The buzz and excitement around generative AI is continuing to grow as their capabilities rapidly expand. However, their ability to generate large quantities of textual content is just the starting point. In the past few months we’ve seen an emergent reasoning capability, which coupled with their intelligent use of tools, is what will make this technology truly transformational, and could mark the start of a new technology epoch.

This talk will rapidly bring you up to speed with Generative AI, explaining how these models work, have been trained, and taking a quick look under-the-hood at their architectures. We’ll explore their capabilities and weaknesses, and the growing range of open source models. However, while the technology itself is fascinating, we’ll focus more on the practical applications. This talk will explore a range of uses, from those which are safe, and ready for mainstream adoption, to those which show great promise, but aren’t ready for prime time. We’ll also touch on some of the unsolved challenges that may mean we have to wait a little longer before we roll this out everywhere!