How AI Happens

In this episode, we talk to Stefan Scherer (CTO of Embodied) about why he decided to focus on the more nuanced challenge of developing children’s social-emotional skills. Stefan takes us through how encouraging children to mentor Moxie (a friendly robot) through social interaction helps them develop their interpersonal relationships. We dive into the relevance of scripted versus unscripted conversation in different AI technologies, and how Embodied taught Moxie to define abstract concepts such as "kindness". Key Points From This Episode:Welcome to Stefan Scherer, CTO of Embodied and lead researcher and developer of Embodied's SocialX™ technology, Moxie.The goal of Embodied: using a natural mode of communication to support children’s social development. Mentoring Moxie: how Moxie teaches children social-emotional learning without being a teacher. Why Stefan and Embodied focused on the challenge of social-emotional skills, not STEM. Developing a technology that captures the infinite answers to social-emotional questions: using neural networks and sentiment analysis.How using Few-shot learning reduced the amount of data needed to train Moxie.Why it's important to make the transition between freer- and scripted conversations seamless.How the percentage of scripted versus non-scripted conversation differs based on the context of the technology.  Discover how Moxie adapts to children’s changing needs and desires. How Moxie as a springboard in teaching children to form long-term relationships. The hardware behind Moxie: the ethical considerations around home devices, and data protection.Why Moxie looks the way it does: making it affordable. Tweetables:“Human behavior is very complex, and it gives us a window into our soul. We can understand so much more than just language from human behavior, we can understand an individual's wellbeing and their abilities to communicate with others.” — Stefan Scherer [0:01:04]"It is not sufficient to work on the easy challenges at first and then expand from there. No, as a startup you have to tackle the hard ones first because that's where you set yourself apart from the rest." — Stefan Scherer [0:04:53]“Moxie comes into the world of the child with the mission to basically learn how to be a good friend to humans. And Moxie puts the child into this position of teaching Moxie about how to do that.” — Stefan Scherer [0:17:40]"One of the most important aspects of Moxie is that Moxie doesn't serve as the destination, Moxie is really a springboard into life." — Stefan Scherer [0:18:29]“We did not want to overengineer Moxie, we really wanted to basically afford the ability to have a conversation, to be able to multimodally interact, and yet be as frugal with the amount of concepts that we added or the amount of capabilities that we added.” — Stefan Scherer [0:27:17]Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:See Moxie in ActionStefan Scherer on LinkedInEmbodied Website

Today we talk to Celtra Founder and CPO, Matevž Klanjšek, about how AI can be used to accelerate creativity, and what would happen if it eventually replaces humans in the creative space. We discuss the limitations of the tools currently available, why Matevž isn’t interested in teaching AI variance, and how humans and AI need to work together in advertising. Tune in to hear what the future of advertising looks like, and why the human-AI feedback loop is essential. Matevž tells us about the bizarre adverts he’s seen AI produce, and talks us through the evolution of human creativity: from paintings to photographs, and how humans stay relevant when we invent something new. Key Points From This Episode:An introduction to the founder and CPO of Celtra, Matevž Klanjšek.Where the idea of using AI in advertising came from.How Celtra technology helps creatives scale their media, accelerating creativity.Why AI is the right tool for the job.Two dangers of using AI in advertising: impacting the communication strategy, and losing uniqueness.Can you teach AI variance?Why it’s important to leave space for human error.Humanity in advertising: why brands are trying to be more human.What a collaboration between humans and AI looks like.How human genius lies in building communication strategies.The surprising results when AI tries to create adverts.Playing with generative design: how AI can inspire humans.Why AI won’t replace humans in the future.Tweetables:“It just makes sense to automate [repetitive tasks] as much as possible, and remove that from the equation, let human genius think about big ideas and communication strategies, creativity and so on.” — @hyperhandsome [0:03:47]“I think on all of the levels, across the creative process, we always try to have humans involved. It’s almost like a basic principle.” — @hyperhandsome [0:14:47]“So that’s the nice thing, actually, perhaps using pretty advanced AI to really inspire creativity in humans instead of replacing it. It’s kind of beautiful in a way.” — @hyperhandsome [0:17:24]"I think the whole point of advertising, and humanity in general is precisely to be always different, to invent new things." — @hyperhandsome [0:18:12]“I think technology always gets to a point where it can perfectly imitate, and do it better than humans can, but then we invent something new.” — @hyperhandsome [0:19:52]Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:Matevž Klanjšek on LinkedInCeltra Technologies

