AI Podcast Interviews Articles and Reports

Our podcast interviews feature the best and brightest executives and researchers in artificial intelligence today, and each episode highlights current and near-term AI use-cases of value for business leaders. Explore our full list of AI podcast episodes below:

Open-Minded Conversation May Be Our Best Bet for Survival in the 21st Century - A Conversation with Lord Martin Rees

Open-Minded Conversation May Be Our Best Bet for Survival in the 21st Century – A Conversation with Lord Martin Rees

Episode SummaryFew astrophysicists are as decorated as Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, who was a primary contributor to the big-bang theory and named to the honorary position of UK's astronomer royal in 1995. His work has explored the intersections of science and philosophy,  as well as human beings’ contextual place in the universe. In his book "Our Final Century", published in 2003, Rees warned about the dangers of uncontrolled scientific advance, and argued that human beings have a 50 percent chance of surviving past the year 2100 as a direct result. In this episode, I asked him why he considers AI to be among one of the foremost existential risks that society should consider, as well as his thoughts around how we might best regulate AI and other emerging technologies in the nearer term.

Putting the Art in Artificial Intelligence with Creative Computation - A Conversation with Phillipe Pasquier

Putting the Art in Artificial Intelligence with Creative Computation – A Conversation with Phillipe Pasquier

Episode SummaryWhen we think about AI, we often think about optimizing some particular task. In most circumstances through computation there is an optimal chess move, or an optimal way to determine pattern in data, or solve a math problem, or route info through servers. Most of us are aware of these uses, but what about creative tasks? Can these also be optimized? If we want to give a computer information and tell it to create powerpoint slides, is there an optimal way to create such slides? Dr. Philippe Pasquier’s computational research is focused on artificial creativity. In this episode, we talk about how to define a very new field, train machines in this area, and also discuss trends and developments that might permit such technology to thrive in the next 10 years.

How Machine Learning Builds Meaning from Our Chats, Tweets, and Likes - A Conversation with Dr. Lyle Ungar

How Machine Learning Builds Meaning from Our Chats, Tweets, and Likes – A Conversation with Dr. Lyle Ungar

Episode SummaryThere’s a small lab in Pennsylvania that may know your gender, age, and understands facets about your personality, whether you’re introverted or extroverted, for example…and it's using machine learning to help make conclusions from social media information. For those who are raising an eyebrow, know that they’re not tapping into people’s accounts without permission. The described study is happening at University of Pennsylvania and is led in part by Dr. Lyle Ungar. In this episode, we talk about the focus of his work - on finding patterns between users and their language on social media content, and building an understanding for how this information might help individuals and communities in the future.

AT&T uses machine learning

How AT&T Uses Machine Learning to Better Serve Customers

Episode Summary: We’ve featured a number of artificial intelligence researchers on the show, but today we switch gears and dive into the business side of the industry. In this episode, Dr. Mazin Gilbert (who earned his PhD in Engineering) breaks down AT&T’s efforts to make more intelligent systems large-scale. How do they train their network to route traffic through the right nodes on holidays, when certain areas of traffic are overloaded? How can a system know, based on signals from hardware, which pieces might be going bad and need replacing and send out a message to alert the company? Making a network ‘aware’ is a large challenge, but Mazin gives an insider’s perspective as to how AT&T uses machine learning technologies in order to remain profitable.

Snuggle up with Technology, But Don't Leave Empathy in the Cold - A Conversation with Dr. Sherry Turkle

Snuggle up with Technology, But Don’t Leave Empathy in the Cold – A Conversation with Dr. Sherry Turkle

Episode SummaryAre we losing something with technology? [hint text="There are two sides to every argument, including this one. Dr. Sherry Turkle is of the belief that there’s enough mounting scientific evidence that points toward loss of empathy and self knowledge due to increasing interaction with machines"] There are two sides to every argument, including this one. Dr. Sherry Turkle is of the belief that there’s enough mounting scientific evidence that points toward loss of empathy and self knowledge due to increasing interaction with machines. In this episode, we discuss Dr. Turkle’s research and her subtle fears for the future, particularly of those about machines that replicate emotions or conversation but that don’t actually feel anything - is the ability to form real connections between two beings at risk of being lost?

Putting the Horse Before the Cart May Lead the Way to Artificial General Intelligence

Putting the Horse Before the Cart May Lead the Way to Artificial General Intelligence

Episode SummaryA lot of AI applications are not really “smart”, at least not in the sense of the word as most humans might envision a true artificial intelligence. If you know how Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov, for example, then you may not believe that Watson is a legitimate thinking machine. Our guest this week, Dr. Pei Wang, is of the belief that building a Artificial “General” Intelligence (AGI), what researchers define as an entity with human-like cognition, is a separate question from figuring out AI applications in the more narrow sense. In this episode, Dr. Wang lays out three differentiating factors that separate AGI from AI in general, and also talks about three varied and active approaches being taken to try and accomplish AGI.

Deciphering the Discovery Engines that Decipher Our Digital Wants and Needs - A Conversation with Raefer Gabriel

Deciphering the Discovery Engines that Decipher Our Digital Wants and Needs – A Conversation with Raefer Gabriel

Episode SummaryEver had the perfect book recommended to you by Amazon or gave a pleasantly-surprised thumbs up for a song selected for you by Pandora? Both services are powered by recommendation engines, which are gaining steam int he commercial space. In this episode, we speak with Entrepreneur Raefer Gabriel, who works for Delvv on the commercial applications of recommendation engines. We talk about how this technology works, and how it comes to learn from reviews, ratings, and consumer interactions. Gabriel also gives perspective on how these engines might be enhanced and applied in the future, a good topic for those of you in the startup world.

When Many Intelligent Agents are Better than One - A Conversation with Dr. Mehdi Dastani

When Many Intelligent Agents are Better than One – A Conversation with Dr. Mehdi Dastani

Episode SummaryThe beauty of a platform like eBay is that you can set a price that you’re willing to spend and let eBay do the bidding long after you’ve left the site. What if, in similar fashion, your washing machine could turn on and serve up clean clothes once it had found the cheapest rate and time of day by autonomously communicating with local electricity providers?