Episode 271: David Hardoon dissects language models

Waters Wavelength

This week, David Hardoon, group chief data and AI officer at Union Bank of the Philippines, joins Wei-Shen on the podcast to discuss language models and how they add that conversation layer to knowledge. They then unravel some of the terminologies around LLMs and the fundamentals of what firms are trying to achieve. This episode is David’s second time on the podcast. He first came on to talk about challenges with AI and what operationalizing data and AI means. https://www.waterstechnology.com/data-management/7704916/wavelength-podcast-ep-218-david-hardoon-on-ais-unforeseen-challenges 2:30 – David joins the podcast and discusses how his role revolves around data. 5:30 – He gives his view of how we view language and communicate about language. 10:30 – The necessity of specialization in the LLM space. 14:30 – What are the challenges in creating that ring-fence? 18:00 – Let’s talk about the most important question: What are we trying to achieve? 21:00 – Finding the balance between innovation and running the business. 24:30 – David walks through some use cases that will be more prevalent in the capital markets. 27:30 – How are these specialized LLMs trying to provide more context? 31:00 – A practical example of AI hallucination and the critical role that humans play in validation. 35:30 – David’s thoughts on the operationalization of AI and quantum computing.