MLSG - Open Models & Harnesses

Name: MLSG - Open Models & Harnesses
Start: 2026-08-06T10:45:00.000Z
End: 2026-08-06T13:45:00.000Z
Location: 80 Pasir Panjang Rd, Singapore, Singapore

80 Pasir Panjang Rd, Singapore, Singapore, Google Developers Space, SingaporeThursday, Aug 6 · 6:45 AM

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Doors 6:45 AM

The Story

This month, we're adding our support to "the Open Letter" backed by Nvidia, Google, etc - and talk about how Open Models can be harnessed effectively. Talks: **"Harnesses for Generalisation" - Martin Andrews** In his talk, Martin will describe how the latest research in harnesses is a natural progression : from the DSPy framework, through Recursive Language Models to the latest work from the same authors. It's research that points in a practical, local direction. **"The State of Open Models" - Sam Witteveen** With NVIDIA's recent letter about why open models matter and many companies co-signing (including Google) it, Sam will take a look at some of the recent open models, both big and small, and see what you can actually do with local AI these days. This talk will answer what models should you be using for Agents, Coding and just general all round use. **FOOD UPDATE :** Google has told us that **there WILL BE** pizza at the event \-\-\- Talks will start at 7:10pm (entry at 6:45pm) and end at around 9:00pm, at which point attendees can come up to the front for a bit of a chat with each other, and the speakers. Due to some recent security incidents at the venue please take note of the new DevSpace security procedures [https://bit.ly/devspace-security](https://bit.ly/devspace-security) Attendees will not be admitted later than 15min after the talks have started. As always, we're actively looking for more speakers - both '30 minutes long-form', and lightning talks. For the lightning talks, we welcome folks to come and talk about something cool they've done with keras, PyTorch, JAX and/or Deep Learning for 5-10mins (so, if you have slides, then #max=10). We believe that the key ingredient for the success of a Lightning Talk is simply the cool/interesting factor. It doesn't matter whether you're an expert or an enthusiastic beginner: Given the responses we have had to previous talks, we're sure there are lots of people who would love to hear what you've been playi