Pankaj Kedia has been a trailblazer across laptop PC,  smartphone, and wearable products, having held leadership roles at Intel and Qualcomm over the last 3 decades. Now an active AI investor, advisor, mentor, and speaker, Pankaj founded 2468 Ventures in 2021 and has since made angel investments in such notable AI companies as Anthropic, Athena, Figure, Groq, and OpenAI. Recently appointed as the Chief AI Officer and board member at Biossmann, a Mexican healthcare solutions company, Pankaj brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the AI space. He holds engineering degrees from IIT Roorkee and the University of Michigan, along with an MBA from Wharton.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• The journey of transitioning from early AI work in the 1980s to becoming a key player in the wearable revolution.
• Leadership lessons learned from working with iconic leaders like Andy Grove at Intel and Irwin Jacobs at Qualcomm.
• The evolution of wearable technology and its role in augmenting human capabilities through AI.
• The ethical implications and potential risks associated with the integration of AI in wearable devices.
• Insights into the mindset and qualities of successful AI entrepreneurs and the criteria for investing in disruptive technologies.
• Predictions about the future of work, the rise of AGI, and the shift towards an age of abundance where work becomes a choice rather than a necessity.

Resources

Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter

Connect with Pankaj

AI fun fact article

Babak Hodjat, co-inventor of Siri, on AI and the Future of Work

Josh Allan Dykstra is a polymath and TEDx speaker who has made significant contributions as a published author, musician, and CEO. As a sought-after coach on the future of work, Josh has collaborated with industry giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Chanel. He founded The Work Revolution, an organization dedicated to creating energy-based workplaces where teams can thrive, believing that work life can be a source of positivity. Josh is also the author of "Igniting the Invisible Tribe," and his boundless energy and innovative approach have inspired many to rethink their work and lives.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Josh's journey from a classically trained musician to becoming a leading voice in the future of work.
• We explore the pivotal moment that led Josh to shift his focus from music to transforming the workplace.
• Josh shares his vision for an energy-based work system that empowers employees rather than draining them.
• The concept of a work revolution and what it means to completely turn around traditional work systems.
• Josh’s belief that work can be a force for healing the world, even amid global challenges.
• The potential of AI in the workplace and how leaders can prepare for the future while prioritizing human well-being.

Resources

Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter

Connect with Josh 

AI fun fact article

Josh Bersin, HRTech pioneer, on the future of AI at work

Adityo Prakash is a serial entrepreneur, high-tech CEO, amateur photographer, and author who transitioned from academia to revolutionize video streaming, and is now transforming drug discovery and commercialization. As the founder of Verseon, Adityo employs deep quantum modeling and AI to expedite the identification and development of innovative pharmaceuticals, potentially reshaping our approach to aging and healthcare. With degrees in math and physics from Caltech and over 40 patents to his name, Adityo is at the forefront of technological advancements in the medical field.

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. How Verseon uses deep quantum modeling and AI to revolutionize drug discovery and development, aiming to change the standard of care for various diseases.
2. Adityo's journey from Caltech, where he studied math and physics, to founding Verseon and securing over 40 patents.
3. The challenges and opportunities at the intersection of high tech and biotech, and how these fields are converging to create new platform companies.
4. The limitations of traditional trial-and-error drug discovery methods and how Verseon's approach offers a more systematic, atom-by-atom design of new drugs.
5. The potential for AI and advanced modeling techniques to address complex health issues like aging, by treating it as a disease with identifiable therapeutic targets.
6. The future of drug development, regulatory challenges, and how the integration of AI and physics could transform the pharmaceutical industry over the next decade.

Resources

Connect with Adityo 

AI fun fact article

An episode you might like about which AI businesses are getting investor dollars

Rana Gujral, CEO of Behavioral Signals since 2018, joined the company after a distinguished tech career growing companies like Logitech, TiZE, and Cricut. Behavioral Signals uses emotion and behavioral science to help contact center agents deliver better service. Rana and the team are on a mission to improve customer interactions by using signals other than the spoken word to understand exactly what they need based on indicators like voice tone and pitch.

