This week’s guest is Ilan Gleiser, Founder and CEO of Synarchy AI, an AI consultancy based in the Bay Area. Ilan has worked with large organizations, including a role as Product Owner for Artificial Intelligence Enterprise Solutions at Wells Fargo, the third-largest bank in the U.S. In this episode, Ilan explains his process for filtering projects based on criteria like the potential return on investment and risk involved to help determine which projects are the most realistic to start with. Ilan also speaks about how he was inspired by some of our frameworks and added his own layer of trust and risk assessment to models. Download our whitepaper “Beginning with AI” at emerj.com/beg1.

This week's guest is Ilan Gleiser, Founder and CEO of Synarchy AI, an AI consultancy firm based in the Bay area. Ilan has a lot of hands-on experience with large enterprises, including work as Product Owner for AI Enterprise Solutions at Wells Fargo, one of the world's largest financial services firms. Today, Ilan discusses AI maturity and how to assess a specific business's skills, culture, and data resources. He also shares the tools he uses to determine potential projects for companies ready to move forward with AI deployment. Ilan is an Emerj subscriber and Emerj Plus Member, and he references some of our frameworks in this episode. To discover more AI use-cases, best practice guides, white papers, frameworks, and more, visit emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Christophe Makni, Managing Consultant for Lean AI and Automation at Basler Kantonalbank in Basel, Switzerland. Today, Christophe speaks about his processes for thinking about and identifying opportunities for automation in the Financial Services space. Christophe is also a valued Emerj Plus member. If you would like to learn more about how to join business leaders like Christophe around the world using our AI use-cases, whitepapers, and best practice frameworks in their work leading AI change, visit emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Nick Elprin, CEO and Co-Founder of Domino Data Lab, an enterprise data science management platform. Domino has raised over $100M to date. Nick previously served as Senior Application Technologist at Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world. In today’s episode, Nick shares his definition of a platform in the proper sense and speaks about the place and purpose of AI platforms. He also discusses why an enterprise would choose a platform and under what circumstances it would be a worthwhile investment while also sharing his idea of what the future will look like. If you are interested in reaching the Emerj audience, whether through thought leadership, e-mail, podcasts, or more, check out  emerj.com/ad1.

Today's guest is Peter Voss, Founder, CEO, and Chief Scientist at Aigo.ai. Peter shares his perspective today on what is holding chatbots back and what the technology might do in the future. He also discusses some of the unique use cases and challenges of applying conversational interfaces in the banking space specifically. If you are interested in more interviews about conversational interfaces in general, where they are making a dent in business, check out the AI in Business podcast on all major platforms such as Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, Google Podcasts, etc.

Today's guest is Pamela Negosanti, Head of Sector Strategy for Financial Services of Expert AI, a firm based in Italy, and doing lots of work globally in the financial space and NLP. Pamela breaks down in relative depth when and how to decide to build, buy, or combine the two. She lays out a couple of different continuums and gradients on decision-making that will help you figure out when you have more points on either side of the board, lean on the build or buy direction, or meet somewhere in the middle. If you are interested in learning to select the right AI vendor and going the buy route, be sure to download our free PDF brief called "5 Ways to Select the Right AI Vendor" at emerj.com/buy1

Today, returning with us is Mark Gazit, CEO, and Founder of ThetaRay, a firm based in Israel but doing business globally, with nearly $70M of funds raised, helping with fraud and anti-money laundering. Mark speaks with us today with a broader perspective in the world of fraud and AI deployments in general, as to where they will find more or less of a fit in the world of financial services in the year ahead as we aim to recover from this wild crisis. Want to learn more about AI deployment? Get Emerj's PDF guide: emerj.com/p1

Today's guest is Shankar Narayanan, Co-Founder, and COO of Active.Ai, a Singapore Head Quartered Fintech startup with an innovation lab in Bengaluru that delivers conversational banking services to help banks and financial institutions redefine their future digital strategy through AI. Shankar speaks to us today about where conversational interfaces belong in banking, where they can get fruitful use, and the areas where it is unrealistic to expect them to deliver value. Are you interested in more NLP use cases, including Conversational Interfaces? Download our free PDF Brief "Unlocking the Business Value of NLP" here: emerj.com/nlp1

Today's guest is the great and brilliant Ram Sukumar, Co-Founder and CEO of Indium Software, a Technology Solutions company with deep expertise in Digital and QA services, such as AI, Advanced Analytics, Text Analytics Center of Excellence, Big Data, Data Engineering, Stream Processing & Data Virtualization, and low-code development across platforms. Ram speaks with me today about particular workflows for text analytics. What does it look like in operation? Where do people get it wrong, where can it fit into play, and where is the potential value for text analytics when it comes to ideas for use cases? What are the practical realities of what you need to expect when deploying these technologies? Are you interested in more use cases and best practices around AI adoption and ROI? Check out Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1

Returning today is the great and brilliant Luca Scagliarini, Chief Product Officer of Expert.ai (formerly Expert System). Expert.ai is a public enterprise services company specializing in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Expert System went public in 2014 and continues to grow, raising $29.4 million to expand its AI text extraction & analysis capabilities in 2020. Its clients include giants like Dow Jones, Vodafone, and the U.S. government. Expert.ai's approach combines symbolic human-like comprehension and machine learning to transform language-intensive processes into practical knowledge. In this episode, Luca helps us dive into: the "war" between symbolic & ML techniques for NLP, when to use NLP to support financial services, and what companies often get wrong. Want to learn more about unlocking the business value of NLP? Get Emerj's PDF guide: emerj.com/nlp1