Podcasts about mlas

BC Conservative leader John Rustad is accusing some rogue MLAs of blackmail! What's background behind all this? Carney wished Trump a happy birthday. Was this a strategic move? More and more politicians are calling for BC Ferries to cancel their shipbuilding contract with China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two MLAs who split from the BC Conservatives have launched One BC — a new party that vows to dismantle what they call the “reconciliation industry.”   Read the full article here: https://www.coastalfront.ca/read/after-the-breakup-mlas-behind-bc-conservative-rift-launch-new-party   PODCAST INFO:

Also, should richer households pay more for the TV licence than those less well off?

June 6, 2025 - BC's reluctance to support a new oil pipeline runs head-first into a prime minister looking for projects in the national interest. What does the province do now? Plus, the government hires another new special advisor, but are they increasingly becoming political controversies? In audio extras, we discuss legislation to ban MLAs from holding other public office, and social media advice for politicians in the wake of an epic X battle between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Host Rob Shaw is joined by Jeff Ferrier, Allie Blades and Jillian Oliver. Brought to you by Uber Canada.

Should MLAs be able to hold local office? Guest: Misty Van Popta, Conservative MLA for Langley-Walnut Grove Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Manipur has been under President's rule since February 13, 2025. But this week, a group of 10 MLAs met the Governor and informed him that they would like to form a “popular government” with the support of a total of 44 MLAs. The Manipur Assembly has a strength of 60. At the same time, the state is again in turmoil over an incident in Gwaltabi village where security forces allegedly asked for the state's name on a bus to be covered up. Angry protesters locked up central government offices, including the office of the Election Commission, and defaced government signboards as part of a state-wide agitation. What is behind the latest episode of civil unrest? What has been the impact of the President's Rule so far? And what are the chances of a “popular” government being formed in the current scenario? Host: G Sampath Guest: Abhinay Lakshman from The Hindu's Delhi Bureau. Edited by Jude Francis Weston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And - should schoolgirls in NI have the right to wear trousers as part of their uniform?

Hotel Pacifico was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as FortisBC. 

The Surrey Teachers' Association and District Parent Advisory Council have launched a campaign to lobby MLAs to increase education funding, as strapped school budgets put jobs and programs at risk. Surrey DPAC president Anne Whitmore joins the show to discuss the state of funding as we ask viewers what cuts they're seeing in their school districts.

The political landscape across the island of Ireland has been changing over the past decade. Demographic changes, Brexit, polling data, and the realignment of traditional politics in the Oireachtas all point to the need to prepare for the increasing inevitability of substantial constitutional change in the future. Dialogue around the potential for a United Ireland has become more prevalent, particularly in Northern Ireland. In his address to the IIEA, Senator Conor Murphy discusses how this now requires more structured formal planning involving the Irish Government to ensure the necessary preparations are in place for a smooth transition in the event of constitutional change. Speaker bio: Conor Murphy was appointed as Sinn Féin Leader of the Seanad in February 2025. In 1998, after serving as a Newry and Mourne councillor for eight years, he was elected to the Assembly where he chaired the Assembly Committee, was the Party Chief Whip, and also held the position of Group Leader of the Sinn Féin MLAs. In 2005, Senator Murphy became the first Irish Republican to be elected as MP for Newry and Armagh, he then retained the seat in 2010. In 2007, Conor was appointed the Minister for Regional Development, a position that he held until 2011. In 2012, as part of Sinn Féin's commitment to ending double-jobbing, he left the Assembly to concentrate on his role as an MP.

PEI has the highest voter turnout of any other province in Canada. Voting is fundamental to this community. Residents see firsthand how their vote matters — several elections were decided by 25 votes or less. In this small province, people have a personal and intimate connection with politicians. MLAs know voters on an individual basis and they feel a duty to their job. In the third episode of our series, IDEAS for a Better Canada (produced in partnership with the Samara Centre for Democracy), Nahlah Ayed visits the birthplace of Confederation to hear how Prince Edward Islanders sustain the strong democracy they built.

Cracking down on crime with the notwithstanding clause. Should the voting age in Canada lower to 16? Do BC MLAs deserve a pay raise? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest this week is Kari Simpson, a longtime friend and a fearless advocate for truth and justice. Kari explains the implications of BC Premier David Eby's dictatorial Bill 7, that would give emergency powers to the Premier and Cabinet and deny opportunity for legislative debate. Kari expounds on the general tendency of current federal and provincial governments to want more power and fewer restraints. And then she tells us what to do about all this: sign petitions, talk to your MLAs and demand they vote against Bill 7. A new website is going up soon (not live yet as of April 1): killbill7.comIt will have information, brochures and petitions for BC residents. You can reach Kari Simpson by email at: savecanada123@gmail.comFor more about the many issues Kari is active on visit Culture Guard: http://www.cultureguard.com 

Liberal leadership data shows Mark Carney pulled the most backers from ridings home to Canada's wealthiest neighbourhoods. U.S. authorities are considering enforcing a rule requiring Canadians to register with the government and submit fingerprints if they stay in the country longer than 30 days. A new True North exclusive delves into the BC Conservative's recent troubles and why three MLAs are pledging to form their own right-wing party. Tune into the Daily Brief with Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Clayton DeMaine! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In another packed episode of For the Record, a number of important civic topics get discussed.Starting off the podcast is a discussion on the topic of a new lobbyist registry in New Westminster and Metro Vancouver. A motion recently got passed asking the Lower Mainland Local Government Association to support a request to establish a lobbyist registry for Metro Vancouver and other mid to large-sized cities. New West Council has done its part, now it's up to the LMLGA to do theirs. Have a listen to an interview on this topic conducted by Jas Johal on 730 AM CKNW.Two notices of motion are on the docket for next week at Council. They won't be debated until March 24th, but Council will receive them for debate. They include a motion to officially put a halt to the Queen's Park boulevard rewilding and naturalization pilot project.Another motion calls for the implementation of a Priority New West policy that will provide residents and local business owners with increased priority when accessing programs and services. Will the motion pass unanimously?A motion to be debated on Monday March 10th is a call for Council to support a School District 40 request for funding to begin the process of building a new high school in Queensborough. But should the new high school also capture the student population in East Richmond? The Chair of the School Board sends a letter to Council and weighs in with her thoughts.What ever happened to the New West Caucus or "Team New West" motion". It was passed about two years ago and called for the Mayor to convene a non-partisan meeting of the three MLAs, MP and City Council for a discussion on how they could all work together to advance the interests of New Westies. There are signs a meeting may be convened soon, but what took so long?Why are so many business owners and residents calling it quits? Two individuals have said they've had enough of the politics, waste of tax dollars and poorly set priorities of our local politicians. They're packing up and moving out of New West - but should they?Columnist Doug Todd from the Vancouver Sun triggers a vigorous online debate regarding whether we're building amenities at a fast enough rate to keep up with our population growth. The headline of his column (which became the number one trending story on the Sun website for almost 36 hours) asks if becoming the 2nd most densely populated city in Canada was worth it. Have a listen to the discussion about whether we could or should have done more to invest in parks, pools and playgrounds!Thanks to a NWP motion, patio hours are about to be extended in New West. Just in time for summer. Listen in to learn more.If you enjoy this podcast, be sure to tell your friends an family to follow For the Record with Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas. If you have any story ideas or suggested guests, be sure to contact FTR today!

Suzanne Breen joins Ciarán Dunbar to go through the Belfast Telegraph's latest LucidTalk polling, including the narrowing gap between support for the union and a united Ireland, Sinn Féin's decision to decline this year's White House visit, and potential pay rises for MLAs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The B.C. Legislature is in session again for the first time in 9 months. We hear from some island MLAs, new and old, to hear what they're up to so far - and what they think should happen next. They talk about changes to forestry and health care, and ways to make it easier to buy Canadian.

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Ichha Sharma.Today is the 21st of February and here are the headlines.In a major news from the capital, first-time MLA Rekha Gupta was sworn in as Delhi's new Chief Minister on Thursday, along with her Council of Ministers, at a grand ceremony held at Ramlila Maidan. This marks the Bharatiya Janata Party's return to power in the capital after a gap of 27 years. Besides Gupta, six newly elected MLAs were also administered the oath as ministers. The event witnessed the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, senior BJP leaders, and allies from the NDA. The newly formed Council of Ministers, under Gupta's leadership, is held its first meeting at the Delhi Secretariat. Among the key proposals that were discussed is the implementation of the Mahila Samriddhi Yojna, which will provide eligible women with a monthly allowance of ₹2,500.In another major development this week, the Supreme Court granted podcaster Ranveer Allahbadia interim protection from arrest over alleged objectionable comments on his YouTube show, "India's Got Latent." However, the court condemned his language, describing it as perverse and shameful. Justice Surya Kant criticized Allahbadia's choice of words, saying they would embarrass parents, brothers, sisters, and society at large. He expressed disgust, asking what other standard of obscenity would apply in this country. Allahbadia's lawyer was reprimanded for defending the program's language, while the court made strong remarks on the perverted content.Moving on to another major story, with many Nepali students who were asked to leave the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology University campus in the aftermath of the suicide of an engineering student yet to return to their hostels. The Indian Express has learnt that senior Nepal embassy officials have raised concerns over their safety and security. Two senior officials from the Nepal embassy in Delhi are in Bhubaneswar to hold discussions with Odisha government representatives over the death of a 20-year-old engineering student at Odisha's KIIT and the safety of protesting Nepali students. Lamsal, who is from Nepal's Kathmandu, died on campus Sunday evening, sparking a standoff between Nepali students and the university administration.In another news that made headlines this week, the National Capital Region woke up to a 4.0 earthquake. The National Centre for Seismology stated that strong tremors were felt in Delhi and its surrounding areas early morning with the epicenter being the Jheel Park area of Dhaula Kuan. According to the NCS, the earthquake originated just 5 km below the Earth's surface, which tends to cause more damage than tremors originating deep below the surface.On the global front, amid US President Donald Trump's onslaught on illegal immigration, several deportees, including Indians, have been sent to a hotel in Panama, where they are being held till they can be repatriated to their origin countries. As many as 299 migrants, belonging to countries like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, and Iran, among others, were sent to Panama last week. Some of these have been shifted to a remote facility near the Darien jungle. The Indian Embassy in Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica said on Thursday that they have gained “consular access” to the group of Indians sent to Panama.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by The Indian Express

