20VC: Why No Models Today Will Be Used in a Year, Why Open Will Always Beat Closed in AI, Why Proprietary Data is Less Important Than Ever And Why EU AI Regulation is a Disaster with Alex Lebrun, Founder & CEO @ Nabla
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2023
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alex Lebrun is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nabla, an AI assistant for doctors. Prior to Nabla, he led engineering at Facebook AI Research. Alex founded Wit.ai, an AI platform that makes it easy to build apps that understand natural human language. Wit.ai was acquired by Facebook in 2015. Prior to Wit, Alex was the Founder and CEO of VirtuOz, the world pioneer in customer service chatbots, acquired by Nuance Communications in 2013.
In Today's Episode with Alex Lebrun We Discuss:
1. Third Time Lucky and Lessons from Zuckerberg:
- How did Alex make his way into the world of startups with the founding of his first company?
- What worked with Alex's prior companies that he has taken with him to Nabla? What did not work that he has left behind?
- What were the single biggest takeaways for Alex from working with Mark Zuckerberg? How does Mark prepare for meetings? How does Mark negotiate so well?
2. Open vs Closed:
- Why does Alex believe the winning AI models will always be open?
- Why are open models not as transparent as people think they are?
- What are the biggest downsides to both open and closed models?
- Does Alex agree with Emad @ Stability that we will have "national data sets"?
3. Incumbent vs Startup:
- Who wins in the AI race; startups or incumbents?
- How important is access to proprietary data in winning in AI today?
- How does Alex respond to many VCs who suggest so many AI startups are merely "a thin layer on top of a foundational model"? Is that a fair critique?
- Which startups are best placed to challenge incumbents? Which incumbents have been most impressive in adopting AI into existing product suites?
4. Models 101: Size, Quality, Switching Costs:
- Why will the best companies switch the models that they use often?
- Will any models in action today be used in a year?
- How important is the size of the model? How will this change with time?
- In what way is new EU regulation around models going to harm European AI companies?
5. Location Matters: Who Wins:
- When looking at China, US and Europe, who is best placed to win the AI war?
- What are the biggest challenges Europe and China face?
- Why is the US best placed to win the AI race? What does it have to overcome first?
- If Alex were a politician, what would he do to ensure his country were best positioned?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So the new regulation is a disaster. It means 100% of the LMs that were trained these last three years would be illegal in Europe. |
| 0:08.1 | It's not connected to the reality. The intent is good, but the limits it puts on how to train a model and how to operate a model makes it in practice compared to what we do today makes everything illegal. |
| 0:18.2 | Welcome back to 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and today we continue the deep dive |
| 0:22.4 | into the world of AI. |
| 0:23.5 | If you haven't listened to the shows with EMAD at Stability and Jan Lacoon, then they are a must. |
| 0:27.9 | But I'm so thrilled to follow those with this incredible discussion with Alex Lebrach, co-founder |
| 0:32.1 | and CEO at NABLA, an AI system for doctors. |
| 0:35.3 | Prior to NABler, he led engineering of Facebook AI research. |
| 0:38.9 | Alex came to Facebook through his founding of wit.a.I. |
| 0:42.2 | An AI platform that makes it easy to build apps that understand natural human language. |
| 0:47.3 | Wit.a.I was acquired by Facebook in 2015. |
| 0:50.0 | And prior to Witt, Alex was the founder and CEO of Virtuos, |
| 0:53.4 | the world pioneering customer |
| 0:54.9 | service chatboss acquired by nuanced communications in 2013. |
| 0:59.1 | I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Julianne Cordonier for the intro today, without which |
| 1:03.1 | this episode simply would not have been possible. |
| 1:05.3 | But before we dive into the show's day, this episode is brought to you by Teegas, the go-to research |
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| 1:34.1 | all on Tegas. As a 20-minute VC listener, you can try it for free at teagas.com, |
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