Episode 31

You're the Base, AI Is the Exponent — with Tareef Kawaf

Posit CEO Tareef Kawaf’s theory about LLMs is that they work like an exponent on whoever you already are. Greater than one and you compound. Under one and you accelerate in the wrong direction. Michael, Wes, and Hadley chat with Tareef about what that means for data science, along with John Chambers' Prime Directive, why Tareef now goes up against his own board, and the cat he waited 40 years for.

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Episode notes

Tareef Kawaf runs Posit. He also files the bug reports. In this episode, he talks about abdicating judgment to machines, standing up to his own board, being an immigrant who defined success as power and money, and what happens to a company built for a hundred years when nobody can see three years out.

  • LLMs as an exponent, and why the base is you
  • The CEO bug hunter
  • John Chambers' Prime Directive and why AI makes it matter again
  • A Kaypro 16, 128K of RAM, and an uncle in Daytona
  • The 70 percent of your job that stops being yours
  • The oud, and the cat he waited forty years for

Hosts & guests

Data Scientist and Software Engineer at Posit, PBC
Michael Chow
Hadley Wickham Headshot
Chief Scientist, Posit
Hadley Wickham
Wes McKinney Headshot
Principal Architect, Posit
Wes McKinney
Tareef Kawaf
CEO, Posit
Tareef Kawaf