Jeetu Patel says AI took off on November 30, 2022, the date ChatGPT was launched.
“It took off in November, on November thirtieth of 2022. What was so significant about that date? That's when Chat GPT was launched.”
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Jeetu Patel
3 episodes · 62 quoted claims
Jeetu Patel describes a large language model as one that understands human language, so humans no longer have to learn the machine's language.
“a large language model was a model that actually understood human language”
Patel says modern AI models were possible because petabytes of public internet data were available for training.
“we had petabytes and petabytes of publicly available data on the internet that you could use to train these models”
Patel uses a hypothetical 1600s Amazon to argue that big innovations depend on earlier infrastructure such as the internet and logistics.
“imagine if Amazon dot com got built in the sixteen hundreds, it would be an epically failed company.”
Patel says AI requires data centers to be rebuilt, or 're-racked', with new computing, networking and cooling arrangements.
“you have to kind of rethink and reimagine, and as they call in technical terms, re rack the data centers.”
Patel predicts scientific progress will compound by roughly a thousand times because of AI.
“scientific progress will probably compound by a thousand X”
Patel recalls that Ray Kurzweil's thesis was that people living to forty would reach technology allowing indefinite life extension.
“he had written this book where his thesis at the time was if you live until you're forty, we will have the science and technology to allow us to live in perpetuity.”
Patel says he is responsible for Cisco's networking, security, data and collaboration products.
“all the products that you use from Cisco, whether it be networking products, whether it be security products, whether it be data products or collaboration products.”
Patel argues that productivity is about 10% of AI's value and that doing previously impossible things is the other roughly 90%.
“Going out and doing things you couldn't do before and solving problems you couldn't solve before in different ways that you couldn't even dream of solving before is probably going to be the ninety factor.”
Patel says 20-year-olds use AI as a brainstorming companion, unlike 28-year-olds who mainly use it for quick answers.
“A twenty year old thinks of it like a companion and a brainstorming partner, and they might actually talk to it and brainstorm with it so that they can come to an ideation.”
Patel argues that ending entry-level hiring cuts off new talent and ideas, which he calls a bad idea for companies.
“if you actually don't hire new people to come in, you have essentially given up on injection of new talent and new ideas into the thought process”
Patel calls the printing press one of the most important inventions because it passed learning between generations.
“one of the most important inventions that ever was created was a printing press.”
Patel recommends reverse mentorship, where a leader aims to learn from an intern for about half of a one-hour meeting.
“So if you're spending an hour with an intern, make sure that one of your key objectives is for thirty minutes of it, make sure you're getting something out of it, not just them.”
Patel says he entered computing because an uncle advised him the night before that he would be better suited to it than business management.
“The reason I got into computers was because some uncle told me the night before that, hey, seems like I would be better than going into business management.”
Patel's test is that something needing a PhD to explain its benefit is a hype cycle, while an instantly obvious benefit signals a megatrend.
“if it requires a PhD for someone to explain what the benefit of something is, it is a hype cycle.”
Patel says AI technology is advancing faster than organizations' ability to find tangible value from it.
“the technology is moving fast, the adoption is moving slower”
Patel says he spends from nine to midnight each night in learning mode, which AI has increased.
“I spend like from nine to midnight every night, almost in my learning mode”
Cisco became the first design partner for OpenAI's Codex coding tool, according to Jeetu Patel.
“we are the first design partner with their Codex.”
Jeetu Patel says Cisco's product range includes both long-established technologies and brand-new products built from scratch in recent months.
“Cisco, um, has a range of technologies from things that have been around for a long time and things that are kind of, you know, brand new”
Jeetu Patel predicted that in 2025 a meaningful amount of Cisco's code would be generated autonomously by AI.
“in 2025, um, you will see a pretty meaningful amount of code that'll be generated autonomously”
Jeetu Patel attributes to Sam Altman the saying that current AI is the worst it will ever be.