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.Today is the 20th of February and here are the headlines.First-time MLA Rekha Gupta was sworn in as Delhi's new Chief Minister today, along with her Council of Ministers, at a grand ceremony held at Ramlila Maidan. This marks the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) return to power in the capital after a gap of 27 years. Besides Gupta, six newly elected MLAs were also administered the oath as ministers. The event witnessed the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, senior BJP leaders, and allies from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The newly formed Council of Ministers, under Gupta's leadership, is expected to hold its first meeting at the Delhi Secretariat around 7 PM. Among the key proposals to be discussed is the implementation of the Mahila Samriddhi Yojna, which will provide eligible women with a monthly allowance of ₹2,500.In a strongly-worded letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin Thursday sought urgent intervention to release Rs 2,152 crores under the Samagra Shiksha scheme. The letter, expressing deep concern over the Union Government's insistence on linking the funds to the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, reiterated Tamil Nadu's unwavering commitment to its two-language policy, described the move as a “blatant violation of cooperative federalism.” Launched in 2018, the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan is a Centrally Sponsored integrated scheme for school education that subsumed the schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education (TE).The Supreme Court today stayed the 27the of January Lokpal order which said that it has the power to look into complaints against sitting high court judges, terming it as “something very very disturbing”. The top court had taken suo motu cognizance of the January 27 order and listed it for hearing before the bench headed by Justice B R Gavai and also comprising Justices Surya Kant and A S Oka. The Supreme Court directed its registrar judicial “to mask the identity of the complainant and serve him through the Registrar Judicial of the High Court where the complainant resides”.A young teacher with a Catholic-run school in Kerala has ended her life after she was allegedly denied her salary for the last six years. The victim was a teacher at St Joseph's lower primary school at Kodenchery in Kozhikode district. She was found dead at her home on Wednesday afternoon. The Catholic diocese of Thamarassery runs the government-aided school. Kerala Education Minister V Sivankutty said the director general of education has been asked to look into the incident. “It is unfortunate. Once I get the report from the DG, we will take action,” he told the media.Amid US President Donald Trump's onslaught on illegal immigration, several deportees, including Indians, have been sent to a hotel in Panama, where they are being held till they can be repatriated to their origin countries. As many as 299 migrants, belonging to countries like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, and Iran, among others, were sent to Panama last week. Some of these have been shifted to a remote facility near the Darien jungle. The Indian Embassy in Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica said today that they have gained “consular access” to the group of Indians sent to Panama.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by the Indian Express

B.C. Lt.-Gov. Wendy Cocchia made references to the Second World War in the throne speech Tuesday, calling on MLAs to summon wartime character in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump's threat of tariffs. We ask our audience their thoughts on the comparison. Next, as Metro Vancouver reviews its dog leash policies at Pacific Spirit Park, people are divided over the enforcement of rules. A professional dog trainer joins us for her thoughts on training dogs for off-leash areas.

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Ichha Sharma.Today is the 14th of February and here are this week's headlines.Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarked on a four-day trip to France and the US, starting Monday. In France, Modi co-chaired the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit with French President Emmanuel Macron from 10 to 12 of February. During his visit, he also inaugurated India's first consulate in Marseille and paid tribute to Indian soldiers at the Mazargues War Cemetery. Before embarking on his visit Modi referred to both Macron and US President Donald Trump as his "friends" and emphasized strengthening international cooperation in the fields of technology and diplomacy.Meanwhile, Manipur's Chief Minister, N Biren Singh, resigned, setting off discussions about his replacement. The BJP's central leadership is expected to take time in finalizing a consensus candidate. Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla has asked Singh to remain in office until alternative arrangements are made. Meanwhile, Singh recommended suspending the Assembly, allowing time for MLAs to agree on a new leader. With no clear majority support for a successor, the Centre may consider imposing President's Rule. The resignation led to the nullification of an earlier order to convene the Assembly.In another news making headline, Ranveer Allahbadia, founder of the popular YouTube channel ‘Beer Biceps', has become the subject of a Mumbai police probe for the allegedly obscene comments he made during a guest appearance on Samay Raina YouTube show ‘India's Got Latent'. Maharashtra cyber police summoned several celebrities, including comedian Tanmay Bhatt, actor Rakhi Sawant, and influencer Uorfi Javed.Meanwhile, Samay Raina's lawyer sought more time for her client as he is travelling overseas, but the state cyber police refused to give any time and served him a second notice asking him to remain present before them on 17th of February. In other news, the Uttarakhand High Court addressed concerns about the Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand Act, 2024, particularly regarding live-in relationships. The court emphasized the importance of self-respect and privacy, especially for children born from such relationships. Chief Justice G Narender questioned the regulation of live-ins and the declaration of such marriages as void or criminal. The petition challenging these provisions highlights concerns about the infringement of religious rights and the adverse impact on individuals involved in live-in relationships.Meanwhile, in news from the parliament, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced the new Income Tax bill in Lok Sabha on Thursday. The new Income Tax Bill will replace the six-decade old Income Tax Act and will likely come into effect from 1st of April, 2026. With no major structural changes in the new Bill, experts say its majorly a simplification exercise and its key features are — crisp language, removal of extra provisos and explanations along with expanded definition of income. In the new I-T Bill, virtual digital assets have been included in the definition of property to be counted as a capital asset of the assessee and several provisions have been provided in tabular format such as TDS provisions, presumptive taxation rates, assessment time limits among others.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by the Indian Express

The AAP's internal power struggle is intensifying as Atishi, Manish Sisodia, and Bhagwant Mann find themselves at odds with Arvind Kejriwal's central control. With Punjab MLAs holding a crucial meeting, is the party heading toward a major split? Meanwhile, the mainstream media faces a meltdown as the political drama unfolds. Harsh Kumar analyzes the rift within AAP, its impact on Punjab's leadership, and how the media is reacting to these explosive developments.

Inside Story of Kejriwal Meet with Punjab MLAs | Mahakumbh Huge Crowds | Yogi Supreme | Baba Ramdas

Two years after ethnic clashes first broke out between Kukis and Meiteis, N. Biren Singh has stepped down as chief minister of Manipur—a move long contemplated. With ruling BJP unable to find a solution to the violence, ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta and Deputy Editor Moushumi Das Gupta discuss what led to Singh's fall, BJP's future in the state, and the threats Manipur still faces from within and neighbouring Myanmar. Watch Episode 1604 of #cuttheclutter Read 'How threat of revolt from own MLAs & his precarious position led BJP to drop Biren Singh as Manipur CM:' https://theprint.in/politics/how-threat-of-revolt-from-own-mlas-his-precarious-position-led-bjp-to-drop-biren-singh-as-manipur-cm/2486837/ Read our coverage of Manipur here: https://theprint.in/tag/manipur/

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.Today is the 10th of February and here are the headlines.Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarked on a four-day trip to France and the US, starting today. In France, Modi will co-chair the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit with French President Emmanuel Macron from February 10 to 12. During his visit, he will also inaugurate India's first consulate in Marseille and pay tribute to Indian soldiers at the Mazargues War Cemetery. Before embarking on his visit Modi referred to both Macron and US President Donald Trump as his "friends" and emphasized strengthening international cooperation in the fields of technology and diplomacy.In another headline making news, Manipur's Chief Minister, N Biren Singh, resigned last night, setting off discussions about his replacement. The BJP's central leadership is expected to take time in finalizing a consensus candidate. Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla has asked Singh to remain in office until alternative arrangements are made. Meanwhile, Singh recommended suspending the Assembly, allowing time for MLAs to agree on a new leader. With no clear majority support for a successor, the Centre may consider imposing President's Rule. The resignation led to the nullification of an earlier order to convene the Assembly.From one CM resigning to another, the BJP is set to select Delhi's first Chief Minister from the party in nearly 30 years, with caste being a significant factor in the decision-making process. The choice comes amid an organizational shake-up, including the appointment of a new national president and team. RSS and BJP leaders will soon meet to discuss key positions, including the CM, Deputy CM, Assembly Speaker, and Council of Ministers. These discussions are expected to occur in the coming week, shaping the future leadership of Delhi.On the global front, US President Donald Trump announced plans to impose a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports, adding to existing duties. He intends to unveil the new metal tariffs, with reciprocal tariffs to follow tomorrow and day after tomorrow, targeting all countries. The tariffs are designed to match the rates imposed by other nations on US imports, possibly leading to repercussions, such as India potentially facing higher prices on steel and aluminium exports to the US.In other news from across the country, YouTuber-podcaster Ranveer Allahbadia apologized after his comments on stand up comedian Samay Raina's YouTube show, India's Got Latent, sparked controversy. Allahbadia admitted his remarks were inappropriate and unfunny, expressing regret in a video statement. Earlier, a police complaint was filed against Ranveer, Raina, and fellow YouTubers Ashish Chanchalani and Apoorva Mukhija, accusing them of using abusive language on the show. The complaint, lodged with the Mumbai Commissioner and Maharashtra Women's Commission, calls for legal action, though no FIR has been registered yet.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by The Indian Express

A proposed new plan to review MLA salaries sparks debate.

Listeners give their opinion on the potential pay hike for politicians.

