Agentic A.I. is powerful because it has infinite breadth of capability. But this is a double-edged sword: Agents entail great risk and testing their performance is tricky... until now — thanks to Brooke Hopkins, today's guest!

Brooke:

Is Founder & CEO of Coval (YC S24), a San Francisco-based startup that provides a simulation and evaluation platform for A.I. agents. A few days ago, they announced a $3.3m fundraise that includes heavyhitter VCs like General Catalyst, MaC and Y Combinator.

Previously was Tech Lead and Senior Software Engineer at Waymo, where she worked on simulation and evaluation for Waymo’s self-driving cars.
Before that, she was a Software Engineer at Google.
She holds a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus.

Despite Brooke’s highly technical background, our conversation is largely conceptual and high-level, allowing anyone who’s interested in developing and deploying Agentic A.I. applications to enjoy today’s episode.

In today’s episode, Brooke details:

How simulation and testing best practices inspired by autonomous-vehicle development are being applied by her team at Coval to make A.I. agents useful and trustworthy in the real world.
Why voice agents are poised to be the next major platform shift after mobile, creating entirely new ways to interact with technology.
How companies are using creative strategies like "background overthinkers" to make A.I. agents more robust.
What the rise of A.I. agents means for the future of human work and creativity… indeed, how agents will transform all of society.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.