# Will Falcon — Making Lightning the Apple of ML

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/gradient-dissent/will-falcon-making-lightning-the-apple-of-ml
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/gradient-dissent/will-falcon-making-lightning-the-apple-of-ml.md
Podcast: [Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI](https://stenobird.com/podcast/gradient-dissent)
Published: 2022-09-15T12:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://wandb.ai/site/resources/podcast
Audio file: https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/96d4ab37-2ab1-4279-8019-0e1b01b22871/GD-Will-Falcon-20v6.mp3
Processing state: failed
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/gradient-dissent/episodes/will-falcon-making-lightning-the-apple-of-ml
Duration seconds: 2721

## Resource

Will Falcon is the CEO and co-founder of Lightning AI, a platform that enables users to quickly build and publish ML models. In this episode, Will explains how Lightning addresses the challenges of a fragmented AI ecosystem and reveals which framework PyTorch Lightning was originally built upon (hint: not PyTorch!) He also shares lessons he took from his experience serving in the military and offers a recommendation to veterans who want to work in tech. Show notes (transcript and links): http://wandb.me/gd-will-falcon --- ⏳ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:00 From SEAL training to FAIR 04:17 Stress-testing Lightning 07:55 Choosing PyTorch over TensorFlow and other frameworks 13:16 Components of the Lightning platform 17:01 Launching Lightning from Facebook 19:09 Similarities between leadership and research 22:08 Lessons from the military 26:56 Scaling PyTorch Lightning to Lightning AI 33:21 Hiring the right people 35:21 The future of Lightning 39:53 Reducing algorithm complexity in self-supervised learning 42:19 A fragmented ML landscape 44:35 Outro --- Connect with Lightning 📍 Website: https://lightning.ai 📍 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LightningAI 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pytorch-lightning/ 📍 Careers: https://boards.greenhouse.io/lightningai --- 💬 Host: Lukas Biewald 📹 Producers: Riley Fields, Anish Shah, Cayla Sharp, Angelica Pan, Lavanya Shukla --- Subscribe and listen to our podcast today! 👉 Apple Podcasts: http://wandb.me/apple-podcasts​​ 👉 Google Podcasts: http://wandb.me/google-podcasts​ 👉 Spotify: http://wandb.me/spotify​

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## Transcript

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