Dev Interrupted

Dev Interrupted is the go-to podcast for software engineering leadership. Each week, hosts Andrew Zigler, Ben Lloyd Pearson, and Dan Lines sit down with industry experts to explore the strategies, struggles, and stories behind high-performing software teams. Paired with weekly industry news coverage, the conversations dive deep into the real challenges that define excellence in modern tech.

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Dev Interrupted

Why enterprise AI lives or dies on applied research | Contextual AI’s Elizabeth Lingg

September 16, 2025 • LinearB • Season 5 • Episode 37

What does it take to transform a brilliant AI model from a research paper into a product customers can rely on? We're joined by Elizabeth Lingg, Director of Applied Research at Contextual AI (the team behind RAG), to explore the immense challenge of bridging the gap between the lab and the real world. Drawing on her impressive career at Microsoft, Apple, and in the startup scene, Elizabeth details her journey from academic researcher to an industry leader shipping production AI.

Elizabeth shares her expert approach to measuring AI impact, emphasizing the need to correlate "inner loop" metrics like accuracy with "outer loop" metrics like customer satisfaction and the crucial "vibe check." Learn why specialized, grounded AI is essential for the enterprise and how using multiple, diverse metrics is the key to avoiding model bias and sycophancy. She provides a framework for how research and engineering teams can collaborate effectively to turn innovative ideas into robust products.

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