AI and the Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Business, Ethics, HR, and IT for AI Enthusiasts, Leaders and Academics

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 living like WeWork transformed working… and why she’s not scared that bots may take her job. Listen and learn… How Adam Neumann of WeWork fame raised $350M at a $1B valuation from A16Z for his new company Flow… before launching  Kia’s proudest moment as a journalist What the acquisition of Axios by Cox Enterprises means for journalism How Flow may be more than the reincarnation of WeWork’s failed WeLive experiment As a culture, are we ready for communal living? What is the future of company perks… are the days of on-site dry cleaning numbered? How the generational shift is impacting cultural norms in the workplace What tasks bots will never do better than live journalists References in this episode: How AI is transforming journalism according to The Knight Foundation Gary A. Bolles discusses the WorkNet on AI and the Future of Work Mark van Rijmenam, The Digital Speaker, on AI and the Future of Work 

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 TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield startup competition in 2018 and is a member of the Forbes 30 under 30. He’s also a mentor and advisor to founders of color. Listen and learn...How AI connects customers to the right agents then indicates the likelihood of a support interaction escalatingHow to use historical data to help live agents fix problems fasterThe evolution of chatbots from decision trees to AIHow to combine generic language models with domain-specific data to increase the accuracy of NLPHow to solve the problem of bias encoded in dataHow GANs, generative adversarial networks, workWhy ML pipelines need to be monitored like web appsReferences in this episode...ForethoughtDeon on TwitterForward, the Forethought customer eventKrishna Gade from Fiddler on AI and the Future of WorkMonotonic selective risk may solve the AI bias problem

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 Jim cultivated a passion for robots... and why that makes him "the cool dad" How innovation in robotic technology is helping AMRs, autonomous mobile robots, perform more human-like tasks with less trainingWhich "dirty, dull, dangerous" tasks are the best candidates for robotic automation How new training techniques are reducing the time required to train a robot from 300 hours to a fraction of that  which "democratizes automation"  What's required to keep humans safe from robotsHow supplementing humans with robots for a task like picking items from warehouse shelves using machine vision saves 12-15 miles of walking per day while increasing accuracyHow techniques like SLAM and machine learning are making it easier to program robots to do more complex tasks more accurately with zero or minimal codingWhich new careers will be created by industrial robots... and which will be eliminatedTwo quick ways to know if a factory using robots and humans is safe Why Jim's passion is using robots to help people be their best selvesReferences in this episode:The Zebra blogTiernan Ray discusses bot sentience on AI and the Future of WorkIs Google's LaMDA sentient?Machines will out-perform humans in all tasks within 45 years... which is a good thing for us

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. Listen and learn…How Eightfold operationalizes the bold vision to find “the right career for everyone in the world" What has helped Eightfold scale to support customers in 140 countries and 19 languagesHow an AI HR platform helps with upskilling for internal mobility but also with hiring and talent-skill matchingWhy legacy HR tech software failed by focusing on “compliance vs. employee needs” Why automation won’t eliminate jobs… but every job will change as a result of AI How understanding human potential starts with understanding data stored outside HCM in “systems of work” like CRM and ITSM How to mitigate the impact of biased data to use AI to achieve inclusion and diversity goalsHow AI can identify roles where employees are likely to succeed… even when they have no experience performing skills they require What are the ethical implications of using AI to hire and promote employees References in this episode: OneTen.org and the role of Eightfold in its formation Renee Steenvorden from Randstad on AI and the Future of Work Giselle Mota from ADP on AI and the Future of Work Ashu Garg from Foundation Capital on AI and the Future of Work The BigScience BLOOM LLM

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 podcastWhat's required to use AI to improve employee experiences How many new jobs will be created by AI in the next five years according to The World Economic ForumThe right way for investors to identify talent and catalyze innovationHow Ben learned the value of human-centric AI from his days at Yahoo, Box, and TwitterReferences in this episode:Mark Settle, serial CIO, on AI and the Future of WorkDr. Mark van Rijmenam, The Digital Speaker, on AI and the Future of WorkRory O'Driscoll from Scale Ventures Partners on AI and the Future of WorkAshu Garg from Foundation Capital on AI and the Future of Work Glenn Solomon from GGV on AI and the Future of Work The great Katie Stanton, PeopleReign investor from Moxxie Ventures

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 betterWhy automation beyond IVR is saving contact centersWhat happens when AI makes bad decisionsWhen it's ok to "nudge" users to work with the bot... even when they ask for a humanThe ethical implicatio ns of bots pretending to be human What new careers  will be created when call center agents are replaced by botsReferences in this episode:Replicant on TwitterThe Replicant blogThe Open Ethics AI initiativeKrishna Gade from Fiddler on AI and The Future of WorkJohn Oliver's riff on automation

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 enterpriseHow Krish and the team build an AI voice assistant that joins  meetings in 100 countries every dayHow to start with 85% ASR (automated speech recognition) accuracy and make it better using AIHow to mitigate the impact of biased training data where foreign accents and uncommon speech patterns are underrepresentedWho owns voice transcripts used to train AI modelsHow being recorded changes participant behavior in meetingsThe future of "voice-first" computingReferences in this episode:Krishna Gade from Fiddler discusses AI explainabilityFireflies on Twitter A whole breast, AI-based ultrasound system was cleared by the FDA to improve mammogram accuracyDentists now use AI to improve the accuracy of spotting cavities

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 phenomenally complex. Joel makes it sound simple. Hear from the expert. Oh, and stick around to the end for McDonald's fun facts!Listen and learn...How Joel channels Ray Kroc's vision when architecting systems: "restaurants should run themselves... it should be as simple as a shoebox with money going in and going out."Why Joel says "if it's easier for the crew it's better for the consumer."How AI, wearables, IoT, and AR are all parts of the McDonald's technology vision.Why the shift supervisor at a McDonald's restaurant has one of the hardest jobs in the world.  The anatomy of a McDonald's restaurant: "...they're mini factories run by a server."How AI is improving the drive-thru experience and personalizing the dining experience.What's required to support the McDonald's app which generates 16% of the company's revenue and is the world's most downloaded food ordering app.References in this episode...McDonald's by the numbersMeta Research is improving NLP accuracy with less training data by using our understanding of how humans learn languagesGiselle Mota, TEDx speaker and top 100 "Future of Work" thought leader, on AI and the Future of Work

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 people and supporting 15,000 employees at YahooHow the culture at Pivotal Labs inspired Ben's philosophy on quantifying the employee experienceHow Ben convinced a former Apple leader why QSTAC is better than NPSWhy CSAT scores don't actually correlate with how satisfied employees are at workHow the principles of Design Thinking can be used to run ITWhat IT must do to avoid being "Uber-ed" like the taxi industryReferences in this episode...Dion Hinchcliffe on AI and the Future of WorkTim Crawford on AI and the Future of WorkMatt K. Parker on AI and the Future of WorkO'Reilly's 2021 AI adoption in the enterprise surveyQSTAC

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 illustrates how AI can transform legacy industriesWhy "artificial intelligence" isn't really "intelligent"What is an "AI strategy"... and what are the four questions to ask to define yoursHow a fintech company in the UK reduced costs to transfer money by 90% with AIWhat's required to earn the public's trust in AIWhy every company should be required to have a "social license" to use AIReferences in this episode...Fortune article on human-machine collaboration by FrancoisFrancois' "BCG Expert" profileDr. Eric Daimler, Obama's AI authority, on AI and the Future of WorkThe McKinsey "AI in 2020 Survey"