The Pulse of AI

On this podcast I am joined by Braden Hancock who is a co-founder and Head of Technology at Snorkel AI. Snorkel AI is unlocking a better, faster way to build applications With Snorkel Flow, the first truly data-centric AI platform. To date they have raised over $50 million from top VC firms such as Greylock, Lightspeed, GV and others. Snorkel AI is solving a real problem that has been holding back AI adoption by simplifying data labeling and making AI projects look more like software development efforts. Delivering both successfully will encourage companies to more fully embrace AI by removing some of the barriers and hassles that make “doing AI” so difficult.  On this podcast we talk about Braden’s journey to entrepreneurship, the origin story of Snorkel, how their approach to data labeling works and how it helps unlock the power of AI in the enterprise, why SME’s are the key to data labelling and why Snorkel’s approach empowers them, why you should drop what you are doing and immediately send in a resume and much more. I am excited for this conversation because Snorkel AI is solving a real problem in the industry that has been holding back AI adoption and I am just really impressed with their team. In my opinion this is definitely a company to keep an eye on. Let’s get to it!

Online platforms are overwhelmed with speech that is harmful. Companies are trying to get their hands around the problem in order to solve it, because it is driving people off their platforms in droves. But it is a difficult problem to solve. Companies need to establish policies, set up governance committees and protocols, find technical solutions and hire moderators.    Justin Dave, Co-Founder and CEO of Spectrum Systems, founded his company to attack this problem with Contextual AI.  I invited Justin onto the show because I love what Spectrum Labs is doing but I also think that he has great insights into the problem and the range of approaches needed to solve it.  Podcast Transcript: Spectrum Labs elevator pitch (1:29) The professional journey of Justin Davis, Co-Founder/CEO, and why he started Spectrum Labs  (2:32) What is Contextual AI and how does it work? (4:47) Quantifying the size of the negative/violent/hateful/etc that Spectrum Labs is trying to solve (8:50) How does a company work with Spectrum Labs to address this problem?  (12:10) How many companies are taking this problem seriously? (16:42) Who are Spectrum Labs competitors? (20:29)

On this podcast I am joined by Risto Miikkulainen from Cognizant and by Dr. Nuria Oliver from Valencia Spain who led her team to victory in the Cognizant sponsored Xprize Pandemic Response Challenge which was a four month, $500k challenge that focused on the development of data-driven AI systems to predict Covid-19 infection rates and prescribe intervention plans that regional governments, communities and organizations can implement to minimize harm when reopening their economies. Dr. Oliver's team was made up of 20 leading researchers and policy experts from universities and research institutes throughout Valencia, Spain. Click through to see time stamps of the discussion for easier listening.  Transcript Time Stamps: 2:16 - Risto tells us about the origins of the Xprize Challenge and why it is so important 4:09 - Dr. Oliver talks about her background and how her work on other pandemics led her to being in a position to put a team together to advice the regional government of Valencia from the beginning of Covid and how that led to entering the Xprize Challenge 8:07 - Dr. Oliver tells us about her team 10:33 - Risto tells us about the different phases of the competition and what challenges competitors faced 12:55 - Dr. Oliver talks about how she and her team approached the competition, how they leveraged their strengths, key strategic approaches and more 18:00 - Dr. Oliver responds to a question I have around whether diversity was a key competitive advantage of her team 21:02 - Risto tells us what he thinks really made Dr. Oliver and her team stand out from the rest of the competition 22:52 - We discuss how this could be applied to other issues and using AI and competitions in general for policy development 32:34 - We discuss the differences, and pluses and minuses, of short competitions vs longer competitions and what is the best approach to big problems

On this podcast I am joined by Risto Miikulainen, a professor at the University of Texas in Austin and Associate VP of Evolutionary AI at Cognizant, and Mitja Lustrek, who is the head of the Ambient Intelligence Group at the Josef Stefan Institute located in Slovenia, to talk about the recently completed Xprize Covid Challenge where Mitja and his team came in an impressive second.  Podcast Outline: :19 - Risto explains the genesis of this Xprize 3:50 - Mitja introduces us to his institute and team 6:27 - We talk about why Evolutionary AI is an interesting approach for things like Covid 11:00 - We dig down into each of the phases and goals of the competition 14:12 - Mitja walks us through his teams strategy and how they approached the challenge from a technical standpoint 20:12 - Risto highlights some of the really interesting things that Mitja and his team did to set themselves apart from the competition  

Coming off a recent $30 million Series B funding I am joined on this podcast by Victor Kushch, Co-Founder and CTO of Fairmarkit. Fairmarkit is an exciting venture backed company that has created an intelligent sourcing platform that empowers organizations to more efficiently purchase the goods and services they need.  Basically by equipping procurement and supply-chain teams with automation and data, Fairmarkit promotes competitive bidding while reducing manual work within existing processes.  It is a big market that is ripe for disruption and Fairmarkit hopes to be that disruptor!

