The TWIML AI Podcast (formerly This Week in Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence)
Machine learning and artificial intelligence are dramatically changing the way businesses operate and people live. The TWIML AI Podcast brings the top minds and ideas from the world of ML and AI to a broad and influential community of ML/AI researchers, data scientists, engineers and tech-savvy business and IT leaders. Hosted by Sam Charrington, a sought after industry analyst, speaker, commentator and thought leader. Technologies covered include machine learning, artificial intelligence, deep learning, natural language processing, neural networks, analytics, computer science, data science and
Filtered episodes(3)
- StandardSummaries onlyIs RAG Dead? Lessons from Building AI for Tax Law with Alex Bowcut
Published Jun 9, 2026
Alex BowcutAs context windows grow into the millions of tokens, many AI practitioners are questioning whether retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is still necessary. If modern models can ingest entire libraries of documents, why bother with retrieval at all? In this episode, Alex Bowcut, Head of Engineering at Sphere, explains why the answer depends on the application. Sphere uses AI to automate global tax compliance—an environment where getting the answer right isn’t enough. Every conclusion must be back
- StandardSummaries onlyRAG Risks: Why Retrieval-Augmented LLMs are Not Safer with Sebastian Gehrmann
Published May 21, 2025
Sebastian GehrmannToday, we're joined by Sebastian Gehrmann, head of responsible AI in the Office of the CTO at Bloomberg, to discuss AI safety in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems and generative AI in high-stakes domains like financial services. We explore how RAG, contrary to some expectations, can inadvertently degrade model safety. We cover examples of unsafe outputs that can emerge from these systems, different approaches to evaluating these safety risks, and the potential reasons behind this coun
- StandardSummaries onlyGenerative Benchmarking with Kelly Hong
Published Apr 23, 2025
Kelly HongIn this episode, Kelly Hong, a researcher at Chroma, joins us to discuss "Generative Benchmarking," a novel approach to evaluating retrieval systems, like RAG applications, using synthetic data. Kelly explains how traditional benchmarks like MTEB fail to represent real-world query patterns and how embedding models that perform well on public benchmarks often underperform in production. The conversation explores the two-step process of Generative Benchmarking: filtering documents to focus on rele