Quoting John Lennon, Bill Kanarick describes the tectonic industry shifts brought on by the pandemic: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” After months of hunkering down at home, consumers got used to online shopping, telehealth doctor’s appointments and contactless and curbside pickup, effectively doubling e-commerce sales in the last 18 months. “So just in a one-year period, what you saw is the intensification of commitment to an investment in di...
Sep 09, 2021•38 min
Artificial intelligence holds an enormous promise, but to be effective, it must learn from massive sets of data—and the more diverse the better. By learning patterns, AI tools can uncover insights and help decision-making not just in technology, but also pharmaceuticals, medicine, manufacturing, and more. However, data can’t always be shared—whether it’s personally identifiable, holds proprietary information, or to do so would be a security concern—until now. “It’s going to be a new age.” Says D...
Aug 16, 2021•33 min
Advanced cybersecurity capabilities are essential to safeguard software, systems, and data in a new era of cloud, IoT, and other smart technologies. In the real estate industry, for example, companies are concerned about the potential for hijacked elevators, as well as compromised building management and HVAC systems. According to Greg Belanger, vice president of security technologies at CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm, securing the enterprise has gr...
Jul 12, 2021•33 min
If you drive in the United States, chances are you can’t remember the last time you bought a paper map, printed out a digital map, or even stopped to ask for directions. Thanks to GPS and the mobile mapping apps on our smartphones and their real-time routing advice, navigation is a solved problem. But in developing or fast-growing parts of the world: not so much. If you live in a place like Doha, Qatar, where the length of the road network has tripled over the last five years, commercial mapping...
Jun 23, 2021•30 min
For the past several years, economists and government leaders have regularly sounded alarms about the dangers of big tech monopolies. On her 2020 campaign website, for example, Senator Elizabeth Warren said “ big tech companies have too much power, too much power over our economy, our society, our democracy." In the months since the election, politicians on both the left and right have expressed concerns over how to encourage competition and innovation among the big tech leaders, and even how to...
Jun 14, 2021•35 min
Executives need to clearly communicate risks but also bring context to data. Tech talk is out: speaking the same language will win the day. It’s drilled into the heads of board directors and the C-suite by scary data-breach headlines, lawyers, lawsuits, and risk managers: cybersecurity is high-risk. It’s got to be on the list of a company’s top priorities. But how many directors get lost in the technicalities of technology? The challenge for a chief information security officer (CISO) is talking...
Jun 02, 2021•34 min
During the past few months, Microsoft Exchange servers have been like chum in a shark-feeding frenzy . Threat actors have attacked critical zero-day flaws in the email software: an unrelenting cyber campaign that the US government has described as “ widespread domestic and international exploitation ” that could affect hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Gaining visibility into an issue like this requires a full understanding of all assets connected to a company’s network. This type of co...
May 26, 2021•37 min
In a recent survey, “2021 Thriving in an AI World,” KPMG found that across every industry—manufacturing to technology to retail—the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is increasing year over year. Part of the reason is digital transformation is moving faster, which helps companies start to move exponentially faster. But, as Cliff Justice, US leader for enterprise innovation at KPMG posits, “Covid-19 has accelerated the pace of digital in many ways, across many types of technologies.” Justi...
May 19, 2021•32 min
There’s nothing new about conspiracy theories, disinformation, and untruths in politics. What is new is how quickly malicious actors can spread disinformation when the world is tightly connected across social networks and internet news sites. We can give up on the problem and rely on the platforms themselves to fact-check stories or posts and screen out disinformation—or we can build new tools to help people identify disinformation as soon as it crosses their screens. Preslav Nakov is a computer...
May 02, 2021•30 min
The digital revolution is here, but not everyone is benefiting equitably from it. And as Silicon Valley’s ethos of “move fast and break things” spreads around the world, now is the time to pause and consider who is being left out and how we can better distribute the benefits of our new data economy. “Data is the main resource of a new digital economy,” says IT for Change director Parminder Singh. Global society will benefit because the economy will benefit, argues Singh, on decentralization of d...