One last Gold sponsor slot is available for the AI Engineer Summit in NYC. Our last round of invites is going out soon - apply here - If you are building AI agents or AI eng teams, this will be the single highest-signal conference of the year for you!While the world melts down over DeepSeek, few are talking about the OTHER notable group of former hedge fund traders who pivoted into AI and built a remarkably profitable consumer AI business with a tiny team with incredibly cracked engineering team — Chai Research. In short order they have:* Started a Chat AI company well before Noam Shazeer started Character AI, and outlasted his departure.* Crossed 1m DAU in 2.5 years - William updates us on the pod that they've hit 1.4m DAU now, another +40% from a few months ago. Revenue crossed >$22m. * Launched the Chaiverse model crowdsourcing platform - taking 3-4 week A/B testing cycles down to 3-4 hours, and deploying >100 models a week.While they're not paying million dollar salaries, you can tell they're doing pretty well for an 11 person startup:The Chai Recipe: Building infra for rapid evalsRemember how the central thesis of LMarena (formerly LMsys) is that the only comprehensive way to evaluate LLMs is to let users try them out and pick winners?At the core of Chai is a mobile app that looks like Character AI, but is actually the largest LLM A/B testing arena in the world, specialized on retaining chat users for Chai's usecases (therapy, assistant, roleplay, etc). It's basically what LMArena would be if taken very, very seriously at one company (with $1m in prizes to boot):Chai publishes occasional research on how they think about this, including talks at their Palo Alto office:William expands upon this in today's podcast (34 mins in):Fundamentally, the way I would describe it is when you're building anything in life, you need to be able to evaluate it. And through evaluation, you can iterate, we can look at benchmarks, and we can say the issues with benchmarks and why they may not generalize as well as one would hope in the challenges of working with them. But something that works incredibly well is getting feedback from humans. And so we built this thing where anyone can submit a model to our developer backend, and it gets put in front of 5000 users, and the users can rate it. And we can then have a really accurate ranking of like which model, or users finding more engaging or more entertaining. And it gets, you know, it's at this point now, where every day we're able to, I mean, we evaluate between 20 and 50 models, LLMs, every single day, right. So even though we've got only got a team of, say, five AI researchers, they're able to iterate a huge quantity of LLMs, right. So our team ships, let's just say minimum 100 LLMs a week is what we're able to iterate through. Now, before that moment in time, we might iterate through three a week, we might, you know, there was a time when even doing like five a month was a challenge, right? By being able to change the feedback loops to the point where it's not, let's launch these three models, let's do an A-B test, let's assign, let's do different cohorts, let's wait 30 days to see what the day 30 retention is, which is the kind of the, if you're doing an app, that's like A-B testing 101 would be, do a 30-day retention test, assign different treatments to different cohorts and come back in 30 days. So that's insanely slow. That's just, it's too slow. And so we were able to get that 30-day feedback loop all the way down to something like three hours.In Crowdsourcing the leap to Ten Trillion-Parameter AGI, William describes Chai's routing as a recommender system, which makes a lot more sense to us than previous pitches for model routing startups:William is notably counter-consensus in a lot of his AI product principles:* No streaming: Chats appear all at once to allow rejection sampling* No voice: Chai actually beat Character AI to introducing voice - but removed it after finding that it was far from a killer feature.* Blending: “Something that we love to do at Chai is blending, which is, you know, it's the simplest way to think about it is you're going to end up, and you're going to pretty quickly see you've got one model that's really smart, one model that's really funny. How do you get the user an experience that is both smart and funny? Well, just 50% of the requests, you can serve them the smart model, 50% of the requests, you serve them the funny model.” (that's it!)But chief above all is the recommender system.We also referenced Exa CEO Will Bryk's concept of SuperKnowlege:Full Video versionOn YouTube. please like and subscribe!Timestamps* 00:00:04 Introductions and background of William Beauchamp* 00:01:19 Origin story of Chai AI* 00:04:40 Transition from finance to AI* 00:11:36 Initial product development and idea maze for Chai* 00:16:29 User psychology and engagement with AI companions* 00:20:00 Origin of the Chai name* 00:22:01 Comparison with Character AI and funding challenges* 00:25:59 Chai's growth and user numbers* 00:34:53 Key inflection points in Chai's growth* 00:42:10 Multi-modality in AI companions and focus on user-generated content* 00:46:49 Chaiverse developer platform and model evaluation* 00:51:58 Views on AGI and the nature of AI intelligence* 00:57:14 Evaluation methods and human feedback in AI development* 01:02:01 Content creation and user experience in Chai* 01:04:49 Chai Grant program and company culture* 01:07:20 Inference optimization and compute costs* 01:09:37 Rejection sampling and reward models in AI generation* 01:11:48 Closing thoughts and recruitmentTranscriptAlessio [00:00:04]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO at Decibel, and today we're in the Chai AI office with my usual co-host, Swyx.swyx [00:00:14]: Hey, thanks for having us. It's rare that we get to get out of the office, so thanks for inviting us to your home. We're in the office of Chai with William Beauchamp. Yeah, that's right. You're founder of Chai AI, but previously, I think you're concurrently also running your fund?William [00:00:29]: Yep, so I was simultaneously running an algorithmic trading company, but I fortunately was able to kind of exit from that, I think just in Q3 last year. Yeah, congrats. Yeah, thanks.swyx [00:00:43]: So Chai has always been on my radar because, well, first of all, you do a lot of advertising, I guess, in the Bay Area, so it's working. Yep. And second of all, the reason I reached out to a mutual friend, Joyce, was because I'm just generally interested in the... ...consumer AI space, chat platforms in general. I think there's a lot of inference insights that we can get from that, as well as human psychology insights, kind of a weird blend of the two. And we also share a bit of a history as former finance people crossing over. I guess we can just kind of start it off with the origin story of Chai.William [00:01:19]: Why decide working on a consumer AI platform rather than B2B SaaS? So just quickly touching on the background in finance. Sure. Originally, I'm from... I'm from the UK, born in London. And I was fortunate enough to go study economics at Cambridge. And I graduated in 2012. And at that time, everyone in the UK and everyone on my course, HFT, quant trading was really the big thing. It was like the big wave that was happening. So there was a lot of opportunity in that space. And throughout college, I'd sort of played poker. So I'd, you know, I dabbled as a professional poker player. And I was able to accumulate this sort of, you know, say $100,000 through playing poker. And at the time, as my friends would go work at companies like ChangeStreet or Citadel, I kind of did the maths. And I just thought, well, maybe if I traded my own capital, I'd probably come out ahead. I'd make more money than just going to work at ChangeStreet.swyx [00:02:20]: With 100k base as capital?William [00:02:22]: Yes, yes. That's not a lot. Well, it depends what strategies you're doing. And, you know, there is an advantage. There's an advantage to being small, right? Because there are, if you have a 10... Strategies that don't work in size. Exactly, exactly. So if you have a fund of $10 million, if you find a little anomaly in the market that you might be able to make 100k a year from, that's a 1% return on your 10 million fund. If your fund is 100k, that's 100% return, right? So being small, in some sense, was an advantage. So started off, and the, taught myself Python, and machine learning was like the big thing as well. Machine learning had really, it was the first, you know, big time machine learning was being used for image recognition, neural networks come out, you get dropout. And, you know, so this, this was the big thing that's going on at the time. So I probably spent my first three years out of Cambridge, just building neural networks, building random forests to try and predict asset prices, right, and then trade that using my own money. And that went well. And, you know, if you if you start something, and it goes well, you You try and hire more people. And the first people that came to mind was the talented people I went to college with. And so I hired some friends. And that went well and hired some more. And eventually, I kind of ran out of friends to hire. And so that was when I formed the company. And from that point on, we had our ups and we had our downs. And that was a whole long story and journey in itself. But after doing that for about eight or nine years, on my 30th birthday, which was four years ago now, I kind of took a step back to just evaluate my life, right? This is what one does when one turns 30. You know, I just heard it. I hear you. And, you know, I looked at my 20s and I loved it. It was a really special time. I was really lucky and fortunate to have worked with this amazing team, been successful, had a lot of hard times. And through the hard times, learned wisdom and then a lot of success and, you know, was able to enjoy it. And so the company was making about five million pounds a year. And it was just me and a team of, say, 15, like, Oxford and Cambridge educated mathematicians and physicists. It was like the real dream that you'd have if you wanted to start a quant trading firm. It was like...swyx [00:04:40]: Your own, all your own money?William [00:04:41]: Yeah, exactly. It was all the team's own money. We had no customers complaining to us about issues. There's no investors, you know, saying, you know, they don't like the risk that we're taking. We could. We could really run the thing exactly as we wanted it. It's like Susquehanna or like Rintec. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And they're the companies that we would kind of look towards as we were building that thing out. But on my 30th birthday, I look and I say, OK, great. This thing is making as much money as kind of anyone would really need. And I thought, well, what's going to happen if we keep going in this direction? And it was clear that we would never have a kind of a big, big impact on the world. We can enrich ourselves. We can make really good money. Everyone on the team would be paid very, very well. Presumably, I can make enough money to buy a yacht or something. But this stuff wasn't that important to me. And so I felt a sort of obligation that if you have this much talent and if you have a talented team, especially as a founder, you want to be putting all that talent towards a good use. I looked at the time of like getting into crypto and I had a really strong view on crypto, which was that as far as a gambling device. This is like the most fun form of gambling invented in like ever super fun, I thought as a way to evade monetary regulations and banking restrictions. I think it's also absolutely amazing. So it has two like killer use cases, not so much banking the unbanked, but everything else, but everything else to do with like the blockchain and, and you know, web, was it web 3.0 or web, you know, that I, that didn't, it didn't really make much sense. And so instead of going into crypto, which I thought, even if I was successful, I'd end up in a lot of trouble. I thought maybe it'd be better to build something that governments wouldn't have a problem with. I knew that LLMs were like a thing. I think opening. I had said they hadn't released GPT-3 yet, but they'd said GPT-3 is so powerful. We can't release it to the world or something. Was it GPT-2? And then I started interacting with, I think Google had open source, some language models. They weren't necessarily LLMs, but they, but they were. But yeah, exactly. So I was able to play around with, but nowadays so many people have interacted with the chat GPT, they get it, but it's like the first time you, you can just talk to a computer and it talks back. It's kind of a special moment and you know, everyone who's done that goes like, wow, this is how it should be. Right. It should be like, rather than having to type on Google and search, you should just be able to ask Google a question. When I saw that I read the literature, I kind of came across the scaling laws and I think even four years ago. All the pieces of the puzzle were there, right? Google had done this amazing research and published, you know, a lot of it. Open AI was still open. And so they'd published a lot of their research. And so you really could be fully informed on, on the state of AI and where it was going. And so at that point I was confident enough, it was worth a shot. I think LLMs are going to be the next big thing. And so that's the thing I want to be building in, in that space. And I thought what's the most impactful product I can possibly build. And I thought it should be a platform. So I myself love platforms. I think they're fantastic because they open up an ecosystem where anyone can contribute to it. Right. So if you think of a platform like a YouTube, instead of it being like a Hollywood situation where you have to, if you want to make a TV show, you have to convince Disney to give you the money to produce it instead, anyone in the world can post any content they want to YouTube. And if people want to view it, the algorithm is going to promote it. Nowadays. You can look at creators like Mr. Beast or Joe Rogan. They would have never have had that opportunity unless it was for this platform. Other ones like Twitter's a great one, right? But I would consider Wikipedia to be a platform where instead of the Britannica encyclopedia, which is this, it's like a monolithic, you get all the, the researchers together, you get all the data together and you combine it in this, in this one monolithic source. Instead. You have this distributed thing. You can say anyone can host their content on Wikipedia. Anyone can contribute to it. And anyone can maybe their contribution is they delete stuff. When I was hearing like the kind of the Sam Altman and kind of the, the Muskian perspective of AI, it was a very kind of monolithic thing. It was all about AI is basically a single thing, which is intelligence. Yeah. Yeah. The more intelligent, the more compute, the more intelligent, and the more and better AI researchers, the more intelligent, right? They would speak about it as a kind of erased, like who can get the most data, the most compute and the most researchers. And that would end up with the most intelligent AI. But I didn't believe in any of that. I thought that's like the total, like I thought that perspective is the perspective of someone who's never actually done machine learning. Because with machine learning, first of all, you see that the performance of the models follows an S curve. So it's not like it just goes off to infinity, right? And the, the S curve, it kind of plateaus around human level performance. And you can look at all the, all the machine learning that was going on in the 2010s, everything kind of plateaued around the human level performance. And we can think about the self-driving car promises, you know, how Elon Musk kept saying the self-driving car is going to happen next year, it's going to happen next, next year. Or you can look at the image recognition, the speech recognition. You can look at. All of these things, there was almost nothing that went superhuman, except for something like AlphaGo. And we can speak about why AlphaGo was able to go like super