Daniel Faggella
Daniel Faggella is the founder and CEO at Emerj. Called upon by the United Nations, World Bank, INTERPOL, and many global enterprises, Daniel is a sought-after expert on the competitive strategy implications of AI for business and government leaders.
Articles by Daniel
527 articles
We’ve made it to article seven of seven in this “AI Zeitgeist” series. It’s been a while building up to this, and I’ve kept the competitive dynamics of AI as the topic of this seventh article because to me everything builds up to this. Everything we do here at Emerj is always about who’s going […]
Episode Summary: If one wants to start a general search engine, they’re going to have to compete with Google. If one wants to start a general eCommerce platform, they’ll have to compete with Amazon. But the same dynamics play out on a smaller scale. There are going to be some established players, some big tech […]
We come to the sixth installment in the “AI Zeitgeist” series, and this one is about the changing landscape of artificial intelligence priorities for business leaders. We’ve covered all sorts of topics in the series, thus far. We’ve talked about the buying readiness of business leaders. We’ve talked about the AI talent landscape. We’ve talked […]
Episode Summary: A lot of AI in the press is CMOs or marketing people talking about what a company can do in a way that really is aspirational. They’re speaking about what they can do, but in reality, the things that they’re talking about, the capabilities won’t be unlocked for maybe a year or more. […]
This article is part 5 of a 7-part series called “AI Zeitgeist,” where we’ll be mapping out the details of AI adoption over the next 10 years and explore the critical changes in the AI ecosystem that business leaders need to understand. In this installment of the Zeitgeist series, we’ll take a look at how […]
This week we interview a leader at Facebook. Jason Sundram is the lead of World.ai at Facebook, which is one of their efforts to work with public data around roads and population and other projects of that kind. But Sundram is also highly involved in the Boston office here, where Facebook will soon have around […]
This article is part 4 of a 7-part series called “AI Zeitgeist,” where we’ll be mapping out the details of AI adoption over the next 10 years and explore the critical changes in the AI ecosystem that business leaders need to understand. In this installment of the Zeitgeist series, we’ll be talking about how artificial […]
Episode Summary: One of the promises of artificial intelligence is aiding humans in making smarter decisions. Whether it’s in pharma, retail, or eCommerce companies, the idea of being able to pool together streams of data and coax out the insights that would help make the best call for the organization to reach its goals is […]
This article is part 3 of a 7-part series called “AI Zeitgeist,” where we’ll be mapping out the details of AI adoption over the next 10 years and explore the critical changes in the AI ecosystem that business leaders need to understand. In this installment of the Zeitgeist series, we’ll be talking about how the […]
Episode Summary: Sales is a big part of any sort of B2B firm. We speak this week with Micha Breakstone, co-founder of Chorus.ai. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Sciences from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and prior to starting his own company, he studied for a few years at MIT and was working on […]
This article is part 2 of a 7-part series called “AI Zeitgeist,” where we’ll be mapping out the details of AI adoption over the next 10 years and explore the critical changes in the AI ecosystem that business leaders need to understand. In this installment of the Zeitgeist series, we’ll be exploring the ways that […]
Episode Summary: Close to a year ago, we had an interview here on the AI in Industry podcast with Jeremy Barnes of Element AI. We visited their headquarters in Montreal, and we’d interviewed Yoshua Bengio a couple years before that. Jeremy had brought up one point in that interview that I really like and that transfers […]
The following statements are all true, but not in the way you might think: AI is hard for most companies to adopt. Machine learning talent is hard to find and hard to hire. AI gives some companies new ways to compete in the market. AI adoption is harder in some sectors than others. Strategies for […]
Episode Summary: Recently, we were called upon by the World Bank to do a good deal of research on the potential of applying artificial intelligence to health data in the developing world. Diagnostics was a very big focus of the information that we presented. It appears as though diagnostics is an area of great promise […]
Here at Emerj we’re dedicated to cutting through the AI hype that’s permeating the current zeitgeist in the business world. Although we’re skeptical about many of the claims that AI vendors make on their websites about what they’re AI software can do, it seems unlikely that the AI hype is going to disappoint venture capitalists […]
Episode Summary: Artificial intelligence plays a role in the future of retail in terms of a deeper understanding of customers going beyond intuition. This week, we speak with Pedro Alves, CEO of a company called Ople, based in San Francisco. Alves was previously the Head of Data Science at a number of companies in addition […]
We talk a lot about the concept of connective tissue here at Emerj, the fact that a company that wants to apply AI not only needs to have access to data, not only needs to hire normally very expensive artificial intelligence talent, but also has to have the connective tissue of related subject-matter experts who […]
Event Title: Artificial Intelligence – Reshaping National Security Event Host: United Nations (UNICRI), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies Date: December 17 – 18, 2018 Team Member: Daniel Faggella, Emerj Founder and CEO Presentation Title: AI, Automation, and Economic Impact – National Security Implications What Happened The Shangai Institutes for Internal Studies and UNICRI pulled people together to […]
Episode Summary: Many machine learning applications in business can be boiled down to some form of decision support. There are big decisions like deciding whether or not to merge or acquire another company, and there might be smaller decisions like whether or not a tumor has enough traits that make it seem like it’s worth a […]
Episode Summary: This week, we’re going to be talking about the defense sector. We interview Ryan Welsh, CEO of Kyndi, a company working on explainable AI. We focus specifically on the unique data challenges of the defense industry, as well as the general use case of AI in defense writ large. Many of the challenges […]
We’ve seen a lot of what we call “fake AI rebrands” in the last 18 months, and I suspect that as long as AI is a buzzword, we will only see more and more of this. Business leaders are going to have to keep their eyes peeled for these kinds of companies in their midst. […]
Episode Summary: Whether we’re talking about customer service, marketing, or building developer teams, what we try to do on our AI in Industry podcast is bring to bear lessons that are transferable. There are few more transferrable ideas than what makes a company ready to adopt AI. When it comes to the willingness and the ability […]
One of the biggest problems facing business executives when it comes to adopting AI is determining whether a company is truly leveraging AI or simply using the term as a marketing strategy. We have discussed rules of thumb for assessing the authenticity of AI companies in previous articles based on insights derived from hundreds of […]
Something that dawned on me very early on in reading biography and history is that incentives rule the world, that company’s, nations, individuals ultimately do things primarily for their own self-interest. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it’s important to bear it in mind. Business is no different. Artificial intelligence is no different. […]
Episode Summary: Some businesses are going to require a sea change in the way that their computation works and the kinds of computing power that they’re leveraging to do what they need to do with artificial intelligence. Others might not need an upgrade in hardware in the near term to do what they want to […]
If one tunes into social media, it’s easy to be convinced that every AI startup is making a lot of money, making a big difference in the companies that they’re working with, and driving real revenue. However, as we’ve mentioned many times here at Emerj, most AI applications are really in pilot mode. There’s nothing […]
Episode Summary: We speak this week with Aneesh Reddy, cofounder and CEO of Capillary Technologies, which focuses on machine vision applications in the retail environment. How do we instrument a physical retail space so that, with cameras, we can pick up on the same kind of metrics that eCommerce stores can? Retail stores, as Reddy […]
Finding the right people to do a job has always been a problem, especially when it requires a high level of expertise. Hiring professionals (84%) are relying more and more on social media to find the right talent, and B2B executives often look to LinkedIn for leads when it comes to finding the right companies to provide […]
Episode Summary: In this episode of AI In Industry, we interview Nick Possley, the CTO of a company called AllyO, based in the San Francisco Bay area. We speak with Nick about where artificial intelligence and machine learning are playing a role in recruiting today and how picking the right candidates from a pool is […]
Most of the time when we have requests for speaking engagements here at Emerj (formerly TechEmergence), they’re from business leaders. At the time this article was published, I just came back from a presentation at National Defense University in Washington DC. Presenting there was unique in many regards. Obviously, the use cases for tanks and […]
We have discussed the importance of having the right talent in place when it comes to AI adoption in enterprise quite thoroughly here at Emerj. The scarcity of data science talent and its price point are one of the main reasons small businesses are not likely to adopt AI successfully at this time. That said, […]
Event Title: Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Science in Health and Nutrition Event Host: the World Bank Group Date: September 10, 2018; September 24, 2018; October 1, 2018 Team Member: Daniel Faggella, Emerj Founder and CEO What Happened For those who aren’t familiar with it, the World Bank provides loans to countries to fund […]
Event: A guest appearance at National Defense University Date: October 24, 2018 Team Member: Daniel Faggella, Emerj CEO and Founder What Happened Through a variety of presentations for business and government personnel, I was put in touch with some of the leadership at the Defense Innovation Unit at the Department of Defense, which is essentially an arm […]
Broadly, artificial intelligence involves a machine doing something that only a human would be able to do. That said, computer scientists disagree on if certain computing capabilities from several years ago still constitute AI. Nowadays, many of these capabilities might just be called software. The modern resurgence in AI interest has been fueled by advancements […]
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have fueled technological innovations in marketing, eCommerce, and several other industries. Many people experience the benefits of AI and ML systems without even knowing it every time they search on Google or click on a song in Spotify. AI can help recommend movies and music – what’s keeping these same […]
We discussed the difficulties large businesses may have in adopting AI in our previous article; despite this, last month we fleshed out the reasons why it’s still more difficult for small businesses to apply AI than the enterprise and how they might catch up to larger businesses in the future. In this article, we draw […]
Technology Provider: DigitalGenius is an artificial intelligence solutions provider for customer service operations. User Company: Magoosh provides online educational tools for students preparing for standardized tests, such as GRE, GMAT, etc. Industry: Education Function: Customer service Problem Magoosh’s support staff comprises two teams of 50 agents: A community support team for handling account inquiries, and […]
Tech Provider: Predii – a company which specializes in building AI platforms designed for repair and maintenance services in the industrial equipment and automotive sector Client: Snap-on Inc. – an OEM of high-end tools and equipment for the automotive, heavy duty, equipment, marine, aviation, and railroad industries. Industry: Transportation Function: Business Intelligence and Analytics Tech […]
This article is based on a presentation given by TechEmeregnce CEO Dan Faggella at a recent conference “Artificial Intelligence and Business Ethics: Friends or Foes?” held at the University of Notre Dame. The conversation about artificial intelligence and ethics ranges from the broad to the specific. On the one end, there are governments making laws […]
Event Title: Artificial Intelligence and Business Ethics: Friends or Foes? Event Host: the University of Notre Dame, Mendoza School of Business Date: September 19, 2018 Team Member: Daniel Faggella, Emerj Founder and CEO What Happened Four years ago, we spent more time talking about the ethical and social implications of AI in the long-term as opposed to the industrial […]
After plenty of deliberation, web development and research, we’ve finally rebranded from TechEmergence to Emerj! I’m glad I finally won’t get any more “so when are you rebranding?” emails. It sure did take more effort and development work than I had expected (lots of new features / functionality to build out), but it was well […]
One highly sought after engineering role at major tech companies today is the natural language processing, or NLP, engineer. NLP is a subset of machine learning which involves text and language recognition, rather than image analysis done with computer vision. Engineers hired for an NLP role could be responsible for implementations relating to tools like […]
A few months ago, we spoke about three rules of thumb for assessing companies and trying to figure out if they are really doing AI or just using it for marketing purposes in our How to Cut Through the Artificial Intelligence Hype piece. Since it was so popular, I was inspired to write this follow-up. […]
Most AI solutions are not for small businesses, but they will be over time. I decided to put together an understanding of where AI solutions are now and how they will eventually become accessible to small businesses. This short guide discusses the levels of AI investment and expertise that companies will require to implement AI […]
In this post, we point out three factors that could ensure job security as artificial intelligence becomes a more prominent tool in different industries. […]
Event Title: The Conference on Disarmament at the United Nations in Geneva Event Host: the United Nations Date: August 16, 2018 Team Member: Daniel Faggella, Emerj CEO and Founder What Happened Wendell Wallach, one of the foremost thinkers on the intersection of AI and ethics and governance, put me in touch with Anja Kasperson, Director of […]
This week on AI in Industry, we are talking about the ethical consequences of AI in business. When machine learning is integrated into technology products, could a misbehaving system put the company at financial and legal risk? […]
Back at the beginning of the year, I set out to get a feel for a city in the longitudinal center of the country, between two coastal tech hubs in San Francisco and NYC: Austin. I wanted to find out what made Austin an attractive AI and tech hub the way I had in Boston, Atlanta, Montreal, […]
This article is based on a panel discussion facilitated by Emerj (Techemergence) CEO Dan Faggella on the state of AI in the healthcare industry. The panelists were Just Biotherapeutics Chief Business Officer Carolina Garcia Rizo (representing healthcare startups) and Senior Manager for A.I./Machine Learning at Bayer Kevin Hua (representing big pharma). This session was part of […]
For large eCommerce, media and travel companies, running huge campaigns requires substantial effort and human oversight. Translating and laying out ads for dozens of languages is a challenge that one day machines may master — but they’ll do so with the help of constant human guiding and adjustments. […]
Machine learning is critical to moderation at scale – but it’s often human effort that helps train those algorithms. I interviewed Charly Walther, VP of Product and Growth at Gengo.ai, to learn more about the crowdsourced processes that underlie many content moderation algorithms – and to determine how and when human effort is required to help machines better filter spam or inappropriate content. […]
This article is based on a presentation at a joint United Nations / INTERPOL conference for law enforcement agencies held in Singapore entitled “Machine Learning and Machine Vision Cutting-Edge Trends and Implications in Law Enforcement” delivered by Emerj CEO Daniel Faggella. Enforcing the law is an expensive business. According to a 2012 report by the Justice […]
We spoke with Gengo.ai, to learn more about how crowdsourced labor is used to improve eCommerce search results – along with some tangible examples of when crowdsourcing might be used. […]
Event: 1st INTERPOL – United Nations (UNICRI) Global Meeting on the Opportunities and Risks of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Law Enforcement Date: July 11, 2018 Team Member: Daniel Faggella Presentation: Machine Learning and Machine Vision – Cutting-Edge Trends and Implications in Law Enforcement What Happened I spoke at a joint United Nations-INTERPOL summit in […]
Over the last 3-4 years, sentiment analysis has become a more and more common term – understood by marketers and businesspeople alike. The idea is simple: An artificial intelligence system that can detect the emotional “tone” or sentiment of a specific text document (as long as a book, or as short as a tweet). What […]
