A real, unscripted discussion

AI, In Conversation.

Sumit Arora in conversation with Amit Singhai — how AI actually works, talked through in plain English and cut into short, standalone parts. No slides, no jargon: just the questions a builder actually asks, and honest answers.

Part 1 of 4

Should You Train AI on Your Own Data?

Train a model for a skill and keep your information separate — connect the two with RAG or an MCP server. The chartered-accountant analogy makes it stick.

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Mm. A field tag has now domain knowledge is increasing, right? Because now we did the first step, is more people are coming. They are asking couple of things- Mm. -which trust me, like I need to really sit in. Without that, I cannot make... If he says, add this button or something, it's easy. But when he apply couple of things, weights or this, I need to see what comes next, something like that. So if we think in this direction that we get a model and we trained it only for specific purpose, only for specific purpose. S-specific purpose means, let's say I have a field tag. I added all New Zealand defined residential laws, regulations, and I also added their... make it learn him how we are implementing it, and we are fine-tuning it as we are developing the solution. So that model knows it is, it is, it is himself, I say, field tag model. Can- I- No. No, no. It's, uh, I think it's a natural way of thinking, but, uh, in my opinion, it is not correct because- Okay. Mm. -what you are trying to do is you are trying to feed information to a language model and expecting it to be an expert on it- Um, which is okay, but in my opinion, not very correct. See, like large language model understands the language. The field tag, field tag and all related information, whether it's a law or act or business or whatever it is the information that should be put it in a rag. LLM should only be translating your prompts and connecting to this information to form the responses. Okay? See, what you train a model for? You train a model for English, its grammar, its nuances and everything. You can train a model to do a coding. So you feed all that, uh, all that, um, uh, language, uh, say Java, for example, Java. Java language, um, compiler stuff, all that language nuances, how that language was formed, uh, its examples and everything. Correct? Uh, now consider I give this model that code me a device driver for USB, but this model doesn't know what is a USB driver. So what it will do, it will connect to some addit-external information, get the details, and then uses its la- Java learning and code that in Java. Okay? So if field tag and related information is there, you should be connecting to this information to a large language model. You are not training field tag information. Uh, you're not using this information to train the model. They're two different things. Okay. -is a, is a large language model. It understands your English. Okay? But if there is a... Now your domain, field tag is a domain. It has lot of information. You connect these two, keep this information separate, connect these two. Teach LLM how to connect to this guy using MCP server or using a rag way or whatever you want. Okay? And then you use them separately. That's a-- In my opinion, that is a right way instead of... Because here what you're gonna do, even if suppose even if we train, we give all that information and then we train the weights, uh, what it will accomplish? That's I'm trying to understand. Suppose there is a image model. Image model understands the image, JPG, pixels, RGB, CMYK, transparency, and it knows how to form an image, how to decode an image. So when it comes to how-tos, how-tos, you put it into the model. When it come to information, you just use a tool to connect it. In my opinion, thought that, yeah. No. In my opinion, no. The reas- reason being, reason being, um, there are two part of it. Consider there are two part of it. One is, uh, you're trained in neural network and other is information out there. For example, for example, let's say we have a chartered accountant who has studied for six, seven years, understood everything. Right. Now, this guy is trained. You ask him, he might answer something. You ask difficult question, he might go back to his books, read it and give you the exact information This guy doesn't know everything. Now, a new GST comes in, new law comes in. This guy doesn't know, but this guy know. What this guy know? I... This guy is a trained chartered accountant. He will download that new act, read it- And continue it ... and then update itself. Correct. Correct. Correct. So training is one part, information is the other part. Yes, you can do. What you can do, use... Forget about, I don't want to keep it. I will use this entire information and train this. This a heavy, heavily costly process, but somehow I train it, okay? It will answer, but things will keep updating outside. Correct. Update, keep updating, and not necessarily, not necessarily the information this guy is, has got is 100% perfect. Even if you train this huge information with it, there are probabilities that it might be 80% correct, 90% correct or whatever it is. Okay. So train for a skill, keep the information separate. This is a good approach. You can use that vast information, train it, but when updates will come, what will you do? Again, train it, train it. When any law changes or any new layout comes in or any- anything

Part 2 of 4

How Do AI Models Actually Get Better?

Model progress is no magic: expectations rise, you improve the system — measured on a ladder of tests from grade-one sums to PhD-level questions.