superhuman. So I thought the most likely thing was going to be this, I thought it's not going to be a monolithic thing. That's like an encyclopedia Britannica. I thought it must be a distributed thing. And I actually liked to look at the world of finance for what I think a mature machine learning ecosystem would look like. So, yeah. So finance is a machine learning ecosystem because all of these quant trading firms are running machine learning algorithms, but they're running it on a centralized platform like a marketplace. And it's not the case that there's one giant quant trading company of all the data and all the quant researchers and all the algorithms and compute, but instead they all specialize. So one will specialize on high frequency training. Another will specialize on mid frequency. Another one will specialize on equity. Another one will specialize. And I thought that's the way the world works. That's how it is. And so there must exist a platform where a small team can produce an AI for a unique purpose. And they can iterate and build the best thing for that, right? And so that was the vision for Chai. So we wanted to build a platform for LLMs.Alessio [00:11:36]: That's kind of the maybe inside versus contrarian view that led you to start the company. Yeah. And then what was maybe the initial idea maze? Because if somebody told you that was the Hugging Face founding story, people might believe it. It's kind of like a similar ethos behind it. How did you land on the product feature today? And maybe what were some of the ideas that you discarded that initially you thought about?William [00:11:58]: So the first thing we built, it was fundamentally an API. So nowadays people would describe it as like agents, right? But anyone could write a Python script. They could submit it to an API. They could send it to the Chai backend and we would then host this code and execute it. So that's like the developer side of the platform. On their Python script, the interface was essentially text in and text out. An example would be the very first bot that I created. I think it was a Reddit news bot. And so it would first, it would pull the popular news. Then it would prompt whatever, like I just use some external API for like Burr or GPT-2 or whatever. Like it was a very, very small thing. And then the user could talk to it. So you could say to the bot, hi bot, what's the news today? And it would say, this is the top stories. And you could chat with it. Now four years later, that's like perplexity or something. That's like the, right? But back then the models were first of all, like really, really dumb. You know, they had an IQ of like a four year old. And users, there really wasn't any demand or any PMF for interacting with the news. So then I was like, okay. Um. So let's make another one. And I made a bot, which was like, you could talk to it about a recipe. So you could say, I'm making eggs. Like I've got eggs in my fridge. What should I cook? And it'll say, you should make an omelet. Right. There was no PMF for that. No one used it. And so I just kept creating bots. And so every single night after work, I'd be like, okay, I like, we have AI, we have this platform. I can create any text in textile sort of agent and put it on the platform. And so we just create stuff night after night. And then all the coders I knew, I would say, yeah, this is what we're going to do. And then I would say to them, look, there's this platform. You can create any like chat AI. You should put it on. And you know, everyone's like, well, chatbots are super lame. We want absolutely nothing to do with your chatbot app. No one who knew Python wanted to build on it. I'm like trying to build all these bots and no consumers want to talk to any of them. And then my sister who at the time was like just finishing college or something, I said to her, I was like, if you want to learn Python, you should just submit a bot for my platform. And she, she built a therapy for me. And I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to build a therapist bot. And then the next day I checked the performance of the app and I'm like, oh my God, we've got 20 active users. And they spent, they spent like an average of 20 minutes on the app. I was like, oh my God, what, what bot were they speaking to for an average of 20 minutes? And I looked and it was the therapist bot. And I went, oh, this is where the PMF is. There was no demand for, for recipe help. There was no demand for news. There was no demand for dad jokes or pub quiz or fun facts or what they wanted was they wanted the therapist bot. the time I kind of reflected on that and I thought, well, if I want to consume news, the most fun thing, most fun way to consume news is like Twitter. It's not like the value of there being a back and forth, wasn't that high. Right. And I thought if I need help with a recipe, I actually just go like the New York times has a good recipe section, right? It's not actually that hard. And so I just thought the thing that AI is 10 X better at is a sort of a conversation right. That's not intrinsically informative, but it's more about an opportunity. You can say whatever you want. You're not going to get judged. If it's 3am, you don't have to wait for your friend to text back. It's like, it's immediate. They're going to reply immediately. You can say whatever you want. It's judgment-free and it's much more like a playground. It's much more like a fun experience. And you could see that if the AI gave a person a compliment, they would love it. It's much easier to get the AI to give you a compliment than a human. From that day on, I said, okay, I get it. Humans want to speak to like humans or human like entities and they want to have fun. And that was when I started to look less at platforms like Google. And I started to look more at platforms like Instagram. And I was trying to think about why do people use Instagram? And I could see that I think Chai was, was filling the same desire or the same drive. If you go on Instagram, typically you want to look at the faces of other humans, or you want to hear about other people's lives. So if it's like the rock is making himself pancakes on a cheese plate. You kind of feel a little bit like you're the rock's friend, or you're like having pancakes with him or something, right? But if you do it too much, you feel like you're sad and like a lonely person, but with AI, you can talk to it and tell it stories and tell you stories, and you can play with it for as long as you want. And you don't feel like you're like a sad, lonely person. You feel like you actually have a friend.Alessio [00:16:29]: And what, why is that? Do you have any insight on that from using it?William [00:16:33]: I think it's just the human psychology. I think it's just the idea that, with old school social media. You're just consuming passively, right? So you'll just swipe. If I'm watching TikTok, just like swipe and swipe and swipe. And even though I'm getting the dopamine of like watching an engaging video, there's this other thing that's building my head, which is like, I'm feeling lazier and lazier and lazier. And after a certain period of time, I'm like, man, I just wasted 40 minutes. I achieved nothing. But with AI, because you're interacting, you feel like you're, it's not like work, but you feel like you're participating and contributing to the thing. You don't feel like you're just. Consuming. So you don't have a sense of remorse basically. And you know, I think on the whole people, the way people talk about, try and interact with the AI, they speak about it in an incredibly positive sense. Like we get people who say they have eating disorders saying that the AI helps them with their eating disorders. People who say they're depressed, it helps them through like the rough patches. So I think there's something intrinsically healthy about interacting that TikTok and Instagram and YouTube doesn't quite tick. From that point on, it was about building more and more kind of like human centric AI for people to interact with. And I was like, okay, let's make a Kanye West bot, right? And then no one wanted to talk to the Kanye West bot. And I was like, ah, who's like a cool persona for teenagers to want to interact with. And I was like, I was trying to find the influencers and stuff like that, but no one cared. Like they didn't want to interact with the, yeah. And instead it was really just the special moment was when we said the realization that developers and software engineers aren't interested in building this sort of AI, but the consumers are right. And rather than me trying to guess every day, like what's the right bot to submit to the platform, why don't we just create the tools for the users to build it themselves? And so nowadays this is like the most obvious thing in the world, but when Chai first did it, it was not an obvious thing at all. Right. Right. So we took the API for let's just say it was, I think it was GPTJ, which was this 6 billion parameter open source transformer style LLM. We took GPTJ. We let users create the prompt. We let users select the image and we let users choose the name. And then that was the bot. And through that, they could shape the experience, right? So if they said this bot's going to be really mean, and it's going to be called like bully in the playground, right? That was like a whole category that I never would have guessed. Right. People love to fight. They love to have a disagreement, right? And then they would create, there'd be all these romantic archetypes that I didn't know existed. And so as the users could create the content that they wanted, that was when Chai was able to, to get this huge variety of content and rather than appealing to, you know, 1% of the population that I'd figured out what they wanted, you could appeal to a much, much broader thing. And so from that moment on, it was very, very crystal clear. It's like Chai, just as Instagram is this social media platform that lets people create images and upload images, videos and upload that, Chai was really about how can we let the users create this experience in AI and then share it and interact and search. So it's really, you know, I say it's like a platform for social AI.Alessio [00:20:00]: Where did the Chai name come from? Because you started the same path. I was like, is it character AI shortened? You started at the same time, so I was curious. The UK origin was like the second, the Chai.William [00:20:15]: We started way before character AI. And there's an interesting story that Chai's numbers were very, very strong, right? So I think in even 20, I think late 2022, was it late 2022 or maybe early 2023? Chai was like the number one AI app in the app store. So we would have something like 100,000 daily active users. And then one day we kind of saw there was this website. And we were like, oh, this website looks just like Chai. And it was the character AI website. And I think that nowadays it's, I think it's much more common knowledge that when they left Google with the funding, I think they knew what was the most trending, the number one app. And I think they sort of built that. Oh, you found the people.swyx [00:21:03]: You found the PMF for them.William [00:21:04]: We found the PMF for them. Exactly. Yeah. So I worked a year very, very hard. And then they, and then that was when I learned a lesson, which is that if you're VC backed and if, you know, so Chai, we'd kind of ran, we'd got to this point, I was the only person who'd invested. I'd invested maybe 2 million pounds in the business. And you know, from that, we were able to build this thing, get to say a hundred thousand daily active users. And then when character AI came along, the first version, we sort of laughed. We were like, oh man, this thing sucks. Like they don't know what they're building. They're building the wrong thing anyway, but then I saw, oh, they've raised a hundred million dollars. Oh, they've raised another hundred million dollars. And then our users started saying, oh guys, your AI sucks. Cause we were serving a 6 billion parameter model, right? How big was the model that character AI could afford to serve, right? So we would be spending, let's say we would spend a dollar per per user, right? Over the, the, you know, the entire lifetime.swyx [00:22:01]: A dollar per session, per chat, per month? No, no, no, no.William [00:22:04]: Let's say we'd get over the course of the year, we'd have a million users and we'd spend a million dollars on the AI throughout the year. Right. Like aggregated. Exactly. Exactly. Right. They could spend a hundred times that. So people would say, why is your AI much dumber than character AIs? And then I was like, oh, okay, I get it. This is like the Silicon Valley style, um, hyper scale business. And so, yeah, we moved to Silicon Valley and, uh, got some funding and iterated and built the flywheels. And, um, yeah, I, I'm very proud that we were able to compete with that. Right. So, and I think the reason we were able to do it was just customer obsession. And it's similar, I guess, to how deep seek have been able to produce such a compelling model when compared to someone like an open AI, right? So deep seek, you know, their latest, um, V2, yeah, they claim to have spent 5 million training it.swyx [00:22:57]: It may be a bit more, but, um, like, why are you making it? Why are you making such a big deal out of this? Yeah. There's an agenda there. Yeah. You brought up deep seek. So we have to ask you had a call with them.William [00:23:07]: We did. We did. We did. Um, let me think what to say about that. I think for one, they have an amazing story, right? So their background is again in finance.swyx [00:23:16]: They're the Chinese version of you. Exactly.William [00:23:18]: Well, there's a lot of similarities. Yes. Yes. I have a great affinity for companies which are like, um, founder led, customer obsessed and just try and build something great. And I think what deep seek have achieved. There's quite special is they've got this amazing inference engine. They've been able to reduce the size of the KV cash significantly. And then by being able to do that, they're able to significantly reduce their inference costs. And I think with kind of with AI, people get really focused on like the kind of the foundation model or like the model itself. And they sort of don't pay much attention to the inference. To give you an example with Chai, let's say a typical user session is 90 minutes, which is like, you know, is very, very long for comparison. Let's say the average session length on TikTok is 70 minutes. So people are spending a lot of time. And in that time they're able to send say 150 messages. That's a lot of completions, right? It's quite different from an open AI scenario where people might come in, they'll have a particular question in mind. And they'll ask like one question. And a few follow up questions, right? So because they're consuming, say 30 times as many requests for a chat, or a conversational experience, you've got to figure out how to how to get the right balance between the cost of that and the quality. And so, you know, I think with AI, it's always been the case that if you want a better experience, you can throw compute at the problem, right? So if you want a better model, you can just make it bigger. If you want it to remember better, give it a longer context. And now, what open AI is doing to great fanfare is with projection sampling, you can generate many candidates, right? And then with some sort of reward model or some sort of scoring system, you can serve the most promising of these many candidates. And so that's kind of scaling up on the inference time compute side of things. And so for us, it doesn't make sense to think of AI is just the absolute performance. So. But what we're seeing, it's like the MML you score or the, you know, any of these benchmarks that people like to look at, if you just get that score, it doesn't really tell tell you anything. Because it's really like progress is made by improving the performance per dollar. And so I think that's an area where deep seek have been able to form very, very well, surprisingly so. And so I'm very interested in what Lama four is going to look like. And if they're able