Mar 22, 2021•34 min
Tim O’Reilly, the “Oracle of Silicon Valley,” wants to shift the conversation about data value to focus on the harm that tech giants are inflicting against us with our own data. It’s “time to wake up and do a better job,” says publisher Tim O’Reilly—from getting serious about climate change to building a better data economy. And the way a better data economy is built is through data commons—or data as a common resource—not as the giant tech companies are acting now, which is not just keeping dat...
Mar 11, 2021•40 min
A solar-powered autonomous drone scans for forest fires. A surgeon first operates on a digital heart before she picks up a scalpel. A global community bands together to print personal protection equipment to fight a pandemic. “The future is now,” says Frederic Vacher, head of innovation at Dassault Systèmes. And all of this is possible with cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and a virtual 3D design shop, or as Dassault calls it, the 3DEXPERIENCE innovation lab. This open innovation l...
Nov 18, 2020•35 min
Some people might not associate the word “trust” with artificial intelligence (AI). Stefan Jockusch is not one of them. Vice president of strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software, Jockusch says trusting an algorithm powering an AI application is a matter of statistics. This podcast episode was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not produced by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff. “If it works right, and if you have enough compute power, then ...
Oct 28, 2020•25 min
2020 has created more than a brave new world. It’s a world of opportunity rapidly pressuring organizations of all sizes to rapidly adopt technology to not just survive, but to thrive. And Andrew Dugan, chief technology officer at Lumen Technologies, sees proof in the company’s own customer base, where “those organizations fared the best throughout covid were the ones that were prepared with their digital transformation.” And that’s been a common story this year. A 2018 McKinsey survey showed tha...
Oct 14, 2020•28 min
Ask Stefan Jockusch about what a factory might look like in 10 or 20 years, and the answer might leave you at a crossroads between fascination and bewilderment. Jockusch is vice president for strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software, which develops applications that simulates the conception, design, and manufacture of products such as a cell phone or a smart watch. His vision of a smart factory is abuzz with “independent, moving” robots. But they don’t stop at making one or three or five ...
Sep 29, 2020•25 min
[Sponsored] AI advancements today are pointing to improvements everywhere you look. But it’s a confluence of technologies—cloud, 5G wireless, smart devices, and more—that will usher in the greatest results, predicts Dell Technologies’ John Roese. If you need a reason to feel good about the direction technology is going, look up Dell’s CTO John Roese on Twitter. The handle he composed back in 2006 is @theICToptimist. ICT stands for information and communication. “The reason for that acronym was b...
Jul 29, 2020•37 min
[Sponsored] The coronavirus pandemic has led to enhanced collaboration, spurred innovation, and increased the use of digital technologies. Telehealth enables doctors to safely connect with patients virtually and to monitor them remotely, whether in different cities or just down the hall. And smarter and smaller medical devices are producing better outcomes for patients—a disruption is sensed, like low blood sugar or a too rapid beating heart, and a therapy is applied, in real time. All of this i...
Jun 29, 2020•39 min
[Sponsored] As technology rapidly develops, the number of security and privacy concerns will only continue to grow. In this episode, we look at how companies can build cybersecurity into their business strategies—instead of scrambling to respond when a breach happens. Even with danger lurking around the corner, today’s guest, cybersecurity expert Ann Cavoukian, argues that companies are turning a blind eye to security and privacy issues until it is too late. Cavoukian is the executive director o...
Mar 04, 2020•28 min
[Sponsored] In this episode, we look at the need to secure the internet of things, physical workspaces, and the products companies make. From planes to children’s toys to oil rigs, more connected devices are vulnerable to attack than ever before. Ken Munro is an internet-of things security researcher, penetration tester, and writer with two decades of experience in the security industry. He is also the founder of security services company Pen Test Partners. Munro helps expose the vulnerabilities...
Feb 26, 2020•38 min
[Sponsored] As the new year (and new decade) begins, one thing is certain: cybersecurity will continue to have an increasing impact on business, for better or worse. In this episode, we hear from Stephanie Balaouras, a cybersecurity expert who has spoken to thousands of customers over her 15 years at Forrester Research. She is the vice president and group director of security and risk research, as well as infrastructure and operations research. Balaouras makes the case that all businesses should...
Jan 29, 2020•54 min•Ep. 12
[Sponsored] From 1999 to 2012, Marissa Mayer was one of the most public faces at Google, where she helped to build the company’s core search and advertising platforms. From 2012 to 2017 she steered Yahoo! through its final years as an independent business. In other words, she’s spent a long time at the center of the Silicon Valley whirlwind. In this special episode, Business Lab host Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau asks Mayer how conditions for women technology leaders have changed during her career....
