Episode #68 | Eric Siegel | On the ease of AI, and the difficulty of standing out

In this episode of The Only Constant, host Lasse Rindom speaks with Eric Siegel - author of The AI Playbook and a straight-talking voice in a noisy AI market. Siegel cuts through overpromises, resists crystal-ball fantasies, and reminds listeners that most of AI’s real business value still comes from predictive models, not the latest generative toys.

They discuss:

• Why predictive AI remains an untapped differentiator while generative AI is fast becoming a commodity
• The “accuracy fallacy” and the danger of chasing perfect certainty
• How narrowing scope and adding predictive layers over generative systems can make them viable in high-stakes use cases
• Why AGI is, in Siegel’s view, at least 1,000 years away - and why that’s a useful mindset for today’s business leaders

Do you want to know more about Eric Siegel?

Eric Siegel, Ph.D., is a former Columbia University professor who helps companies deploy machine learning. He is the cofounder and CEO of Gooder AI, the founder of the long-running Machine Learning Week conference series, the instructor of the acclaimed online course “Machine Learning Leadership and Practice – End-to-End Mastery,” executive editor of The Machine Learning Times, and a frequent keynote speaker. He wrote the bestselling Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die, which has been used in courses at hundreds of universities, as well as The AI Playbook: Mastering the Rare Art of Machine Learning Deployment. Eric’s interdisciplinary work bridges the stubborn technology/business gap. At Columbia, he won the Distinguished Faculty award when teaching the graduate computer science courses in ML and AI. Later, he served as a business school professor at UVA Darden. A Forbes contributor, Eric publishes op-eds on analytics and social justice.
 
Eric has appeared on Bloomberg TV and Radio, BNN (Canada), Israel National Radio, National Geographic Breakthrough, NPR Marketplace, Radio National (Australia), and TheStreet. A Forbes contributor, Eric and his books have been featured in BBC, Big Think, Businessweek, CBS MoneyWatch, Contagious Magazine, The European Business Review, Fast Company, The Financial Times, Fortune, GQ, Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Luckbox Magazine, MIT Sloan Management Review, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Newsweek, Quartz, Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, Scientific American, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and WSJ MarketWatch.