213 - Setting up your own chatbot with Ruggiero Lovreglio and Amir Rafe

Fire Science Show

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The AI revolution has arrived, but fire safety engineers face a critical dilemma: how to leverage powerful AI tools while protecting confidential project data.

Professor Ruggiero Rino Lovreglio from Massey University and Dr. Amir Rafe from Utah State University join us to explore the world of local Large Language Models (LLMs) - AI systems you can run privately on your own computer without sending sensitive information to the cloud. While cloud-based AI like ChatGPT raises serious privacy concerns (as Sam Altman recently admitted, user prompts could be surrendered to courts if requested), local models offer a secure alternative that doesn't compromise confidentiality.
We break down things you should know about setting up your own AI assistant: from hardware requirements and model selection to fine-tuning for fire engineering tasks. Our guests explain how even models with "just" a few billion parameters can transform your workflow while keeping your data completely private. They share their groundbreaking work developing specialized fire engineering datasets and testing these tools on real-world evacuation problems.
The conversation demystifies technical concepts like parameters, temperature settings, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), and fine-tuning - making them accessible to engineers without computer science backgrounds. Most importantly, we address why fire engineering remains resilient to AI takeover (with only a 19% risk of automation) while exploring how these tools can enhance rather than replace human expertise.
Whether you're AI-curious or AI-skeptical, this episode provides practical insights for integrating these powerful tools into your engineering practice without compromising the confidentiality that defines professional work. Download Ollama today and take your first steps toward a more efficient, AI-augmented engineering workflow that keeps your data where it belongs - on your computer.

Further reading: https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/9780784486191.034

Ollama: https://ollama.com/

Hugging face: https://huggingface.co/

Rino's Youtube with guide videos: https://www.youtube.com/@rinoandcaroline

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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

Chapters

1. The AI Revolution in Fire Engineering (00:00:00)

2. Privacy Concerns with Cloud-Based AI (00:03:22)

3. Understanding AI Models and Parameters (00:09:20)

4. Why Fire Engineering Resists AI Takeover (00:17:42)

5. Local LLMs: Running AI Privately (00:25:45)

6. Fine-Tuning Models for Specialized Tasks (00:35:49)

7. Future Integration of AI in Engineering (00:48:47)

8. Final Thoughts and Episode Wrap-up (00:58:07)

233 episodes

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