A myriad of customer service channels exist today, such as social media, email, chat services, call centers, and voice mail. There are so many ways that a customer can interact with a business and it is important to take them all into account. Customers or prospects who interact via chat may represent just one segment […]
There’s a lot going on here at TechEmergence (soon to be rebranded to Emerj), and after receiving a string of LinkedIn messages about the re-brand and near-term future of the company, I wanted to put together this note about three important topics: 2018 progress update What prompted the move from West Coast to East Coast […]
Last September I had the chance to do a series of AI-related speaking engagements in Atlanta (one of those presentations became one of our most popular articles on “enterprise AI adoption”), but unlike most trips, I spent very little time in the hotel. Little did I know I’d be hurled into over a dozen of […]
Over the past decade, the industrial sector has seen major advancements in automation and robotics applications. Automation in both continuous process and discrete manufacturing, as well as the use of robots for repetitive tasks are both relatively standard in most large manufacturing operations (this is especially true in industries like automotive and electronics). One useful […]
This article is based on a presentation originally given by Daniel Faggella, CEO & Founder at Emerj (formerly TechEmergence) to a group of real estate executives at a Grupo4s “Future of Real Estate” event in San Francisco, in March of 2018. The real estate market in the US is currently a seller’s market, with demand […]
Intellectual property (IP) is about more than preventing competitors from copying a technology or idea. IP informs a number of other strategic initiatives for companies: Corporations study their competitor’s intellectual portfolio to get a sense of their R&D initiatives, and innovation priorities Large organizations of venture capital firms scope out acquisition targets that have desirable […]
Deloitte, EY, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and KPMG are among the largest service providers in the accounting industry— collectively referred to as the Big Four. Many of the financial and consulting services offered by these firms – such as advising on investment decisions – involve finding patterns in very large sets of data. This data is often […]
Many products today leverage artificial intelligence for a wide range of industries, from healthcare to marketing. However, most business leaders who need to make strategic and procurement decisions about these technologies have no formal AI background or academic training in data science. The purpose of this article is to give business people with no AI […]
Almost all young companies and companies in the start-up ecosystem today would like to talk about how they leverage AI or machine learning. In most cases, this is to make their product sound special and exciting. However, the fact is most young companies do not have the resources or the talent needed to leverage artificial […]
Artificial intelligence — especially machine learning — is at it’s best when it is working with a large, analyzable data set, like text. But much of the data in the world isn’t in text form. Instead, it’s in the form of spoken words on video and audio recordings or even live events. This makes reliable […]
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are hot terms right now, and many companies are eager to talk about how their products rely on these cutting edge technologies. Established companies and startups want to explain how AI is a critical part of their business. But often, “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning” are used as buzzwords, mere […]
Implementing artificial intelligence into an existing business is about more than algorithms. In fact, many AI researchers believe that algorithms are the easiest part of an artificial intelligence implementation. Algorithms need data, and for a business to assess, organize, clean, and use it’s data requires ways of thinking that are entirely foreign to most existing […]
AI is being likened to a “Fourth Industrial Revolution” because of it’s potential for creating profound change in people’s lives, much like the invention of steam engines (First Industrial Revolution), electricity and mass production (Second Industrial Revolution), and the rise of the digital age (Third Industrial Revolution) had in the past. AI/ML applications are everywhere, from […]
As interest in artificial intelligence has exploded in the last two years, the prevalence of AI-related events has followed suit. Leaders across industries are developing an interest in where AI will impact their sectors, and what they should be doing about it now. In partnership with RE•WORK, we decided to get perspective on the value […]
With “machine learning” excitement in full swing, Boston is buzzing as always with it’s own batch of startups, accelerators, and VCs, and I decided to do a deep dive into the local artificial intelligence ecosystem. While Boston often doesn’t attract the same press attention as Silicon Valley, it certainly hasn’t stopped being a hotbed for […]
Technology Provider: Automated Insights is a provider of natural language generation platform, Wordsmith, that converts big data into narratives or summary understandable by humans User: digitalSTROM, a smart home services provider in Zurich Industry: Home automation, Internet of things Application: Natural language generation, Personalized in-app reports and email communications The Problem digitalSTROM (from digitalSTROM AG) is a […]
This year has been marked by an increase in artificial intelligence interest from new business sectors. Just one years ago, we hardly had any visitors or subscribers from the food services sector – and this year we have a strong interest from food processing and food services leaders, which has come as a surprise. I […]
Chances are you have already been bombarded on social media or in your inbox about all these “revolutionary AI” this and “game-changer AI” that. Vendors of AI technology are often incentivized to make their technology sound more capable than it is – but to hint at more real-world traction than they actually have. Yes the […]
While customer service is making its way to Facebook Messenger and other burgeoning platforms – a massive percentage of customer support inquiries are handled the way they have been for years: Over the phone or on chat. As of 2015, Site Selection Group reports that there are approximately 2.2 million American call center employees in […]
My most recent TEDx is titled “Can AI Make the World a Better Place?” – but this title is somewhat misleading. While the presentation touches lightly on how artificial intelligence can be used to altruistic purposes in the present, it is ultimately about the same topic that all of my most important talks are about: […]
Tech Provider: Lexalytics – A natural language processing and text analytics software and service provider. Client Company: Voziq – Offers software to help customers reduce churn and gain insight on their customers. Industry: Media Function: Business intelligence and analytics, Process automation Tech Provider Contact: Charles Le Gros Problem Viziq is responsible for help call centers […]
Tech Provider: Lexalytics – A natural language processing and text analytics software and service provider. Client Company: Microsoft – A multinational technology company which develops, licenses, sells and supports software, hardware, and services. Industry: Consumer goods Function: Business intelligence and analytics, Process automation Tech Provider Contact Person: Charles Le Gros Problem Microsoft’s Customer Market Research (CMR) team […]
After a presentation at the Shop!Association’s national conference late last year, I had plenty of time to chat with retail business people about their own ideas about AI’s uses, and the trends that matter most. This prompted me to gather my thoughts and combine the ideas of retailers with the AI-in-retail research we’ve done, and […]
Technology Provider: Automated Insights is a provider of natural language generation platform, Wordsmith, that converts big data into narratives or summary understandable by humans User: Yahoo!, the web services provider headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA. Industry: Media, Entertainment Function: Process Automation The Problem According to Ken Fuchs, head of Yahoo! Sports, most fantasy football users spend […]
Cosabella realized that investing in manual efforts in marketing and advertising was not scalable or cost-effective. The company wanted to automate marketing rather than rely on traditional marketing/advertising agencies. […]
Swedbank wanted its customer contact center agents to focus on sales rather than on service. The bank’s 700 contact center agents were handling 3.6 million annual customer interactions, which included more than two million basic transactional queries, 500,000 emails, and 10,000 social media interactions. The bank wanted to automate this process to achieve its goal. […]
UHS operates on a value-based healthcare system, meaning its healthcare providers are paid based on the quality of care rather than the quantity. One of the methods the quality of healthcare is determined is by physician documentation, which is a set of progress notes that contain patient clinical status, such as improvements or declines in patients’ health. […]
Episode summary: Sales forecasting is big business. If you can better predict how much of a certain product or service you will sell in a given day, you can better stock inventory, better staff your facilities, and ultimately keep more margin in your business’s accounts. This week on AI in Industry we interview John-Paul B Clarke, […]
Episode summary: In this episode of AI in industry, Innoplexus CEO Gunjan Bhardwaj explores how pharma giants are working to overcome two critical challenges with AI: Data, and talent. Pharmaceutical data is challenging because the same term (say “EGFR”) might be referred to as a “protein”, a “biomarker”, or a “target”. Gunjan explores how this kind of […]
Associated Press (AP) reporters spent a significant amount of time and effort to manually glean insights from quarterly financial reports released by public companies in the US. This involved extracting and analyzing relevant financial data, such as profit, revenue growth, tax expenses, etc., and converting them to financial recaps (news narrative or prose summary). […]
The recent renaissance of machine learning promises to transform the data-rich world of healthcare, and there are hardly any healthcare segments more excited than the pharmaceutical industry. While hospitals and healthcare facilities have complex sets of stakeholders for AI adoption (e.g. Hospital CEOs may want AI tech, but doctors may resist it – or – […]
Ayasdi claims to have unearthed many new cases and patterns directly correlated to fraud – as well as reducing HSBC’s false positives (cases when HSBC’s existing rules would have flagged for laundering risk when no such risk actually existed). […]
Episode Summary: This week’s episode covers the medical applications of machine vision for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Medical science has integrated AI since the late 90s, and it’s been useful in the fight against cancer. This week’s guest is Dr. Alexandre Le Bouthillier, founder of Imagia. Imagia is a medical imaging company which […]
Technology Provider: DigitalGenius, an artificial intelligence solutions provider for customer service operations. User Company: Joybird User Company Description: Joybird offers handcrafted custom mid century modern furniture in 100+ fabric and leather options. Industries: Retail, Furniture Applications: Customer Support, Customer Experience Problem The 12 agent team at Joybird was dealing with a growing stream of customer support requests through email, […]
In the last 12 months, Montreal has arrived on the world stage as an epicenter for machine learning and artificial intelligence. The city’s extraordinarily high density of AI talent isn’t new, but the demand for machine learning is, and the proverbial “tech spotlight” is now shining bright on this very French Canadian city. In just […]
Introduction: In this episode of AI in Industry, we explore how artificial intelligence can be use to manipulate human behavior – in gaming and in business. We explore how game designers use psychology and machine learning to drive their own desired outcomes, leaving users to “feel” in control. Dr. Charles Isbell teaches machine learning at […]
If you combine the hype-factor of both “blockchain” and “artificial intelligence” you often get a supernova of jargon. This week on the AI in Industry podcast, we aim to get beyond the hype to discuss how blockchain might make AI more accessible for small and mid-sized businesses in the years ahead. Dr. Ben Goertzel – […]
Expert systems and machine learning are two ends of a spectrum working to solve similar problems quite differently. One one hand you have if-then scenarios and a logical approach, and on the other you have vast neural networks and a big data approach. Some companies exist to try and bridge the gap between the if-then […]
This article was written in partnership and collaboration with the IEEE. For more information about content partnerships visit the Emerj Partnerships page. Until somewhat recently, “moral concerns” about artificial intelligence would have been seen as absurd, something relegated science fiction. To some AI researchers, it still seems far too early for “ethics” and “AI” to […]
Introduction: There’s a lot of hype out there about conversational AI. Although according to our guest, we’re nowhere near the day when AI can generate accurate conversations for the average business to integrate into their customer service, chatbots still have practical applications. In this episode, we interview the head of research at Digital Genius, Yoram […]
Episode Summary: How can machine learning help us advertise through social media? In this episode, Thomas Jelonek, CEO of Envision.ai, talks to us about how in the next five years, machine learning might automate the laborious guess-and-check process of finding visual content with which users can engage. Right now, finding images and videos that will […]
Companies and cities all over world are experimenting with using artificial intelligence to reduce and prevent crime, and to more quickly respond to crimes in progress. The ideas behind many of these projects is that crimes are relatively predictable; it just requires being able to sort through a massive volume of data to find patterns […]
This episode explores the ways in which artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionize the field of medicine. This week’s guest, Dr. Kristóf Zsolt Szalay speaks to this topic, discussing research that hopes to create automated learning networks and algorithms designed to predict the development of human cells in response to drugs. This technological innovation would make it possible for near-instantaneous simulations to be run, allowing optimal combinations and optimal doses of drugs to be pinpointed and distributed to patients. […]
Tech Provider: LiftIgniter Client Company: Ranker Client Company Description: Ranker is an online destination for broad, opinion-based, crowdsourced rankings of everything. Industry: Online Media Function: Marketing Problem Ranker’s visitors participate in developing the lists by coming up with definitive rankings across various topics (from politics to film and beyond). The company faced the problem of […]
Episode Summary: In this episode, discover how chatbots and conversational agents can provide you an advantage in the realms of customer support, product, support, lead engagement, and more, and learn the theory behind creating useful chatbots you can use in your own business. Right now, if we intend to find a piece of information or […]
Episode summary: This week on AI in Industry, we speak to Paul Barba (Chief Scientist at Lexalytics) about what how companies are using natural language processing, and what it takes (in terms of expertise, time, and training) to get these systems working. From sentiment analysis to categorization, Paul walks us through interesting and fruitful use-cases […]
Episode summary: In this episode, we speak with Alan O’Herlihy, Founder and CEO of Ireland-based Everseen. Alan speaks to us about how machine vision systems can be used to detect theft or mistakes at a checkout counter (including forgetting to scan items, customers intentionally hiding items, and more). Alan not only explains where these technologies […]
Episode summary: In this episode, we talk to Murali Aravamudan, Founder and CEO of AI-driven drug discovery startup Qrativ, a joint venture by the Mayo Clinic and biotech/data science firm nference. Murali and I discuss the surge of medical information and data in the medical industry, the role of artificial intelligence in developing drugs for […]
MemSQL was having challenges targeting the right prospects at the right companies. The company aimed to reach technology leaders and software architects who were looking for a solution like MemSQL. The firm was looking for an account-based marketing (ABM) process that could sustain their sales and growth needs. […]
Episode summary: In this episode, we talk to Daniel Nigrin, MD, Senior Vice President and CIO at Boston Children’s Hospital. Daniel and I discuss why hackers have come to prey on the healthcare industry, how these hackers benefit from their illicit activities, and what healthcare IT security precautions can be taken to prevent such attacks. Dr. […]
Tech Provider: Albert Client Company: Dole Food Company Client Company Description: Dole is an American agricultural multinational corporation. The company is the largest producer of fruit and vegetables in the world, operating with 74,300 full-time and seasonal employees who are responsible for over 300 products in 90 countries (according to Wikipedia). Industry: Produce Function: Marketing […]
Natural language processing has gained more and more attention with the raise of (or rather, the “fad” of) chatbots. Despite the flurry of press releases from companies about their conversational agents (only a few of which seem to be delivering real business value), few business leaders understand the value of NLP for customer service, sales […]