Joining us today is Dr. Bill Porto, Redpoint Senior Analytics Engineer and storied AI researcher, academic, and developer. Bill shares all his current projects,  including pattern recognition and optimization models, and he reveals what it was like to work with the father of Evolutionary Programming, Dr. Larry Fogel. We touch on a new definition for computational intelligence, and talk about where evolutionary programming is in use today, before exploring the fact that evolution is not simply survival of the fittest, but increases variance through retaining less perfect fits. What's more, we define evolution as adaptation in a dynamic environment.  Key Points From This Episode: Be introduced to today’s guest, Bill Porto, Redpoint Senior Analytics Engineer.How he entered the industry, his background in applied math, and how he ended up in his current role.The subjects he is working on now: pattern recognition and optimization models, personalized recommendation systems and business process optimization.What it was like to work with Larry Fogel, a polymath in the true sense of the word.How computational intelligence is just taking cues from nature.Where evolutionary programming is in use today: commercial and government organizations, transport, the pharmaceutical industry, and more.Why evolution is not really survival of the fittest, but increases variance by retaining more solutions.How evolutionary processes require noise and how we should control what kind of noise it accesses.What evolution is all about: adaptation in a dynamic environment.Why having solutions that are medium fits can help you find exactly the right one.How there is no single algorithm for all optimization problems.Why, if you spend a lot of time getting a perfect solution, it may be stale by the time you implement it.How important it is to prioritize customer satisfaction and optimize human resourcesWhy considering different goals and attaching different weights to them is so important.Why a hybrid approach is good engineering practice as is using the best tool for the job.How customer acquisition is not the same thing as customer retention.Non-discrete, asymmetric bowl functions as a way to create solutions.Scalability as a feature of the current landscape that enables us to tackle large problems.Why continual learning is such a powerful approach. Tweetables:“Computational intelligence is just taking cues from nature. And nature adaptively learns using iterative evaluation selection. So why not put that into an application on a computer?” — Bill Porto [0:04:18]“It’s not really survival of the fittest, that’s the common moniker for it, in reality evolution favors the solutions that are most fit, but it tends to retain a number of less fit solutions, and one of the benefits of that is it increases the variance in the number of solutions.” — Bill Porto [0:07:20]“If you spend a lot of time getting a perfect solution, by the time you have it, it very well may be stale.” — Bill Porto [0:15:17] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:Redpoint GlobalBill Porto on LinkedIn

CEO Shahan Lilja joins to explain how Mavenoid is able to deploy custom chat bots in a matter of minutes, the processes by which these tools get better over time, and how the ability to automatically turn technical expertise into an algorithm that can be utilized at scale is amplifying human intelligence. 

Rob Carpenter is the founder and CEO of Valyant AI, which is on a journey to solve the complex problem of conversational AI in the food service industry. In today’s episode, Rob explains the three main components of AI speech processing (and the challenges that arise at each of these nodes), how conversational AI has the capacity to improve conditions for human workers in the food service industry, and what this technology is going to be like in the future. After this episode, you’ll understand the importance of being more thoughtful about how you communicate your next burger and fries order to a conversational AI system. Key Points From This Episode:Rob’s early interest in entrepreneurship. The original idea that Rob wanted to center his company around, and why it didn’t work out that way. What Valyant AI does. Long term goals that Rob has for his company. Challenges of conversational AI in the food service industry.  Benefits of being an industry newcomer. The “three amigos” of speech processing.Examples of customer statements which highlight why a natural language processor is such a vital part of AI speech processing.How people need to learn to communicate with AI systems. The deficit of employees in the restaurant industry.Ways that conversational AI improves working conditions for food service industry employees. Progress that we have made as a society as a result of innovation. What we can expect from conversational AI in the next five to ten years. Tweetables:“I thought the hologram was the hard part and that the conversational AI was solved, but it was basically the inverse of that.” — Rob Carpenter [0:06:47]“There’s benefits when you get into a new industry or technology not knowing the problems, because you don’t know what your limitations are. I think a lot of times that frees you up to be more creative and innovative.” — Rob Carpenter [0:08:38]“If I was to postulate where things would end up, I’d say it’s probably a 90/10. 90% is that the technology has to be better, and keep getting better. 90% of everything needs to be handled by the AI. The other 10%, people need to be more thoughtful when they communicate with these systems.” — Rob Carpenter [0:17:22]“There’s 1.7 million unfilled positions in the restaurant industry right now. 1 in 6 of every position available right now is in restaurants.” — Rob Carpenter [0:20:26]“Innovation is not only built into economies, but it’s essential for their health and long-term safety.” — Rob Carpenter [0:23:28]Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:Rob Carpenter on LinkedInValyant AI

Dr. John Kane, Head of Signal Processing & Machine Learning at Cogito, explains the challenges brought on by the oft-repeated truism "speech is more than text", and how Cogito addresses these challenges to deliver real-time conversational insight to their users. Later, John explains the holistic approach to ensuring machine learning technology is created in a bias-free environment.

Data & AI Solution Specialist for Microsoft, Priyanka Roy, explains how Design Thinking is a crucial approach in the development of any AI technology, and how it's proper utilization results in better products and more effective teams. Priyanka also outlines the key pillars of a successful data governance approach, and the utility of "thick" data.

Walmart's SVP of Global Technology Anshu Bhardwaj and VP of Emerging Technology Desirée Gosby join Sama CEO Wendy Gonzalez for a roundtable discussion about representation in AI, explainable & ethical AI, and how representative teams are a key way to reduce biases in AI technology.

Theresa Benson, Product Storyteller for InRule Technology, explains the opportunity of combining declarative AI with predictive AI, and how InRule Technology is using predictive AI to empower non AI experts to develop algorithms from their existing domain knowledge.

LeanTaas CEO Mohan Giridharadas explains how his team is solving the Supply & Demand challenge within healthcare, how the algorithms are stress tested in order to handle extreme edge cases, as well as how drift is defined, detected, and resolved in a customer-centric fashion.