AI Engineers, Pendants, and Competition Between OpenAI and Developers with Swyx of Latent Space

In this episode, Nathan sits down with Swyx of Latent Space to chat about AI engineers and tools to check out, competitive dynamics between OpenAI, other foundation model providers, and developers, and if Swyx would wear an AI Horcrux. We also learn that Nathan lived in the same dorm as Mark Zuckerberg back in his college days (and was a late adopter to Facebook…). If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/cognitive Subscribe to the show Substack to join future conversations and submit questions to upcoming guests! https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/ We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. SPONSORS: Shopify | NetSuite | Omneky Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform ✅ head to NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/cognitive and download your own customized KPI checklist. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (00:00:49) AI Nathan’s intro (00:03:14) What is an AI engineer? (00:05:56) What backgrounds do AI engineers typically have? (00:15:51) Sponsors: Netsuite | Omneky (00:17:13) Swyx’s Discord AI project (00:20:41) Key tools for AI engineers (00:23:42) HumanLoop, Guardrails, Langchain (00:27:01) Criteria for identifying capable AI engineers when hiring (00:30:59) Skepticism around AI being a fad and doubts about contributing to AI (00:34:03) AI Engineer Conference speaker lineup (00:41:14) AI agents and two years to AGI (00:46:04) Expectations and disagreement around what AI agent capabilities will work soon (00:50:12) Swyx’s OpenAI thesis (00:53:03) AI safety considerations and the role of AI engineers (00:56:24) Disagreement on whether AI will soon be able to generate code pull requests (01:01:07) AI helping non-technical people to code (01:01:49) Multi-modal Chat-GPT and the future implications (01:03:33) Nathan living in the same dorm as Mark Zuckerberg (01:04:44) Competitive dynamics between OpenAI and other AI model developers (01:05:39) Play.ht vs ElevenLabs (01:09:20) The tension between platforms and developers building on top of them (01:11:40) The best thing startups can do to compete with foundation model providers (01:16:26) User identity/authentication services like Login with OpenAI (01:19:20) Google vs the other live players (01:20:46) AI Horcruxes / Pendants (01:22:05) The concept of an AI app bundle for consumers and developers