As a human, we can often understand the mood, intention, and future action of another person just by looking at them. We see their posture, their facial expression, where their eyes are focused, and we can get a decent understanding of what they might do next. The problem of computer vision for body language is […]
In the future, the vast majority of photos and videos recorded won’t be seen and used by humans – they’ll be seen and used by machines. This week we interview Allan Benchetrit, CEO at Algolux – a Montreal-based AI company focusing on computational imaging. If you take an image for a human being in a consumer […]
The vision of an army of small unmanned aerial vehicles streaming through the sky to rapidly deliver food packages has captured the imagination of the public, the media, and most importantly some of the largest companies in the world. Achieving this vision won’t just require overcoming the technological and safety challenges, but also significant buy-in […]
Krishnan Natarajan (Director of Demand Generation at WhiteHat Security) wanted a better way to ensure targeted messaging to it’s audience. Natarajan was adamant about not allowing the wrong message to be sent at the wrong time, as it reflects poorly on the company. He sought a more accurate method of targeting prospect personas in order to achieve this aim. […]
Procurement isn’t usually seen as a “sexy” aspect of a business’s operations. Procurement personnel are responsible for sourcing suppliers or vendors, determining criterion of success, negotiating deal terms, and tracking results and deliverables – all of which could be considered “under appreciated” work. This week, Tamr’s Eliot Knudsen walks us through the ways that AI […]
This week we speak with Bastiaan Janmaat (CEO and co-Founder of DataFox) about the current and future applications of artificial intelligence in the CRM. No matter what business you’re in, there’s a high likelihood that managing relationships with customers, wholesalers, suppliers, or affiliates is important to your daily operations. Artificial intelligence is currently being employed to […]
J&B Medical’s expansion goals were being hindered by a heavy need to recruit and train live call center agents. The hiring process for this role was particularly time-consuming and costly. Automation efforts for low-to-medium complexity calls was limited by the elderly demographic of J&B Medical and HIPAA compliance. HIPAA’s authentication rules (requiring three pieces of customer data) was particularly time consuming and mundane, but much of the process hadn’t been able to be automated. […]
Technology Provider: Luminoso User Company: C Space C Space is a Boston-based agency that helps global firms better understand their customers and develop growth strategies. C Space establishes and manages online communities for its clients, garnering large masses of unstructured text in the form of forum posts, comments, and more. Industries: Healthcare / Pharma Applications: Text and Language Processing […]
Artificial intelligence is coming – should be worried about our jobs? Well, it depends. Our guest Dr. Kevin LaGrandeur spent the last two years researching the impacts of automation and artificial intelligence on society and the job market. In this interview on AI in Industry, we explore the near future of AI’s impact on the […]
When managers and leaders think about machine learning in retail, they often imagine helpful in-store robots, automated processes like checkout or stocking shelves, or conversational agents that suggest products and answer questions for customers. While these applications should be considered as disruptive factors for retail’s future, it’s unlikely that these factors will be the first […]
Though we don’t think about it on a daily basis – the technologies around us often “work” because of an underlying standard that they depend on. These technologies include: Wifi, ethernet, fax, and much of the internet itself. Do certain AI applications need their own set of standards in order to scale? Imagine if you […]
It would be great if instead of having our car break down – could have them fixed as soon as the underlying problem began. It would be great if instead of having to diagnose a malfunctioning piece of mechanical equipment – would could have the right “fix” presented to us immediately. As it turns out, artificial […]
Episode summary: In this episode we talk to Lior Tasman who is the CEO of PredictiveBid, an Israeli-based predictive advertising optimization start-up. The team focuses on applying AI to some of the bigger issues in programmatic advertising to help draw out more ROI from ads. We discuss some of the challenges of programmatic advertising and […]
Episode summary: In this episode we talk to Adam Spector, the Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer at LiftIgniter, a company which provide a service which modulates website experience per users, for an array of different businesses. Adam and I discuss what the tech giants are doing to customize their business experiences, what data they’re using to […]
Episode summary: Imagine you work in a large organization with tens of thousands of employees across multiple countries, a business that’s been around for over a hundred years, and all of a sudden you have people in one department who are interested in applying chatbots, colleagues in another department who wish to implement sentiment analysis […]
Episode summary: In this episode we speak with Sangeeta Chakraborty Chief Customer Officer at Ayasdi and discuss the applications of data science and AI in healthcare, what hospitals and healthcare systems are doing to adopt this kind of technology, and how this approach can be extended to other forms of enterprise. This interview was conducted in-person […]
Smartphone manufacturers are trend-setters for innovations in the mobile and consumer electronics space at large. The convenience and integral role of mobile technology in the everyday lives of consumers have contributed to the estimated 77 percent of Americans who own a smartphone. It’s no wonder so many of the smartphone applications we use every day […]
Episode summary: Machine learning currently faces a number of obstacles which prevent it from advancing as quickly as it might. How might these obstacles be overcome and what impact would this have on the machine learning across different industries in the coming decade? In this episode we talk to Dr. Hanie Sedghi, Research Scientist at […]
Episode summary: Although machine learning in finance is far from new, it is merely at the cusp of a much wider set of applications (in all segments of finance, from insurance to bookkeeping and beyond). Already machine learning has overhauled so many aspects of the financial landscape, from accounting to trading, and it is destined to […]
Episode Summary: If there’s any industry ripe for disruption by AI and ML applications, it’s healthcare. This week, we speak with Eleven Two Capital‘s Founder and Managing Partner Shelley Zhuang, whose investment focus (among other spaces) is on innovative healthcare services and applications. In addition to discussing how AI and ML is helping propel genomics, diagnostics, therapeutic […]
Episode Summary: In the last few months, we’ve had a string of fantastic interviews with investors and have gained a cross-industry picture of what’s important for start-ups and emerging trends in the AI and ML space. This week’s interview is no exception. Ann Miura-Ko, co-founder and partner at Floodgate, starts with an explanation of the “self-driving enterprise” concept, her functioning idea […]
The last few years have yielded a tremendous amount of attention at the intersection of AI and healthcare, from DeepMind’s partnership with the UK’s National Health Service to IBM’s continued pushes into areas of genomics and drug discovery. From the perspective of healthcare executives, however, many important questions are left unanswered and rarely addressed in […]
Episode Summary: This week we interview Polaris Partners‘ Gary Swart, who gives his perspective on companies that are doing “AI right” i.e. laying strong foundations for using AI applications optimally. Swart provides valuable examples of how he’s seen companies use AI as a tool to build more defensible and durable business models in an increasingly competitive landscape. Getting an […]
Artificial intelligence in retail is being applied in new ways across the entire product and service cycle—from assembly to post-sale customer service interactions, but retail players need answers to important questions: Which AI applications are playing a role in automation or augmentation of the retail process? How are retail companies using these technologies to stay […]
Episode Summary: One of the most clear insights from our recent consensus on machine learning in marketing was that companies who have more digital touch points along the path to conversion—and more conversion in general—have an advantage when applying AI and ML technologies. In this week’s episode, Scopely Co-Founder Ankur Bulsara shines a light on […]
Episode Summary: In this episode we speak with Co-founder and CEO Alex Holub of Vidora about how businesses, particularly in the digital and B2C spaces, can improve marketing results with AI. Holub discusses the resources needed—time, money, in-house or outside expertise, calibration, and data—in order to leverage AI in a realistic way. It’s safe to say that today, some businesses are […]
Episode Summary: Venture investing in AI healthcare applications has been on the uptick and is directly related to the subject of this week’s episode: just how the healthcare industry is (and isn’t) being impacted by innovations in AI technology. Guest Steve Gullans of Boston-Based Excel Venture Management talks about some of the various healthcare-related ML and AI applications that he […]
Technology Provider: Cloudera User Company: Wargaming Industry: Gaming Application: ML Infrastructure Problem With 150 million registered users at the time that this case study took place, Wargaming realized substantial upgrades to their data analytics platform would be necessary to improve the results of their “freemium” gaming business. The company aimed to develop a game analytics […]
Technology Provider: MarianaIQ User Company: ZenDesk Industry: (Many) Application: Marketing / Advertising Problem ZenDesk realized that it was having a problem with consistently generating ROI on pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine marketing (SEM, like Google AdWords). The company felt that it’s target audiences were often too broad to convert well, resulting in higher cost to […]
Technology Provider: Luminoso User Company: GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Industries: Healthcare b>Applications: Text and Language Processing Problem GSK sought to understand why some parents vaccinate and others do not. Pharmaceutical regulations limit interaction with consumers, so GSK sought a non-intrusive method to gain insight on vaccination concerns. Actions Taken GSK used Luminoso’s experience analytics technology to surface insight and sentiment from […]
I’m excited to announce that Emerj has “raised” a bit over a million dollars to fund our mission moving forward. The usual path of the 20-something who moves to Silicon Valley is to gain some bootstrapped traction, find some investors, and get a seed round raised. In our case, the funds came entirely from the […]
Episode Summary: In some ways, investors in AI have to do a lot of what we do at Emerj, which is sort through marketing fluff and determine what’s actually working and what’s more of a pipe dream, as well as what’s coming up in the next five years that seems inevitable and what’s more likely to […]
When businesses make investments in new technologies, they usually do so with the intention of creating value for customers and stakeholders and making smart long-term investments. This is not always an easy thing to do when implementing cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Business intelligence case studies that show how these technologies have been […]
Episode Summary: As it turns out, survival of the fittest applies as much to algorithms as it does to amoebas, at least when we’re talking about genetic algorithms. While we’ve explored other types of machine learning algorithms in business in past articles, genetic algorithms are newer territory. We recently interviewed Dr. Jay Perret, CTO of Aria Networks, a company that uses […]
The rise of AI industrial robotics experienced record double-digit expansion in various countries in 2014 and 2015, but such large scale segments i.e. ‘industrial’ versus ‘medical’ or ‘military’, were more or less one amalgam of parts a couple of decades ago. Examples of medical and military applications can be found in our updated machine learning in robotics […]
Episode Summary: Getting beyond the marketing and jargon on the home pages of AI companies and figuring out what’s actually happening, what results are being driven in business, is part of our job at Emerj. Shaking those answers out of founders is not always easy, but we didn’t have to do much shaking with Yohai Sabag, chief […]
When it comes to effectiveness of machine learning, more data almost always yields better results—and the healthcare sector is sitting on a data goldmine. McKinsey estimates that big data and machine learning in pharma and medicine could generate a value of up to $100B annually, based on better decision-making, optimized innovation, improved efficiency of research/clinical trials, and new tool […]
Episode Summary: You might be aware that some of the articles online about sports or financial performance of companies are article written by machines; this machine learning-based technology is the burgeoning field of natural language generation (NLG), which aims to create written content as humans would—in context— but at greater speed and scale. Yseop is one such […]
Technology Provider: Optimove User Company: Adore Me Industry: Consumer Retail Application: Marketing / Advertising Problem Adore Me required a more personalized and targeted method for customer communications and marketing. The company required better attribution on marketing spend, and more personalization and automation across multi-channel campaigns. Actions Taken Adore Me used Optimove’s segment modeling technology to […]
More data, less problems? How AI is transforming the financial marketplace and operations from the inside out. AI got a head-start in the information-rich financial industry over two decades ago, though the applications of today—robo-advisors and algorithmic traders, for example—are far more autonomous and omnipresent, accelerated in large by the increasing availability of data and advanced […]
Episode Summary: There is, in fact, a dark side to AI. Although we’re certainly not at the point where we need to fear terminators, it’s certainly been leveraged toward malicious aims in a business context. In data security, tremendous venture dollars are going into preventing fraud and theft, but this same brand of technology is […]
Though yet to become a standard in schools, artificial intelligence in education has been “a thing” since AI’s uptick in the 1980s. In many ways, the two seem made for each other. We use education as a means to develop minds capable of expanding and leveraging the knowledge pool, while AI provides tools for developing a more accurate […]
Episode Summary: Most of our recent investor interviews have been Bay area investors, like Accenture and Canvas, and we don’t usually get to speak with investors overseas, particularly in Asia. This week, however, we interviewed Tak Lo, a partner with Zeroth.ai, an accelerator program and cohort investing firm based in Hong Kong and focused on startup […]
There is a certain level of stigma that exists around using machine learning and location data in business applications, understandably due to risks inherent in exploitation of individual privacy. But if we look under the hood of society’s daily web of interactions, we see that the location information economy—from GPS to radio signal based-triangulation to […]
The following article has been written by Luigi Congedo, principal at BootstrapLabs. BootstrapLabs is an AI-focused VC firm in San Francisco. Editing and quotes added by the Emerj team.For information about our contributed material and publishing arrangements with brands, please visit our partnerships page. 2016 has been the year of artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley. […]
Episode Summary: If you’re going to apply machine learning (ML) in a business context, you need a lot of data, and algorithms across the board perform better with more recent, rich, and relevant data. Today, there are companies whose entire business models are predicated on helping others make sense of and use of this type of […]
When it comes to business applications of machine learning, marketing is always near the top of the list. Modern digital marketing offers a huge volume of quantifiable data for teams to work with, and marketing can be said to take precedent over other areas like customer service and business intelligence because of it’s direct tie […]
Human resources has been slower to come to the table with machine learning and artificial intelligence than other fields—marketing, communications, even health care. But the value of machine learning in human resources can now be measured, thanks to advances in algorithms that can predict employee attrition, for example, or deep learning neural networks that are edging toward […]
Episode Summary: One facet of business that nearly any industry has in common is the need to stay on top of news in their respective market, including competitor strategies or understanding changes in news related to the field. Media monitoring is a domain that machine learning (ML) is well suited for, with it’s ability to coax out […]
Episode Summary: What does it mean to tune an algorithm, how does it matter in a business context, and what are the approaches being developed today when it comes to tuning algorithms? This week’s guest helps us answer these questions and more. CEO and Co-Founder Scott Clark of SigOpt takes time to explain the dynamics of tuning […]
