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

Bill Davidow is an icon in the venture capital world having made his first $5,000 venture investment in the 1960s before starting Mohr Davidow in 1985. This week’s episode of AI and the Future of Work is a fascinating discussion with Bill about his new book "The Autonomous Revolution: Reclaiming the Lives We’ve Sold to Machines”. This is a rare opportunity to learn secrets from one of the greats who helped launch the 8086 chip at Intel before planting the seeds that became today's venture capital industry.Bill on how today's autonomous revolution relates to the previous agricultural and industrial revolutions: "If we could figure out a way to adjust in an era of scarcity we should be able to adjust in an era of abundance." Listen and learn…What Silicon Valley was like in the 80s and how it has changed. The future of labor and why we’re measuring productivity the wrong way. What Bill means when he says we’ve locked ourselves in algorithmic prisons. How Bill proposes we mitigate the impact of AI bias. What are the attributes of the best entrepreneurs Bill has coached. This is a special one. Enjoy!

On this week’s podcast, we interview Shannon Burns, internal developer tools manager from Slack. Shannon’s been adjusting to a new style of management during the quarantine. Let’s just say the pace hasn’t slowed down for her and her team but she’s adapted her leadership style to help everyone stay productive while also acknowledging how the pandemic has affected them personally.Listen and learn...What makes Slack’s culture unique that might surprise you.Why a manager's new role is helping team members work less hard… and how Shannon does that.How Shannon’s team gathers requirements in lieu of traditional whiteboard sessions with developers.Shannon’s favorite Slack features (that you’re probably not using).How Shannon has been hobbying her way through the quarantine to stay sane.

How AI and Humans Will Work Together to Build a More Human Future of WorkIn this turnaround format, Leeza McKeown and Dan King interview Dan Turchin!  Hear...-- Dan's backstory - starting PeopleReign.io to help augment the human experience.  (What are his goals?)-- The benefits of AI for a frontline call center agent.  (Timely.... 600% increase in need for employee IT support for home workers.)-- How to think about optimizing your "digital labor" resources.  (There is a class for business leaders who want to master this.)-- What is the first question Dan asks in each virtual meeting & who does he look up to as leaders in the time of COVID-19.-- Why "building back better" is a realistic goal, because we were built for this.

We enjoyed our discussion with Charlene Li, analyst and best-selling author of The Disruption Mindset, so much last December that we invited her back to discuss the impact of the pandemic on leaders, culture, and the evolving nature of work. Charlene's advice for disruptors is more relevant than ever.Charlene's advice to leaders who have themselves been disrupted: "Now is the time to be a better leader. Take this opportunity to get to know the whole person - where they live, their families, their hobbies. These intimate work interactions allow us to be more empathetic."Listen and learn… How Charlene has made use of time spent not traveling and speaking at live eventsWhat's the single most important skill for managers leading in periods of uncertainty The new definition of work. Hint: it’s no longer defined by physical space. 

In this week’s episode of AI and the Future of Work, Slack Senior Vice President of Engineering Allan Leinwand shares how he’s leading his teams through the pandemic and what it means within Slack when CEO Stewart Butterfield says “we were made for this.” Allan helped develop, launch, and manage some of the most-loved technology products in history including Cisco’s routing products, Zynga’s social gaming backend, ServiceNow’s platform, and of course Slack. Listen and learn…What it’s like to develop the app that quite literally makes it possible to WFH.What teams that build iconic products do differently than others.What technology trend will define the next decade like cloud and AI have defined the past decade.How Allan defines his success as a leader.What leaders need to do now to keep employees productive and create cultures that are stronger on the other side of COVID-19.

On this week’s episode of AI and the Future of Work, we discuss the future of post-pandemic consumer behavior and AI in retail with Breinify CEO Diane Keng. Breinify develops a predictive personalization engine used by brands like BevMo! to understand how we buy and optimize the buying experience. She’s building a great culture and learning fast as a first-time founder and CEO. Listen and learn… How Diane thinks about company culture and how she keeps her team motivated in the face of uncertainty. How AI is delivering a better consumer experience and how to use data to predict behavior without violating consumer privacy. How Breinify uses data signals to identify “moments that matter”. Diane’s superpower and her advice for the next generation of female founders.

In this week’s episode of AI and the Future of Work, Dan Turchin discusses Silicon Valley culture pre and post pandemic, SaaS metrics, and the mistakes that get CEOs fired with Dave Kellogg, Silicon Valley luminary, investor, advisor, and CEO. Listen and learn...What’s the single most important metric for venture-backed SaaS companies… and why you’re probably calculating it wrong. What makes a great high-tech culture and why Dave is particularly proud of one slide that summarizes his philosophy on building successful teams.Why most CEOs fail because of one specific way they mis-manage board expectations.Dave’s biggest regret and how he has learned to overcome it as a leader.Dave's excellent blog: https://kellblog.com/Twitter: @kellblog

In recent weeks, we’ve been discussing what leaders do in a crisis. This week, we share an update from a discussion last November with Tess Posner, CEO of AI4ALL. In the past six weeks, AI4ALL has…Released a new Open Learning course about AI and COVID-19 for students and educators. Published a sentiment analysis and NLP curriculum. Made more than 65 hours of AI curricula and teaching guides available for free at olp.ai-4-all.org.Transitioned many 2020 high school summer internships online. Shifted its entire team to fully remote work.Tess is a force of nature. We need more leaders like her who see opportunities in the crisis not to help themselves but to help others first. In Tess’ case, she’s on a mission to bring AI education to high school students around the world. In this episode, listen and learn...What's the future of AI education for high school students?How can we mitigate the impact of AI bias in hiring?How high school students are solving real world problems with AI.How a natural disaster inspired Tess to launch her career in AI education. 

In this week’s episode of AI and the future of work, we discuss enterprise bots and natural language processing with Socrates.ai CEO Randy Womack. Randy is a 30-year Silicon Valley enterprise software veteran who has built successful teams and products at amazing organizations like SuccessFactors (now SAP) and Castlight Health. Listen and learn... What is an employee experience platform and how do great companies think about employee experiences? Why was Randy an early advocate for remote work and why do distributed teams outperform others? Hint: it’s not what you think. What do tattoos and blue hair have to do with company culture and what are the attributes of the best company cultures? Why is Marc Andreessen right about the need to build… as long as we don’t build keyboards. Thanks to Brian Ascher from Venrock for the introduction to Randy. 

This week, we discuss the human toll of the pandemic on day 35 of the shelter in place order. We also discuss what life on the other side will be like. We're learning from organizations like TaskRabbit whose CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot shares her organization's journey with Bob Safian on Reid Hoffman's Masters of Scale. We're re-publishing an episode that originally aired last August with former ServiceNow Vice President and next level leader Craig Pratt. In it, Craig discusses...Lessons for leaders looking to make an impact in or outside careers in technologyWhy empathy and intuition are timeless skills that transcend technology and will never be replaced by AIWhat inspired his career in technology from humble beginnings as a golf caddyFear is subsiding. Hope is returning. We're strong. We're resilient.Enjoy!Links referenced in this week's episode:https://mastersofscale.com/stacy-brown-philpot-keep-humans-in-the-equation-masters-of-scale-podcast/https://podcasts.apple.com/ne/podcast/next-level-leader/id1461652719