The Artificial Intelligence Podcast

Join Vrajesh Bhavsar, CEO of Operant AI, as he reveals the emerging threat landscape facing production AI systems, from sophisticated prompt injection attacks to zero-click exploits that can exfiltrate sensitive data without any user interaction. Bhavsar explains how traditional security tools like code scanning, network firewalls, and cloud security posture management become largely ineffective against AI agents operating with non-deterministic behavior and authorized access to critical systems, requiring runtime security solutions that function as AI-layer firewalls. He discusses the Shadow Escape attack class discovered by Operant targeting Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, where the rapid proliferation of 20,000 mostly open-source MCP servers creates dangerous shared memory spaces across disparate API endpoints, enabling data poisoning and exfiltration at scale while traditional security teams remain blind to these agent-to-agent interactions happening within the "cloud within the cloud."

Join Raj Shukla, CTO of SymphonyAI, as he discusses the critical distinction between AI demos and production-ready systems, revealing that enterprises consistently underestimate the "last mile" challenges of authentication, authorization, and data scalability that break POCs when moving to production. Shukla explains how SymphonyAI's vertical AI approach pre-trains models on industry-specific ontologies and knowledge graphs for retail, financial services, industrial manufacturing, and enterprise IT, enabling faster ROI by providing pre-built agents and domain-specific context rather than expecting generic LLMs to solve everything. He addresses the hidden costs that shock CFOs—not LLM inference which has dropped 1000x, but the expensive work of making data and APIs AI-ready through proper governance layers and MCP server implementations, while warning that enterprises overestimate the autonomy achievable in the short term and underestimate the infrastructure work required for real process automation at scale.

Join Balaji Raghavan, Head of Engineering at Postman, as he discusses the critical gap between AI adoption and API readiness, revealing that while 80% of developers use AI, only 24% design APIs with AI agents as the intended consumer. Drawing from Postman's 40 million developer user base, Raghavan explains how human-designed APIs create ambiguity problems for AI systems, requiring additional tooling layers that often introduce security vulnerabilities through proxy credentials and unauthorized access risks. He addresses the uncomfortable reality that the industry is still in early stages of making AI reliably call APIs at scale, with hallucinations and context limitations preventing effective orchestration across hundreds of endpoints, while warning that judicious leaders must distinguish between deterministic flows and cases where expensive AI-based approaches are truly necessary to manage infrastructure costs and prevent cascade failures.

Join Stelios Diamantidis, Chief Product Officer at Cognichip, as he explores how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing semiconductor development by enabling more holistic design processes that can reduce development time by half and costs by 75%. He discusses how AI tackles complex challenges across the entire chip design workflow—from early product definition through manufacturing—including verification, debugging, and hardware-software co-design optimization. Diamantidis envisions a near future where AI agents serve as true co-designers, helping engineers navigate the complex trade-offs between performance, power efficiency, and chip area while enabling rapid creation of bespoke accelerators tailored to specific AI workloads.

Join Paul Canetti, CEO of Skej, as he discusses the unique challenges of building AI products that operate without traditional user interfaces, instead functioning as virtual humans with email addresses, phone numbers, and Slack handles that interact through natural language. Drawing from his experience in UX design at Apple during the iPhone era, Canetti explains how building non-deterministic AI systems fundamentally differs from traditional software, requiring multiple quality assurance layers to prevent hallucinations and ensure AI assistants know when to remain silent in group conversations. He explores the shift toward anthropomorphized AI assistants with distinct personalities, arguing that as forms become obsolete and natural language interfaces become mainstream, the future lies in liberating people to do uniquely human work while AI handles generic tasks that anyone could accomplish but everyone suffers through.

Zachary Hanif, VP of Data and AI at Twilio, brings a wealth of experience leading AI initiatives in both regulated financial services and communication platforms. He dives into the delicate balance between explainable AI and high-performing black box models, stressing the importance of tailored governance frameworks. Hanif discusses the challenges of moving AI from proof-of-concept to production, with 80% of pilots failing. He emphasizes the role of privacy-by-design principles and collaboration between tech teams and domain experts for successful implementations.

Join Santosh Kaveti, CEO of ProArch, as he addresses the critical gap between AI ambition and execution in enterprise environments, where despite widespread C-suite commitment, only a quarter of organizations achieve meaningful AI implementation. Kaveti outlines his four-pillar framework for AI operationalization, emphasizing that AI adoption is fundamentally a people and culture problem rather than a technology issue, with 63% of companies lacking basic AI governance policies. He discusses the growing challenges of shadow AI usage, the convergence of IT and operational technology creating new security vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure, and how organizations can build compliance frameworks that won't become obsolete as AI regulations continue to evolve rapidly.

Suman Kanuganti, Co-founder and CEO of Personal AI, specializes in personal language models and decision-making engines for edge devices. He discusses a shift from large, generic AI models to tailored personal language models that capture unique decision-making patterns. Kanuganti highlights the efficiency of smaller models, emphasizing privacy-by-design and their ability to perform better in specific applications. He also explores the future of distributed AI systems and the challenges faced by the current AI landscape, dominated by resource-heavy solutions.

Join Jay Dawani, CEO of Lemurian Labs, as he discusses the critical infrastructure challenges facing AI development and his company's efforts to rebuild the AI software stack from the ground up. Drawing from his experience as a former NASA AI advisor working on Mars Rover navigation and exoplanet research, Dawani explains how current AI systems are plagued by massive inefficiencies, with some data centers operating at only 10-15% utilization despite consuming enormous amounts of energy. The conversation explores how the industry must shift from kernel-based programming models designed for single GPUs to dynamic runtime systems that can efficiently manage communication and memory across hundreds of thousands of processors, ultimately making advanced AI more accessible and sustainable.

Richard White, founder and CEO of Fathom, builds AI meeting transcription and note-taking tools. He discusses instant, high-quality AI notes, syncing summaries into CRMs and workflows, detecting issues with semantic alerts, and scaling insights across thousands of meetings. Conversations cover privacy tradeoffs, enterprise adoption, and how AI could reduce meeting load while preserving human judgment.