Episode Summary: In this episode, recorded live at Canvas Ventures in Portola Valley, I speak with Ben Narasin, a general partner with Canvas and an avid venture investor in AI and ML companies. Ben doesn’t look to invest in AI; instead, he looks for solid companies in which to invest, a subtle but important difference in a startup […]
Episode Summary: There’s been lot of hype around AI and ML in business over the past five years. Even among investors exist a lot of misconceptions about using ML in a business context, and how to get up to speed on and learn machine learning as it applies to utility in industry. Recently, I talked with Benjamin […]
Episode Summary: Uday Veeramachaneni is taking a new approach to machine learning in infosecurity aka infosec. Traditionally, infosec has approached predicting attacks in two ways: 1—through a system of hand-designed rules and 2—through anomaly detection, a technique that detects statistical outliers in the data. The problem with these approaches, Veermachaneni says, is that the signal-to-noise […]
Episode Summary: When it comes to finding an expert who knows how to hire machine learning talent, Parshu Kulkarni may just be the guy to ask. Not only is Kulkarni one of a small subsegment of the global population with an advanced degree in data science who has also been hired to work in tech companies […]
Episode Summary: In marketing, there are lots of applications in AI and machine learning (ML), from recommendation engines to predictive analytics and beyond. At the company Albert, there are even more ambitious projects underway – like automating the process of marketing altogether by having a machine run and generate ads, or test and spend the marketing […]
Episode Summary: Not all knowledge work can be crunched by a program, but there are some hard-to-automate business processes that a select few entities are making an attempt to automate now. Boston-based Rage Frameworks, Inc. is one such company, and in this episode we speak with Senior Vice President (SVP) Joy Dasgupta about specific applications […]
Episode Summary: This week we speak with CEO and Founder of Nexar Inc., Eran Shir, whose company has created a dashboard app that allows drivers to mount a smartphone, which then collects visual information and other data, such as speed from your accelerometer, in order to help detect and prevent accidents. The app also serves as a way […]
Episode Summary: In this episode, we speak with Senior Editor for The Economist in digital and data products and Co-author of “Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Work, Live and Think”, Kenneth Cukier, who speaks on the technologies that underlie big data and make it what it is today. Cukier addresses common misconceptions about […]
Job automation predictions from an individual expert typically draw from years of academic research experience, or time “in the trenches” of industry. With growing interest and speculation on the job market of the next decade, we set out to garner a perspective as to what Silicon Valley thinks about the possibilities of automations in various business tasks. We wanted […]
Episode Summary: What are executives missing the boat on and what do they need to think about when it comes to AI and machine learning? This week, we speak with John Straw, who has had a number of businesses in the UK and US and is currently a senior advisor to McKinsey & Co. John works […]
Episode Summary: In many ways, AI and finance are made for each other. Machine learning and other techniques make it easier to identify patterns that might otherwise not be detected by the human eye, and finance is quantitative to begin with, so that it’s hard not to find traction. Financial firms have also invested heavily […]
It’s easy to see the massive rise in popularity for venture investment, conferences, and business-related queries for “machine learning” since 2012 – but most technology executives often have trouble identifying where their business might actually apply machine learning (ML) to business problems. With new AI buzzwords being created weekly, it can seem difficult to get ahold […]
Episode Summary: Market research and trends is important when discussing AI and business, but it’s also worthwhile to contemplate the ethical and social implications further down the line. How will countries deal with potential unemployment problems? How might countries collaborate to hedge against the risks that AI poses to the future of work and other economic […]
Episode Summary: A medium-size business with a $20m marketing budget can run into issues when aiming to track an attribute, what marketing dollars brought in customers, etc. But when you’re managing $90B for customers all over the world and working in every conceivable channel, things get all the more complicated. Josh Sutton, global head of Data and […]
In July of 2016, we sent out a series of survey questions to past guests who have been featured on the Emerj podcast, including academic researchers, founders, and executives who are experts in the machine learning domain. In this article, we focus on responses to the following question: “What industries do you believe to be […]
Episode Summary: I remember reading an article in Scientific American years ago about a poster of a person looking in the direction people sitting in a school dining room, and that this poster would make people sitting in the dining room less likely to litter. This seems like an absurd example of holding people accountable for […]
1 – An AI Ophthalmologist Shows How Machine Learning May Transform Medicine Google researchers are disrupting the medical field with a new algorithm capable of diagnosing eye disease. The team has been collaborating with the Aravind Medical Research Foundation in India to test-drive a deep-learning algorithm, trained to spot and diagnose a common cause of blindness […]
Episode Summary: Today’s episode is about continual learning, a focus of Cogitai, a company dedicated to building AI’s that interact and learn from the real world. Cogitai’s Cofound and CEO Mark Ring talks about the differences between supervised and reinforcement, and how Cogitai intends to take reinforcement learning in the direction of continual learning. Ring also touches […]
Investments in artificial intelligence continued on an upward swing in 2016, following through on the technology’s promise to disrupt how business is done across industries. While venture capital (VC) investments for 2016 fell overall (especially in the first quarter – source Bloomberg Reporting), they stayed strong and continued their upward trends in the AI sector, […]
Episode Summary: There’s not that many serial tech entrepreneurs in the legal space, but Gary Sangha is one of them. Sangha is CEO and founder of LitIQ, which is applying machine learning and computational linguistics to legal documents to help lawyers avoid making drafting mistakes. In this episode, Sangha talks about where this type of software is […]
1 – Is DeepMind’s Health-Care App a Solution, or a Problem? A new app from Google’s DeepMind called Streams will provide access to patients’ histories and test results to hospitals in the UK. After signing a five-year contract with UK’s National Health Service, DeepMind is now privy to 1.6 million + patients’ healthcare information registered with […]
Episode Summary: Some organizations are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to help the world with research, some to help companies with marketing, and some are intent on ensuring that the future of AI doesn’t result in the end of humanity. Theres’a good likelihood that if you’re reading this interview, that you’re already familiar with OpenAI, an organization […]
Episode Summary: Right now, you can take a picture of a flower in your garden and post it on social media to see if anyone knows its proper name. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if a machine could identify the correct name and species in the picture you just took? Solving this problem in applications of machine vision […]
1 – Found in Translation: More Accurate, Fluent Sentences in Google Translate On Tuesday, Google rolled out the latest in its translation technologies – Neural Machine Translation. As opposed to translating sentences part by part, this new system translates sentences as a whole unit, depending largely on context to determine the most relevant translation. Neural Machine Translation […]
Episode Summary: This week’s guest is Kimberly Powell, senior director of business development at NVIDIA. In an interview conducted at the 2016 AI Summit in San Francisco, Emerj kicked off the conversation by asking Powell, ‘What is a GPU?’ Powell explains not only the difference between GPUs and CPUs but also the factors that are making the former […]
Since Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Kik, Slack, and a growing number of bot-creation platforms came online, developers have been churning out chatbots across industries, with Facebook’s most recent bot count at over 33,000. At a CRM technologies conference in 2011, Gartner predicted that 85 percent of customer engagement would be fielded without human intervention. Though a seeming […]
Episode Summary: Accenture is a leading global professional services company in the tech space, providing services to many of the Fortune 500 and their global equivalents. The company recently conducted a study, combined with expertise from economists and AI researchers, about the longer-term economic impact of artificial intelligence around the world. In this episode, I spoke with Chief […]
1 – Artificial-Intelligence System Surfs Web to Improve Its Performance Information extraction involves classifying data items that are stored in plain text, and is a major area of research for machine learning scientists. Last week, a research team from MIT introduced a new approach to information extraction for machine learning systems at the Association for Computational […]
Episode Summary: Crowdsourcing is a relatively common term in technical vernacular today. Even if you’re not a self-identified “techie”, you may very may well have leveraged crowdsourcing in journalism, the sciences, public policy, or elsewhere. One area in which this concept hasn’t really taken off is in finance and hedge funds. In this episode, we speak with Numerai […]
While there have been and continue to be innovative and significant machine learning applications in healthcare, the industry has been slower to come to and embrace the big data movement than other industries. But a snail’s pace hasn’t kept the data from mounting, and the underlying value in the data now available to health care providers […]
Episode Summary: What does the world look like when we can replicate human expertise in an assistant? Are we close to developing human-level chatbots that we can ask about law or medical conditions? We dive into this topic with Founder and CEO of exClone, Dr. Riza Berkan, whose personal assistant and chat-bot company is leveraging […]
1 – Carnegie Mellon Receives $10 Million From K&L Gates To Study Ethical Issues Posed By Artificial Intelligence Carnegie Mellon announced that it will dedicate a $10 million gift from the K&L Gates Foundation to the establishment of a new K&L Gates Endowment for Ethics and Computational Technologies. Carnegie Mellon President Subra Suresh expressed gratitude for the grant, […]
Episode Summary: CEO Chris Nicholson speaks on Skymind machine learning applications, which integrate with Hadoop and Spark. In this episode, Nicholson sheds light on current machine learning trends that he sees across industries and best practices for implementing AI solutions in order to gain consistent return on investment. For our readers who enjoyed out consensus on future trends […]
Busy and multitasking are understatements for today’s executives and entrepreneurs. Machine learning has the potential to help make businesses more efficient, competitive, and profitable, but learning how it works and finding the resources to implement this technology takes time. Where to apply machine learning when first getting started is dependent on a number of factors – […]
Episode Summary: We’ve interviewed a number of guests on Emerj, but very few who have had a serious part of their career in selling automobiles. But Michael Perry did just that for 5 years before founding Kit, his third startup – an AI-powered Virtual Employee that works in marketing for small businesses and was acquired by Shopify […]
1 – Machine Learning Veterans Launch ‘ElementAI’ – A Montreal Based Artificial Intelligence Startup Factory ElementAI, a Montreal-based AI incubator co-founded by Dr. Yoshua Bengio, officially launched on Monday. Co-founder and CEO Jean-Francois Gagné announced the company’s mission: “Our mission is to bring entrepreneurs and academics together and help them incubate advanced AI-First solutions.” The founding team […]
Episode Summary: Martin Ford started off as a software entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, but became better known for his speaking and writing on robotics’ and automation’s influence on the job market after writing his best-selling book, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. In this episode, Martin talks about why he believes […]
Over the past few years, we’ve sought out and spoken to some of the top researchers, entrepreneurs, and executives involved in the machine learning field across industries and domains. This week, we decided to collate our five most popular machine learning podcast episodes in one place (they’re listed below, ranked in order from most popular by number […]
Episode Summary: As Senior Director and World Wide Head of the Cognitive Innovation Group at Nuance Communications, Mark Hanson works on bringing Nuance lab innovations to business applications, with the guiding goals of improving customer experience and business efficiency. In this episode, Hanson speaks about natural language processing (NLP) and virtual assistant services, where he believes […]
1 – Computer Vision Leader Fei-Fei Li on Why AI Needs Diversity While computer science and AI has historically been dominated by men, the numbers of women entering these fields, according to The American Association of University Women, as been reduced from 37 percent in 1984 to just 18 percent today. Stanford’s Fei-Fei Li sees this […]
Expertise: Data science and economics Brief Recognition: Elena Grewal leads a team of data scientists responsible for the user’s online and offline travel experience at Airbnb. Her team partners with the product team to understand and optimize all parts of the product, using experimentation and machine learning in a wide variety of contexts. Prior to Airbnb, […]
Predictive analytics for marketing would have been adopted years ago – if only the compute power were more ubiquitous, the data were more accessible, and the software were easier to use. Now “predictive analytics” itself is almost a buzzword, after nearly 30 years of backward-looking marketing tracking. Today, well over 30 years after the founding […]
Episode Summary: How do you know if you’ve made the right decision for a hire? Often, employers go off gut instinct and make a decision retrospectively, but it turns out AI might be able to help out in human resource management through shedding light on best hiring decisions. In this episode, Pasha Roberts, chief scientist at Talent […]
1 – Barack Obama: Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive President Obama was generous enough to take time out of his (still) busy schedule to guest-edit Wired’s November issue, also contributing an opening essay that articulates his thoughts on why this is the best time to be alive (regardless of what’s touted in news and […]
Episode Summary: Big data is often a buzz word, but if you’re trying to quantify data around homes in the U.S. and pair that with hard to quantify information – like images – you’re likely running into the frontiers of machine learning technology. This is something Zillow deals with daily. In this episode, Stan Humphries, chief […]
What is artificial intelligence (AI)? We take the term for granted, but how might we phrase a formal definition? And are the technologies that we have today really reflective of all that this term implies? Traditionally a branch of computer science, AI as a holistic concept has pulled from many areas of academic arenas, from philosophy to […]
Episode Summary: When Google’s DeepMind won against one of the best modern Go champions, is used multiple AI approaches and exposed gaps in some individual strategies. This even has shed more light on AI, but also on the utility in combining approaches to AI for individual problems. Data security is one of these problem areas where […]
1 – Samsung to Acquire Viv, the Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Platform On Thursday, Samsung announced its plans to purchase Viv Labs, an AI platform that uses natural language technology to support conversational assistants. Viv Labs’ founders are former researchers of Apple, who left the company (after creating and selling Siri) to create a system in […]
Episode Summary: This episode’s guest is Uri Sarid, PhD, CTO for MuleSoft, Inc. Sarid speaks about where he believes the future of machine learning (ML) applications in industry might go – he thinks applications might stay small and niche-based, and will develop based on how well each serves its individual purposes. He also gives his perspective on how companies […]
Machine learning offers an opportunity to leverage competition and new forms of collaboration in order to yield new products, services, and entire business models… but machine learning misconceptions run rampant. In such a nascent niche, it’s helpful to gather expert consensus in how best to apply machine learning in business. As a company, it’s tempting […]
Episode Summary: It isn’t by chance that birds fly in flocks and fish swim in schools – they’re actually smarter when they act in a group. Could it be possible to extend that collective intelligence to human beings, and even AI? Louis Rosenberg is a PhD from Stanford, previously founder of Immersion and who now […]
