Multimodal AI Models on Apple Silicon with MLX with Prince Canuma - #744
Today, we're joined by Prince Canuma, an ML engineer and open-source developer focused on optimizing AI inference on Apple Silicon devices. Prince shares his journey to becoming one of the most prolific contributors to Apple’s MLX ecosystem, having published over 1,000 models and libraries that make open, multimodal AI accessible and performant on Apple devices. We explore his workflow for adapting new models in MLX, the trade-offs between the GPU and Neural Engine, and how optimization methods like pruning and quantization enhance performance. We also cover his work on "Fusion," a weight-space method for combining model behaviors without retraining, and his popular packages—MLX-Audio, MLX-Embeddings, and MLX-VLM—which streamline the use of MLX across different modalities. Finally, Prince introduces Marvis, a real-time speech-to-speech voice agent, and shares his vision for the future of AI, emphasizing the move towards "media models" that can handle multiple modalities, and more. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/744.
26 Aug 1h 10min
Genie 3: A New Frontier for World Models with Jack Parker-Holder and Shlomi Fruchter - #743
Today, we're joined by Jack Parker-Holder and Shlomi Fruchter, researchers at Google DeepMind, to discuss the recent release of Genie 3, a model capable of generating “playable” virtual worlds. We dig into the evolution of the Genie project and review the current model’s scaled-up capabilities, including creating real-time, interactive, and high-resolution environments. Jack and Shlomi share their perspectives on what defines a world model, the model's architecture, and key technical challenges and breakthroughs, including Genie 3’s visual memory and ability to handle “promptable world events.” Jack, Shlomi, and Sam share their favorite Genie 3 demos, and discuss its potential as a dynamic training environment for embodied AI agents. Finally, we will explore future directions for Genie research. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/743.
19 Aug 1h 1min
Closing the Loop Between AI Training and Inference with Lin Qiao - #742
In this episode, we're joined by Lin Qiao, CEO and co-founder of Fireworks AI. Drawing on key lessons from her time building PyTorch, Lin shares her perspective on the modern generative AI development lifecycle. She explains why aligning training and inference systems is essential for creating a seamless, fast-moving production pipeline, preventing the friction that often stalls deployment. We explore the strategic shift from treating models as commodities to viewing them as core product assets. Lin details how post-training methods, like reinforcement fine-tuning (RFT), allow teams to leverage their own proprietary data to continuously improve these assets. Lin also breaks down the complex challenge of what she calls "3D optimization"—balancing cost, latency, and quality—and emphasizes the role of clear evaluation criteria to guide this process, moving beyond unreliable methods like "vibe checking." Finally, we discuss the path toward the future of AI development: designing a closed-loop system for automated model improvement, a vision made more attainable by the exciting convergence of open and closed-source model capabilities. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/742.
12 Aug 1h 1min
Context Engineering for Productive AI Agents with Filip Kozera - #741
In this episode, Filip Kozera, founder and CEO of Wordware, explains his approach to building agentic workflows where natural language serves as the new programming interface. Filip breaks down the architecture of these "background agents," explaining how they use a reflection loop and tool-calling to execute complex tasks. He discusses the current limitations of agent protocols like MCPs and how developers can extend them to handle the required context and authority. The conversation challenges the idea that more powerful models lead to more autonomous agents, arguing instead for "graceful recovery" systems that proactively bring humans into the loop when the agent "knows what it doesn't know." We also get into the "application layer" fight, exploring how SaaS platforms are creating data silos and what this means for the future of interoperable AI agents. Filip also shares his vision for the "word artisan"—the non-technical user who can now build and manage a fleet of AI agents, fundamentally changing the nature of knowledge work. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/741.
29 Juli 46min
Infrastructure Scaling and Compound AI Systems with Jared Quincy Davis - #740
In this episode, Jared Quincy Davis, founder and CEO at Foundry, introduces the concept of "compound AI systems," which allows users to create powerful, efficient applications by composing multiple, often diverse, AI models and services. We discuss how these "networks of networks" can push the Pareto frontier, delivering results that are simultaneously faster, more accurate, and even cheaper than single-model approaches. Using examples like "laconic decoding," Jared explains the practical techniques for building these systems and the underlying principles of inference-time scaling. The conversation also delves into the critical role of co-design, where the evolution of AI algorithms and the underlying cloud infrastructure are deeply intertwined, shaping the future of agentic AI and the compute landscape. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/740.
22 Juli 1h 13min
Building Voice AI Agents That Don’t Suck with Kwindla Kramer - #739
In this episode, Kwindla Kramer, co-founder and CEO of Daily and creator of the open source Pipecat framework, joins us to discuss the architecture and challenges of building real-time, production-ready conversational voice AI. Kwin breaks down the full stack for voice agents—from the models and APIs to the critical orchestration layer that manages the complexities of multi-turn conversations. We explore why many production systems favor a modular, multi-model approach over the end-to-end models demonstrated by large AI labs, and how this impacts everything from latency and cost to observability and evaluation. Kwin also digs into the core challenges of interruption handling, turn-taking, and creating truly natural conversational dynamics, and how to overcome them. We discuss use cases, thoughts on where the technology is headed, the move toward hybrid edge-cloud pipelines, and the exciting future of real-time video avatars, and much more. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/739.
15 Juli 1h 13min
Distilling Transformers and Diffusion Models for Robust Edge Use Cases with Fatih Porikli - #738
Today, we're joined by Fatih Porikli, senior director of technology at Qualcomm AI Research for an in-depth look at several of Qualcomm's accepted papers and demos featured at this year’s CVPR conference. We start with “DiMA: Distilling Multi-modal Large Language Models for Autonomous Driving,” an end-to-end autonomous driving system that incorporates distilling large language models for structured scene understanding and safe planning motion in critical "long-tail" scenarios. We explore how DiMA utilizes LLMs' world knowledge and efficient transformer-based models to significantly reduce collision rates and trajectory errors. We then discuss “SharpDepth: Sharpening Metric Depth Predictions Using Diffusion Distillation,” a diffusion-distilled approach that combines generative models with metric depth estimation to produce sharp, accurate monocular depth maps. Additionally, Fatih also shares a look at Qualcomm’s on-device demos, including text-to-3D mesh generation, real-time image-to-video and video-to-video generation, and a multi-modal visual question-answering assistant. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/738.
9 Juli 1h
Building the Internet of Agents with Vijoy Pandey - #737
Today, we're joined by Vijoy Pandey, SVP and general manager at Outshift by Cisco to discuss a foundational challenge for the enterprise: how do we make specialized agents from different vendors collaborate effectively? As companies like Salesforce, Workday, and Microsoft all develop their own agentic systems, integrating them creates a complex, probabilistic, and noisy environment, a stark contrast to the deterministic APIs of the past. Vijoy introduces Cisco's vision for an "Internet of Agents," a platform to manage this new reality, and its open-source implementation, AGNTCY. We explore the four phases of agent collaboration—discovery, composition, deployment, and evaluation—and dive deep into the communication stack, from syntactic protocols like A2A, ACP, and MCP to the deeper semantic challenges of creating a shared understanding between agents. Vijoy also unveils SLIM (Secure Low-Latency Interactive Messaging), a novel transport layer designed to make agent-to-agent communication quantum-safe, real-time, and efficient for multi-modal workloads. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/737.
24 Juni 56min