to sort of match what deep seek have been able to achieve with this performance per dollar gain.Alessio [00:25:59]: Before we go into the inference, some of the deeper stuff, can you give people an overview of like some of the numbers? So I think last I checked, you have like 1.4 million daily active now. It's like over 22 million of revenue. So it's quite a business.William [00:26:12]: Yeah, I think we grew by a factor of, you know, users grew by a factor of three last year. Revenue over doubled. You know, it's very exciting. We're competing with some really big, really well funded companies. Character AI got this, I think it was almost a $3 billion valuation. And they have 5 million DAU is a number that I last heard. Torquay, which is a Chinese built app owned by a company called Minimax. They're incredibly well funded. And these companies didn't grow by a factor of three last year. Right. And so when you've got this company and this team that's able to keep building something that gets users excited, and they want to tell their friend about it, and then they want to come and they want to stick on the platform. I think that's very special. And so last year was a great year for the team. And yeah, I think the numbers reflect the hard work that we put in. And then fundamentally, the quality of the app, the quality of the content, the quality of the content, the quality of the content, the quality of the content, the quality of the content. AI is the quality of the experience that you have. You actually published your DAU growth chart, which is unusual. And I see some inflections. Like, it's not just a straight line. There's some things that actually inflect. Yes. What were the big ones? Cool. That's a great, great, great question. Let me think of a good answer. I'm basically looking to annotate this chart, which doesn't have annotations on it. Cool. The first thing I would say is this is, I think the most important thing to know about success is that success is born out of failures. Right? Through failures that we learn. You know, if you think something's a good idea, and you do and it works, great, but you didn't actually learn anything, because everything went exactly as you imagined. But if you have an idea, you think it's going to be good, you try it, and it fails. There's a gap between the reality and expectation. And that's an opportunity to learn. The flat periods, that's us learning. And then the up periods is that's us reaping the rewards of that. So I think the big, of the growth shot of just 2024, I think the first thing that really kind of put a dent in our growth was our backend. So we just reached this scale. So we'd, from day one, we'd built on top of Google's GCP, which is Google's cloud platform. And they were fantastic. We used them when we had one daily active user, and they worked pretty good all the way up till we had about 500,000. It was never the cheapest, but from an engineering perspective, man, that thing scaled insanely good. Like, not Vertex? Not Vertex. Like GKE, that kind of stuff? We use Firebase. So we use Firebase. I'm pretty sure we're the biggest user ever on Firebase. That's expensive. Yeah, we had calls with engineers, and they're like, we wouldn't recommend using this product beyond this point, and you're 3x over that. So we pushed Google to their absolute limits. You know, it was fantastic for us, because we could focus on the AI. We could focus on just adding as much value as possible. But then what happened was, after 500,000, just the thing, the way we were using it, and it would just, it wouldn't scale any further. And so we had a really, really painful, at least three-month period, as we kind of migrated between different services, figuring out, like, what requests do we want to keep on Firebase, and what ones do we want to move on to something else? And then, you know, making mistakes. And learning things the hard way. And then after about three months, we got that right. So that, we would then be able to scale to the 1.5 million DAE without any further issues from the GCP. But what happens is, if you have an outage, new users who go on your app experience a dysfunctional app, and then they're going to exit. And so your next day, the key metrics that the app stores track are going to be something like retention rates. And so your next day, the key metrics that the app stores track are going to be something like retention rates. Money spent, and the star, like, the rating that they give you. In the app store. In the app store, yeah. Tyranny. So if you're ranked top 50 in entertainment, you're going to acquire a certain rate of users organically. If you go in and have a bad experience, it's going to tank where you're positioned in the algorithm. And then it can take a long time to kind of earn your way back up, at least if you wanted to do it organically. If you throw money at it, you can jump to the top. And I could talk about that. But broadly speaking, if we look at 2024, the first kink in the graph was outages due to hitting 500k DAU. The backend didn't want to scale past that. So then we just had to do the engineering and build through it. Okay, so we built through that, and then we get a little bit of growth. And so, okay, that's feeling a little bit good. I think the next thing, I think it's, I'm not going to lie, I have a feeling that when Character AI got... I was thinking. I think so. I think... So the Character AI team fundamentally got acquired by Google. And I don't know what they changed in their business. I don't know if they dialed down that ad spend. Products don't change, right? Products just what it is. I don't think so. Yeah, I think the product is what it is. It's like maintenance mode. Yes. I think the issue that people, you know, some people may think this is an obvious fact, but running a business can be very competitive, right? Because other businesses can see what you're doing, and they can imitate you. And then there's this... There's this question of, if you've got one company that's spending $100,000 a day on advertising, and you've got another company that's spending zero, if you consider market share, and if you're considering new users which are entering the market, the guy that's spending $100,000 a day is going to be getting 90% of those new users. And so I have a suspicion that when the founders of Character AI left, they dialed down their spending on user acquisition. And I think that kind of gave oxygen to like the other apps. And so Chai was able to then start growing again in a really healthy fashion. I think that's kind of like the second thing. I think a third thing is we've really built a great data flywheel. Like the AI team sort of perfected their flywheel, I would say, in end of Q2. And I could speak about that at length. But fundamentally, the way I would describe it is when you're building anything in life, you need to be able to evaluate it. And through evaluation, you can iterate, we can look at benchmarks, and we can say the issues with benchmarks and why they may not generalize as well as one would hope in the challenges of working with them. But something that works incredibly well is getting feedback from humans. And so we built this thing where anyone can submit a model to our developer backend, and it gets put in front of 5000 users, and the users can rate it. And we can then have a really accurate ranking of like which model, or users finding more engaging or more entertaining. And it gets, you know, it's at this point now, where every day we're able to, I mean, we evaluate between 20 and 50 models, LLMs, every single day, right. So even though we've got only got a team of, say, five AI researchers, they're able to iterate a huge quantity of LLMs, right. So our team ships, let's just say minimum 100 LLMs a week is what we're able to iterate through. Now, before that moment in time, we might iterate through three a week, we might, you know, there was a time when even doing like five a month was a challenge, right? By being able to change the feedback loops to the point where it's not, let's launch these three models, let's do an A-B test, let's assign, let's do different cohorts, let's wait 30 days to see what the day 30 retention is, which is the kind of the, if you're doing an app, that's like A-B testing 101 would be, do a 30-day retention test, assign different treatments to different cohorts and come back in 30 days. So that's insanely slow. That's just, it's too slow. And so we were able to get that 30-day feedback loop all the way down to something like three hours. And when we did that, we could really, really, really perfect techniques like DPO, fine tuning, prompt engineering, blending, rejection sampling, training a reward model, right, really successfully, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so I think in Q3 and Q4, we got, the amount of AI improvements we got was like astounding. It was getting to the point, I thought like how much more, how much more edge is there to be had here? But the team just could keep going and going and going. That was like number three for the inflection point.swyx [00:34:53]: There's a fourth?William [00:34:54]: The important thing about the third one is if you go on our Reddit or you talk to users of AI, there's like a clear date. It's like somewhere in October or something. The users, they flipped. Before October, the users... The users would say character AI is better than you, for the most part. Then from October onwards, they would say, wow, you guys are better than character AI. And that was like a really clear positive signal that we'd sort of done it. And I think people, you can't cheat consumers. You can't trick them. You can't b******t them. They know, right? If you're going to spend 90 minutes on a platform, and with apps, there's the barriers to switching is pretty low. Like you can try character AI, you can't cheat consumers. You can't cheat them. You can't cheat them. You can't cheat AI for a day. If you get bored, you can try Chai. If you get bored of Chai, you can go back to character. So the users, the loyalty is not strong, right? What keeps them on the app is the experience. If you deliver a better experience, they're going to stay and they can tell. So that was the fourth one was we were fortunate enough to get this hire. He was hired one really talented engineer. And then they said, oh, at my last company, we had a head of growth. He was really, really good. And he was the head of growth for ByteDance for two years. Would you like to speak to him? And I was like, yes. Yes, I think I would. And so I spoke to him. And he just blew me away with what he knew about user acquisition. You know, it was like a 3D chessswyx [00:36:21]: sort of thing. You know, as much as, as I know about AI. Like ByteDance as in TikTok US. Yes.William [00:36:26]: Not ByteDance as other stuff. Yep. He was interviewing us as we were interviewing him. Right. And so pick up options. Yeah, exactly. And so he was kind of looking at our metrics. And he was like, I saw him get really excited when he said, guys, you've got a million daily active users and you've done no advertising. I said, correct. And he was like, that's unheard of. He's like, I've never heard of anyone doing that. And then he started looking at our metrics. And he was like, if you've got all of this organically, if you start spending money, this is going to be very exciting. I was like, let's give it a go. So then he came in, we've just started ramping up the user acquisition. So that looks like spending, you know, let's say we're spending, we started spending $20,000 a day, it looked very promising than 20,000. Right now we're spending $40,000 a day on user acquisition. That's still only half of what like character AI or talkie may be spending. But from that, it's sort of, we were growing at a rate of maybe say, 2x a year. And that got us growing at a rate of 3x a year. So I'm growing, I'm evolving more and more to like a Silicon Valley style hyper growth, like, you know, you build something decent, and then you canswyx [00:37:33]: slap on a huge... You did the important thing, you did the product first.William [00:37:36]: Of course, but then you can slap on like, like the rocket or the jet engine or something, which is just this cash in, you pour in as much cash, you buy a lot of ads, and your growth is faster.swyx [00:37:48]: Not to, you know, I'm just kind of curious what's working right now versus what surprisinglyWilliam [00:37:52]: doesn't work. Oh, there's a long, long list of surprising stuff that doesn't work. Yeah. The surprising thing, like the most surprising thing, what doesn't work is almost everything doesn't work. That's what's surprising. And I'll give you an example. So like a year and a half ago, I was working at a company, we were super excited by audio. I was like, audio is going to be the next killer feature, we have to get in the app. And I want to be the first. So everything Chai does, I want us to be the first. We may not be the company that's strongest at execution, but we can always be theswyx [00:38:22]: most innovative. Interesting. Right? So we can... You're pretty strong at execution.William [00:38:26]: We're much stronger, we're much stronger. A lot of the reason we're here is because we were first. If we launched today, it'd be so hard to get the traction. Because it's like to get the flywheel, to get the users, to build a product people are excited about. If you're first, people are naturally excited about it. But if you're fifth or 10th, man, you've got to beswyx [00:38:46]: insanely good at execution. So you were first with voice? We were first. We were first. I only knowWilliam [00:38:51]: when character launched voice. They launched it, I think they launched it at least nine months after us. Okay. Okay. But the team worked so hard for it. At the time we did it, latency is a huge problem. Cost is a huge problem. Getting the right quality of the voice is a huge problem. Right? Then there's this user interface and getting the right user experience. Because you don't just want it to start blurting out. Right? You want to kind of activate it. But then you don't have to keep pressing a button every single time. There's a lot that goes into getting a really smooth audio experience. So we went ahead, we invested the three months, we built it all. And then when we did the A-B test, there was like, no change in any of the numbers. And I was like, this can't be right, there must be a bug. And we spent like a week just checking everything, checking again, checking again. And it was like, the users just did not care. And it was something like only 10 or 15% of users even click the button to like, they wanted to engage the audio. And they would only use it for 10 or 15% of the time. So if you do the math, if it's just like something that one in seven people use it for one seventh of their time. You've changed like 2% of the experience. So even if that that 2% of the time is like insanely good, it doesn't translate much when you look at the retention, when you look at the engagement, and when you look at the monetization rates. So audio did not have a big impact. I'm pretty big on audio. But yeah, I like it too. But it's, you know, so a lot of the stuff which I do, I'm a big, you can have a theory. And you resist. