Last month we came together for an evening of insightful learning and conversations in London. The event consisted of tacos from Burrito Joe (they were sensational, by the way) as we discussed ML, AI, and a new “disruptive” technology, Blockchain!
A big thank you to Appvia for hosting the space that made the night possible and the food offerings from Burrito Joe, who went above and beyond for us on the details.
Kicking off your journey into the world of machine learning
The event kicked off with the CIO of Civo, Josh Mesout, discussing how open source can be the single driving force in the development of a project. He gave an example of Facebook's LLaMa-13B model evolving into the Vicuna-13B model once the project got leaked and was publicly available to savvy AI open source specialists. This new Vicuna-13B model then began competing with Bard/ChatGPT within a week, all due to the open source community.
Enterprises are using open source more and more due to the easy process of tapping into GitHub’s freely available resources, which not only saves investment but due to the development already done for them it also saves a lot of time to get better results and performance.
AI/machine learning became all the craze in 2023, with millions of projects being launched shortly after the release of ChatGPT. With the release of all these projects came the question as to whether large investments and the outcomes were relative to each other or were they just very overpriced and not well managed.
Josh went on to talk about how Civo is enabling smaller businesses to utilize resources they would never get exposure to for a more affordable price with Civo ML. With Civo ML, we are able to tackle this issue by offering a range of solutions, such as GPU edge box, GPU instances, and fractional instances, allowing multiple users to use one GPU for their needed resources. You can find out more about Civo ML here:
- An introduction to machine learning on the cloud
- How cloud native can reduce the cost of machine learning
How Anglo America are transforming mining through Blockchain and ML
Steve Woodward, Global Head of Blockchain Strategy at Anglo America, then took to the stage to discuss all things Blockchain. This exciting new technology was revealed to the world in the form of Cryptocurrency but has since been quietly transforming various industries, including financial services, by enhancing data transfer and security measures. Steve emphasized that when Blockchain integrates into everyday operations and becomes the go-to method, it signifies a successful implementation.
Cryptocurrency was a way for the technology to be publicized, showing its potential use cases and attracting investment. The exposure allowed them to generate significant interest in a “disruptive tech” that could revolutionize current processes.
Steve showed how the application of decentralized platforms to physical assets in order to create industry solutions to current ongoing problems, such as tracking emissions from the start to the very end of the process as the tokens are exchanged at every part of the journey between different businesses that can be tracked through the blockchain. This also, in Anglo Americans instance, can help detect fraud within the chain if someone was to steal or exchange goods, you would be able to go back to the exact point a transaction was made and deal with it from there, whereas most of the time now it's hard to nail down where this occurred if no one noticed for a long time down the chain.
However, achieving this level of transparency would require collaboration and agreement between businesses to allow this tracking to continue down the chain with the exchange of these tokens via Blockchain. Driving cultural change is difficult, especially when it involves changing industry standards into a new model. Humans are naturally wary of change and prefer to do follow their typical routine.
What’s next for Disruptive Tech?
If you’re interested in joining the meetup group and attending future meetups that are being hosted around the world, check out the links and details below:
- Take a look at the Disruptive Tech meetup page.
- Find Disruptive Tech on Twitter!
Upcoming events
Join us as we kick off our first Brewing Connections Happy Hour event focused on helping founders, executives, and visionaries build meaningful connections in the London area. The first drink is on us, so grab your friends and co-workers and join us for an exciting opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals.
*Some information sourced via Atharva Lad, who shared a summary of the evening on a LinkedIn Post