Oct 03, 2019•33 min•Ep. 11
[Sponsored] The development of cyber security is interwoven with the evolution of the hacker community. Keren Elazari, cyber security analyst and senior researcher at the Tel Aviv University Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center, educated the world in her 2014 TED talk on the importance of cultivating friendly hackers for the protection of the internet. Today, she researches the most pressing cyber security threats, and how to prevent these breaches. In this episode, Elazari shares her story o...
Aug 01, 2019•35 min•Ep. 10
[Sponsored] In this episode: How the development of cybersecurity arose and how that history created a world rife with invasions. Chris Wysopal, CTO and cofounder of Veracode, sat in the first row for the advent of cyber defense. In fact, as the Vulnerability Researcher at the seminal hacker think tank the L0pht, he has worked for decades to demand more secure technology from influential tech companies. In this episode Wysopal shares his work in the early years of cybersecurity, including when h...
Jun 27, 2019•30 min•Ep. 9
[Sponsored] The rise in ransomware incidents; hacking attacks and data breaches have become a scary reality for organizations and individuals worldwide. Increasingly, the issue of cyber security and what organizations need to do to better protect their people and their systems now sit at the top of the priority list for business leaders. In this episode, Martin Giles, the San Francisco Bureau Chief of MIT Technology Review, shares his view that the widespread dangers of a cyber attack have becom...
Apr 25, 2019•30 min•Ep. 8
[Sponsored] In this episode: Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates talks with Gideon Lichfield, MIT Technology Review’s Editor-in-Chief, about the magazine’s new list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies, which Gates curated. The magazine has been publishing its list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies (formerly 10 Emerging Technologies) annually since 2001 as a way to highlight the recent advances that could have the biggest impact in the near future. Usually the magazine’s expert editors and r...
Mar 28, 2019•20 min•Ep. 7
[Sponsored] In this episode: Emotion-tracking AI is starting to help machines recognize our moods. Are we ready? Personal assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, or Google Home can parse our spoken words and (sometimes) respond appropriately, but they can’t gauge how we’re feeling—in part because they can’t see our faces. But in the emerging field of “emotion-tracking AI,” companies are studying the facial expressions captured by our devices’ cameras to allow software of all kinds become more resp...
Feb 28, 2019•32 min•Ep. 6
[Sponsored] In this episode: Why there will never be another “AI winter,” and what IBM and MIT are doing together to ensure that. More times than almost any other field of innovation, artificial intelligence has weathered recurring cycles of overinflated hope, followed by disappointment, pessimism, and funding cutbacks. But Sophie Vandebroek, IBM’s vice president of emerging technology partnerships, thinks the AI winters are truly a thing of the past, thanks to the huge amounts of computing powe...
Feb 28, 2019•33 min•Ep. 5
[Sponsored] In this episode: Why researchers at the year’s biggest AI conference focused on how to keep human bias out of computer algorithms. Both the progress and the hype around cutting-edge machine learning techniques were on vivid display at the December 2018 NeurIPS Conference in Montreal, Quebec, says Will Knight, MIT Technology Review’s senior editor for artificial intelligence. One big question hanging over the meeting, Will says, was how to detect and reverse the sexism, racism, and ot...
Jan 31, 2019•30 min•Ep. 4
[Sponsored] In this episode: How the right AI algorithms can help organizations evolve into “superminds” that are smarter than their individual members. Thomas Malone is a professor of management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, founder and director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, and author of the 2018 book Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together. The book explores the different ways groups of people make decisions, and how new forms of arti...
Jan 24, 2019•31 min•Ep. 3
[Sponsored] In this episode: What new kinds of sensor data can tell us about the merits of open offices and remote work. Do open offices foster more collaboration, or just more frustration? Should managers encourage employees to telecommute, or is a scattered workforce less cohesive? The conventional wisdom on these issues swings like a pendulum, and for managers the only constant seems to be anxiety that they’re not getting it right. But new technology may offer some real answers. Ben Waber, a ...
Jan 24, 2019•30 min•Ep. 2
