Growing up in a multilingual community, Prem Natarajan became interested in language at a young age. Eventually that interest, aptitude, and curiosity translated into an interest in machine learning and technical development, and today Prem works as the chief scientist and head of enterprise AI at financial services company Capital One. Prem joins this episode to share how Capital One’s technology teams are delivering value to customers by applying artificial intelligence in areas like fraud det...
Jan 03, 2024•29 min•Season 8Ep. 7
When Vandi Verma saw the Spirit and Opportunity rovers land on Mars while she was working toward a Ph.D. in robotics, it set her on a path toward working at NASA in space exploration., Perhaps unsurprisingly, today, as chief engineer for robotic operations at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Vandi sees the biggest opportunities for artificial intelligence in robotics and automation. She describes the ways in which the Mars rovers rely on AI, including the technology’s use in digital twin ...
Dec 19, 2023•27 min•Season 8Ep. 6
Ellen Nielsen, Chevron’s first chief data officer, sees data as the common thread throughout a career that has spanned systems, digital data, procurement, and supply chain. In her current role, she applies what she’s learned to Chevron’s wide-ranging AI and machine learning initiatives, including the use of robots and computer vision to inspect tanks, digital twins to simulate operations, and sensors to monitor equipment in refineries. On this episode, Ellen shares examples of the integrated ene...
Dec 05, 2023•35 min•Season 8Ep. 5
Miqdad Jaffer brings a background in engineering to his role as director of product for digital marketplace platform Shopify. Users might recognize the commerce platform as one that enables a fast and secure online checkout experience. On the merchant side, Shopify enables business owners to set up e-commerce sites where they can list and sell their products. Using generative AI, the platform also now offers merchants the ability to complete administrative tasks much more quickly, including writ...
Nov 21, 2023•35 min•Season 8Ep. 4
As an associate professor at Harvard Business School and cofounder of the Customer Intelligence Lab at the school’s Digital Data Design Institute, Ayelet Israeli’s work is focused on how data and technology can inform marketing strategy, as well as how generative AI can be a useful tool in eliminating algorithmic bias. One of the products of her recent work is a paper she coauthored with two Microsoft economists and researchers on how generative AI could be used to simulate focus groups and surv...
Nov 07, 2023•35 min•Season 8Ep. 3
A former startup employee herself, Shilpa Prasad knows the level of commitment and effort required to begin a new venture. That’s what led her to join LG Nova, electronics manufacturer LG’s innovation incubator, as an entrepreneur in residence. In her role, Shilpa identifies promising startups — particularly those working with AI — and coaches and nurtures entrepreneurs while keeping a close eye on the products that might one day find their way into LG’s ecosystem. On this episode, Shilpa explai...
Oct 24, 2023•26 min•Season 8Ep. 2
Starting a career with the ambition of becoming a medical doctor and ending up a technical leader for a major automaker might seem an unlikely path, but for Anders Sjögren, who leads data and AI innovation projects for Volvo Cars, it was a perfect trajectory. On this episode, Anders joins Sam and Shervin to explain the ways the carmaker uses data and artificial intelligence to inform manufacturing — ensuring that parts are made consistently and as efficiently as possible — as well as driver expe...
Oct 10, 2023•23 min•Season 8Ep. 1
At Amnesty Tech, a division of human rights organization Amnesty International, Damini Satija and Matt Mahmoudi leverage their expertise in technology and public policy to examine the use of AI in the public sector and its impact on citizens worldwide. In Part 1 of Matt and Damini’s conversation with Sam and Shervin, they described scenarios in which AI tools can put human rights at risk and how their work is helping to expose those risks and protect people from the technology’s misuse. In this ...
Sep 13, 2023•22 min•Season 7Ep. 8
Amnesty International brings together more than 10 million staff members and volunteers worldwide to advocate for social justice. Damini Satija and Matt Mahmoudi work with Amnesty Tech, a division of the human rights organization that focuses on the role of government, Big Tech, and technologies like artificial intelligence in areas like surveillance, discrimination, and bias. On this episode, Matt and Damini join Sam and Shervin to highlight scenarios in which AI tools can put human rights at r...
Aug 29, 2023•28 min•Season 7Ep. 7
Jeremy King leads a team of 1,400 passionate engineers working on the continuous improvement of Pinterest’s image-driven platform. With a background that includes heading up a translation team at eBay and overseeing the technology behind Walmart’s U.S. retail stores and e-commerce business, Jeremy is now responsible for technology operations at Pinterest. To support the company’s mission to inspire people to “create a life that they love,” he and his team rely on advanced AI, machine learning, a...
Aug 15, 2023•20 min•Season 7Ep. 6
When Zan Gilani came to the U.S. from Pakistan to complete his undergraduate studies, he chose to study Chinese because it was rumored to be a difficult language. At the time, the tech industry was booming, and he quickly became interested in applying his passion for foreign languages and learning more generally in a technology-rich environment. Those interests led Zan to Duolingo, where he has been working in product management for eight years and now oversees the app company’s experiential AI ...
Aug 01, 2023•28 min•Season 7Ep. 5
Naba Banerjee’s identity as a “forever learner” led to her become the first female engineer in her family. That curiosity has informed her career choices as well, leading her to companies as varied as Tata, Cognizent, Walmart, and AAA. Now, as director of trust product and operations at vacation rental platform Airbnb, she is continuing let her curiosity be her guide as she applies her previous data science experience to the travel industry. On this episode, Naba joins Shervin and Sam to talk ab...
Jul 18, 2023•34 min•Season 7Ep. 4
As CEO of Aboitiz Data Innovation, David Hardoon oversees the operations of a technology conglomerate focused on using data science and AI to support its businesses in a range of sectors, including banking, financial services, utilities, agriculture, and construction in Singapore and the Philippines. In his role, David is leading some unexpected — but practical — uses of artificial intelligence, including using voice and image recognition to detect stress in livestock, and analyzing internet-of-...
Jul 05, 2023•26 min•Season 7Ep. 3
When Elizabeth Anne Watkins started her doctoral program, she landed a research role studying journalists’ use of security and privacy technologies — but she found the security tools confusing and difficult to use. Today, as a research scientist in the social science of AI at Intel Labs, she advocates for other end users faced with understanding and working with new technologies. Elizabeth employs social science to understand the concerns of technicians performing complex chip manufacturing proc...
Jun 20, 2023•34 min•Season 7Ep. 2
Hina Dixit’s interest in supporting people and solving problems has its roots in her family’s call office business, where she helped people place telephone calls when she was growing up in India. Later, after earning her bachelor’s degree in computer science, she was quickly recruited into the tech space, where her problem-solving and customer service skills have served her well as both a software engineer and tech investor. From a developer role at Symantec, to project leader at Apple, to an AI...
Jun 06, 2023•24 min•Season 7Ep. 1
Shelia Anderson parlayed a love of learning into studying the emerging field of engineering when she began her undergraduate education. After gaining experience leading IT teams in the technology, airline, and insurance industries, she joined Aflac in the summer of 2022. Shelia joins Sam and Shervin to share how using artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the processing of somewhat routine insurance claims frees up staff members to spend more time serving customers and process...
May 23, 2023•22 min•Season 6Ep. 8
Stephanie Moyerman’s background in cosmology and astrophysics — where she worked with large data sets, looking for a signal among what was mostly noise — prepared her well for a career in data science and ethics. Today, she is the data science director of well-being at Instagram, where she works to enhance trust, safety, and integrity for users of the social media platform. Stephanie joins Sam and Shervin on this episode to discuss how applying artificial intelligence to social media enables Ins...
May 09, 2023•28 min•Season 6Ep. 7
Wildlife conservation efforts may not be the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks about opportunities to use artificial intelligence and machine learning. But Dave Thau, data and technology lead scientist at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), can share myriad examples of how these technologies are helping our planet. On this episode, Dave joins Sam and Shervin to discuss WWF’s many uses of AI and machine learning. Among them are applications that predict deforestation, analyze images from ...
Apr 25, 2023•26 min•Season 6Ep. 6
Rathi Murthy has always been passionate about technology roles that allow her to drive business transformation and improve customer experience. In her current role as CTO and president of Product & Technology for Expedia Group, she’s able to do both. One of her key goals is to enhance and unify the end-user experience across Expedia’s many brands, among them Hotels.com, Vrbo, and Travelocity. Another transformation goal: helping to modernize the entire travel industry by making Expedia’s AI tech...
Apr 11, 2023•33 min•Season 6Ep. 5
Anders Butzbach Christensen began his career in product management before landing his dream job working for the Lego Group in Denmark. Today, as head of data engineering, he’s leading Lego’s digital transformation with a specific focus on designing and building data products, including self-service applications that technology and business teams can all use to better serve their customers. In this episode, Anders joins Sam and Shervin to describe how the Lego Group is approaching digital transfo...
Mar 28, 2023•24 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Michelle McCrackin, senior manager of analytics learning and development at Delta Air Lines, never imagined that she’d be an analytics leader when she first joined the airline as an HR business partner. But, faced with the challenge of hiring outside analytics talent, she proposed a solution that would change her career path along with the paths of other Delta employees: an internal analytics training program. Delta Analytics Academy (DAA) enables front-line employees to gain in-demand tech skil...
Mar 14, 2023•29 min•Season 6Ep. 3
As a partner with OpenAI — the company that recently wowed the tech world and the general public with its DALL-E image generator and ChatGPT chatbot — Microsoft helped to make those generative AI tools possible. But Microsoft has long invested in developing its own artificial intelligence technologies, for internal and external customers alike. And even when AI is not the centerpiece of a specific software program, it’s often driving how that tool — such as the company’s Bing search engine — wor...
Feb 28, 2023•29 min•Season 6Ep. 2
When Ziad Obermeyer was a resident in an emergency medicine program, he found himself lying awake at night worrying about the complex elements of patient diagnoses that physicians could miss. He subsequently found his way to data science and research and has since coauthored numerous papers on algorithmic bias and the use of AI and machine learning in predictive analytics in health care. Ziad joins Sam and Shervin to talk about his career trajectory and highlight some of the potentially breakthr...
Feb 14, 2023•33 min•Season 6Ep. 1
While Me, Myself, and AI is on winter break, we hope you enjoy this bonus episode excerpted from an MIT Sloan Management Review-BCG webinar based on our 2022 research report, "Achieving Individual — and Organizational — Value With AI." Cohost Sam Ransbotham is joined by BCG Henderson Institute's global director François Candelon for a discussion of our global survey findings. Download a PDF copy of the slide deck from this webinar here. Follow along with our speakers: 1:31-1:53 — Page 4 1:54-2:2...
Jan 10, 2023•23 min
While Me, Myself, and AI is on winter break, we hope you enjoy this bonus episode excerpted from an MIT Sloan Management Review-BCG webinar based on our 2020 research report, "Expanding AI's Impact With Organizational Learning." Download a PDF copy of the slide deck from this webinar here. Follow along with our speakers: 1:15-1:35 — Page 3 1:38-1:52 — Page 4 1:53-3:13 — Page 7 3:14-3:38 — Page 8 3:39-4:13 — Page 9 4:14-4:50 — Page 10 4:51-6:10 — Page 11 6:11-6:27 — Page 12 6:28-11:31 — Page 13 1...
Dec 06, 2022•25 min
With a background in building enterprise platforms for organizations, including Oracle and Walmart, Wayfair CTO Fiona Tan oversees all of the technology initiatives for the Boston-based e-commerce company. As the home furnishings retailer begins to open brick-and-mortar stores, it’s taking lessons learned from the digital space to inform how it markets its home products to customers in physical locations. On this episode, Fiona joins Sam and Shervin to discuss how artificial intelligence fuels n...
Nov 08, 2022•23 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Khatereh (KK) Khodavirdi is focused on using AI to create better customer experiences — a process she compares to creating an “AI Legoland,” in which various technology components fit together to build cohesive solutions for PayPal’s customers. This is an approach she is applying in her role as senior director of data science in the online payment systems company’s consumer products division, where she oversees data science teams for PayPal, its peer-to-peer payment app Venmo, and e-commerce cou...
Oct 25, 2022•29 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Ameen Kazerouni, chief data and analytics officer at Orangetheory Fitness (OTF), believes that AI’s role isn’t to replace human experts but rather to help them make better decisions. That’s why OTF collects heart rate and telemetry data during its in-studio fitness classes: so that AI algorithms can turn that data into feedback that empowers people to make real-time choices about their workouts and enables coaches to offer personalized recommendations. On this episode, Ameen joins Sam and Shervi...
Oct 11, 2022•24 min•Season 5Ep. 6
As chief data officer of payroll and benefits management company ADP, Jack Berkowitz has three primary responsibilities. One is to oversee the organization’s data overall, ensuring that functions like data governance, security, and analytics, are running well. Another is to build ADP’s data products, such as people analytics and benchmark tools. But the responsibility that’s of most interest to our hosts is Jack’s oversight of the organization’s use of artificial intelligence. In this episode of...
Sep 27, 2022•25 min•Season 5Ep. 5
Tonia Sideri was a data scientist herself before taking on her role as head of Novo Nordisk’s AI and Analytics Center of Excellence. Now she’s putting her experience to use helping the Danish pharmaceutical company in its quest to develop medicines and delivery systems to treat diabetes and other chronic diseases, such as hemophilia, obesity, and growth disorders. In a highly regulated industry where failures are costly, Tonia’s philosophy is to fail fast through what she calls “data-to-wisdom s...
Sep 13, 2022•27 min•Season 5Ep. 4