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How they maintain that kind of model development life cycle that we are here, and we need to improve it here? Just thinking in a very theoretical way, very theoretical way, right? That how they think that we are here at a certain step, and we need to improve it little bit more, they call it. How they understand... I know they will have some sample data or something like that. But what is your theory or mindset saying or im- image is building? How they maintain such a information and prove it, we are in up to this level, and then our next step is something like that? It, this is not different from any Mm-hmm. It performs to that one. My expectation increases. I want more. I want more. I work more, perfect my system, then my expectation increase. Now, initially, say suppose when this Haiku was released, correct? It was doing some basic coding. Now I want advanced reasoning. Okay? Then adva- team worked on advanced reasoning. Correct. They incr- they might have increased parameters, they might have tweaked. I don't know what they have done. I'm not an expert. But now what they want, they want code translations, suppose. They want more. They want more. More and more use cases. More and more use s- cases comes in. Suppose as of now you have Lex ML. Mm-hmm. In Lex ML you have, you have five core features working. Now you want 10 more. You improve your system. There's no difference. It's just that their processes, their processes involve a lot of data scientists and expert engineers. Okay. What exactly they do, that I, that I don't know How, how that reasoning thing has been injected, what kind of, uh, mathematics they put in, that I do not know, but process is No, process-wise I understood, but I was just thinking in that way because... Okay, so they w- I understand they would have, over the period, they would have set up a order. This is our... And they would have matched in any way- Exactly ... with high school questions or intermediate questions or PhD questions- Yes ... or BSD quest- b- business question, professional level questions, diagnostic questions when we w- So they have made that, uh, fertile ladder. So even I made-- I'm just putting this way, that maybe first they would have tried, okay, let's figure out all grade one or grade two question, two plus two plus three, two plus six. Mm-hmm. And then see we solve it. Oh, we solve it a lot. Then they move next, then they move next, something like that. Now that's, uh, that's, uh, specifically, that's specifically fine. So, okay. So let's say, let's say... Now, another question is we are in the two thousand twenty-six,

Part 3 of 4

AGI, Consciousness & Where AI Is Really Heading

Do AI models hit a ceiling like cars do? AGI, super-intelligence, and why intelligence is not the same thing as consciousness.

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Right. Right. But let's say, let's say about the car, right? We saw the car Maruti eight hundred, right? Maybe that was also in your time as well. I have seen the initial cars, Maruti eight hundred or Ambassador, right? For me, that was Mercedes that time. But now recently, I looked into the cars for my friend as well, and I looked all the top quality cars- Mm-hmm ... including Mercedes, Audi, or something, right? Now there's a ceiling set. There's a ceiling set. Yes. Yes. Right? So when I look... Previously, when I looked on these kind of high-end cars, right? I saw, wow, I can see. But now when I saw- Mm-hmm ... and I did all test drive, I did not feel that it's Mercedes. I just felt it's a car. No. It, uh, it is definitely it is better, it is good, but after a certain level it was giving me just- I got it. I got- I feel- I got it. So I'm asking- I got your point ... where how you see the model? How-- If we talk about the models, right, and they are working well, how you see how much they go? How much they go? code- Mm-hmm ... it's a very considering artificial general intelligence, Claude model is a very small model. It's specific to coding tasks. It create programs, correct? It analyzes code. Um, it can hack into systems, correct? If we, uh... It understand network protocols, correct? But this is not... This is a very tiny, very tiny piece of, uh, piece of intelligence out there. Consider a general intelligence system which can do anything. It can do anything, correct? Consider like, uh, um, you pick top programmers, top network engineers, top hardware engineers, top scientists, top doctors, top lawyers, top accountants, top every domain on the earth into one- Uh, floor, one common place, and ask questions. Some of them will be able to answer or some will be able to create things, uh, in perfect way. So AGI is where things will evolve eventually. Can you explain AGI? See, consider as of now we are thinking of deploying various you explain- Huh? Can you explain more about AGI? Sorry, I heard this word, but I can't, um- It's a, um... Okay, so, okay, have you seen any this one, fic- fiction movies in which, in which there is a computer say in Star Yeah. Ha, consciousness means the one who feels happiness, sadness. The who, the one who feels pain, um, joy. S- so consciousness is more towards spirituality if we go, correct? The one who lives. Yeah. Uh, the consciousness is the one which makes you live. Mm. This, there is a robot. If I create exactly same repli- replica robot of a Sumit, it is having cameras and eyes. It does things like Sumit. It, it thinks like Sumit. Correct. It is having all those, but is it alive? Correct? Mm. Is it alive? It can imitate that I am sad. It can imitate that I am happy by, uh, changing the motors and then, mm, it makes like this, um, happy face, and then show, shows. It, it emulates or simulates happiness, but it is not happy, correct? So, uh, consciousness we will see. We will see. Uh, this is where the Transformer movie comes in with all the living robots. Correct. They are conscious. They feel the pain of humanity. They, they feel hatred against humanity. And they, so the consciousness is different. Intelligence is different. AGI is where what a human can do, the same thing AI system can do or surpass it in terms Okay. But, um, it still people are trying to figure it out whether it can do research. Can it replace the scientists who are doing pharmaceutical research? Okay? So this is where, uh, the AGI comes in. AGI means that you are basically creating a human brain which learns by its own. It keep learning by its own. It analyzes. It imagines. Um, it create a Leonardo Vin- Vinci in a machine model.

