Ride Home: Simon Willison: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
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The world’s top AI blogger and friend of every pod, Simon Willison, dropped a monster 2024 recap: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024. Brian of the excellent TechMeme Ride Home pinged us for a connection and a special crossover episode, our first in 2025.
Target Audience and Key Takeaways
The target audience for this podcast is a tech-literate, but non-technical one. You can see Simon’s notes for AI Engineers in his World’s Fair Keynote.
Timestamp
- 00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
- 01:06 State of AI in 2025
- 01:43 Advancements in AI Models
- 03:59 Cost Efficiency in AI
- 06:16 Challenges and Competition in AI
- 17:15 AI Agents and Their Limitations
- 26:12 Multimodal AI and Future Prospects
- 35:29 Exploring Video Avatar Companies
- 36:24 AI Influencers and Their Future
- 37:12 Simplifying Content Creation with AI
- 38:30 The Importance of Credibility in AI
- 41:36 The Future of LLM User Interfaces
- 48:58 Local LLMs: A Growing Interest
- 01:07:22 AI Wearables: The Next Big Thing
- 01:10:16 Wrapping Up and Final Thoughts
Transcript Highlights
[00:00:00] Introduction and Guest Welcome - Brian welcomes Simon Willison to the Tech Meme Write Home bonus episode for 2025. Simon is a go-to for many in the AI space.
[00:01:06] State of AI in 2025 - Simon discusses the advancements in AI models in 2024, highlighting their speed, cost efficiency, and multimodal capabilities.
[00:01:43] Advancements in AI Models - The discussion moves to the expectations of a step change in AI models in 2025 and the improvements seen in existing models.
[00:03:59] Cost Efficiency in AI - Simon talks about the significant drop in prices of AI models, making them more accessible and efficient to run.
[00:06:16] Challenges and Competition in AI - The conversation delves into the competition driving down prices and the impact on end users in terms of cost reduction.