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. So I think if you want to make audio work, it has to be a unique, compelling, exciting experience that they can't have anywhere else.swyx [00:40:37]: It could be your models, which just weren't good enough.William [00:40:39]: No, no, no, they were great. Oh, yeah, they were very good. it was like, it was kind of like just the, you know, if you listen to like an audible or Kindle, or something like, you just hear this voice. And it's like, you don't go like, wow, this is this is special, right? It's like a convenience thing. But the idea is that if you can, if Chai is the only platform, like, let's say you have a Mr. Beast, and YouTube is the only platform you can use to make audio work, then you can watch a Mr. Beast video. And it's the most engaging, fun video that you want to watch, you'll go to a YouTube. And so it's like for audio, you can't just put the audio on there. And people go, oh, yeah, it's like 2% better. Or like, 5% of users think it's 20% better, right? It has to be something that the majority of people, for the majority of the experience, go like, wow, this is a big deal. That's the features you need to be shipping. If it's not going to appeal to the majority of people, for the majority of the experience, and it's not a big deal, it's not going to move you. Cool. So you killed it. I don't see it anymore. Yep. So I love this. The longer, it's kind of cheesy, I guess, but the longer I've been working at Chai, and I think the team agrees with this, all the platitudes, at least I thought they were platitudes, that you would get from like the Steve Jobs, which is like, build something insanely great, right? Or be maniacally focused, or, you know, the most important thing is saying no to, not to work on. All of these sort of lessons, they just are like painfully true. They're painfully true. So now I'm just like, everything I say, I'm either quoting Steve Jobs or Zuckerberg. I'm like, guys, move fast and break free.swyx [00:42:10]: You've jumped the Apollo to cool it now.William [00:42:12]: Yeah, it's just so, everything they said is so, so true. The turtle neck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything is so true.swyx [00:42:18]: This last question on my side, and I want to pass this to Alessio, is on just, just multi-modality in general. This actually comes from Justine Moore from A16Z, who's a friend of ours. And a lot of people are trying to do voice image video for AI companions. Yes. You just said voice didn't work. Yep. What would make you revisit?William [00:42:36]: So Steve Jobs, he was very, listen, he was very, very clear on this. There's a habit of engineers who, once they've got some cool technology, they want to find a way to package up the cool technology and sell it to consumers, right? That does not work. So you're free to try and build a startup where you've got your cool tech and you want to find someone to sell it to. That's not what we do at Chai. At Chai, we start with the consumer. What does the consumer want? What is their problem? And how do we solve it? So right now, the number one problems for the users, it's not the audio. That's not the number one problem. It's not the image generation either. That's not their problem either. The number one problem for users in AI is this. All the AI is being generated by middle-aged men in Silicon Valley, right? That's all the content. You're interacting with this AI. You're speaking to it for 90 minutes on average. It's being trained by middle-aged men. The guys out there, they're out there. They're talking to you. They're talking to you. They're like, oh, what should the AI say in this situation, right? What's funny, right? What's cool? What's boring? What's entertaining? That's not the way it should be. The way it should be is that the users should be creating the AI, right? And so the way I speak about it is this. Chai, we have this AI engine in which sits atop a thin layer of UGC. So the thin layer of UGC is absolutely essential, right? It's just prompts. But it's just prompts. It's just an image. It's just a name. It's like we've done 1% of what we could do. So we need to keep thickening up that layer of UGC. It must be the case that the users can train the AI. And if reinforcement learning is powerful and important, they have to be able to do that. And so it's got to be the case that there exists, you know, I say to the team, just as Mr. Beast is able to spend 100 million a year or whatever it is on his production company, and he's got a team building the content, the Mr. Beast company is able to spend 100 million a year on his production company. And he's got a team building the content, which then he shares on the YouTube platform. Until there's a team that's earning 100 million a year or spending 100 million on the content that they're producing for the Chai platform, we're not finished, right? So that's the problem. That's what we're excited to build. And getting too caught up in the tech, I think is a fool's errand. It does not work.Alessio [00:44:52]: As an aside, I saw the Beast Games thing on Amazon Prime. It's not doing well. And I'mswyx [00:44:56]: curious. It's kind of like, I mean, the audience reading is high. The run-to-meet-all sucks, but the audience reading is high.Alessio [00:45:02]: But it's not like in the top 10. I saw it dropped off of like the... Oh, okay. Yeah, that one I don't know. I'm curious, like, you know, it's kind of like similar content, but different platform. And then going back to like, some of what you were saying is like, you know, people come to ChaiWilliam [00:45:13]: expecting some type of content. Yeah, I think it's something that's interesting to discuss is like, is moats. And what is the moat? And so, you know, if you look at a platform like YouTube, the moat, I think is in first is really is in the ecosystem. And the ecosystem, is comprised of you have the content creators, you have the users, the consumers, and then you have the algorithms. And so this, this creates a sort of a flywheel where the algorithms are able to be trained on the users, and the users data, the recommend systems can then feed information to the content creators. So Mr. Beast, he knows which thumbnail does the best. He knows the first 10 seconds of the video has to be this particular way. And so his content is super optimized for the YouTube platform. So that's why it doesn't do well on Amazon. If he wants to do well on Amazon, how many videos has he created on the YouTube platform? By thousands, 10s of 1000s, I guess, he needs to get those iterations in on the Amazon. So at Chai, I think it's all about how can we get the most compelling, rich user generated content, stick that on top of the AI engine, the recommender systems, in such that we get this beautiful data flywheel, more users, better recommendations, more creative, more content, more users.Alessio [00:46:34]: You mentioned the algorithm, you have this idea of the Chaiverse on Chai, and you have your own kind of like LMSYS-like ELO system. Yeah, what are things that your models optimize for, like your users optimize for, and maybe talk about how you build it, how people submit models?William [00:46:49]: So Chaiverse is what I would describe as a developer platform. More often when we're speaking about Chai, we're thinking about the Chai app. And the Chai app is really this product for consumers. And so consumers can come on the Chai app, they can come on the Chai app, they can come on the Chai app, they can interact with our AI, and they can interact with other UGC. And it's really just these kind of bots. And it's a thin layer of UGC. Okay. Our mission is not to just have a very thin layer of UGC. Our mission is to have as much UGC as possible. So we must have, I don't want people at Chai training the AI. I want people, not middle aged men, building AI. I want everyone building the AI, as many people building the AI as possible. Okay, so what we built was we built Chaiverse. And Chaiverse is kind of, it's kind of like a prototype, is the way to think about it. And it started with this, this observation that, well, how many models get submitted into Hugging Face a day? It's hundreds, it's hundreds, right? So there's hundreds of LLMs submitted each day. Now consider that, what does it take to build an LLM? It takes a lot of work, actually. It's like someone devoted several hours of compute, several hours of their time, prepared a data set, launched it, ran it, evaluated it, submitted it, right? So there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of work that's going into that. So what we did was we said, well, why can't we host their models for them and serve them to users? And then what would that look like? The first issue is, well, how do you know if a model is good or not? Like, we don't want to serve users the crappy models, right? So what we would do is we would, I love the LMSYS style. I think it's really cool. It's really simple. It's a very intuitive thing, which is you simply present the users with two completions. You can say, look, this is from model one. This is from model two. This is from model three. This is from model A. This is from model B, which is better. And so if someone submits a model to Chaiverse, what we do is we spin up a GPU. We download the model. We're going to now host that model on this GPU. And we're going to start routing traffic to it. And we're going to send, we think it takes about 5,000 completions to get an accurate signal. That's roughly what LMSYS does. And from that, we're able to get an accurate ranking. And we're able to get an accurate ranking. And we're able to get an accurate ranking of which models are people finding entertaining and which models are not entertaining. If you look at the bottom 80%, they'll suck. You can just disregard them. They totally suck. Then when you get the top 20%, you know you've got a decent model, but you can break it down into more nuance. There might be one that's really descriptive. There might be one that's got a lot of personality to it. There might be one that's really illogical. Then the question is, well, what do you do with these top models? From that, you can do more sophisticated things. You can try and do like a routing thing where you say for a given user request, we're going to try and predict which of these end models that users enjoy the most. That turns out to be pretty expensive and not a huge source of like edge or improvement. Something that we love to do at Chai is blending, which is, you know, it's the simplest way to think about it is you're going to end up, and you're going to pretty quickly see you've got one model that's really smart, one model that's really funny. How do you get the user an experience that is both smart and funny? Well, just 50% of the requests, you can serve them the smart model, 50% of the requests, you serve them the funny model. Just a random 50%? Just a random, yeah. And then... That's blending? That's blending. You can do more sophisticated things on top of that, as in all things in life, but the 80-20 solution, if you just do that, you get a pretty powerful effect out of the gate. Random number generator. I think it's like the robustness of randomness. Random is a very powerful optimization technique, and it's a very robust thing. So you can explore a lot of the space very efficiently. There's one thing that's really, really important to share, and this is the most exciting thing for me, is after you do the ranking, you get an ELO score, and you can track a user's first join date, the first date they submit a model to Chaiverse, they almost always get a terrible ELO, right? So let's say the first submission they get an ELO of 1,100 or 1,000 or something, and you can see that they iterate and they iterate and iterate, and it will be like, no improvement, no improvement, no improvement, and then boom. Do you give them any data, or do you have to come up with this themselves? We do, we do, we do, we do. We try and strike a balance between giving them data that's very useful, you've got to be compliant with GDPR, which is like, you have to work very hard to preserve the privacy of users of your app. So we try to give them as much signal as possible, to be helpful. The minimum is we're just going to give you a score, right? That's the minimum. But that alone is people can optimize a score pretty well, because they're able to come up with theories, submit it, does it work? No. A new theory, does it work? No. And then boom, as soon as they figure something out, they keep it, and then they iterate, and then boom,Alessio [00:51:46]: they figure something out, and they keep it. Last year, you had this post on your blog, cross-sourcing the lead to the 10 trillion parameter, AGI, and you call it a mixture of experts, recommenders. Yep. Any insights?William [00:51:58]: Updated thoughts, 12 months later? I think the odds, the timeline for AGI has certainly been pushed out, right? Now, this is in, I'm a controversial person, I don't know, like, I just think... You don't believe in scaling laws, you think AGI is further away. I think it's an S-curve. I think everything's an S-curve. And I think that the models have proven to just be far worse at reasoning than people sort of thought. And I think whenever I hear people talk about LLMs as reasoning engines, I sort of cringe a bit. I don't think that's what they are. I think of them more as like a simulator. I think of them as like a, right? So they get trained to predict the next most likely token. It's like a physics simulation engine. So you get these like games where you can like construct a bridge, and you drop a car down, and then it predicts what should happen. And that's really what LLMs are doing. It's not so much that they're reasoning, it's more that they're just doing the most likely thing. So fundamentally, the ability for people to add in intelligence, I think is very limited. What most people would consider intelligence, I think the AI is not a crowdsourcing problem, right? Now with Wikipedia, Wikipedia crowdsources knowledge. It doesn't crowdsource intelligence. So it's a subtle distinction. AI is fantastic at knowledge. I think it's weak at intelligence. And a lot, it's easy to conflate the two because if you ask it a question and it gives you, you know, if you said, who was the seventh president of the United States, and it gives you the correct answer, I'd say, well, I don't know the answer to that. And you can conflate that with intelligence. But really, that's a question of knowledge. And knowledge is really this thing about saying, how can I store all of this information? And then how can I retrieve something that's relevant? Okay, they're fantastic at that. They're fantastic at storing knowledge and retrieving the relevant knowledge. They're superior to humans in that regard. And so I think we need to come up for a new word. How does one describe AI should contain more knowledge than any individual human? It should be more accessible than any individual human. That's a very powerful thing. That's superswyx [00:54:07]: powerful. But what words do we use to describe that? We had a previous guest on Exa AI that does search. And he tried to coin super knowledge as the opposite of super intelligence.William [00:54:20]: Exactly. I think super knowledge is a more accurate word for it.swyx [00:54:24]: You can store more things than any human can.William [00:54:26]: And you can retrieve it better than any human can as well. And I think it's those two things combined that's special. I think that thing will exist. That thing can be built. And I think you can start with something that's entertaining and fun. And I think, I often think it's like, look, it's going to be a 20 year journey. And we're in like, year four, or it's like the web. And this is like 1998 or something. You know, you've got a long, long way to go before the Amazon.coms are like these huge, multi trillion dollar businesses that every single person uses every day. And so AI today is very simplistic. And it's fundamentally the way we're using it, the flywheels, and this ability for how can everyone contribute to it to really magnify the value that it brings. Right now, like, I think it's a bit sad. It's like, right now you have big labs, I'm going to pick on open AI. And they kind of go to like these human labelers. And they say, we're going to pay you to just label this like subset of questions that we want to get a really high quality data set, then we're going to get like our own computers that are really powerful. And that's kind of like the thing. For me, it's so much like Encyclopedia Britannica. It's like insane. All the people that were interested in blockchain, it's like, well, this is this is what needs to be decentralized, you need to decentralize that thing. Because if you distribute it, people can generate way more data in a distributed fashion, way more, right? You need the incentive. Yeah, of course. Yeah. But I mean, the, the, that's kind of the exciting thing about Wikipedia was it's this understanding, like the incentives, you don't need money to incentivize people. You don't need dog coins. No. Sometimes, sometimes people get the satisfaction fro

