Citizens of Silopolis: Aarne Talman, Head of Technology at SiloGen

Aarne Talman is a natural language processing (NLP) scientist and AI leader with over 16 years of industry experience. With a background in Large Language Models (LLMs), software engineering, product management, and technology leadership, Aarne brings a wealth of expertise to his role as Head of Technology at SiloGen, our product subsidiary developing LLM and generative AI technology.

Prior to joining Silo AI in early 2021, Aarne worked as the UK CTO and Global Machine Learning Practice Lead at Nordcloud, an IBM Company. For the past years, he has also been a Visiting Researcher in Language Technology at the University of Helsinki, with multiple papers on NLP and LLMs in ACL venues and top journals like Natural Language Engineering. 

During his first years in Silopolis, Aarne functioned as a Lead AI Scientist in developing state-of-the-art language models for a large-scale engagement with a global technology giant. The models included web-scale search, machine translation, automatic speech recognition and content detection models. Many of these are now in production, serving hundreds of millions of end users globally. 

Spearheading the development of LLMs and generative AI technology at SiloGen

When Silo AI launched its subsidiary SiloGen, focused on generative AI (GenAI), it was a natural step for Aarne to become one of the pioneering team members spearheading the effort. SiloGen is developing LLM and GenAI technology for more accurate, trustworthy, and robust downstream applications of LLMs, with a mission of digital sovereignty. Aarne says: 

"What's unique about Silo AI is that we are a pure-play AI company, and SiloGen focuses fully on LLMs and GenAI. There isn't another AI company of this scale in Europe where I could focus fully on the latest GenAI technologies and business opportunities. I get to work closely with some of Europe's leading experts in language technology to train open, reliable, and trustworthy foundation models."

At SiloGen, Aarne leads technology and works closely with clients to help them harness the power of LLMs and GenAI. He assists them in finding the best technical solutions and adapting foundation models that are tailored and fine-tuned to their specific use cases. 

One good example of a use case that Aarne has worked on is SiloGen's recently published collaboration with Tietoevry. In this project, SiloGen is providing technology and helping Tietoevry to develop one of the first LLM-based conversational search products for healthcare professionals. By utilizing SiloGen's proprietary technology, the joint effort finetunes a GPT model for the healthcare domain, with a conversational semantic search functionality for Tietoevry's Lifecare patient information system. This AI assistant aims to free up medical doctors' and other professionals' time for patient care.

In his role, Aarne functions as a glue between SiloGen's client interfacing work and product development, in ensuring we create a product that creates value.

Freetime 

When not at work, Aarne enjoys playing basketball whenever he gets the opportunity and even coaches a junior team. Aside from that, he also likes hiking, running, and fly fishing. He highly values spending quality time with his family, including his wife and two teenage daughters. 

Favorite Silo AI value? 

"My favorite Silo AI value would have to be Keep Learning. At Silo AI, I'm surrounded by talented AI experts who I can turn to if I need support. I get to work in an environment where I learn something new and can challenge myself intellectually every day."

Would you like to join highly skilled professionals like Aarne on the SiloGen team? 

We're constantly growing our SiloGen team with an immediate focus on expanding our team of generative AI and LLM experts across Europe.

Check out our open positions here: https://www.silo.ai/careers/open-positions. 

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