1 – Oculus Investor Greg Castle Unveils $12 million Fund for VR, Self-Driving Cars, and More Anorak Ventures’ Greg Castle, who got in early on Oculus, announced this week $12 million in seed funds for cutting-edge companies in the areas of VR, AR, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and pioneering innovations using AI and computer vision technologies. In an email to […]
Episode Summary: Predictive analytics and machine learning are all the rage in Silicon Valley, but how do companies actually derive value by leveraging these technologies? We asked this question to Dr. Ronen Meiri, CTO and Founder of DMWay, a predictive analytics and machine learning platform company based in Israel. In this episode, Ronen speaks about what […]
Security is a broad term, and in industry and government there are a myriad of “security” contexts on a variety of levels – from the individual to nation-wide. Artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are being applied and developed across this spectrum. While many of these technologies have the potential and have greatly benefited society (helping […]
Episode Summary: Our guest in this episode has spent a large part of his life on figuring out how to make machines more intelligent. Loop AI Labs‘ Chief Scientist Patrick Ehlen has worked on a number of important projects, from DARPA projects to big-company AI solutions at places like AT&T. Loop AI works on getting AI to make sense and […]
1 – Self-Driving Cars: Feds Release Long-Awaited Rules On Tuesday, the federal government released its long-anticipated new rules for self-driving cars. In a press release, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx stated, “Automated vehicles have the potential to save thousands of lives, driving the single biggest leap in road safety that our country has ever taken.” The […]
Episode Summary: This week’s guest is Senior Vice President of SPARK, an economic development organization dedicated to getting startups and other early-stage companies off the ground in Ann Arbor, MI. Skip Simms speaks on pitching angel investors – specifically on how to convey complex technologies to investors who don’t necessarily have your technical expertise, and still close […]
Typing “what is machine learning?” into a Google search opens up a pandora’s box of forums, academic research, and here-say – and the purpose of this article is to simplify the definition and understanding of machine learning thanks to the direct help from our panel of machine learning researchers. In addition to an informed, working […]
Episode Summary: For some companies, big data remains an abstraction; for others, it’s an integral part of the lifeblood of a business. Mat Harris is vice president at Sojern, a travel marketing platform that has leveraged big data to grow $3 billion in bookings and 1/3 of a billion traveler profiles across its platform. In this episode, […]
1 – 10 Later-stage Startups Join the Seattle Machine Learning and Data Science Accelerator Microsoft has launched its fourth Machine Learning Accelerator with 10 late-stage startups in Seattle. Chosen startups, spanning domains from manufacturing to social media, have received an average of $5.3 million in funding with $3 million average annual recurring revenue. Startups will gain access […]
Episode Summary: Companies looking to raise money are often asking what investors think of their company, their industry, and how they’re making investment decisions in related companies. In this episode, I ask these questions of Robert Seidl, who is managing partner of Motus Ventures, an investment firm focusing funding early-stage software companies for autonomous Vehicles and […]
As the term “machine learning” has heated up, interest in “robotics” (as expressed in Google Trends) has not altered much over the last three years. So how much of a place is there for machine learning in robotics? While only a portion of recent developments in robotics can be credited to developments and uses of […]
Episode Summary: This week’s interview was recorded live at Nuance’s Silicon Valley office with guest Charles Ortiz, director of the AI and Natural Language (NL) Processing Lab for Nuance Communications in Silicon Valley. In this episode, Ortiz speaks about what he sees as the most important developments in natural language processing (NLP) over the last few years, what […]
1 – WaveNet: DeepMind’s Generative Model for Raw Audio On Thursday, researchers at DeepMind introduced WaveNet, a “deep generative model of raw audio waveforms” that moves forward how sound is generated in text-to-speech (i.e. speech synthesis). The deep learning-based model is able to generate both increased human-like sounding speech (DeepMind claims it has reduced the gap […]
Episode Summary: Fifteen years ago, investing in AI may have seemed a bit far-fetched, but today it’s not at all a rare occurrence; however, it’s more rare to find entire firms dedicated to investing entirely in AI. In today’s episode, we’re joined by Saman Farid, co-founder of Comet Labs, an investment firm focused on investment in AI companies […]
Unlike other components to an enterprises’ technology mix, determining the ROI of machine learning is a less-than-obvious process, particularly when solutions are new and little by way of case studies or benchmarks exist. While we’re far from a world where SMBs (small- and mid-sized businesses) outside of Silicon Valley integrate AI into their regular operations, we will […]
Episode Summary: One of the most memorable moments from this interview is when our guest mentioned that Larry Page hired him to solve intelligence; very few people can say this, and this says something about today’s guest, Dr. Nando de Freitas – a senior researcher at Google and professor at Oxford – as well as […]
1 – How Tech Giants Are Devising Real Ethics for Artificial Intelligence A new report issued this week by Stanford University gives a 2016 update on the 100-year study of AI, pioneered by Stanford alumnus and Microsoft Researcher Eric Horvitz in 2009 and co-led by Bioengineering and Computer Science Professor Russ Altman. The report reflected the […]
Episode Summary: In this episode, we speak with Dr. Matteo Berlucchi, the founder of Your.MD, which uses artificial intelligence to create one of the first personal health assistant platforms in 70+ countries. Berlucchi talks about the challenges in making an AI do what you want, specifically helping people self diagnose and seek proper treatment. He discusses the multiple […]
In the broad sweep of AI’s current worldly ambitions, machine learning healthcare applications seem to top the list for funding and press in the last three years. Since early 2013, IBM’s Watson has been used in the medical field, and after winning an astounding series of games against with world’s best living Go player, Google DeepMind‘s […]
Episode Summary: CTO and Co-founder of Sumo Logic Christian Beedgen gives his take on how to glean return on investment from applying machine learning to companies. There are no easy answers, but Beedgen boils down simple concepts for thinking about humans thinking through causation, machines working out correlations, and how the combination of the two […]
1 – People Favour Expressive, Communicative Robots Over Efficient and Effective Ones A recently published study out of the University of Bristol and University College London provides evidence that people may prefer robots that are able to show human-like emotions over those that are more quick and efficient in completing tasks. Researchers studied how humans interacted with Bert2, […]
Episode Summary: Artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) are often seen as different trends, but there is a lot of overlap in these areas, where you might not expect. Lucid VR’s CTO Adam Rowell speaks today about how AI plays a role in making VR work, augmenting the accuracy of images and making a more immersive […]
At the recent KDD2016 (knowledge discovery and data mining) conference in San Francisco, Managing Director at Amazon Development Center Germany GmbH and Director of Amazon Machine Learning Ralf Herbrich discussed three lessons that he’s learned while working with sparse machine learning models at scale. Before joining Amazon, Herbirch was one of the inventors of TrueSkill […]
Episode Summary: At Facebook headquarters, I learned there are 1 billion active users every month. In a more recent interview at eBay headquarters in San Jose, l learned that the well-known digital store has over 1 billion products for sale. eBay is, without a doubt, the world’s largest marketplace, and there’s enough incoming data to keep […]
1 – Pepper, the 4-foot-tall Robot that “Reads Emotions,” Makes her US debut Japan’s famous robot Pepper made its North America debut this week at the b8ta showroom floor in Palo Alto. The robot was first launched into Japan’s public sphere two years ago in SoftBank stores, and there are currently about 10,000 Pepper robots across […]
Episode Summary: In this week’s episode, I speak with Igor Baikalov, chief scientist at cybersecurity company Securonix, about the trends in data security and where security itself has had to take a step up in the last five years. Igor touches on major meta-trends that have forced data security to advance, as well as what has […]
Machine learning has had fruitful applications in finance well before the advent of mobile banking apps, proficient chatbots, or search engines. Given the high volume, accurate historical records, and quantitative nature of the finance world, few industries are better suited for artificial intelligence. There are more uses cases of machine learning in finance than ever before, a […]
Episode Summary: In this week’s episode, we feature an in-person interview from Facebook’s headquarters with Hussein Mehanna, director of engineering of the Core Machine Learning group. Mehanna and I talk in-depth about the topic of personalization, touching on the pros and cons, how it works at Facebook, and how his team is working to overcome technological barriers to implement […]
1 – How Locus Robotics Plans to Build a Successor to Amazon’s Kiva Robots Quiet Logistics’ spin-off company Locus Robotics is building warehouse robots to help replace the former Kiva Robots once used by its parent company. Before being bought by Amazon in 2012, Kiva Robots supplied all of Quiet Logistics’ robots, which were distributed to its […]
Episode Summary: When one thinks through important industry apps of AI, law or legal apps are not usually the first to jump to mind, but there’s certainly a need. Richard Downe PhD is vice president of Data Science at Casetext, a startup working on improving search and natural language processing and democratizing legal information. In this […]
Bots are where the web was in 1994. The arena is still wide open, and we don’t know what’s going to work and what’s not, or areas where the overhype is most prevalent. The rise of the chat bots domain is still filled with unknowns, but there’s a tremendous amount of money to be invested […]
In the hundreds of researcher and executive interviews we’ve been fortunate enough to conduct in the last three years, few artificial intelligence applications are brought up more than marketing and advertising. During talks with execs and researchers from companies ranging from Facebook to Baidu, and IBM to AT&T, marketing has been a perennial theme in conversations […]
Episode Summary: Learning about the research behind machine learning is always fun, but so is learning about the real-world applications. In today’s episode, we’re joined by the CEO and Founder of Wrike, Andrew Filev. Filev speaks about where Wrike is currently applying machine learning and AI in their fast-growing, data-driven company. He shares his insights as […]
1 – IBM Scientists Imitate the Functionality of Neurons with a Phase-Change Device IBM scientists in Zurich, Switzerland have advanced cognitive computing through the research and creation of phase-change-based artificial neurons. While study of phase-change materials for memory applications has been going on for more than a decade, accelerated progress has been made in the past two years. IBM […]
Episode Summary: Today we have a guest who has interviewed more futurists than anyone else I know. While at Emerj a lot of our interviews focus on executives in AI, Nikola Danaylov has had the pleasure of interviewing some of the finest futurists and forward-thinking minds in the world, including Ray Kurzweil, Verner Vinge, Marvin Minsky, […]
AI investments have become more and more prevalent over the last 5 years, and articles in the Financial Times, TechCrunch, WIRED, and elsewhere tout an era of heightened interest in machine learning and artificial intelligence-oriented companies. We at Emerj set out to ask the questions: “What do company founders themselves think?” “How is the investor sentiment […]
Episode Summary: A lot of companies in the San Francisco Bay area make the claim that they can do something great with data; many fewer are at a degree of scale to make this vision possible. Today we speak with Nicholas Clark, CEO of DoubleDutch, a company now powering thousands of events nationally and implementing machine […]
1 – Who’s Better At Phishing Twitter, Me Or Artificial Intelligence? Forbes Reporter Thomas Fox-Brewster went head-to-head with a double-teamed AI to see who was the better phisher on Twitter – a human or an AI. The AI software, called SNAP-R (Social Media Automated Phishing and Reconnaissance), was created by data scientists John Seymour and Phillip […]
Episode Summary: Natural language processing (NLP) sounds cool in theory. We’re familiar with Siri and Echo of course, but where does it play a role in other companies? In today’s episode, we speak with Samiur Rahman from Mattermark, whose entire business model is predicated on organizing and making findable information about companies, and generating a platform […]
Today’s artificial intelligence market is not easy to quantify. Besides the lack of consensus on a coherent definition for “artificial intelligence” as a term, the field’s nascent stage of development makes it difficult to carve out silos or hard barriers of where one industry or application ends, and another begins. In one of our more popular […]
Episode Summary: We’ve spoken in the past about computer vision on the Emerj show, but we haven’t covered much about it in industry apps. Few businesses have better mastered this technology in the form of an app better than Shutterstock. In today’s episode, we speak with Nathan Hurst, currently a distinguished engineer with Shutterstock and previously […]
1 – Investing in the Future of Work – News from the Slack Fund On Tuesday, Slack gave an updated peek into startups that it’s acquired since starting ‘The Slack Fund’ seven months ago. To date, the cloud-based messaging platform has invested in a total of 14 companies, giving $1.97 million of its own capital and raising […]
Episode Summary: In addition to focusing on industry applications of artificial intelligence and emerging technology, we also focus on ethical and societal impacts of emerging technology. In this episode, we get back to ethics with Wendell Wallach, a scholar at Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and author of “A Dangerous Master”, which addresses tech governance and […]
Episode Summary: The artificial intelligence field is normally seen as burgeoning and new, populated with lots of small, scrappy companies aiming to become the next de-facto solution, with maybe one exception – “Big Blue”. IBM has been involved since the ‘beginning’ and is perhaps best known for Watson, which has from Jeopardy to a range of […]
1 – DARPA Challenge Tests AI as Cybersecurity Defenders In August, seven teams will compete in DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge, pitting autonomous AI systems against threats and attacks from other network servers and patching up proprietary software errors in the process. The U.S. military agency hopes to promote programs that can work side by side with […]
Episode Summary: “Artificial intelligence (AI) can be seen as a progression in our scalability of labor.” This quote comes from this week’s guest, Naveen Rao, who received his PhD in Neuroscience from Brown before becoming CEO at Nervana Systems, which works on full stack solutions to help companies solve machine learning (ML) problems at scale. In […]
Episode Summary: Many employers (and employees) are familiar with the ‘painful’ learning curves of using multiple software products or platforms at once, but these may not be gripes you want to share with Amotz Maimon. This week, we feature an interview recorded at Yahoo headquarters with its Chief Architect, Amotz Maimon. He speaks about technology governance […]
1 – Sucking Robot Arm Wins Amazon Picking Challenge A Dutch robotics team was awarded the top prize in Amazon’s most recent warehouse bot competition in Germany. Team Delft’s bot excelled in two tasks: selecting and picking products from a container and putting them on a shelf, and performing those actions in reverse. Teams were given […]
Episode Summary: If you’re in the San Francisco Bay area, it’s not all that novel to be trained in or working on some form of AI; however, to be doing so in the 1980s and 1990s was a more rare occurrence. Dr. Lorien Pratt has been working with neural nets and AI applications for many […]
Episode Summary: When we think about applying AI and data science to different areas of business, we often think about those domains that offer a wide swath of quantitative metrics that we can feed a machine, like marketing or finance. Human resources (HR) normally doesn’t fit the bill. How we hired someone, how we felt […]
1 – Robot Eyes and Humans Fix on Different Things to Decode a Scene A team from Facebook AI Research recently published a paper on their work in mapping active neural nets in both humans and machine learning systems when decoding visual objects. It turns out that humans and the machines involved in the study do […]
Episode Summary: There are hedge funds and financial institutions that already use real-time data and sentiment analysis from social media, articles and videos in real-time to potentially make better trading decisions – but what does it mean when those same companies can use real-time satellite information to detect company activities and make trades based on that […]