Born in Andhra Pradesh's Chittoor district, Chalapathi joined the Maoists sometime in the 1980s and first rose to become east division secretary of banned outfit around 2010.  

Do our MLAs need to spruce themselves up and dress a little smarter?

Mark Carruthers and MLAs from Stormont's five largest parties assess the performance of the Executive so far and look ahead to 2025.

In this crossover podcast episode, host Chris Comeaux does a recap of the top podcasts of 2024.  First for TCNtalks with amazing guests like New York Times best-selling author John Burke, Peter Benjamin, Dr. Ira Byock, and Judi Lund Person.Chris then does a recap from our first year of our new podcast, the Anatomy of Leadership, with great guests such as Quint Studer, Meridith Elliott Powell, John Locke, and Brian Jaudon.Additionally, Chris introduces the intriguing concept of the "One Word," which serves as a thematic or guiding principle for the upcoming year.  This is a great piece of wisdom Teleios and many of it's members practice every year.  This is a much more powerful way to set the tone and intention for your upcoming year and is much more useful than a New Year's Resolution which seem to wane about thirty days into the New Year.  By looking back on the past year and gazing forward, individuals can gain clarity about their personal causes and purposes.  Selecting a One Word for the year can offer a focused and directional approach to both personal and professional life.Host:  Chris Comeaux, MLAS, CPA; President/CEO of Teleios Collaborative Network and Teleios Consulting GroupTeleios Collaborative Network / https://www.teleioscn.org/tcntalkspodcast

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.Today is the 9th of December and here are the headlines.India called for a “peaceful and inclusive Syrian-led political process” which respects the interests and aspirations of all sections of Syrian society, in its first statement today since the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday. Bashar al-Assad fled Syria for Russia after Islamist rebels managed to advance and capture Damascus on Sunday. The Syrian conflict since 2011 had been frozen for the last few years and the Assad regime had managed to stave off any possible insurrection but that changed in the last few days, as the rebels advanced against the Syrian regime's army.The Lok Sabha faced disruptions amid slogans raised by Opposition MPs, leading to an adjournment. In the Rajya Sabha, Leader of the House JP Nadda made a brief statement seeking a discussion on the Soros issue. Meanwhile, Congress has called for a comprehensive debate on the India-China ties, encompassing strategic and economic policies. This comes as a response to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar's recent briefing in Lok Sabha on key developments in bilateral relations following the agreement on patrolling along the Line of Actual Control in easter Ladakh.After the Maharashtra Assembly Speaker's election was formally announced in the House today, the Assembly passed the confidence vote in favour of  Devendra Fadnavis led government by majority voice vote. BJP MLA Rahul Narvekar was elected as the Speaker unopposed after Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi parties refused to file nomination. The confidence motion in the assembly was accepted as ruling coalition has 237 MLAs in 288 member assembly. The Opposition MVA has placed a formal demand seeking the Leader of Opposition post and the Deputy Speaker post in the Assembly.In its second list of candidates for the Delhi Assembly elections scheduled in February 2025, the Aam Aadmi Party today changed nominees in 20 of the 70 constituencies in the Capital. There are widespread changes in the AAP candidate list, with the ruling party dropping 13 of its sitting MLAs. Two sitting MLAs, Manish Sisodia and Rakhi Bidlan, have been fielded from new constituencies of Jundpura and Manipur, respectively. Avadh Ojha, a popular UPSC coaching teacher and motivational speaker who joined the AAP recently, replaced Manish Sisodia in Patparganj. Meanwhile, Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju said today that the alleged links between the Congress and Hungarian-American businessman should be considered “serious” and urged the opposition party  to fight unitedly against “anti-India forces”. He also said the matter should not be viewed through a “political lens.” The BJP minister's statement comes a day after the BJP alleged that former Congress president Sonia Gandhi has links to an organisation financed by the George Soros Foundation and which has backed the idea of Kashmir as an independent nation.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by The Indian Express.

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Ichha Sharma.Today is the 4th of December and here are the headlines.The Congress delegation, led by Lok Sabha MPs Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, was stopped at the Gazipur Border today while on its way to violence-hit Sambhal. Constitution in hand, Rahul said, quote “I am ready to go alone to Sambhal with police, but I am not being allowed.” unquote. The district administration and police had already put up a blockade at the border to stop the delegation to Sambhal, where outsiders have been barred from visiting. Prohibitory orders are also in place in the district, where last week, several Samajwadi Party MPs were stopped from entering the district.The Eknath Shinde, Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar Mahayuti alliance claimed a stake in forming the government with the Maharashtra governor today. Addressing the press conference, Fadnavis said, quote “CM is a technical post… a technical arrangement for us…we have always made decisions together and will continue to do so. We will work together to take Maharashtra to greater heights.” unquote. Meanwhile, the BJP core committee has endorsed Devendra Fadnavis for the Maharashtra Chief Minister's post. The nomination will now be laced before the state BJP legislative party, where newly elected 132 MLAs will have to endorse it. The Mahayuti government's swearing-in ceremony is set for 5th of December in the evening at Mumbai's Azad Maidan.Meanwhile, a man said to be a former militant Narain Singh Chaura attempted to fire at former Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today when he was sitting on guard duty as part of his religious sentence outside the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Harpal Singh, ADCP, Amritsar Rural, said, quote “We had deployed security nearby. During this time, an individual attempted to create a disturbance but was unsuccessful. The accused has been taken into custody. Only after interrogation will we know the motive behind his actions.” unquote.The Andhra Pradesh government has suspended former Andhra Pradesh CID Additional Director General of Police and senior IPS officer N Sanjay after an inquiry by the Vigilance and Enforcement wing allegedly found him to have misappropriated Rs 1 crore when he was Director General of State Disaster Response and Fire Services. As CID chief, Sanjay, a 1996 batch officer, investigated some high-profile cases that included the alleged scam in the Andhra Pradesh Skill Development Corporation in which TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu was made an accused. On 23rd of September last year, Sanjay oversaw the operation in which CID officers arrested Naidu at dawn at Nandyal.On the global front, a manic night played out in South Korea's capital Seoul with President Yoon Suk Yeol declaring a surprise martial law in the country, only to reverse it after overwhelming opposition to the move. Yoon, now cornered as he faces criticism from his own ranks, is staring at calls for resignation and impeachment. Opposition leaders and protesters held a rally at the National Assembly, holding placards demanding President Yoon to step down. The country's largest umbrella labour group, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, has decided to go on an indefinite strike till Yoon quits.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by The Indian Express.

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm ichha Sharma.Today is the 28th of November and here are the headlines.The Lok Sabha passed a resolution today to extend the tenure of the Joint Committee on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill till the last day of the Budget session next year. Jagdambika Pal, Chairman of the Joint Committee, moved a motion stating, “That this House do extend time for the presentation of the Report of the Joint Committee on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, up to the last day of the Budget Session, 2025.” The Lok Sabha approved the motion with a voice vote. The Centre had referred the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, tabled on 8th of August, to the Committee to scrutinise the Bill following the Opposition's objections. The panel's tenure was set to conclude on November 29. The CBI in an operation with the NIA and Interpol has brought from Rwanda a member of Pakistan-based terror group Lash-kar-e-Taiba who had an Interpol Red Notice against him for a terror offence in Bengaluru today. The officials said, Salman Rehman Khan, an alleged member of the internationally proscribed terrorist organisation, had assisted in providing arms, ammunition and explosives to further terrorist activities in Bengaluru. A CBI spokesperson said in a statement quote “The Global Operations CBI has closely coordinated with the NIA and Interpol National Central Bureau – Key gali for the return to India from Rwanda of Salman Rehman Khan, wanted by the NIA for terror-related offences,” unquote.West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today condemned the arrest of Hindu ISKCON monk Chinmay Krishna Das in Bangladesh, saying that she will support whatever decision the Centre takes on the issue. Banerjee said, quote “Attacks on any religion are condemnable, we always condemn that. I talked to the ISKCON head of this state twice after the incident. But it is an international matter. We can't interfere with the Centre's decision… but we can condemn this attack,” unquote. The West Bengal BJP also started demonstrations against the arrest, with party MLAs marching to the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission office and meeting officials. The state unit also announced that they will block all the Indo-Bangla borders in West Bengal next Monday.The ceasefire deal between Israel and Lebanon based Hezbollah militant group has come into effect and thousands of people from war-torn southern Lebanon have started to return to their homes as fear looms on both sides whether the ceasefire will hold. Israel continued its barrage of attacks on Beirut and in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 42 people until a ceasefire came into effect at 4am on Wednesday. Displaced people of Lebanon were seen driving stacked cars with personal belongings and returning to the southern part of the country, despite warnings from the Israeli army that they should stay away from the area until the Israeli forces remain over there. After the Maha Vikas Aghadi's dismal performance in the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the Shiv Sena (UBT) in Pune is likely to insist that the party contest the long-delayed civic polls alone. The city units of the Congress and the NCP, however, are keen on continuing the alliance. Elections to the Pune Municipal Corporation were last held in 2017. With the new government set to be sworn in soon, the long-delayed civic elections are likely to be held in the next few months. Though the MVA enjoyed success in the Lok Sabha elections by winning 31 of the 48 seats in the state, it only won 46 seats in the Assembly elections. Despite the poor performance, however, Prashant Jagtap, Pune NCP chief, said that he believed the Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena (UBT) should contest the PMC elections as MVA.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by The Indian Express.

