Episode 60: 10 Things I Hate About AI Evals with Hamel Husain

Vanishing Gradients

Content provided by Hugo Bowne-Anderson. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Hugo Bowne-Anderson or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

1M ago 1:13:15

MP3•Episode home

Most AI teams find "evals" frustrating, but ML Engineer Hamel Husain argues they’re just using the wrong playbook. In this episode, he lays out a data-centric approach to systematically measure and improve AI, turning unreliable prototypes into robust, production-ready systems.

Drawing from his experience getting countless teams unstuck, Hamel explains why the solution requires a "revenge of the data scientists." He details the essential mindset shifts, error analysis techniques, and practical steps needed to move beyond guesswork and build AI products you can actually trust.

We talk through:

The 10(+1) critical mistakes that cause teams to waste time on evals
Why "hallucination scores" are a waste of time (and what to measure instead)
The manual review process that finds major issues in hours, not weeks
A step-by-step method for building LLM judges you can actually trust
How to use domain experts without getting stuck in endless review committees
Guest Bryan Bischof's "Failure as a Funnel" for debugging complex AI agents

If you're tired of ambiguous "vibe checks" and want a clear process that delivers real improvement, this episode provides the definitive roadmap.

LINKS

🎓 Learn more:

Hugo's course: Building LLM Applications for Data Scientists and Software Engineers — https://maven.com/s/course/d56067f338

62 episodes

#Tech #Hugo BowneAnderson Its #Data Science #Machine Learning