The New Stack Podcast

How Kubernetes Faces a New Reality with the AI Engineer

Episode Summary

The Kubernetes community primarily focuses on improving the development and operations experience for applications and infrastructure, emphasizing DevOps and developer-centric approaches. In contrast, the data science community historically moved at a slower pace. However, with the emergence of the AI engineer persona, the pace of advancement in data science has accelerated significantly. Alex Williams, founder and publisher of The New Stack co-hosted a discussion with Sanjeev Mohan, an independent analyst, which highlighted the challenges faced by data-related tasks on Kubernetes due to the stateful nature of data. Unlike applications, restarting a database node after a failure may lead to inconsistent states and data loss. This discrepancy in pace and needs between developers and data scientists led to Kubernetes and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation initially overlooking data science.

Episode Notes

The Kubernetes community primarily focuses on improving the development and operations experience for applications and infrastructure, emphasizing DevOps and developer-centric approaches. In contrast, the data science community historically moved at a slower pace. However, with the emergence of the AI engineer persona, the pace of advancement in data science has accelerated significantly. 

Alex Williams, founder and publisher of The New Stack co-hosted a discussion with Sanjeev Mohan, an independent analyst, which highlighted the challenges faced by data-related tasks on Kubernetes due to the stateful nature of data. Unlike applications, restarting a database node after a failure may lead to inconsistent states and data loss. This discrepancy in pace and needs between developers and data scientists led to Kubernetes and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation initially overlooking data science. 

Nevertheless, Mohan noted that the pace of data engineers has increased as they explore new AI applications and workloads. Kubernetes now plays a crucial role in supporting these advancements by helping manage resources efficiently, especially considering the high cost of training large language models (LLMs) and using GPUs for AI workloads. Mohan also discussed the evolving landscape of AI frameworks and the importance of aligning business use cases with AI strategies. Learn more from The New Stack about data development and DevOps: AI Will Drive Streaming Data Use — But Not Yet, Report Says https://thenewstack.io/ai-will-drive-streaming-data-adoption-says-redpanda-survey/ The Paradigm Shift from Model-Centric to Data-Centric AI https://thenewstack.io/the-paradigm-shift-from-model-centric-to-data-centric-ai/ AI Development Needs to Focus More on Data, Less on Models https://thenewstack.io/ai-development-needs-to-focus-more-on-data-less-on-models/ 

Learn more from The New Stack about data development and DevOps: 

AI Will Drive Streaming Data Use - But Not Yet, Report Says

The Paradigm Shift from Model-Centric to Data-Centric AI

AI Development Needs to Focus More on Data, Less on Models 

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