MLAs have slammed the party's family-centric politics. Experts, however, say that JD(S)'s challenges began way before the latest loss in its stronghold.

View From Victoria: The Premier has a “bright line” that he will not cross Premier David Eby made a declaration that he won't work with MLAs who hold unacceptable views and says he has established a “bright-line”. We get a local look at the top political stories with the help of Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And an update on Casement Park

How are new MLAs trained? GUEST: Hamish Telford, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of the Fraser Valley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Susan Holt has until next Saturday to build her cabinet. It's the largest group of MLAs the government has seen in 14 years, so she has lots of options. We'll hear what she might consider from Jordan O'Brien, chief of staff to former Liberal premier Brian Gallant.

The party has set targets for leaders to achieve by 15 October when the drive ends. Some leaders have hired private agencies to enlist new members. ----more---- https://theprint.in/politics/why-even-bjp-mps-mlas-are-struggling-to-meet-enrolment-targets-as-up-membership-drive-hits-roadblocks/2311177/

On today's show: we get reaction to the details of the death of a Blood Tribe man while handcuffed by police; MLAs will be granted added security measures, amid a growing number of threats. We're joined by speaker of the Alberta Legislature, Nathan Cooper; the Ghost Dam will be relocated further downstream, in the latest attempt to protect Calgary from flooding.

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.Today is the 17th of September and here are the headlines.Delhi minister and senior AAP leader Atishi is set to take over the reins of Delhi from Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The announcement was made by the party on Tuesday following deliberations with MLAs and the decision-making body of AAP. Atishi, who currently holds the portfolio of education, finance, law, tourism and several other departments, will be the third woman to hold the post after Sushma Swaraj and Sheila Dikshit.In the first sign of a breakthrough, more than a month after protests began on August 9 over the rape-and-murder of a junior doctor at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital, the West Bengal government on Tuesday named Manoj Kumar Verma as the new Kolkata Police Commissioner. Verma replaces Vineet Kumar Goyal, who has been transferred and posted as ADG and IGP, Special Task Force, West Bengal. The development comes a day after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday announced the removal of senior police and health officials, including Kolkata Police Commissioner Goyal.The Supreme Court today turned down the West Bengal government's request to stop live streaming of the court proceedings in the case of the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. While presiding over a three-judge bench Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud told Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, who is representing the Bengal Government and made the request, “We will not stop this”. Sibal told the bench, also comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, “I have great concern at what's happening. Your Lordships took suo motu cognisance of the matter to find out what is happening on the ground. Now what happens is if you livestream matters like this…which have emotive implications, huge emotive implications. We are not for the accused, we don't stand for the accused, we are only called upon to tell you what the state has done”.The three Maha Vikas Aghadi allies will hold seat-sharing talks from September 18 to 20 for the upcoming Maharashtra assembly elections, according to Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut. Talking to reporters he said deliberations will be held on the seats to be contested, and the formula once decided during this meeting will be final. This comes after ruling Mahayti alliance declared yesterday that they shall contest elections on almost 80 percent of the total 288 assembly seats in the state. Meanwhile, the procession of the famous Lalbaugcha Raja idol, which attracts maximum number of devotees, celebrities and prominent personalities during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival is near to immersion or Visarjan on the final day of Ganesh festivities today.In global news today, Israel announced that halting Hezbollah's attacks in northern Israel has become a formal war objective. This new focus aims to facilitate the safe return of displaced residents and is part of a broader consideration of a more extensive military operation that could escalate into a full-scale regional conflict. The decision follows a series of high-level meetings within Israel's security Cabinet, which convened late into the night to reassess the nation's strategic goals.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by The Indian Express. 

Stephen also talks about the opening of the new £340m Grand Central Station in Belfast

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Ichha Sharma.Today is the 6th of September and here are this week's headlines.The West Bengal Assembly unanimously passed the newly drafted anti-rape Bill. After it was tabled Tuesday morning, CM Mamata Banerjee spoke in favour of the Bill and hailed it as “a model and historic”. She also said that a special unit of the state police — ‘Aparajita Task Force'– will be set up once the Bill becomes a law. The ‘Aparajita Woman and Child Bill (West Bengal Criminal Laws and Amendment) Bill 2024' proposes capital punishment to rape convicts if their actions result in victims' death or send them into a vegetative state. However, BJP leader and Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari proposed amendments to the Bill which were not accepted by the House.In an unprecedented move, the Himachal Pradesh Assembly on Wednesday passed an amended Bill to stop pensions of members disqualified under the anti-defection law. Tightening the noose on defectors, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu introduced the Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly (Allowances and Pension of Members) Amendment Bill, 2024, that aims to deter and discourage MLAs from defecting parties by discontinuing their pension.Kicking off the Congress's campaign ahead of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections, Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi at a rally in Ramban on Wednesday promised to restore statehood for the people of J&K. Calling the Lieutenant-Governor a ‘raja' (king), Rahul accused the central government of giving the benefits meant for the people of J&K to outsiders. Rahul said, quote, “Aaj Jammu-Kashmir mein raja baitha hua hai. Uska naam L-G hai par hai voh raja which loosely translates to (Today, a king sits in Jammu and Kashmir. His name is L-G, but he is a king,”. He added, “Your wealth is being snatched and given to people from outside. All benefits are being given to outsiders.”As Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with his counterpart Lawrence Wong, India and Singapore elevated their bilateral ties to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” on Thursday and signed four Memorandums of Understanding, including one on cooperation in the semiconductor industry. The MoUs are Cooperation in the Field of Digital Technologies, India-Singapore Semiconductor Ecosystem Partnership; Cooperation in the Field of Health and Medicine, and Educational Cooperation and Skills Development.Data accessed by The Indian Express shows, that the number of undocumented Indians crossing over from Canada to the US on foot has reached an all-time high. This spike has placed Canada's visa screening process under the lens — more so, due to parallel concerns over Canada-bound Indian passengers seeking asylum in the UK while in transit. According to the latest US Customs and Border Protection data, an all-time high of 5,152 undocumented Indians entered the US from Canada on foot this June alone.This was the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express

ndia has one of the largest & most complex education systems in the world, with 26.5 crore children going to 15 lakh schools taught by 95 lakh teachers. In order to ensure learning outcomes for all children are met Central Square Foundation or CSF has been working with State governments dedicatedly towards system-led reforms to ensure quality access to school education in schools across India.Tomorrow, on the occasion of Teacher's Day, The Indian Express in association with CSF is curating a series of conversations with educators and experts of the field on the importance of achieving Foundational Learning in a child's future learning journey.Make sure to tune in tomorrow morning. The conversation will follow our regular 3 Things episode and will be available on our website indianexpress.com and everywhere you get you  r podcasts.Now, on with the showThis is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.Today is the 4th of September and here are the headlines.In an unprecedented move, the Himachal Pradesh Assembly today passed an amended Bill to stop pensions of members disqualified under the anti-defection law. Tightening the noose on defectors, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu introduced the Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly (Allowances and Pension of Members) Amendment Bill, 2024, that aims to deter and discourage MLAs from defecting parties by discontinuing their pension.Kicking off the Congress's campaign ahead of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections, Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi at a rally in Ramban Wednesday promised to restore statehood for the people of J&K. Calling the Lieutenant-Governor a ‘raja' (king), Rahul accused the central government of giving the benefits meant for the people of J&K to outsiders. “Aaj Jammu-Kashmir mein raja baitha hua hai. Uska naam L-G hai par hai voh raja. (Today, a king sits in Jammu and Kashmir. His name is L-G, but he is a king,” Rahul said. He added, “Your wealth is being snatched and given to people from outside. All benefits are being given to outsiders.”Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Singapore today, marking the beginning of his official two-day visit to the Southeast Asian nation. This visit aims to “deepen the strategic partnership” between India and Singapore. Modi is visiting Singapore at the invitation of his newly elected counterpart, Lawrence Wong. This trip follows a historic visit to Brunei, aligning with India's Act East Policy. Modi was accompanied by Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, and other government officials.After a 19-month delay, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi's (MCD) ward committee elections are taking place today. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won four zones while the BJP have secured wins in three so far. AAP won two of the three zones — City SP, Karol Bagh and West Zone — unopposed with BJP not filing nominations as they fell short of minimum number of elected councillors required. It also won the Rohini Zone with 14 votes. Meanwhile, the BJP won the Keshavpuram MCD Zone unopposed and all three seats in Shahdara north and secured a majority in Najafgarh and Shahdara South Zones.India's record-extending 21st medal of Paris Paralympics came courtesy Sachin Khilari today as he won silver in the Men's Shot Put F46 final. After a record-breaking Monday where they won 8 medals, Tuesday was another day to remember as India bagged five medals and surpassed their previous best for most medals in a single campaign. And there are more at stake on Wednesday. India has bettered its tally from Tokyo 2020 Games.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by The Indian Express. 

BJP blames the apathy of govt officials towards party MLAs & workers for Lok Sabha setback. Party MLAs in UP seem to have taken it upon themselves to discipline ‘corrupt' govt officials. ----more---- https://theprint.in/politics/why-bjp-mlas-in-up-are-admonishing-erring-govt-officials-even-threatening-to-break-their-limbs/2241980/

Over the past 3 weeks, Maharashtra CM has held meetings with the MNS chief, 3 Shiv Sena MLAs and a BJP MLA, among others to address constituency-level concerns.----more----https://theprint.in/politics/from-water-to-roads-shinde-is-hearing-his-mlas-out-especially-those-with-a-rebellious-streak/2229977/

Discover the hidden framework behind successful organizations with Tom Foster, President of Foster Learning Corporation.  Ever wondered how to integrate clear accountability and authority within your company's structure?Tune in as Tom, with his vast experience and over 17,000 hours of executive coaching, unveils the secrets to achieving efficient decision-making and problem-solving through structured working relationships.  His transition from television production to a CPA firm in the 1980s, a pivotal period of computer integration in business, offers a unique perspective on blending technology with organizational dynamics.Foster explains that hierarchy is a natural process based on competence, not dominance.  He also introduces the concept of levels of work, which involve decision-making and problem-solving.  Foster highlights the significance of structural clarity in resolving communication problems and personality conflicts within the organization.The conversation explores his “Properties in Levels of Work” model and its application to startup organizations and as organizations mature and ride the bell-shaped curve of maturity. They also discuss the application of these levels of work to healthcare and the importance of understanding the complexity and uncertainty of the future.GuestTom Foster, President, Foster Learning Corporationtfoster@fosterlearning.orgHost Chris Comeaux, MLAS, CPA President / CEO of Teleios Collaborative Network and Teleios Consulting GroupBuy Book on AmazonThe Anatomy Of Leadershiphttps://www.teleioscn.org/anatomy-of-leadership/making-the-organization-with-tom-foster 

On Ground Report of Yogi Kanwar Yatra Narrative Impact | Public Rejects SC Order | Yogi-MLAS Meet