“Sam Altman says this quite a bit, which is this is the worst you'll ever see”
Jeetu Patel says Cisco's AI business has two parts: infrastructure to power AI and safety and security guardrails around AI.
“Cisco does a couple things with AI. The first one is we provide infrastructure to power AI. The second one is we actually provide all the safety and security guardrails around AI.”
Jeetu Patel says Cisco jailbroke the DeepSeek model within 48 hours across 50 categories of the HarmBench benchmark.
“when DeepSeek came out, it only took us forty eight hours to jailbreak the model in fifty top categories in the harm bench benchmark, right?”
Jeetu Patel reported a 100% attack success rate in Cisco's jailbreak testing of DeepSeek.
“And that attack success rate of 100% is very disturbing, um, because that's one time it's not good.”
Jeetu Patel recommends validating AI models through automated red teaming, meaning algorithmic attack testing, rather than human-only testing.
“you need to make sure that you validate these models through an algorithmic process of red teaming rather than a human process.”
Jeetu Patel says traditional applications had infrastructure, data, business-logic and presentation tiers, and AI adds a model layer on top.
“It used to be that you had an infrastructure tier, a data tier, and some kind of an application, a business logic tier, and, of course, the presentation tier.”
Jeetu Patel says he spends two to three hours every evening learning topics with AI.
“Every night, two to three hours, every evening, I sit down and anything that I is a topic that I'm curious about”
Jeetu Patel says Cisco has thousands of products across many markets, and he used AI research to learn them when he took the product role.
“Cisco has thousands of products, and you know, we are in so many different markets, it's impossible for any one person to know all the markets so well.”
Jeetu Patel says Cisco's chief customer officer, Liz Centoni, is using AI internally to improve the customer experience.
“our chief, um, you know, customer officer, Liz Centoni, she's using AI quite effectively internally”
Jeetu Patel says he travels 42 to 44 weeks a year to meet customers, partners, suppliers and employees.
“I travel forty two weeks, forty three, forty four weeks a year”
Jeetu Patel says Cisco recently met its global customer advisory board in Ireland and showed them planned licensing simplifications.
“we were in Ireland just recently with our global customer advisory board, and, um, we walked them through, you know, some innovations that we're doing on the licensing side”
Jeetu Patel says Cisco launched its own security-focused AI model that is a fraction of the size of a large language model and can run on a single GPU.
“we launched our own security model that is a fraction of the size of a large language model, uh, and it actually can run one one 100 GPU.”
Jeetu Patel claims the supply of publicly available training data has been used up, while enterprises hold about 150 times more private data.
“we are currently out of publicly available data to train the models.”
Jeetu Patel says Cisco's service provider business is recovering after a slow period, helped by AI demand.
“our service provider business, we are starting to see, uh, in a really healthy state all of a sudden again because of AI”
Jeetu Patel says the industry is moving toward a common security and safety layer applied across models, applications and agents.
“Today, what's happening is you're gonna get this common substrate of security and safety that can be applied to these models”
Jeetu Patel describes agentic AI as a coordinator agent splitting a job among multiple agents that reconcile disagreements before a human reviews the result.
“that coordinator agent might actually spin off multiple agents underneath them that say, go get this job done.”
Jeetu Patel says the United States leads in AI but only by a small margin.
“America has, um, enjoyed the lead, but, um, that lead is a small lead”
Jeetu Patel says he recently visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi to work on AI collaboration.
“I was in, um, the Middle East in, um, the the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I was in Qatar, we were in Bahrain, we were in Abu Dhabi.”
Jeetu Patel says Cisco is working with Saudi Arabia's Humane project, a data center build-out for Saudi AI.
“they have a project called the Humane project, which is their the Saudi AI, you know, build out of data centers, and we're working very closely with them over there.”
Jeetu Patel says Cisco is partnering with G42 in Abu Dhabi on AI infrastructure.
“we are doing the same thing in Abu Dhabi, um, with, um, um, with G42.”