'Is ChatGPT not already smarter than most humans?'

April 5th, 2024

Interview with Rahul Sonwalkar, CEO of Julius AI

Rahul Sonwalkar CEO of Julius AI interview Spilling the digital beans on ai

As a former software engineer for Meta and a machine learning engineer for Uber, Rahul Sonwalkar's CV is definitely something to brag about. And as if to back up his dedication to AI, he has invested in today's big players Pika Labs and Perplexity AI.

With Julius he has created his own AI for data analysis and is bound to make our lives easier with clever built-in features. 'Your personal Math AI' will help you with math you just can't get your head around, and the ChatGPT Plugin ‘Chat with your Data’ will sift through data with you.

I was really curious to read what Rahul had to say about our future with AI, and he sure did not disappoint me!

The Interview

What's your job and how does it involve AI?

I'm the CEO & founder of Julius, your AI data analyst (and a whole lot more). As an AI startup founder, my job revolves around understanding and applying the most recent generative AI innovations to build a product that users love.

Which AI tool do you personally use the most?

ChatGPT/Claude

How much time do you approximately save daily by using AI tools?

~20 hours a week

Do you prefer: ChatGPT or Gemini?

Other: Claude. I recently challenged myself to stop using ChatGPT and to try out Anthropic's Claude instead. I even went so far as to create a Chrome extension that redirects from ChatGPT to Claude if I absent-mindedly find myself going to ChatGPT. So far, I haven't seen any drop-off, and in some tasks, I believe Anthropic's latest model even exceeds GPT-4.

What area should AI enthusiasts keep an eye on in the near future?

Text-to-video. OpenAI's Sora demo is incredible, and I think it'll disrupt a ton of industries once it is productized.

Any tips, tricks or hacks regarding the use of AI?

Prompt like you are speaking to a human with no context of what is going on. Don't assume the models can read your mind! We often see this with Julius — the biggest struggle is getting users to explain their tasks thoroughly, without leaving out or skipping over key details.

What AI tool should be invented for you?

An alarm clock hooked up to Large Language Models so I can talk to it when I wake up in the morning

Love or hate: Technology smarter than humans aka AGI?

Love — is ChatGPT not already smarter than most humans?

Do you believe AI will bring a bigger technological revolution than the internet?

In the long-run (ie. millennia), artificial intelligence will likely replace humanity as the dominant intelligence in the universe. So, in a way, the answer is almost certainly yes. However, if you're asking if this current set of artificial intelligence innovations — the invention of the transformer architecture and the subsequent scaling of language models — will have a greater impact on the world than the internet, I'm not as certain. Maybe it is a false signal and mostly hype, but I think it has already proven out to produce more value in everyday life than, say, crypto & web3 has.

Who'll make the race for spearheading AI in 10 years?
I believe foundational models will become commoditized, and the pie will be fairly evenly split among the "winners" of the race. In fact, some of those who capture the most value might be those who build productized layers on top of those models, even if they aren't necessarily creating most of the value they are capturing.

Is AI more of a chance or a challenge for humanity?

An opportunity, at least in the immediate future. This technology is so new — I think we'll see incredible products built over the next few months that make life easier and better in amazing ways.

About Julius AI:

Julius AI is an easy-to-use tool that makes analyzing and visualizing your data straightforward, acting as an AI for data analysis.

It's like having a smart assistant that can quickly make sense of complex information, saving you time and effort.

With Julius AI, you can chat with your data, create graphs, and even build forecasts, making it a valuable AI for data analysis for anyone looking to understand their data better without needing any coding skills.

About the interview series:

‘Spilling the digital beans on AI’ allows you to listen in on CEOs building AI tools and learn from AI enthusiasts who are already leveraging the technology every day.

Whether you are looking for tips using AI or want to take a glimpse into the future of AI with us, get the popcorn out because we translate the technical chit-chat into a language we all understand.