The Pulse of AI

On this podcast I am joined by Kenneth Stanley, currently of OpenAI, and Babak Hodjat, VP of Evolutionary AI at Cognizant, to talk about creativity, novelty search, Evolutionary AI, open endedness and all things in between. I was absolutely blown away by the breadth and depth of the insights around these topics. 

On this podcast I am joined by Quoc Le and Risto Miikkulainen to talk about AutoML and the future direction of AI. Risto is an associate VP of Evolutionary AI at Cognizant and also a professor at the University of Texas. Quoc Le needs little introduction because he is one of the preeminent thought leaders in AI today and is known for many things including co-founding Google Brain and as the person behind AutoML. 

On this podcast I am joined by Dr. Jordan Pollack and Babak Hodjat to talk about the Demystification of AI. It is hard to find two people who add more value to this conversation than these two guests. Both are preeminent thought leaders in the field and in this wide ranging and lively conversation we cover a lot of ground that will be interesting to anyone involved in the field of AI generally and Evolutionary AI specifically. Our discussion range’s from the theoretical to the practical and the insights that are provided by both are invaluable.

World renowned AI thought leader’s Joydeep Ghosh and Risto Miikkulainen join me on this podcast in a wide ranging discussion centered around the issue of Trustworthiness in AI. As our businesses and society increasingly rely on AI the issues around trust and explainability have become much more important.  And in fact, failure to successfully address the issue will hamper further adoption of AI. Whether you are a business leader, AI scientist, or a policy maker this podcast will help you understand the issues, both technical and philosophical, around explainability and trust in AI, and will give you insights into ways that top companies and scientists are successfully addressing this challenge. We also talk about how Evolutionary AI can be a key tool in helping create more trustworthy AI.  

Ever since the Covid pandemic spread across the globe many have asked the question “where is AI in this fight”? And it is a valid question because many of the techniques used in AI require large amounts of training data, which a new pandemic like Covid simply lacks.  However, a project developed by Babak Hodjat and Risto Miikulainen and their team at Cognizant has come the closest I have seen to answering this question. The system uses evolutionary AI which requires less data, utilizes creativity and goes beyond forecasting to basically providing advice. Babak gave me a demo last week and it is pretty exciting and so I wanted to bring them on the podcast so that they could share it with you and talk about what is under the hood.   In addition to Babak and Risto I am also joined by Bret Greenstein who is the Senior Vice President and Global Head of the Ai and Analytics Practice at Cognizant to talk about how the amazing work they have done is also relevant for business leaders. This is a really interesting podcast and I hope you enjoy it.. Let’s get to it.

This podcast will help you successfully complete your journey to AI and data transformation. I am joined by Saket Malhotra of Takeda and Bret Greenstein of Cognizant to talk about the importance of data strategy, establishing KPI’s and Metrics, and the importance that change management plays in successful digital transformation efforts. Digital transformation is hard and it is exciting to hear from a company that is doing it right. Lots of great insights to say the least. 

Join me on this podcast as I speak with Bret Greenstein of Cognizant and Inder Kochar of Novartis Oncology about the challenges, opportunities and best practices around centering an enterprise around data and AI.  Inder brings to light his “Journey to AI” experience over the past several years while Bret brings a cross-industry global perspective. We talk about data strategy, change management, using design thinking to understand and improve the customer journey and much more. If you are struggling with trying to successfully digitally transform your organization then this is a must listen! Note: The opinions expressed by Inder are his alone and do not reflect those of Novartis Oncology

In this podcast I speak with Babak Hodjat, VP of Evolutionary AI at Cognizant, and his collegue Naveen Sharma who is Head of AI and Analytics for Life Sciences about the exciting and profound changes that are occuring in pharma and healthcare driven both by Covid and the opportunities presented by AI techniques like Evolutionary AI.  I am a big believer that AI will enable innovation throughout the life sciences ecosystem from better and faster drug discovery to more efficient manufacturing to new business models that will change how patients interact with healthcare. All of which, in my opinion, will foster better health outcomes while lowering the cost curve. Which of course means treating more people better and cheaper.  It is a really exciting time for this industry and Babak and Naveen really lay out the changes that are happening. 

On this podcast I speak with Babak Hodjat, VP of Evolutionary AI at Cognizant, and his associate Maria Nazareth who is Head of AI and Analytics for the Banking and Financial Services Industry. Covid is forcing banks to accelerate their digital transformation efforts, re-think how they interact with customers, build more resilient models to evaluate risk and much more. And to do all of this they are leveraging data and AI in exciting and innovative ways. Part of the solution in my mind is using an Evolutionary AI approach and Babak explains how this works. The bank of the future is almost here!

Some companies are dealing with the disruption caused by the Covid crisis better than others. Cognizant virtually overnight changed the entire way their almost 300k global workforce operated. It is an amazing story.  Join me as I talk to Seth Bartlett, Global Chief Operating Officer of Cognizant’s Digital Business, and Bret Greenstein, SVP and Global Head of the AI & Analytics Practice, about how Cognizant immediately responded to the crisis and over the following weeks changed the way the entire company operated. It is a fascinating story and a must listen to every business leader that is trying to transform their enterprise to deal with the disruption caused by Covid.