Listen and learn...

1. How to train AI models on past service interactions and outcomes to determine which agents should speak to which customers
2. How to use deep learning and NLP to process non-speech behavior signals like intonation, pitch, and tonal variance
3. How behavior signals can be used to predict stress, duress, and propensity to buy or pay
4. How to achieve high levels of prediction accuracy without processing "the spoken word"
5. Why tone and pitch are better indicators of sentiment than actual words across any language 
6. How to compete with Google/Microsoft/Amazon for data when building an AI-first conversational intelligence product
7. The biggest opportunity Rana sees to use AI to help humans live better lives

References in this episode:

• Mahesh Ram from Solvvy (now Zoom) on AI and the Future of Work
• Gadi Shamia from Replicant on AI and the Future of Work
• How personalization algorithms work in your social feeds
• Behavioral Signals

Ahmed Elsamadisi built the data infrastructure at WeWork before realizing every company could benefit from his team’s innovation. Traditional star schemas aren’t the best way to manage data. Ahmed instead pioneered a new approach using a single-table column model better suited for real questions people ask. He launched Narrator in 2017 to make it easier to turn data questions into answers and has since raised $6.2M from Initialized Capital, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Y Combinator. Ahmed received his BS in Robotics from Cornell. Hear from a pioneer (and tech provocateur) how new data wrangling techniques are making it easier for mere mortals to get more value out of their data.

Listen and learn…

1. How a roboticist who got his start building self-driving cars and designing missile defense systems ended up redefining how data is stored
2. Why traditional approaches that require SQL to access data are broken
3. How a single-column schema eliminates the complexity of joining systems and tables
4. Why it’s easier to tell better stories with data using temporal relationships extracted from customer journeys
5. Why Snowflake, Redshift, and BigQuery are really all the same… and data modeling is the place to innovate 
6. What it means to replace traditional tables with activities… and why they’ll eliminate the need for specialized data analysts 
7. How to reduce data storage costs by 90% and time to generate data insights from weeks to minutes 
8. Why data management vendors are responsible for bad decisions made using your data 
9. What is data cleaning and how you should do it 
10. What is a racist algorithm 
11. Why querying data with natural language will never work 
12. Is the WeCrashed version of Adam Neumann’s neuroticism accurate? Hear from someone who lived it... 

References in this episode:

• Google’s LaMDA isn’t sentient
• Chandra Khatri from Got It AI on AI and the Future of Work 
• Derek Steer from Mode on AI and the Future of Work 
• Barr Moses from Monte Carlo on AI and the Future of Work 
• Peter Fishman from Mozart Data on AI and the Future of Work 
• Ahmed on Twitter 

Seth Earley is a Chemist by training and an expert on AI. Specifically, how AI is used to improve knowledge management. In fact, he wrote the book on the topic titled “The AI-Powered Enterprise” in which he explains the importance of ontologies when applying AI. Seth is the CEO of Earley Information Science. He has been advising companies on technology strategy since 1994 and is currently focused on AI and knowledge engineering. 

Listen and learn: 

1. Seth’s contribution to AI history… including the term he coined that was co-opted by former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty 
2. Why all AI is a data (and information architecture) problem 
3. How the Applied Materials field services team reduced time spent finding information by 50% with knowledge engineering and ontologies 
4. Why proper information architecture is required for virtual agents to reduce call volume and help live agents 
5. What has changed since Seth first published his AI book in 2020 
6. The benefits of semantic search vs. traditional keyword search 
7. Where to start with a knowledge management strategy 
8. Why “data scientists spend more time being data janitors” 
9. How to mitigate the impact of bias in AI training data 

References in this episode: 

• How AI can detect employee burnout
• The Innovation Delusion on Amazon 
• Earley Information Science
• The AI-Powered Enterprise on Amazon 
• Kevin Dewalt, Prolego CEO, on AI and the Future of Work

Peter Scott, author, TedX speaker, and futurist, worked at NASA’s JPL laboratory after receiving his Masters Degree in Computer Science from Cambridge. Raising kids made him realize the potential impact of AI to do both good and harm. He left NASA and switched careers to feel confident he was doing all he could to secure their future. He recently published Artificial Intelligence and You after publishing Crisis of Control five years back. 

