https://video.ut0pia.org/videos/watch/8f44d945-e668-4c7f-ab13-73b4392c2e91 My AI voice tutor doesn't run on a frontier model. It runs on a small one, and the reason isn't cost. It's that voice lives or dies on latency, and the scaffolding around the model is what makes it feel smart anyway. When you build a voice agent the clock is brutal. A pause longer than a held breath feels broken, so your real budget is time to first token, not benchmark score. A big model that thinks for a second has already lost the room. So the model choice gets made for you: pick the fastest one the latency budget allows, then make up the intelligence elsewhere. I'll show how that plays out in an AI voice tutor I built on a small, fast model. The model never has to remember what the student knows, plan the lesson, or decide what comes next. Deterministic systems do all of that and hand the model a tight, structured brief each turn. What's left for the model is the one thing it's genuinely best at, which is talking. The scaffolding isn't a cost optimization bolted on afterward. It's the thing that lets you use the cheap fast model at all. Seven minutes. The latency budget that forces the decision, what moves out of the model to survive it, and where a small model still falls down no matter how much scaffolding you give it. Speakers: Joel Allou: Joel builds voice-first AI tutors. Solo founder focused on agentic systems for personalized learning, with a particular interest in infrastructure that makes flow agents reliable. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-allou/, Ornella Bahidika (Microsoft): Ornella Bahidika is a Product Manager at Microsoft, where she develops solutions that help organizations optimize collaboration, workplace technology, and AI-driven experiences. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ornella-bahidika/ Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:07:38 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://video.ut0pia.org https://video.ut0pia.org/lazy-static/avatars/0287a09a-aae7-4840-9843-b416426e7046.webp https://video.ut0pia.org/videos/watch/8f44d945-e668-4c7f-ab13-73b4392c2e91 All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://video.ut0pia.org/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.