates exactly how to do it. ABOUT RYAN DEEDY Ryan Deedy, CFA, has spent the last 14 years working as an equity analyst in the investment management industry. He most recently worked at Millennium Management, a hedge fund, where he conducted fundamental research on the aerospace, defense, and transportation sectors. Prior to Millennium, he worked at RiverSource Investments, Manulife Investment Management and Putnam Investments, where his research coverage included the financial, technology, telecom, industrial and consumer sectors. During his time at Putnam, he spent three years in Singapore covering emerging markets. Ryan believes that many of our societal and economic issues are due to a broken monetary system and the innovation of Bitcoin is the solution to most of them. His goal is to contribute to the development and adoption of the Bitcoin ecosystem as an educator and investor. ITEMS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW: Ryan Deedy Article Page at Bitcoin Magazine TWITTER: Follow Blue Collar Bitcoin Podcast @blue_collarbtc, Follow Ryan @Ryan_Deedy EMAIL: Send us questions, comments, or feedback at bluecollarbitcoinpodcast@gmail.com

In the thirteenth episode, recorded at block #731168, hosts Turbo and Mitch talk with Eric Yakes about his book, "The 7th Property: Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution", The Federal Reserve, and going full-time Bitcoin. In this episode, they are also joined by special guest Ryan Deedy, who has spent the last 14 years working as an equity analyst at various mutual funds and hedge funds before leaving to focus all of his time to advocate for Bitcoin.Find more on Eric:Twitter - @ericyakesHis Book: The 7th Property: Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution Find more on Ryan:Twitter - @rdeedy_Resources Referenced: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale CarnegieProgramming Bitcoin by Jimmy SongGeopolitical Alpha by Marko PapicThomas Sowell's WritingThe 7th Property: Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution by Eric YakesHow the Economic Machine Works by Ray DalioTwitter Info: -@OrangePillAddix-@TurboHodl-@WittyUsername30-@kc_hodlKansas City Bitcoin MeetupKcBitcoiners.comIntro music by Coma-Media from PixabayDisclaimer: This podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as financial advice.

Carmen Deedy tells a story about riding shotgun with her embarrassing mother.

Carmen Deedy tells a family tale that begins with the memory of a delicious dessert

Carmen Deedy knows that even though parents can drive you bonkers, once they're gone you'll treasure every day you had with them. Trouble is, Carmen's mother knows it too .

Poverty and riots racked 19th-century rural England, but one eccentric Victorian cleric was convinced he had the solution – inventing a new language. Siân Rees introduces us to Reverend William Barnes, who developed a new version of English stripped of foreign words, which he was convinced would bind the nation together and return England to a state of harmony. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“What got you into AI? And what part of it really interests you about it?” — a simple question that I have asked more than 30 researchers from different backgrounds and applications on my podcasts to learn more about their motivation. Thought of compiling them into one; to whosoever, it proves to be insightful with the aim to learn more what drives researchers explore and work in the domain of Machine Learning and what got them started in it!About the Host:I am a Ph.D. student at Arizona State University, doing research on building Interpretable AI models for Medical Diagnosis.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shahjay22/You can reach out to https://www.public.asu.edu/~jgshah1/ for any queries.Stay tuned for upcoming podcasts!#machinelearning #artificialintelligence #research***Disclaimer: The information contained in this video represents the views and opinions of the speaker and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of any institution. It does not constitute an endorsement by any Institution or its affiliates of such video content.***

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Full episode with Deedy available here: https://youtu.be/Vn79br3mKZMDebarghya (Deedy) currently a Founding Engineer at a Stealth Startup is a computer science graduate from Cornell University. He has previously worked and interned at Google, Facebook and Coursera. In this podcast we talk about various computer science roles in industry: research, software engineering, product management, and doing a PhD or not.Also check-out these talks on all available podcast platforms: https://jayshah.buzzsprout.comHosted by:Jay Shah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shahjay22/You can reach out to https://www.public.asu.edu/~jgshah1/ for any queries.Stay tuned for upcoming webinars!***Disclaimer: The information contained in this video represents the views and opinions of the speaker and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of any institution. It does not constitute an endorsement by any Institution or its affiliates of such video content.***

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Do you have a favorite family recipe? On today's BITE, Carmen Deedy talks about her aunt's wonderful dessert in the story, "Rice Pudding". Sam is joined in the studio by Gene Nelson.