Episode Summary: Not more than 10 years ago, it would have been difficult to talk into your phone and have anything meaningful happen. AI and natural language processing (NLP) have made large leaps in the last decade, and in this episode Dr. Catherine Havasi articulates why and how. Havasi talks about how NLP used to work, […]
1 – Structure-Mapping Engine Enables Computers to Reason and Learn Like Humans, Including Solving Moral Dilemmas A Northwestern University research team led by Ken Forbus and backed by DARPA is building a structure-mapping engine (SME) that may allow computers to make more complex decisions based on fewer data sets. The model builds on the use of […]
It’s been over a month since our last major artificial intelligence consensus (which covered 33 AI researcher perspectives on the 20-year risks of AI), and we decided that this time around, we’d speak with AI executives directly about the future of artificial intelligence and machine learning in consumer tech. The media is awash with buzz-stories […]
Episode Summary: When it comes to data science and machine learning, what are the related skills that are getting people jobs and what are the industries that are supplying those in-demand jobs? These are two important questions that we discuss in this week’s episode with CrowdFlower’s CEO Lukas Biewald, whose company is providing a pragmatic perspective […]
1 – You May Already Be Using Google’s AI Chips and Not Know It At this week’s 2016 Wired Business Conference in New York City, Google announced that it’s already using its in-house artificial intelligence processing chips (and they may have been present in some products for the last year). Known as Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) […]
[This story has been revised and updated.] Big data has turned out to be a key ingredient in turning machine learning from an abstract technology into a potentially invaluable tool of insight and foresight for businesses across industries. The burgeoning cognitive technologies of predictive analytics and data visualization are opening new windows of opportunity to companies trying to solve […]
Episode Summary: When you go to Harvard Business School and then to McKinsey company to work in private equity, there’s really only one thing left to do – go to Silicon Valley and launch an AI startup. At least, this is exactly what CEO Praful Krishna did when he moved to San Francisco to start Coseer, an AI […]
1 – Google DeepMind Researchers Develop AI Kill Switch Researchers at Google’s DeepMind and the Future of Humanity Institute have documented their ideas for building in a “kill switch” in an artificial intelligence that might otherwise refuse human intervention. Their paper will be presented at the 32nd conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence in New York […]
Machine learning has the best chance of achieving meaningful return on investment when companies model previous success. At last week’s Applied Artificial Intelligence conference in San Francisco, Uber’s Head of Machine Learning Danny Lange laid out his four principles for simplifying the process of applying machine learning in business. Lange has witnessed firsthand the evolution […]
Episode Summary: While we’ve featured quite a few companies that use and implement AI systems, we’ve more rarely gone behind the scenes with companies or consultants providing AI-related services to companies. In this week’s episode, we talk with Machine Learning Consultant Charles Martin, a data scientist and machine learning expert who has done freelance consulting on […]
1 – Welcome to Magenta! On Wednesday, the Google Brain Team introduced Magenta, a research project that will use machine learning to create art and compose music. The team will use TensorFlow and release its models on GitHub, posting demos, tutorials, and technical papers along the way. Though no date was given, the team said it […]
Episode Summary: Tad Slaff is the founder of Inovance Financial Technologies, the creator of TRAIDE – a strategy creation platform that uses machine learning algorithms to help traders uncover patterns in assets and indicators and build more reliable trading strategies. In this episode, Tad speaks about the state of machine learning in finance today, and touches […]
1 – Apple is Reportedly Building a Siri Speaker to Rival Amazon’s Echo Apple is looking to make inroads into the virtual household assistant platform with a Siri-powered speaker for the home, facing competitors like Amazon’s Echo and Google’s recently unveiled Google Assistant technology. In another move that follows competitors, Apple has reportedly expressed intentions to open […]
Episode Summary: It’s more common to ask what AI can to do to win at games, but it’s less common to ask what games can do to help develop AI. This is a particularly fitting topic after Google’s DeepMind’s defeat of Go, and in this episode we talk with New York University’s Julian Togelius about his […]
1 – How to Create a Malevolent Artificial Intelligence A recently published paper by independent researchers Federico Pistono and Roman Yampolskiy sheds light on the “unethical” side of developing smart and capable AI systems. Titled Unethical Research: How to Create a Malevolent Artificial Intelligence, attempts to identify conditions under which a harmful AI could occur. Some of […]
Episode Summary: What is intelligence? For some researchers, it may be quite possible to create an intelligent machine ‘in a box’, something without physical embodiment but with a powerful mind. Others believe general intelligence requires interaction with the outside world, inferring information from gestures and other features of functioning in an environment. Dr. Vincent Müller is of […]
1 – Announcing SyntaxNet: The World’s Most Accurate Parser Goes Open Source On Thursday, Google released SyntaxNet, its open-source neural network framework through TensorFlow that serves as a base building block for natural language understanding (NLU) systems. Parsing human languages has been historically challenging for computers, in big part due to the ambiguity of syntactic structures. The […]
Episode Summary: You’re a business, and you’ve collected data – now how do you now make sense of it? Bring in ‘sentiment analysis’, a form of machine learning that determines whether text is positive or negative. Slater Victoroff’s company Indico provides algorithms that specialize in this task. In this episode, we talk about about the common misconceptions […]
1 – Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence On Monday, The White House announced plans to co-host four upcoming public workshops on various AI topics to “spur public dialogue on artificial intelligence and machine learning and identify challenges and opportunities related to this emerging technology.” Spearheaded by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the […]
Episode Summary: How does automation influence society today? This is an open-ended question with likely endless answers that can be observed in many different areas of society. As a Writer, Speaker, and Professor in Media Theory and Economics, Douglas Rushkoff has made it his livelihood to examine the impacts of automation in our evolving digital society. […]
1 – A Robot Monk Captivates China, Mixing Spirituality With Artificial Intelligence The Longquan (Dragon Spring) Temple in mountains northwest of Beijing is home to Xian’er, the world’s first robotic monk. At two-feet tall, the robot is cartoon- and child-like in appearance, wearing an orange Buddhist robe and with a touch pad on his chest that allows […]
Episode Summary: This week’s in-person interview is with Dr. Adam Coates, who spent 12 years at Stanford studying artificial intelligence before accepting his current position of Director of Baidu’s Silicon-Valley based artificial intelligence lab. We speak about his ideas around consumer artificial intelligence applications and impact and what he’s excited about, as well as what he […]
1 – System Predicts 85 percent of Cyber-Attacks Using Input from Human Experts Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Laboratory (CSAIL) alongside machine learning-startup PatternEx have created a new cybersecurity defense system that makes use of both unsupervised and supervised learning methods. AI2 merges artificial intelligence with analyst tuition by first clustering suspicious data through unsupervised […]
Episode Summary: People often mark progress by what they see, but there’s often much more going on behind the scenes, the up and coming, that marks actual current progress in any particular field. The same can said to be true for natural language processing, and Dr. Dan Roth’s research in this field makes him privy to […]
1 – Bots May be Cool, but DigitalGenius Thinks it Found a Better Way London- and New York-based DigitalGenuis released a new product this week, Human+AI Customer Service Platform, that links to customer service platforms like Zendesk and Salesforce and supplements the chatbot experience. The service analyzes customer service logs from emails, chats, and other social […]
[This interview has been revised and updated.] Episode Summary: How do neural networks affect your life? There’s the one that you walk around with in your head of course, but the one in your pocket is an almost constant presence as well. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Yoshua Bengio about how the neural nets […]
1 – A $2 Billion Chip to Accelerate Artificial Intelligence San Jose-based Nvidia announced a new chip, designed especially for deep learning, during a company event this past Tuesday. The TeslaP100 could allow researchers to feed more data through artificial neural networks, potentially leading to more breakthroughs in the field. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang stated, “For the first time […]
At their annual GPU Technology Conference this week, Nvidia unveiled a powerful and expensive new computer chip, which CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says can perform deep learning neural network tasks 12 times faster than their previous best product. To power this speed, the Tesla P100 is packed with fifteen billion transistors – about three times more than their […]
Episode Summary: Statements about AI and risk, like those given by Elon Musk and Bill Gates, aren’t new, but they still resound with serious potential threats to the entirety of the human race. Some AI researchers have since come forward to challenge the substantive reality of these claims. In this episode, I interview a self-proclaimed “old […]
1 – Chinese AI Team Plans to Challenge Google’s AlphaGo: State Media China’s Computer Go team announced that it will issue a challenge to Google’s AlphaGo by the end of 2016. The announcement was reported by Shanghai Security News after covering The Forum for Understanding the AlphaGo War between Man and Machine and Chinese Artificial Intelligence, organized […]
Episode Summary: Emerj has had a number of past guests who have talked about neural networks and machine learning, but Dr. Pieter Mosterman speaks in-depth about the pendulum swing in this approach to AI from the 1960s to today. What we call neural networks as a general approach to developing AI has come in and out of favor […]
1 – It’s Your Fault Microsoft’s Teen AI Turned Into Such a Jerk Microsoft’s first open experiment with a chat bot in the US was brought to a halt after a series of its less-than-politically-correct statements leaked out on Twitter. The bot, Tay, was created to mimic the speech patterns of a “typical” 19-year-old American female, […]
The year 2015 might be seen as the year that “artificial intelligence risk” or “artificial intelligence danger” went mainstream (or close to it). With the founding of Elon Musk’s Open AI and The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence; the increased attention on the Future of Life Institute and Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute; […]
Episode Summary: Few 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 […]
1 – Project AIX: Using Minecraft to Build More Intelligent Technology Microsoft researchers at the company’s New York-based lab are using Minecraft to teach an AI agent how to learn. While there’s been much progress in teaching AI to perform narrow tasks – such as translation or computer vision, often at levels that surpass that of […]
Episode Summary: When 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 […]
1 – Google’s AI Wins First Game in Historic Match With Go Champion AlphaGo, Google’s AI-playing Go Champion, has so far beat out top human Go player Lee Sedol. The match, held Wednesday in Seoul, was front-page news in Korea and a top news story throughout much of the world. The match officially lasts until next […]
Wall Street, venture capitalists, technology executives – all have important reasons to understand the growth and opportunity in the artificial intelligence market, but the inherent vagueness of the term makes any single valuation extremely difficult. Indeed, the term “artificial intelligence” is notorious for having a relatively amorphous definition. In order to put together an executive […]
Episode Summary: There’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 […]
1 – Rebranding Artificial Intelligence: IBM Watson partners with Ogilvy & Mather If you watched the Academy Awards, you probably saw the new Watson commercial, featuring Carrie Fisher as therapist to a group of robots that are frustrated by Watson’s rounded capabilities in comparison to their more limited personas and abilities. The commercial is part […]
In the ongoing “pop culture” debate as to whether or not the pursuit of AI will result in Terminators that destroy humanity, there are many other more informed and nuanced discussions occurring in academic and business circles about the consequences and implications of continued advances in AI. A surprising number of legitimate AI researchers are of the […]
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 […]
1 – New Google Robot Shows Potential for Artificial Intelligence and Delivery Advances This week, Google unveiled ‘Atlas, The Next Generation’, an improved humanoid robot engineered through its subsidiary Boston Dynamics. The new Atlas uses sensors in its body and head to achieve balance, avoid obstacles, assess its terrain, and manipulate objects. In a released video […]
1 – Artificial Intelligence a Job Killer? Not here New York City-based X.AI is relatively new on the artificial intelligence scene and has created 60 more AI-based jobs on the east coast. The company, which raised $11.3 million in ventral capital over the past two years, is engineering virtual personal assistants to schedule events for their user. […]
Episode Summary: Are 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 […]
Episode Summary: A 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, […]
1 – Diffbot Raises $10M Series A to Become Leading Arms Dealer in Coming AI Wars Palo Alto-based Diffbot, one of the only profitable AI companies worldwide, raised another $10 million in Series A funding to build an autonomous AI that can sift through and synthesize information into the Global Index, a database of knowledge that surpasses […]
The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to fall into the general pit of buzzword-vagueness. Artificial intelligence (AI) often falls into the same trap, particularly with the advent of new terms such as “machine learning,” “deep learning,” “genetic algorithms,” and more. The purpose of this article is to flesh out the actual applications of […]
Episode Summary: It goes without saying that the brain is difficult to understand, with the billions of neurons, fine individual synapses between each neuron, and the different regions responsible for the innumerable behaviors exhibited by human beings. A new burgeoning and promising intermediary field called Connectomics is making waves in mapping the brain and figuring out […]
1 – This Robot Keyboard Will Catapult Microsoft into the Artificial Intelligence Race The UK-based Swiftkey announced this week its decision to “join the Microsoft family.” In 2008, the company introduced the heavily-used keyboard app that suggests the next word in your sentence. Unlike other keyboard programs that make predictions from a set of existing words, Swiftkey […]
Over the last five months, we’ve combined a mix of interviews and surveys with some of our most experienced artificial intelligence guests – including computer science PhDs from Stanford, Georgia Tech, and more – as well as some of the most renowned AGI researchers in the world. We asked 33 AI researchers when they believe (with […]
Episode Summary: Ever 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 […]
1 – Google’s AI Beats a Professional Go Player, an Industry First An article published this week in the journal Nature elaborates upon Google’s big AI win against a top-ranked human player in the ancient game of Go. AI system AlphaGo beat French champion Fan Hui in a five-game match at Google DeepMind’s London office in October. […]
Episode Summary: The 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 […]
1 – Goldman Sachs: We’re investing deeply in artificial intelligence Goldman Sachs and other major financial players are making heavy investments in artificial intelligence and machine learning in 2016 and the foreseeable future. In an interview with Goldman Sachs’ Head of Communications, Cohead of the bank’s technology division Don Duet said, “It’s a very important […]
Episode Summary: Over the last decade, many first-world militaries have developed, and in some cases deployed, autonomous “killer” robots. Some proponents believe that such robots will save human lives, but another side believes that an accidental arms race of this type would yield long-term detriments that outweigh any good. University of Sheffield’s Dr. Noel Sharkey stands […]
1 – China’s Baidu Releases Its Artificial Intelligence Code Baidu, China’s equivalent of America’s Google, released parts of its AI code to the public in an effort to keep up with Google, Facebook and other companies competing for the best AI algorithms to power its AI software. The company has aggressively invested in deep learning over […]
