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

Dan Turchin
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Feb 22, 2021 • 29min

Rak Garg, investor at OpenView, discusses how enterprise software startups can disrupt incumbents like Splunk and Atlassian

Rak Garg recently shifted from Product Management at companies like Atlassian and Redfin to investing at OpenView Venture Partners, the iconic firm behind companies like Datadog, ExactTarget, Instructure, and others. He shares the playbook for enterprise software startups looking to disrupt incumbents like Splunk and Atlassian. His thesis on SIEM (security event management) and log analytics spawned an excellent blog post on how startups are unbundling Splunk and defining new categories in the process. Follow Rak at rak_garg on twitter.Listen and learn...Why investing is harder than being a Product ManagerWhere Splunk and Atlassian are vulnerable to disruption from startupsRak's perspective on what must change about Silicon Valley cultureThe importance of "don't F&*%$ the customer" as a core component of company cultureCompanies mentioned in this episode:NotionLinearFigmaAsanaSnowflake
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Feb 16, 2021 • 36min

Glenn Solomon, GGV Capital Managing Partner, discusses the people behind amazing companies like Airbnb, HashiCorp, and Opendoor

Glenn Solomon, managing partner at GGV Capital, has a track record of investing in iconic companies like Slack and Zendesk. He shares intriguing stories, including his first encounters with the founders of Airbnb and HashiCorp. Discover why Domino's has outpaced Google in stock performance. Glenn discusses Opendoor's rocky journey to a $20B valuation and why Nike prioritizes software engineers over designers. Dive into the future of digital transformation and the impact of AI on industries.
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Feb 9, 2021 • 26min

Elaine Zelby, investor at SignalFire, discusses unsexy markets and the SaaS startup bundle

Elaine Zelby is an investor at SignalFire, a blogger, podcaster, and former Product Marketer at Capriza and Slack. She shares her perspective on the proliferation of SaaS tools, what's sexy about unsexy markets, and what companies she's ready to fund.Listen and learn...Why entrepreneurs describe SignalFire as the "kind" VCThe one technology that will change work most in 2025What Elaine learned as an operator that has helped her as an investorWhy the exodus from big cities may not be a thing after allThanks to Ilya from SignalFire for the introduction to Elaine. Episodes and companies mentioned on the show:Deborah Hanus from SparrowTestbox
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Jan 30, 2021 • 35min

Evangelos Simoudis, best-selling author and Managing Director at Synapse Partners, discusses the present and future of autonomous vehicles

The future of cities, work, and transit all rely on technological advances in the field of autonomous vehicles. On this week's episode, Evangelos Simoudis, acclaimed author, futurist, and investor, discusses  the present and future of everything from robo-taxis to urban planning.Listen and learn...-How ethical implications and regulatory frameworks pose as big a threat to adoption of autonomous vehicles as technology-Why a combination of knowledge-driven and ontological approaches are often required to optimize the accuracy of AI-Why the classic trolley problem from a 1970s philosophy paper is more relevant than ever-The pros and cons of  using neural nets to train autonomous vehicles-Why Evangelos attributes his success to a history of systems thinking
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Jan 23, 2021 • 29min

Ashu Garg, General Partner at Foundation Capital, discusses finding and investing in the future of AI

Ashu Garg is a General Partner at Foundation Capital, one of the most iconic venture firms in Silicon Valley. Ashu was first an entrepreneur before becoming an investor and discovering amazing companies like TubeMogul, Cohesity, Eightfold, and Databricks.Listen and learn...How Ashu translated his unique brand of hustle into finding and backing amazing entrepreneursWhy Ashu feels, as an entrepreneur, it’s worse to be too early than too lateThe challenges and opportunities of applying NLP to enterprise software What emerging technology will most impact work in 2031 How the ability to automate routine tasks creates an opportunity to change the world Companies mentioned on the show:Foundation CapitalEightfoldTuringArizeTubeMogulCohesityDatabricks
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Jan 2, 2021 • 31min

Haixun Wang, VP and AI Distinguished Scientist at Instacart, shares insights from 20 years of innovating at IBM, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon

Great episode to kick off 2021. Dr. Haixun Wang has been at the forefront of introducing AI-based innovation to the world's leading technology companies including IBM, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon. He's the current VP Engineering and Distinguished Scientist at Instacart where he focuses on improving the grocery delivery experience with AI.Listen and learn...Why knowledge graphs may be the solution to improve today’s e-commerce search experience. Why it’s hard to create an algorithm to help shoppers pick items from store shelves.What defines a “technology” company.Why it’s difficult to “make the physical world smart”. What happens when you search “insomnia" on Amazon.Haixun’s proudest accomplishment.Resources mentioned in the discussion with Dr. Wang:Our episodes with...Bill DavidowAlex from Josh.aiDarius from MeratasCharlene LiTiernan RayDave KelloggHaixun's quarantine reading: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel ProustHaixun's blog
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Dec 12, 2020 • 28min

Darius Goldman, CEO and Founder of Meratas, discusses the future of education and how income share agreements work

Darius Goldman, CEO and Founder of Meratas, discusses the future of education and how income share agreements (ISAs) are making college and trade school more accessible. Meratas partners with educational institutions to offer a financing option to students who can attend courses for free up front and pay later with a portion of future income. Meratas is off to a fast start with 30 education partners and 3,100 students.Listen and learn...How ISAs create opportunities for students who couldn’t otherwise afford higher educationDarius’ perspective on the future of education: “It’s a luxury to get educated for the sake of enrichment"How a waitress working three low-paying jobs is now selling software thanks to a Meratas-backed ISA What Darius will be most proud of when Meratas transforms the education marketH/t to Jason Calacanis (@Jason) whose great interview with Darius led to this week’s podcast.Episodes and organizations referenced:Tess Posner, CEO of AI4ALL Charlene Li, best-selling author of The Disruption MindsetPatty Hatter, SVP Palo Alto NetworksPrehiredLambda SchoolCourseraKhan Academy
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Dec 8, 2020 • 33min

Michael Shepherd, Distinguished Engineer at Dell Technologies, discusses the future of AI, ethics, and what happens when machines are smarter than us

On this week’s podcast, Michael Shepherd, Distinguished Engineer at Dell Technologies focused on AI, describes the present and future of intelligent software. Fascinating discussion about using AI for good… and what could happen if we lose control. Worth listening to hear when Michael thinks we’ll achieve AGI (artificial general intelligence), where bots are indistinguishable from humans. Listen and learn… About Michael’s vision for “analytics at the speed of thought”. How Michael describes the “three Vs of big data”. Why laptops may soon not need charging cables. Why knowing the answer will be less important in the future. Research referenced in this episode: Imagine a world without wiresGoogle’s DeepMind beats doctors at breast cancer detectionThe ethics of AI
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Nov 29, 2020 • 46min

The past, present, and future of AIOps with Dr. Helen Gu, CTO and Founder of InsightFinder

In this special episode with Dr. Helen Gu, author or co-author of 80+ academic papers on distributed computing and AI for systems management, we discuss the past, present, and future of AI for IT Operations.Listen and learn...How and why the technology behind common problems like image recognition fails when applied to machine dataWhere Helen and her team were nine years ahead of AmazonWhy unsupervised machine learning is required to predict and prevent system downtimeWhy machine learning is well-suited to anomaly detection for machine dataThe next technology breakthrough that will eliminate sleepless nights for developersResearch papers referenced on today's episode:Helen's 10-year Symposium on Cloud Computing award about elastic resource scalingFixing the hang bug problem
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Nov 22, 2020 • 31min

Chris Curtin, former C-level exec at Visa and Disney tech VP, discusses the future of brands and money

Chris Curtin has been on a journey over the past twenty plus years to modernize iconic brands like Disney, HP, and Visa. He has been at the forefront of new payment technologies, consumer channels, and business models. We discussed the future of everything with Chris. Listen and learn...Why it will soon be as easy to send money to Botswana as it is to send photos or emoji.How Chris defines "brand".What it was like negotiating Visa's Olympic Games partnership.The best leadership advice Chris has received.How Coldplay (and the Pope) just may show up in your living room soon.Companies and episodes mentioned:MicrosoftShopifyVisaDisneyHPOur episode with Alex Capecelatro, Josh.ai CEO and FounderThanks to Lister Delgado from IDEA Fund Partners for the introduction!

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