Leveraging Machine Teaching to Build Autonomous Agents

Welcome to "Grounded Truth," the podcast where we bring together influential data scientists, machine learning practitioners, and innovation leaders to discuss the most relevant topics in AI. I'm John Singleton, your host, and I'm thrilled to be joined by Kence Anderson, CEO and co-founder of Composabl (https://composabl.ai/), a platform for building autonomous intelligent agents. Kence is a seasoned entrepreneur and has a wealth of experience in the AI field, including his work at Microsoft as a principal program manager for AI and research machine teaching innovation.

In this episode, we delve into the fascinating world of autonomous agents and their impact on various industries. From autonomous driving to industrial automation, we explore the challenges and advancements in human-like decision-making. Composabl's mission is to empower individuals without deep AI expertise to create intelligent agents using modular building blocks and their own subject matter expertise. Through the concept of machine teaching, users can train agents to make real-time decisions, whether it's controlling a drone, a bulldozer or even optimizing virtual processes in factories or logistics.

Joining us as well is Shayan Mohanty, co-founder and CEO of Watchful, the machine teaching platform for data-centric AI. Together, we discuss the distinct roles of perception and action in AI and how they differ. While perception involves perceiving and understanding the environment, action focuses on making decisions and taking appropriate steps. We explore the significance of supervised learning in perception tasks like computer vision and prediction, as well as its limitations in driving actionable outcomes.

To learn more from Kence Anderson, be sure to check out his latest publication, "Designing Autonomous AI: A Guide for Machine Teaching," available on O'Reilly (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-autonomous-ai/9781098110741/)  Don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and other podcast platforms.

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Reference: “Dreyfus model of skill acquisition” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition