Merve Hickok is one of the most recognized thought leaders in the emerging field of AI ethics. Merve is the founder of AIethicist.org and Lighthouse Career Consulting. Her work is at the intersection of AI and data ethics along with social justice and DEI policy and regulation. Merve was recently listed among the top 100 most brilliant women in AI ethics and in the past she lectured at the University of Michigan’s School of Information on Data Science ethics. Merve’s at the forefront of this eme...
Dec 11, 2022•38 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast Emmanuel Turlay spent more than a decade in engineering roles at tech-first companies like Instacart and Cruise before realizing machine learning engineers need a better solution. Emmanuel started Sematic earlier this year and was part of the YC summer 2022 batch. He recently raised a $3M seed round from investors including Race Capital and Soma Capital. Thanks to friend of the podcast and former guest Hina Dixit from Samsung NEXT for the intro to Emmanuel. I’ve been involved with the AutoML spa...
Dec 04, 2022•45 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast Kevin Mulcahy , co-author of the Future Workplace Experience, has been thinking and writing about the future of work since 2016. Six years ago the future of work was dramatically different. Reading Kevin’s book makes him seem like a clairvoyant who predicted the future. In addition to being a successful author Kevin is a sought after speaker on all topics related to the future of work and workplace trends. In the past, he also lectured on entrepreneurship at Babson College. Listen and learn: Wha...
Nov 27, 2022•38 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s guest is the co-founder and CEO of vAIsual, the company pioneering the use of generative AI to create synthetic stock media. All of those photos you see online and in print publications of people promoting products usually are human models posing in generic ways. Their pictures are sold by companies like Getty Images in marketplaces that are inefficient and limited in scope. Michael Osterrieder and his partner Nico are legends in the world of stock media who realized there’s a better way...
Nov 20, 2022•42 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast Otto Soderlund co-founded Speechly in 2016 with Hannes Heikinheimo in their hometown of Helsinki. He believes voice should be a first-class citizen for all apps and making it easy for developers to add voice support from any platform will unlock new innovation. Speechly is a member of the YC Winter 22 batch. Otto and I recently co-presented at the VOICE22 event in Washington DC although I presented remote so this is the first time we’re actually meeting. I heard good things about his talk so I w...
Nov 13, 2022•37 min•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast Jonathan Frankle , incoming Harvard Professor and Chief Scientist at MosaicML, is focused on reducing the cost of training neural nets. He received his PhD at MIT and his BSE and MSE from Princeton. Jonathan has also been instrumental in shaping technology policy related to AI. He worked on a landmark facial recognition report while working as a Staff Technologist at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law. Thanks to great guest Hina Dixit from Samsung NEXT for the introduction to...
Nov 06, 2022•40 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast Eric Olson , CEO and co-founder of Consensus, is a collegiate athlete turned data scientist turned entrepreneur who needed faster access to reliable data while working at DraftKings. Consensus is a search engine that uses a large language model to find answers in peer-reviewed research articles. Eric's living proof that the best entrepreneurs start by solving a problem they've encountered. Hear how Eric's scratching his own itch. Listen and learn... Why Google isn't the answe...
Oct 30, 2022•37 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast Mona Akmal , CEO of sales intelligence platform Falkon, is the outspoken co-founder behind an emerging leader in a hot space. Mona migrated to the United States at age 20 with a CS degree and little else. She had an impressive 12-year run as a product leader at Microsoft where she helped scale OneDrive and Office. She subsequently led product and technology organizations at places like Code.org and Amperity. Two decades later, Mona’s the CEO of Falkon AI, an intelligence platform for go to marke...
Oct 23, 2022•34 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast Hina Dixit , venture capitalist leading AI investing at Samsung NEXT, grew up in a small town in India from humble beginnings. She couldn’t afford a Starbucks coffee and graduated with significant student debt… which fueled her passion for mentoring and coaching as she became financially independent. Prior to Samsung NEXT, Hina was an Apple engineering leader who helped launch two-factor authentication and other core iOS technologies. Hina’s a reluctant venture investor having always been a buil...
Oct 16, 2022•36 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast Rana Gujral , CEO of Behavioral Signals since 2018, joined the company after a distinguished tech career growing companies like Logitech, TiZE, and Cricut. Behavioral Signals uses emotion and behavioral science to help contact center agents deliver better service. Rana and the team are on a mission to improve customer interactions by using signals other than the spoken word to understand exactly what they need based on indicators like voice tone and pitch. Listen and learn... How to train AI mod...
Oct 09, 2022•42 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast Ahmed Elsamadisi built the data infrastructure at WeWork before realizing every company could benefit from his team’s innovation. Traditional star schemas aren’t the best way to manage data. Ahmed instead pioneered a new approach using a single-table column model better suited for real questions people ask. He launched Narrator in 2017 to make it easier to turn data questions into answers and has since raised $6.2M from Initialized Capital, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Y Combinator. Ahmed rec...
Oct 02, 2022•52 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast Seth Earley is a Chemist by training and an expert on AI. Specifically, how AI is used to improve knowledge management. In fact, he wrote the book on the topic titled “The AI-Powered Enterprise” in which he explains the importance of ontologies when applying AI. Seth is the CEO of Earley Information Science. He has been advising companies on technology strategy since 1994 and is currently focused on AI and knowledge engineering. Listen and learn: Seth’s contribution to AI history… including the ...
Sep 25, 2022•43 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast Peter Scott , author, TedX speaker, and futurist, worked at NASA’s JPL laboratory after receiving his Masters Degree in Computer Science from Cambridge. Raising kids made him realize the potential impact of AI to do both good and harm. He left NASA and switched careers to feel confident he was doing all he could to secure their future. He recently published Artificial Intelligence and You after publishing Crisis of Control five years back. Listen and learn: When will we achieve artificial genera...
Sep 18, 2022•33 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast Kia Kokalitcheva , Axios tech reporter, is a Silicon Valley native who writes about tech news and culture. Among other things, she co-authors the popular Pro Rata newsletter (over 200k subscribers) with Dan Primack. Kia has covered many of the most iconic tech stories of the past decade as a writer at Fortune and VentureBeat prior to Axios which was just acquired by Cox Enterprises. Kia recently wrote about Adam Neumann’s new company, Flow. Hear Kia’s perspectives on how Flow could transform liv...
Sep 11, 2022•32 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast Deon Nicholas , Forethought Co-Founder CEO, grew up in inner city Toronto stocking shelves in a pharmacy before learning to code at an early age. He started Forethought in 2017 after learning the value of answering customer questions working for companies like Facebook and Pure Storage. Deon has since raised $92M from an exceptional group of investors including funds like Steadfast Capital and NEA plus celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashton Kutcher, and Robert Downey Jr. Deon won the Tech...
Sep 04, 2022•35 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast Jim Lawton , VP and GM of Robotics Automation at Zebra Technologies, met the founder of Roomba, Rodney Brooks , at MIT nearly three decades ago. It inspired a lifetime passion for robots that help humans. Since then, he has influenced generations of robotic automation technology at companies from Rethink Robotics to Zebra Technologies. This is a fascinating discussion that will make you reconsider what robots can do and why humans shouldn't feel threatened by them. Listen and learn... How J...
Aug 28, 2022•42 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast Kamal Ahluwalia and the Eightfold team set out to find the right career for everyone in the world. Six years later after having raised more than $200M from a legendary group of investors and built a talented 600-person team, they’re well on their way. Kamal joined Eightfold as President in 2018 from a successful tech career at companies like Model N and Selectica. Hear Kamal share his vision for how to use data and AI to help employees upskill, reskill, and ultimately find careers they love. Lis...
Aug 21, 2022•37 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast Ben Brennan , former guest, accomplished author, and QSTAC CEO, guest hosts today's "turn the tables" episode... and interviews Dan Turchin , PeopleReign CEO. Learn about Dan's vision for augmenting human intelligence with machine intelligence and how AI will be used to give the next billion employees back an hour a day. Listen and learn... The origin story behind this podcast What's required to use AI to improve employee experiences How many new jobs will be created by ...
Aug 14, 2022•35 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast Gadi Shamia , Replicant CEO and co-founder, has been delivering innovation to help customers have better service experiences for more than a decade. He helped grow and sell Echosign to Adobe for $400M in 2011 then went on to lead Talkdesk which most recently raised $230M at a $10B valuation. Gadi's a serial entrepreneur and a deep thinker who believes in the power of AI to make people better. Listen and learn: Why we hate calling customer support... and how AI is making the experience bette...
Aug 07, 2022•40 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast Krish Ramineni , Fireflies CEO and Microsoft alum, learned the value of NLP working with Skype and Office as a Product Manager. He set out to solve a problem he had: note-taking in meetings and following up afterward. Fireflies has been used by more than 60,000 organizations to make meetings more efficient. Krish has raised nearly $20M from an A-list group of investors including Canaan Partners and Khosla Ventures. Listen and learn... The evolution of speech recognition technology in the enterpr...
Jul 31, 2022•35 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast Joel Eagle , McDonald's Senior Director of Technology and Architecture, started his career in healthcare and logistics before being promoted to technology leadership roles at one of the world's most iconic companies. Joel and his team manage the cloud infrastructure that powers 40,000 restaurants for two million employees... and helps serve happiness in 120 global markets to the equivalent of the world's population every 100 days. The technology that makes McDonald's work is ...
Jul 24, 2022•38 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast Ben Brennan , QSTAC CEO, author, and former IT exec at Yahoo and Verizon Media, is a world traveler, a musician, and a trained psychologist with passions for philosophy and psychotherapy. Not exactly the traditional background for an IT leader. Early roles at Pivotal Labs and Jawbone taught Ben that bringing humanity to technology is the future of work. He since published Badass IT Support and started QSTAC to measure the employee experience. Listen and learn... What Ben learned managing 100 peo...
Jul 17, 2022•34 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast Francois Candelon , Managing Director at the BCG Henderson Institute, has spent 30 years researching how companies adopt modern technology. His research spans business, technology, economics, and science. Francois is a popular speaker, author, and advisor who has been featured at events including Mobile World Congress, TED@BCG, Politico AI Summit, and Wuzhen Internet Conference. Francois is also a leader on BCG's GAMMA AI@Scale team. Listen and learn... The one company Francois says best il...
Jul 10, 2022•39 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast Stephen Messer , founder of Collective[i], was an attorney and teacher before discovering his passion for entrepreneurship. He started LinkShare (acquired by Rakuten in 2005) which made it possible to pay for clicks on the web. He changed how the web works and now he's using AI to change the world of B2B sales. The world needs more visionaries like Stephen. Hear what fuels him and learn about his process for disrupting legacy industries. Listen and learn... The four words that define what a...
Jul 03, 2022•35 min•Ep 26•Transcript available on Metacast In this special episode, we unpack the controversy surrounding the sentient chatbot that "worries about its future". Google engineer Blake Lemoine published a transcript of a conversation with the chatbot LaMDA that generated strong reactions from technologists and AI ethicists. It conjured images from science fiction movies that always capture the public imagination. Tiernan Ray , ZDNet writer, accomplished tech journalist, and good friend of the podcast, joined host Dan Turchin to re...
Jun 26, 2022•41 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast Kevin Dewalt , CEO of Prolego, built his first neural net at Stanford in 1995 after graduating from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. He popularized the term "AI abundance" to describe the path of exponential technologies and how AI adoption is five years from becoming mainstream. He now applies 25 years of studying AI to help organizations embrace the future. Listen and learn... What every company needs to know to succeed with AI. How the most successful organizations approach AI investme...
Jun 19, 2022•39 min•Ep 24•Transcript available on Metacast Giselle Mota , Future of Work principal at ADP, overcame dyslexia and discovered passions for math and AI. Her parents immigrated from the Dominican Republic and taught Giselle the power of perseverance. Now she speaks frequently to global audiences about the importance of using AI responsibly to hire and nurture talent. Listen and learn... How AI accelerates the process of learning new skills How to mitigate the impact of bias in automated decision-making The dangers of using facial recognition...
Jun 12, 2022•33 min•Ep 23•Transcript available on Metacast Harish Batlapenumarthy always believed culture is more important than anything else at work. He and the team at Emtropy Labs set out to identify how groups communicate in companies using machine learning. They ultimately landed on listening to customer feedback to automatically generate insights into customer experience metrics like churn risk. Listen and learn... A better way to identify customer sentiment using supervised machine learning What techniques are most effective for labeling trainin...
Jun 05, 2022•29 min•Ep 22•Transcript available on Metacast Eric Daimler advised the Obama administration on how to have conversations about AI. His work led to the creation of the AI office within the Science Advisory Group of The White House which has now become a cabinet-level position reporting to The President. Eric's a walking encyclopedia about AI policy and he shares all in this fascinating discussion about the future of technology, ethics, and society. Listen and learn... What it's like to shift from academia to venture capital to entr...
May 29, 2022•40 min•Ep 21•Transcript available on Metacast Mahesh Ram , founder and CEO of Solvvy, set out to "give everyone back time". His company was recently acquired by Zoom to improve customer experiences using conversational AI. Mahesh was inspired by his work using speech recognition to improve business English learning at Global English. Solvvy was founded in 2015 and has raised funding from an exceptional group of investors including previous "AI and the Future of Work" guest Rory O'Driscoll from Scale Venture Partners...
May 22, 2022•37 min•Ep 20•Transcript available on Metacast 