The little things that annoy us about our loved ones may be some of the things we miss most about them when they're gone. On today's BITE, you'll hear a story called "You're Gonna Miss Me" by Carmen Deedy. Sam is joined in the studio by Gene Nelson.

Listen to Episode 25 here!: http://traffic.libsyn.com/curiouser-and-curiouser/Grow_House_Grow_FINAL.mp3 I've wanted to have Katie as a guest on my podcast since, well, I started a podcast, and I'm so glad it's finally happening! (Full disclosure: Katie and I recorded this episode months ago, but life has been so busy lately that I've been delayed in getting it posted.) Katie: Please forgive me for the delay! (See: The “Not Right Now” Things.) Katie and I grew up in the same suburban Atlanta neighborhood, and […] The post curiouser & curiouser Podcast: Episode 25 (Katie Deedy Of Grow House Grow) appeared first on curiouser & curiouser.

Meet Mimi Majerus. She's been teaching Biblical truths for over a decade. As an Intercessor and Prophetic voice, she speaks bold confidence over insecurities, encouraging the faith of those who hear her speak. Learn more at www.MimiMajerus.com. Deedy Tripp is a speaker, author, and Bible teacher who loves sharing the truths of God's word.  Her desire is to encourage others by sharing “alive” and uplifting scriptures with them.  Learn more at www.DeedyTrip.com Beth Bingaman is a follower of Jesus Christ. She is an author and speaker called by God to teach His Word. She lives in Reading, Pa with her husband. Learn more at  https://www.bethbingaman.com. Twila Belk, author of The Power to Be: Be Still, Be Grateful, Be Strong, Be Courageous (a 40-day devotional) and six other books, is also known as the Gotta Tell Somebody Gal. She's a writer and speaker who loves braggin’ on God. Learn more at www.gottatellsomebody.com

Highlights | Transcript | Photos Ken Deedy was one of the North Country’s most passionate environmental advocates. He spent over 50 years as a seasonal resident on Grindstone Island, located along the St. Lawrence River. He was also a principal founder of the Thousand Islands Land Trust (TILT) based in Clayton, which protects water and natural resources along the […]

Matt talks with Kainoa Rudolfo and Alexander Deedy about the exciting growth of our local Hawaii Filmmakers Collective. HFC membership has exploded, as have their programs and events, that continue to expand for the exciting community of budding filmmakers in Hawaii. http://sfca.hawaii.gov/hisam/visitor-information

In the days following the Inauguration, I read The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet and instantly knew that I had to have Carmen Agra Deedy as a guest on the podcast. Born in Havana, Cuba, she came to the US as a refugee in 1964. Carmen grew up in Decatur, Georgia, where she still lives today. She has been writing books for children for over two decades and shows no signs of slowing down. Over the course of her writing career, she has been nominated and won a variety of awards.  She is beloved by parents, teachers and children alike. During our conversation, we discussed a variety of topics. I loved how open, honest, and direct she was. Her passion for story and writing shines through from the very first moments and lasted throughout our conversation. After you listen to this episode of Why I Write, I encourage you to take another few minutes to watch Carmen’s TEDxCharlottesville talk Imagine a World Without Stories. You can find out about her upcoming appearances, new books, and happenings on her website.  

Special Agent Christopher Deedy’s first murder trial begins in 2013. The stakes in the case were high. For Deedy but also for local prosecutors, who take an all-or-nothing approach to the case — placing all their chips on the table in a bid to lock Deedy up for life.

Christopher Deedy and Kollin Elderts had never met before Nov. 5, 2011, when a 3-minute brawl ended with Elderts dead and Deedy in handcuffs. How did a Native Hawaiian born in the islands and a white federal agent who’d just arrived end up on opposite sides of a gun?

Deedy, Carmen Agra. 14 COWS IN AMERICA

Deedy reads from her latest book and talks about her Cuban heritage.