Even folks without a remote interest in artificial intelligence understand that it’s starting to surround them. The easy examples can be conjured by just about anyone walking the street: Siri, Amazon’s recommendations, Pandora’s playlists, Facebook’s face-tagging and newsfeed, and Google’s search results – these are the easy examples. However, most of the commonplace applications of […]
Episode Summary: Most of us forget that just about a decade ago, Facebook’s software was incapable of tagging people in a photo, but today can so without difficulty, sometimes without us even knowing. Machine vision has progressed to the point where it’s also common for computers to be able to pick out dogs from cats in […]
1 – Segway to Build Personal Robots with Intel, Xiaomi Scooter manufacturer Segway announced its plans to enter the robotics industry in 2016, with initial plans to work with tech giants like Intel and smart-phone company Xiaomi. The announcement comes after the company’s 2015 acquirement by Chinese-based Ninebot, at which point $80 million in funding was […]
Episode Summary: Have you ever seen a humanoid robot and felt creeped out? In this episode, we talk with Robotics Engineer Derek Scherer about the psychology of the uncanny valley and our relationships with robots. Scherer talks about the factors in robotics that tend to spook people and provoke a feeling of disgust, and how we might […]
1 – Microsoft Brings in Top Sci-Fi Authors to Help Envision the Future Microsoft recently published a free e-book anthology of science fiction stories called Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Stories Inspired by Microsoft. Authors include well-known names in the science fiction genre, such as David Brinn and Nancy Kress, and each story extends upon […]
“Machine learning” is a term that’s heard more often in startup and big data circles than “artificial intelligence”, and interestingly enough, Google Trends confirms what’s already heard through the technological grapevine: Image credit: Google Trends While most business laypeople have heard the term, they’re more interested in what machine learning (ML) can do, as opposed […]
Episode Summary: Most of society functions based on a general social contract i.e. we work to contribute to society and earn income to acquire goods. Those who can’t earn an income are required in some fashion to validate why. In this episode with Federico Pistono, an entrepreneur, author, and futurist asks if this contract is the only […]
1 – Elon Musk Nominated for ‘Luddite’ of the Year Prize over Artificial Intelligence Fears The Information and Technology Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, has nominate Tesla’s Elon Musk for its annual Luddite Awards. This announcement ironically comes after several innovative achievements, including TeslaX’s announcement this past week of successfully launching and returning a rocket […]
Earlier this month we released an article featuring all of the AI risk quotes from Elon Musk, and the article was well received. If there’s another eminent modern businessperson who’s AI quotes have landed all over the web, it’s Bill Gates. Many of the articles about Bill’s AI statements make scant mention of his actual words, […]
Episode Summary: Neural network – it’s almost a buzz word, but it was looked down on during certain periods of AI development. Nonetheless, most of the public is not aware of what a neural network is, how it works, and how we can create an artificial one. CEO and Founder of Imagination Engines, Inc., Dr. […]
1 – Google Raids Threaten Canada’s Lead in Artificial Intelligence Compared to California’s tech industry, Canada’s may be smaller (about 1/3 the size), but its output over the years has included breakthrough technologies in facial recognition algorithms (used by Facebook), the Google photos app, smart voice recognition, and robotics technology. Recently, however, Canada has lots some of its […]
Episode Summary: Cyber security is closely linked to advances in artificial intelligence. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy about the cyber security factors and risks associated with AI. How is AI both causing risks, and how can AI be used to combat those risks? We dive briefly into the future to speak […]
1 – Computer System Passes “Visual Turing test” A new AI system out of MIT has successfully proven its ability to make inferences and produce handwritten characters that are mostly indistinguishable from that of a human’s. The system is based on a computational structure known as a “probabilistic program”, and is the thesis work of former PhD […]
Over the last two years there has been a general “up-tick” in media attention around the risks of artificial general intelligence, and it seems safe to say that though Bill Gates, Stephan Hawking, and many others have publicly articulated their fears, no one has moved the media needle more than Elon Musk. When I set […]
Episode Summary: It’s common knowledge that scientists study the brain to understand how to replicate intelligence in machines; it’s less commonly known that scientists also use machine models to understand how the mind works. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Ashok Goel, a researcher in the field of cognitive systems who sheds light on this […]
1 – Top VC Says Gene Editing Is Riskier Than Artificial Intelligence Venture Capitalist Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures, is more concerned about the threat of human manipulation of genes over potential haywire AI. Khosla made the comment in a Quora response, after he was asked about previous comments made be Tesla’s Elon Musk. […]
A week ago marked the release of IBM’s plan to open source it’s SystemML machine learning software freely available to use, share, and modify. This follows closely in the footsteps of Google’s open source TensorFlow software, and Facebook decision to do the same thing with it’s AI software in January of this year. Why, though? We […]
Episode Summary: Over 100,00 years ago, it may have been advantageous for human beings to be hyper aware of other living things for the purposes of survival. In the future, between the IoT and advances in AI, we once again find ourselves ever more aware. Erik Davis, the author of TechGnosis and a praised journalist and speaker, explores […]
1 – IBM Turns Up Heat Under Competition in Artificial Intelligence IBM has entered into the open-source software competition, with giants Facebook and Google, by making its SystemML available for public modification through the Apache Software Foundation. The nearly decade-old program could help developers customize machine-learning software for the purpose of an institution’s needs. The system […]
Eternal life is appealing. Undeniably appealing. The alluring desire to stave off death (and possibly the very gradual cultural shift away from an acceptance of death) might be part of the cultural underpinnings that have spawned a wave of life-forever artificial intelligence companies. Here’s three companies founded to help us reach digital eternity. Humai. Serious Wonder (run […]
Episode Summary: Most of us can admire AI such as Siri, Watson, and other agents shaping the fabric of future AI-powered entities, but it’s also possible to admire them as a “dead end”. Dr. Alexei V. Samsonovich is one researcher who believes that we won’t be close to perceiving AI as ‘conscious’ machines until we […]
1 – Boston Firm’s Tech Adds Artificial Intelligence to Drone Cameras The Boston-based tech company Neural has introduced AI technology that allows drones to photograph and film people and objects more autonomously. The software comes in the form of a mobile app called “Neurala Selfie Dronie”, which first prompts the user to select an object or […]
I recently came across a TEDx talk by James Cascio that I’m surprised I hadn’t seen before. At the present point in technological development, I’m of the belief that provoking contemplation and conversation is about as important a job as science fiction writers and ethicists have, and James seems to have aimed to do just that: […]
Episode Summary: Dr. James D. Miller, an Economics and AI researcher who received his doctorate from the University of Chicago, sheds light on how economics factors into our increasingly automated world, where development is growing exponentially. We discuss how this acceleration may (or may not) help materialize the “Singularity”, the theorized point at which society is so drastically revolutionized […]
1 – Surprised? Yeah, Microsoft’s Tech Knows That’s How You Felt Microsoft’s Project Oxford AI team introduced its “human emotion reading” tool. Computers can now use facial expression information to infer eight main computer emotions: anger, contempt, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise, and ‘neutral’. While the tool isn’t without error, it has many areas of potential, […]
Facebook’s entry into the personal assistant game with it’s “M” assistant is actually an interesting view to Facebook’s big bet on the future of consumer AI. The way they’re aiming to serve users one-by-one might be what let’s them get a leg up on Google Now and other big personal assistant players – but it […]
Episode Summary: Dr. Danko Nikolic, a scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, asks and works to answer questions about how our physical neuronal connections create the mind’s perceptions. In the realm of AI, Danko zones in on learning in a newborn human and compares that to a robot. He asks how we can take human […]
1 – Toyota Invests $1 Billion in Artificial Intelligence in U.S. Toyota is joining the artificial intelligence race, with a recent announcement that has a five-year plan to invest $1 billion into a Silicon-valley based research and development center for machine intelligence. The entity will be organized as a new company called Toyota Research Institute. Gill […]
Apple’s recent acquisition of UK-based speech recognition company VocalIQ was done in as mysterious a manner as any of their other acquisitions, with no overt explanation from Apple, and no open reply from the acquired team. Speech recognition (and the broader domain of “natural language processing”) is likely to be a more important facet of the […]
Episode Summary: After receiving her PhD in Computer Science from the University of New York in 2002, Dr. Sheryl Brahnam’s research interests steered her toward studying human abuse and misuse with computers, specifically conversational agents such as Siri, phone-based auto agent systems, and even chat support. Her research yields questions in relative new territory: Are AI […]
1 – Google Reveals Its New “RankBrain” Artificial Intelligence System Google went public this week with the announcement of its new AI system, Rankbrain, which it uses for its challenging search queries. The system helps interpret about 15% of phrases that are unfamiliar to the search engine. Google remarked that this program is responsible for a “very large […]
If you could fill your home with customizable, instantly change-able virtual decorations that looked completely real, would you ever buy physical home goods? If you could have expert real-time instruction super-imposed on all of your activities, from cooking to stargazing to picking up the opposite sex, when would you ever need a real teacher? […]
Episode Summary: Dr. Joscha Bach is a software developer and researcher, who is currently developing a cognitive AI framework at MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. In this episode, he speaks about the troubles in projecting when strong AI may be developed, and sheds light on the trends taking us there, including deep […]
1 – A Google researcher said that we’ll become ‘highly dependent’ on artificial intelligence in the near future Google is planning to incorporate more AI and machine learning into all its products, said CEO Sundar Pichai. At present, AI drives Google Translator, as well as image recognition and email spam filters. Geoffrey Hinton, an AI researcher […]
Controlling your feelings, adding or removing memories at will, and controlling our devices telepathically… is this purely the world of science fiction? Evidently not: Sure, the bulldozer might have been created just to push soil and gravel off of a construction site, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be fitted with slightly different equipment to dig […]
Episode Summary: Is it possible to make AI friendly to humans via software or will we have to hardwire consideration for humanity into an advanced AI? Louis Del Monte, best-selling author and expert in the field of Artificial Intelligence, argues the latter. In this discussion, Del Monte talks about how he came to these conclusions and […]
1 – Research Reveals Robot Flaws are Key to Interacting with Humans A new study reveals that humans are less likely to interact with robots if robots are programmed to be “too perfect.” The study was spearheaded by PhD researcher Mriganka Biswas and overseen by Dr. John Murray from the University of Lincoln’s School of Computer Science […]
There’s hardly any theme more played out than the Skynet scenario when it comes to robotics. While military robots (and the AI required to provide them with the kind of autonomy) is likely an impossibility at least in the next decade, the last decade of AI and robotics are impressive, and worth checking out. After getting sucked […]
Episode Summary: Dr. András Kornai wants to put emphasis on the real and near-term ethical considerations around AI. In this interview, Kornai peels off the Hollywood myth “layers” around consciousness and AI in order to spotlight the very real, present, and advancing algorithms. He explains how such algorithms, which are slowly taking over the financial, medical, and automotive industries, are increasingly relevant […]
1 – Artificial intelligence is the next major wave of computing, Android creator says Andy Rubin, the creator of Google’s Android software, cited artificial intelligence as the next big wave in computing while speaking at the Code Mobile conference. He explained that mobile technology will not disappear, but that our current digital devices will be made smarter […]
It was nearly a year ago when Elon Musk likened artificial intelligence to “summoning the demon.” The complete over-quoted quote from his 2014 talk at MIT is as follows: “With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s […]
Episode Summary: Daniel Berleant is an expert in information science and artificial intelligence, and is the author of the book The Human Race to the Future: What Could Happen – and What to Do. In this interview, we discuss how robots and automation are already affecting industry, and how these impacts might shape not only the future […]
1 – Apple Acquires Artificial-Intelligence Startup VocalIQ Apple announced its purchase of VocalIQ Ltd., the U.K.-based software developer that is working natural language AI for better interactions between humans and machines. Initial application is Apple’s virtual assistant Siri, which will help improve voice command learning and response. The technology could potentially be applied to future technologies […]
Episode Summary: Katherine Hayles is best known for her work as a postmodern social and literary critic. Now a professor at Duke University, Hayles joins Emerj for a discussion about the difference between consciousness and cognition, from the features that differentiate the two to the types of technologies that facilitate each. Hayles contributes her views […]
1 – Here’s what Facebook’s artificial intelligence expert thinks about the future Yann LeCun , an AI researcher and former New York university professor, joined Facebook in 2003, and has since led the AI research team in developing the technology that powers the new personal assistant M and other AI-driven features. LeCun, who has been […]
Episode Summary: Could we one day upload ourselves into a computer or chip? Dr. Keith Wiley thinks that one day, we might be able to replicate consciousness within another entity. In this episode, he speaks to us about why uploading human identity in a computer substrate might be possible in the coming decades, and the type of […]
1 – Artificial Intelligence for Kids Is the Hot New Toy Sensation Advancing artificial intelligence and speech recognition is rocking the toy industry, and is doing so in high-fashion with Mattel’s Hello Barbie. In collaboration with San Francisco-based ToyTalk, Mattel is scheduled to release its latest talking Barbie doll in November, just in time for the […]
Episode Summary: When should we care about robots? How quickly should and will that change? These are just some of the thought points addressed by Professor David Gunkel, whose work on the moral valuations of AI is some of the first of its kind. In this interview, we consider the extent to which our “moral weighing” […]
1 – Apple TV Highlights How Far AI Has Come — And How Far It Has To Go The Apple event was the talk of the week, and a new upcoming Apple TV upgrade that allows users to search for shows and control features by voice was one of the highlighted introductions. The technology is already […]
Episode Summary: We talk a lot about the future of technology on Emerj – the long-road potentials and ethical considerations that intersect the various paths of artificial intelligence. But keeping the conversation real and present necessitates looking through binoculars rather than a telescope from time to time. In this episode, Eyal Amir, a tech entrepreneur and associate […]
1 – Could Slack’s Slackbot Herald the Era of Virtual Colleagues? Slack’s new virtual assistant, Slackbot, has helped increase the company’s valuation to $2.8 billion by investors. The “assistant, notepad and programmable bot” first helps Slack users fill out their profile on Slack. The virtual bot then allows users to store message in a notepad, and […]
Episode Summary: Do you need a body to think? This is a worthwhile (and also a perplexing) question, and an ongoing debate amongst roboticists. Cognitive Roboticist Dr. Mark Bickhard is part of a field of belief that cognition and intelligence – and maybe consciousness itself – requires embodiment and direct interaction with the world. In […]