Listen and learn: 

1. When will we achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI)… and is that the right goal for the AI community? 
2. Why we weight the potential of AI doing harm about five times as much as the potential for it doing good. 
3. What’s the biggest global problem AI might solve in the near term. 
4. How DeepMind’s AlphaFold protein folding technology could change humanity. 
5. What does it mean to be human in an era when machines can do more tasks historically reserved for humans? 
6. Why Peter blames Big Tech for “breaking” democracy. 
7. What Peter expects will be AI’s greatest achievement in the next decade. 
8. Why the evolution of a digital race hinges on global economic incentives.

References in this episode: 

• Peter’s site: humancusp.com
• Peter’s podcast: AIandYou.net
• Reducing “radicalization pathways” in social media feeds
• Stuart Russell’s AI textbook  
• Dr. Mark van Rijmenam on AI and the Future of Work 
• Peter Scott’s homage to Monty Python… and how it relates to AI 

Kia Kokalitcheva, Axios tech reporter, is a Silicon Valley native who writes about tech news and culture. Among other things, she co-authors the popular Pro Rata newsletter (over 200k subscribers) with Dan Primack. Kia has covered many of the most iconic tech stories of the past decade as a writer at Fortune and VentureBeat prior to Axios which was just acquired by Cox Enterprises. Kia recently wrote about Adam Neumann’s new company, Flow. Hear Kia’s perspectives on how Flow could transform living like WeWork transformed working… and why she’s not scared that bots may take her job. 

Listen and learn… 

1. How Adam Neumann of WeWork fame raised $350M at a $1B valuation from A16Z for his new company Flow… before launching  
2. Kia’s proudest moment as a journalist 
3. What the acquisition of Axios by Cox Enterprises means for journalism 
4. How Flow may be more than the reincarnation of WeWork’s failed WeLive experiment 
5. As a culture, are we ready for communal living? 
6. What is the future of company perks… are the days of on-site dry cleaning numbered? 
7. How the generational shift is impacting cultural norms in the workplace 
8. What tasks bots will never do better than live journalists 

References in this episode: 

• How AI is transforming journalism according to The Knight Foundation 
• Gary A. Bolles discusses the WorkNet on AI and the Future of Work 
• Mark van Rijmenam, The Digital Speaker, on AI and the Future of Work 

Deon Nicholas, Forethought Co-Founder CEO, grew up in inner city Toronto stocking shelves in a pharmacy before learning to code at an early age. He started Forethought in 2017 after learning the value of answering customer questions working for companies like Facebook and Pure Storage. 

Deon has since raised $92M from an exceptional group of investors including funds like Steadfast Capital and NEA plus celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashton Kutcher, and Robert Downey Jr. Deon won the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield startup competition in 2018 and is a member of the Forbes 30 under 30. He’s also a mentor and advisor to founders of color.
 
Listen and learn...

1. How AI connects customers to the right agents then indicates the likelihood of a support interaction escalating
2. How to use historical data to help live agents fix problems faster
3. The evolution of chatbots from decision trees to AI
4. How to combine generic language models with domain-specific data to increase the accuracy of NLP
5. How to solve the problem of bias encoded in data
6. How GANs, generative adversarial networks, work
7. Why ML pipelines need to be monitored like web apps

References in this episode...

• Forethought
• Deon on Twitter
• Forward, the Forethought customer event
• Krishna Gade from Fiddler on AI and the Future of Work
• Monotonic selective risk may solve the AI bias problem

Jim Lawton, VP and GM of Robotics Automation at Zebra Technologies, met the founder of Roomba, Rodney Brooks, at MIT nearly three decades ago. It inspired a lifetime passion for  robots that help humans. Since then, he has influenced generations of robotic automation technology at companies from Rethink Robotics to Zebra Technologies. This is a fascinating discussion that will make you reconsider what robots can do and why humans shouldn't feel threatened by them. 

