
Show Notes
In this interview, the host Eric provides a detailed introduction to his guest JJ Asgar from IBM, who is deeply involved with the open-source AI project called InstructLab. JJ passionately discusses the importance of open and transparent AI development for societal benefit. He explains the distinction between true AI and the current language models, and emphasizes the need for open data and models to counteract biases and ensure ethical AI advancement for the greater good.
Welcome to The IT Guy Podcast, your go-to destination for all things tech with Eric, your friendly neighborhood IT guy! Join Eric as he shares his wealth of knowledge, insights, and experiences gained from years of working in the IT industry. From troubleshooting common tech issues to exploring the latest trends and innovations, each episode is packed with practical tips, skilled advice, and engaging discussions.
Connect with me! https://linktr.ee/itguyeric
JJ Asghar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjasghar
Hugging Face - https://huggingface.co/
Instruct Lab on Hugging Face https://huggingface.co/instructlab
IBM’s Granite Model https://huggingface.co/ibm-granite
What is InstructLab? https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/ai/what-is-instructlab
Chapters
00:00 Stream start
00:50 Welcome
01:40 Introduction
03:51 Meet JJ
04:47 What is AI?
08:09 What is an LLM?
09:42 Open Source AI
15:50 Instruct Lab
23:26 The Real Reality
28:05 The IT Community
31:15 Wrap up
Graphics and bumpers by Free Hive Agency
Photo by @steve_j on Unsplash
MoodMode. “Beautiful Acoustic Country Track.” Story Blocks, Songtrust, https://www.storyblocks.com/audio/stock/beautiful-acoustic-country-trailer-bboydaqyvkhf01l87.html. Accessed 28 Jan. 2022. Special Guest: JJ Asghar. Support The IT Guy Show
More from The IT Guy Show
I've got a Dell PowerEdge R720 in colocation that sounds like a jet engine, it's six to eight years old, and I refuse to pay Dell a thousand dollars just to unlock its IPMI port. So instead of guessing my way into a replacement, I brought in someone who builds this hardware for a living.
Most password managers ask you to trust them blindly. Bitwarden opens the hood and shows you the code instead. I sat down with Kasey Babcock, a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Bitwarden, to get into why that openness matters when a tool is holding every credential you own.
Most of us treat our homelabs like a junk drawer. Something breaks, we shrug, we fix it whenever we get around to it. Mathias Palmersheim does not operate that way. He's a Solutions Engineer at VictoriaMetrics, where he spends his days helping companies monitor infrastructure at serious scale, and he's brought that same discipline home. He runs his personal homelab against an actual SLA, the kind of uptime commitment most of us only deal with at work.
At SouthEast Linux Fest, I did something I've never attempted before: a live, hands-on intro to tabletop role playing games for a packed room of Linux nerds. No idea how many people were showing up. No idea how many had ever touched a d6. Somewhere between 10 and 100, they said. Cool. Cool cool cool.
Home labs have evolved from hobbyist experiments to essential infrastructure for tech professionals, but knowing when to build one…and how…isn't always clear. Josh from Keep It Techie joins Eric to discuss the practical realities of home lab ownership: the cost-benefit calculations, the apartment constraints, and the decisions that actually matter when you're running real workloads. From colocation trade-offs to gigabit fiber potential, we break down Eric's current setup and explore whether it's time to bring the lab home.