1 – What Emotions Do We Want Robots to Show? Humanity has the Turing test to evaluate whether humans can distinguish conversing with a machine versus a human, and a machine seems to have been partially triumphant in a June 2014 Turing Competition at the Royal Society. We have the Ada Lovelace test, which is meant […]
Even people who aren’t fans of sci-fi or avid A.I. enthusiasts know that in 1997, IBM’s “Deep Blue” chess computer defeated the then world chess champion at the time, Garry Kasparov, but relatively few of us are aware of the fascinating developments in other narrow domains of skill where artificial intelligence is gaining ground at incredible […]
Episode Summary: In this episode, Stephan draws on his robotics background to articulate what it takes to give a robot a “personality”, explaining the differences between responses and propensities along the way. Androids are already making news in the entertainment and retail industries, but we delve into why the health sector is one of the […]
1 – Scientists Can’t Stop AI But They Can Make It ‘Good’ Artificial intelligence is in the media spotlight, with the band of tech movers’ Hawking, Gates and Musk certainly acting as a catalyst but certainly not the only development worth noting. A new report from Tractica, a market intelligence group, recently released a report that predicts […]
The 2014 world cup kick-off was made unforgettable with the help of Juliano Pinto,the 29 year old paraplegic man who initiated this kick with the help of a robotic suit controlled by Pinto’s brain signals via an EEG cap on his skull. There probably wasn’t a single spectator in the stands who would didn’t have some sense […]
Episode Summary: Dr. Ayers provides a comprehensive overview of his development of autonomous underwater robots, intended to help discover and destroy dangerous underwater land mines. He provides his perspective on two major obstacles facing robotics, including the concept of autonomy, providing valuable insight in light of the current events surrounding the development of autonomous AI. Guest: Dr. Joseph Ayers Expertise: […]
1 – Humans, Not Robots, Are The Real Reason Artificial Intelligence Is So Scary Imagine that, sometime in the future, a criminal entity was to steal one of Google’s self-driving cars, strap an automatic weapon to the roof, and reprogram the car to drive around and target people. This shocking image of the potential dangers […]
Episode Summary: Studying the mind has influenced, and will continue to influence, the development of artificial intelligence. In a largely digital world, Bruce turns a clarifying light on the topic of digital versus analog computing, and articulates on how the latter may be making a slow comeback in the wake of discoveries in neural information processing. Guest: Dr. Bruce MacLennan […]
1 – IBM Acquires Merge Healthcare to Grow Watson IBM announced Thursday that it had made its third acquisition of a healthcare company, since establishing its Watson health business in April. The purchase is the next layer on top of an already established partnership with pharmacy giant CVS, with which it will work to spearhead data-driven diagnostics […]
Episode Summary: Machine consciousness could very well exist, though in what form and to what degree, and how we recognize another entity’s experience, remains a problem to be solved. In this episode, Dr. Peter Boltuc helps define machine consciousness and expands on what may be necessary, in both the logical and moral arenas, in order to […]
1 – A Review of Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies Leaves More Questions A book review of Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, looks at Bostrom’s warnings and potential problem-solving strategies for the rise of the so-called superintelligence (i.e. a self-improving AI) against a historical backdrop of scientific accomplishments and blunders. Bostrom warns of the […]
1 – Google’s New DeepDream Algorithm Could Foreshadow a Creative Artificial Intelligence Google just open sourced the codes to its engineers’ algorithm DeepDream, which was designed to examine how neural networks work. The result is a program that, it turns out, creates some wacky and whimsical art, taking ordinary images and enhancing those with patterns […]
Episode Summary: The brain that we have is suited to our past, not our present – and is the (sometimes unfortunate) result of evolution stumbling forward for hundreds of thousands of years. In this episode, we aim to make sense of and deal with it. Dr. Gary Marcus shares his insight as to what the brain is […]
Joanne Pransky received her BA from Tufts University in the mid 1980’s, and began championing public awareness and exposure to robotics and AI technology, playfully calling herself the “first robot psychiatrist.” Since then, she’s been featured on CNN, The Discovery Channel, the Sci-Fi Channel, and even the Tonight Show with Jay Leno – aiming to expose […]
1 – Harvard Researcher Rethinks Economic Theory in a Theoretical AI-Dominated Economy David C. Parkes, Area Dean of Computer Science at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, believes that we may need to rethink our present understanding of economic theory. In a world where AI might bring new efficiency to new […]
Dr. Hables Gray graduated with a PhD in applied philosophy from UCAL Santa Cruz, and is best known for his writings on technology, war, and cyborgs (the combination of organic and inorganic, the evolved and the invented). In this interview, Dr. Hables Gray explains his ideas around how seemingly mundane technologies and social media help […]
1 – Google’s Visual AI “Inception” The in middle of last month, Google published an article on the Google Research blog called “Inceptionism: Going Deeper in Neural Networks.” Frankly, the title didn’t seem all that appealing, and it’s unlikely that it would have jumped out as anything other than science-jargon, even to people signed up […]
Sean Blacknell has spent the last year working on a film called “The Future of Work and Death,” based on interviews with futurists, economists, philosophers, and other experts – with an aim to bring the film to Sundance and other prominent festivals in the coming year. In this interview, Sean explains some of the most […]
Dr. Roger Schank received his PhD from Stanford, taught at Yale, and altogether has spent around three decades attempting to solve the big problems of artificial intelligence. In this interview, Dr. Schank talks about a kind of helpful “teaching” artificial intelligence that would go beyond Siri and help us to make the right decisions at […]
Dr. Nick Montfort doesn’t hold Shakespeare and DaVinci as the high water mark of “creativity,” nor does he believe that human creative endeavor is the only worthwhile kind. In this interview, Dr. Montfort shares some of his own examples of how computers can aide the creative process in ways that might result in “art” that […]
Listen to This Episode Now: On iTunes – or – On Libsyn Guest: Professor Nayef Al-Rodhan, PhD Expertise: Neuroscience, Global Policy, Ethical Implications of Transhumanism Recognition in Brief: Neuroscience researcher / trained neurosurgeon, Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MI). Previously a fellow at the department of neurosurgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Senior Scholar […]
Dr. Patricia Churchland is UC President’s Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego. He popular books such as “Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality” grapple with issues at the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience. In this interview, Dr. Churchland explains how the evolution of the mammalian brain may have influenced […]
Dr. Ian Pearson has been working as a full-time futurologist since 1991. Being featured on BBC and other major media outlets for his predictions about the future of technology, an commissioned future prediction work for large companies like Canon, EA Games, and more. In this interview, Dr. Pearson talks about the “hype bubbles” around 3D […]
Tracy Ingram’s mother was misdiagnosed with a brain aneurism and placed on bed rest for two years – a problem that likely resulted from a typo or similar minor error. Tracy founded BioscanR to help turn biological information from patients into more reliable diagnostic data for doctors, and he competed with his idea in the […]
Dr. Hal Blumenfeld is a pathbreaking neuroscience researcher in the domains of deep brain stimulation and epileptic conditions. His recent Yale research work pertaining to the neurological mechanisms of consciousness and awareness (specially in patients with epilepsy) has garnered quite a bit of attention in recent years. In this interview, Dr. Blumenfeld speaks with us […]
Dr. Rudolph Tanzi is a neuroscientist and renowned researcher at Harvard University. Selected as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2015 for his groundbreaking alzheimer’s research, Dr. Tanzi also serves as the Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). In this interview, Dr. Tanzi shares his […]
Dr. Steve Omohundro earned degrees in physics and mathematics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. Today, most of his best-known work is in the domains of natural and artificial intelligence. In this interview, Dr. Omohundro shares his thoughts about how we might “scaffold” our security measures to […]
Vivek Wadhwa began as a software entrepreneur and now is a well-known speaker, writer, and Vice President of Academics and Innovation at Singularity University. In this interview, Mr. Wadhwa shares his heartfelt predictions about what he sees as the complete overhaul of healthcare and education in the coming decades ahead – and the widespread benefits […]
Dr. Steve Fuller is philosopher and professor at the University of Warwick in the UK. After writing “Humanity 2.0” in 2011, Steve has received increasing attention for his ethical perspective on human enhancement and the transhuman transition. In this interview, Dr. Fuller covers covers what he considers to be the most important present considerations of […]
Juan Enriquez gave a TED talk in 2009 called “The next species of human,” and video went viral – and is now one of the most popular futurist talks in TED history. In addition to previously founding the Life Sciences Project at the Harvard Business School, Juan is now managing partner in Excell Venture Management […]
Decades ago, Cornell’s Dr. Joe Halpern wrote a book called “Reasoning with Uncertainty.” In this interview, we discuss alternatives approaches to handling large scale uncertainty – as might be applied to broad concerns such as environmental policy, or the management of hard-to-predict emerging technologies. Through thought experiments and some philosophical exploration, Prof. Halpern explains some […]
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor became remarkably well-known following her TED talk called “My stroke of insight,” where she explained her experience of having a stroke from her perspective… that is to say: perspective of a neuroscientist. Since then Jill has been featured on Oprah, and her book (with the same title as her TED talk) […]
Dr. John MacCormick is the author of the book “Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today’s Computers,” and in this interview, he shares some of the fundamental algorithms that support modern artificial intelligence, and his optimistic views on the future of AI. Check out this episode on Libsyn. Listen on […]
Dr. Gregory Hickok is working on modeling brain circuits related to hearing and auditory information at the University of California, Irvine. Listen into this interview to hear what Greg believes might be the grandest application of cognitive neuroscience in the coming decade, and why – when asked about modeling the human brain in the coming […]
Dr. Nils Nilsson was one of the early researchers in emerging technology back in the 1960s – graduating with his doctorate from Stanford before it had a computer science department. In this interview, Dr. Nilsson joins me from his retirement residence in Oregon and shares his overview of the history of artificial intelligence – and […]
Zoltan Istvan doesn’t believe that issues of life extension, genetic modification, and neural prosthetics are the problems for the president in the year 220, but that they’re among the most important considerations of the future of America, and of human life in general. In this interview, I ask Zoltan what kinds of technology and health […]
Gray Scott’s mission is to bring the concerns of the future to the public – and with recent coverage in Psychology Today, New York Post, and the World Future Society, he’s picking up steam. In this interview, Gray and I discuss the most important societal shifts that he believes are opening up our generation and […]
Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman is no slouch when it comes to understanding the human mind – particularly the diagnoses and treatment of mental illness. In addition to being chair of psychiatry at Columbia University, Dr. Lieberman sits on the advisory board of many of the world’s largest drug companies. In this particular interview, Dr. Lieberman shares […]
There are “techno-optimists” and “techno-pessimists”… and there’s those who just don’t know what they’re talking about. Skeptic Magazine’s founder Michael Shermer shares his thoughts on what’s hyped-up and what’s worth considering in the human race to the future. Check out this episode on Libsyn. Listen on iTunes. Image credit: wikimedia.org […]
It’s called “transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS),” haven’t you heard about it? The process involves zapping your brain through subtle electrical stimulation on the outside of the head – and though research has been going on in this field for decades, the mechanisms for it’s effects on mood, memory, and more, are still mostly unknown. Dr. […]
Dr. James McLurkin works with swarm robots at Rice University, and his unique work on robot communication has landed him on PBS’s “Nova,” in addition to speaking engagements at events like TED and Singularity Summit. In this episode, Dr. McLurkin discusses how swarm robots have been inspired by insect behavior – and exactly what swarm […]
David Brin is recognized as one of the most iconic futurist fiction writers of our time. With huge bestsellers like “The Postman” (later turned into a movie starring Kevin Costner), David’s work explores the ramifications of human choices of our collective future. In this interview, David talks about fiction’s unique role in helping humanity find […]
Regis Kopper runs the Duke Immersive Virtual Environment, or “DiVE.” His research focuses on the interactions of virtual and real humans. In this interview, he discusses his predictions for the non-gaming applications of virtual reality – and the surprising evidence that virtual reality humans might “relate” to us in much the way that real humans […]
Ofer Leidner is co-founder of Happify, an app aimed at supporting behavior change for well-being. In this interview, Ofer explains his views on the potential for technology to influence habits, and where he feels this particular kind of technology might mold our wearable / technologically immersive future. Check out this episode on Libsyn. Listen on […]
Sean Ellis is recognized as the originator of the term “growth hacking,” and is widely recognized as one of the world’s best startup and technology marketers. Heading up growth at companies like DropBox and LogMeIn, Sean has gone on to found Qualaroo, a qualitative data collection startup. In this interview, Sean discusses the proper use […]
Tool creates cool digital experiences for big companies all over the world (including UX work for online giants like Google and Facebook), and when they created a virtual reality experience of South Park – they couldn’t have imagined how fast it would catch on. After tremendous coverage on sites like TechCrunch and WIRED (and many […]
Current brain-machine interface technologies like MUSE or Mellon detect your mental activity with a headband, and represent it in unique apps. Thync is aiming to actively stimulate your mental activity, creating a more excited or tranquil mental state at your discretion. In this episode, we explore the possibilities of cranial stimulation, and the bigger trend […]
Our podcast frequently covers the business and research sides of emerging technology, but in this episode we talk about some of it’s direct applications. Alisa Brownlee of the ALS Association has been working with assistive technologies for decades, and she explains what truly works best to help weakening ALS patients communicate and live full lives […]
Ketan Joshi and Vishal Shah of Atheer Labs share their ideas about the immediate future of augmented reality, and how interactive computing can be facilitated though an augmented experience. We explore use-cases of the near future, as well as applications underway now. Check out this episode on Libsyn. Listen on iTunes. Image credit: Atheer Labs […]
Dan Ostrower gets to work with some amazing and innovative companies at Altitude (a creative consultancy), and has a keen eye for for the future. A writer for WIRED and a myriad of other publications, Dan shares his thoughts about the pros and cons of our increasingly digital future, and how companies can keep relationships […]
Ever wanted to run, jump, crawl, or otherwise really MOVE in virtual reality? Virtuix has created a harnesses 3-D treadmill to help people do just that, the Omni. As product manager at Virtuix, Colton shares his perspective on the future of more “immersive” and physical VR experiences, as well as the applications of said technology […]
Max is project head at Birdly, one of virtual reality’s most curious projects. Birdly is a full-body kind of “table” that one lays upon while wearing an Oculus VR headset – and through a combination of arm control (to replicate wings) and fan (to replicate the speed of air in one’s face) – reproduces the […]
Mr. Kushnir, MBA is current CEO of InifinityAR, an augmented reality company based in Israel. Their augmented reality technology aims to accurately interpret light, shadows, and reflections in real time, in addition to representing the users hands and other objects more accurately in augmented reality space. In this episode we explore what Mr. Kushnir believes […]