Part 4 of 4

Training vs Running AI — Why Inference Costs More

Training builds the model once; running it live for millions costs far more. Could you self-host a frontier model? Here's what it takes.

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Mm. And I have one more. Okay, so this was just my explanation from whereby I was talking about it and something like that. And, um, back in 2008 also, it was a very active discussion, right? Now, another question is like, uh, mm, when we have this like, uh, a big GPUs cl... What is a cluster or farm where, you know, 100,000, maybe 1 million GPUs are running? So that, and then, so those, when we say GPU set, those basically running, those basically running the, uh, find, training the model, for training the model. Let's say this, uh, this one, what do you say? What is name? Claude. Claude is giving us answer. So his model would be running somewhere in a biggest, a computer, something like that? Yes, yes. Yes. But the training happens in a very big large based of Um, not necessarily. See, this, uh... So there are two things. A scale, cl- cl... The amount Claude operates on a scale, this called inference. Model is always active. A model which is actively run- running is inference. So to train models, they would have required a huge infrastructure, uh, to train a trillion models. I totally agree. Okay? But once trained, in order to run and considering the number of users Claude is having at the same time, the running infrastructure would be much more than what they used it to, uh, train the model. For sure. Because the scale is there. But if it's just training and evaluating, um, like, with one or two users, they, they would have used the same infrastructure on which they trained it. So it depends. It depends on the scale of operations. But considering ChatGPT and Claude and all those popular AI models out there, running active models for those many users require far more infra than training. yes. Right? But actual model, if let's say I'm... If let's say I get that Fabul-5 for my small company. That's an example. Maybe it's a very, uh, stupid example, but that I can run in couple Oh. You, you can, you have, you might have to invest, uh... You might have to get around one terabyte of RAM, um, because it's a model, it's pretty big, and for one terabyte of g-RAM, graphics RAM, video RAM. Okay? And so for that say suppose one H100 is having how many GB? Maybe 94 GB or 100 GB. So you might be requiring like 10 of such cards and maybe few PCs to hook into that. But yeah, some rig. Some rig you have to create. That will be a costly rig, but you can run it by your own, and you require lot of maybe three-phase electricity connection because those many cards are gonna... They will simply not run on a single-phase connection. So electricity, uh, provisions you have to put, but you can run

A note on the series: this is a simple, high-level take from a real discussion — built for intuition, not precision — so some specifics may differ from more formal explanations. Get the right picture first; the rigour is easier to add once you have it.

FAQ

Questions this series answers

Should I train an AI model on my own data?+

Usually not. Train a model for a skill — a language like English or Java — and keep your domain information separate, connecting the two with RAG or an MCP server. The chartered-accountant analogy: a trained accountant just reads the new law; he doesn't re-study for six years.

What is AGI, and how is it different from today’s AI?+

Today's models are narrow — a coding assistant is a tiny slice of intelligence. AGI (artificial general intelligence) is a system that can do what any top expert across every domain can, and that learns, analyses and imagines on its own.

Is AI conscious?+

No. Intelligence is not consciousness. A perfect robot replica can imitate joy or sadness by changing its behaviour, but it isn’t alive — it simulates the feeling without experiencing it.

Does training or running an AI model cost more?+

At real scale, running the model (inference) for millions of users costs far more infrastructure than training it once. You could even self-host a frontier model — roughly a terabyte of GPU memory, ten H100s and three-phase power.