On this podcast I am joined by Mike Hughes and Antonio Allegria to talk about Low-Code generally and what Outsystems is doing specifically in the space. Low-Code is transforming how software gets developed and we are really just at the beginning of the revolution it is driving. Outsystems is doing some really neat stuff and I love their vision around what it is going to take to win the Low-Code market. SHOW SUMMARY: Start - Outsystems elevator pitch 1:57 - What is Low-Code? 4:01 - How does Low-Code help enterprises digitally transform? 6:54 - Low-Code and AI? 12:14 - What differentiates Outsystems from others in the space? 17:58 - Outsystems Customer Use Cases? 21:29 - How does Low-Code empower IT and does it change the talent mix? 27:09 - Where will the game be won in Low-Code? 29:07 - What types of people are you looking to hire and why should they work at Outsystems? 32:25 - What are the important takeaways that business and technical leaders should gain from this podcast?

On this podcast I am joined by Sagi EliYahoo, the Co-Founder and CEO of Tonkean. Tonkean’s Adaptive Business Operations platform simplifies the orchestration of complex, enterprise-level business processes with a truly no-code interface. Ops professionals are becoming a critical component of business units and No-Code generally, and Tonkeans platform specifically, empowers them. I think everyone will benefit from Sagi’s keen insights.   Summary: 2:06 - Tonkean elevator pitch 3:55 - Who uses No-Code? 7:10 - What is Adaptive Process Automation? 12:00 - No-Code use cases 18:16 - Tonkean is the “Operating System for Business Operations” 22:22 - CIO’s reaction to no-code? 25:14 - No-code helps empower business unit ops  30:30 - Why will Tonkean be the leader in the space? 33:52 - Why work at Tonkean?

On today’s podcast I am joined by Toby Phillips who is the executive director of the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford and Bret Greenstein, Senior Vice President of AI and Analytics at Cognizant to talk about the Xprize Pandemic Response Challenge. The Pandemic Response Challenge is a $550k, four month challenge that focuses on the development of data-driven AI systems to predict CODI-19 infection rates and to prescribe Intervention Plans (IPs) that regional governments, communities, and organizations can implement to minimize harm when reopening their economies. Summary of Podcast: (0:29) Founding of the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker project (4:01) The origins of Cognizants AI response effort (6:08) The creation of the Xprize Challenge and it’s goals (11:29) The type of data Oxford collects and how they collect it (15:53) Insights into the importance of sharing data and how it increase its value (19:15) How is new data incorporated into the models and how they are retrained (27:15) Human in the loop: The roles of humans and AI in this project (31:22) Unexpected and counter-intuitive results (34:33) The Oxford project as a model for addressing other global problems (38:53) How Covid has changed business and policy leaders view towards data collaboration (40:25) Last thoughts and takeaways 

On this podcast I have the pleasure of being joined by Ben Taylor, Datarobots Chief AI Evangelist.  Ben is a recognized and engaging speaker for AI with over 16 years of machine learning experience. He has a diverse career including work with Intel/Micron, as the HPC/AI expert for the hedge fund AIQ where he built out models using a 600 GPU cluster to predict stock movements based on the news, and as the Chief Data Scientist for HireVue. He joined DataRobot in early 2020 when they acquired an AutoML start-up that he co-founded by the name of Zeff.ai. I hope you enjoy the conversation! Conversation Summary: Ben’s unique career journey (1:10) DataRobot’s elevator pitch (5:27) Insights into why so many AI project in the enterprise are failing (6:27) How he helps educate C-suite leaders around what AI can, and can’t, do (10:00) AI is expensive, so how should leaders determine where to apply AI to drive the most value? (13:34) Dealing with the shortage of AI and data science talent (16:32) Exploring the fundamental differences between software development and AI/Data Science projects (18:19) The challenges and opportunities around data/AI moving from the IT department into the business units (22:22) Is the Chief Data Officer the right role to drive digital transformation? (24:29) What does the ideal CDO look like? (27:32) Importance of storytelling for the Journey to AI (28:50) Should it be humans plus machines or machines plus humans for true digital transformation? (31:32)

On this podcast I am excited to be joined by Amir Banifatemi of Xprize and Babak Hodjat of Cognizant to talk about a new Xprize Challenge which is designed to develop AI driven insights and solutions to help government officials make better policy decisions around closures and re-opening efforts in response to Covid. This challenge is based on work started early in the pandemic, completely pro bono, that Babak and his team at Cognizant did based on their expertise in Evolutionary AI. It is really groundbreaking work! I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did!