Listen and learn...

1. How Jim cultivated a passion for robots... and why that makes him "the cool dad"
2.  How innovation in robotic technology is helping AMRs, autonomous mobile robots, perform more human-like tasks with less training
3. Which "dirty, dull, dangerous" tasks are the best candidates for robotic automation 
4. How new training techniques are reducing the time required to train a robot from 300 hours to a fraction of that  which "democratizes automation"  
5. What's required to keep humans safe from robots
6. How supplementing humans with robots for a task like picking items from warehouse shelves using machine vision saves 12-15 miles of walking per day while increasing accuracy
7. How techniques like SLAM and machine learning are making it easier to program robots to do more complex tasks more accurately with zero or minimal coding
8. Which new careers will be created by industrial robots... and which will be eliminated
9. Two quick ways to know if a factory using robots and humans is safe 
10. Why Jim's passion is using robots to help people be their best selves

References in this episode:

• The Zebra blog
• Tiernan Ray discusses bot sentience on AI and the Future of Work
• Is Google's LaMDA sentient?
• Machines will out-perform humans in all tasks within 45 years... which is a good thing for us

Kamal Ahluwalia and the Eightfold team set out to find the right career for everyone in the world. Six years later after having raised more than $200M from a legendary group of investors and built a talented 600-person team, they’re well on their way. Kamal joined Eightfold as President in 2018 from a successful tech career at companies like Model N and Selectica. Hear Kamal share his vision for how to use data and AI to help employees upskill, reskill, and ultimately find careers they love. 

Listen and learn…

1. How Eightfold operationalizes the bold vision to find “the right career for everyone in the world" 
2. What has helped Eightfold scale to support customers in 140 countries and 19 languages
3. How an AI HR platform helps with upskilling for internal mobility but also with hiring and talent-skill matching
4. Why legacy HR tech software failed by focusing on “compliance vs. employee needs” 
5. Why automation won’t eliminate jobs… but every job will change as a result of AI 
6. How understanding human potential starts with understanding data stored outside HCM in “systems of work” like CRM and ITSM 
7. How to mitigate the impact of biased data to use AI to achieve inclusion and diversity goals
8. How AI can identify roles where employees are likely to succeed… even when they have no experience performing skills they require 
9. What are the ethical implications of using AI to hire and promote employees 

References in this episode: 

• OneTen.org and the role of Eightfold in its formation 
• Renee Steenvorden from Randstad on AI and the Future of Work 
• Giselle Mota from ADP on AI and the Future of Work 
• Ashu Garg from Foundation Capital on AI and the Future of Work 
• The BigScience BLOOM LLM

Ben Brennan, former guest, accomplished author, and QSTAC CEO, guest hosts today's "turn the tables" episode... and interviews Dan Turchin, PeopleReign CEO. Learn about Dan's vision for augmenting human intelligence with machine intelligence and how AI will be used to give the next billion employees back an hour a day.

Listen and learn...

1. The origin story behind this podcast
2. What's required to use AI to improve employee experiences 
3. How many new jobs will be created by AI in the next five years according to The World Economic Forum
4. The right way for investors to identify talent and catalyze innovation
5. How Ben learned the value of human-centric AI from his days at Yahoo, Box, and Twitter

References in this episode:

• Mark Settle, serial CIO, on AI and the Future of Work
• Dr. Mark van Rijmenam, The Digital Speaker, on AI and the Future of Work
• Rory O'Driscoll from Scale Ventures Partners on AI and the Future of Work
• Ashu Garg from Foundation Capital on AI and the Future of Work 
• Glenn Solomon from GGV on AI and the Future of Work 
• The great Katie Stanton, PeopleReign investor from Moxxie Ventures

Gadi Shamia, Replicant CEO and co-founder, has been delivering innovation to help customers have better service experiences for more than a decade. He helped grow and sell Echosign to Adobe for $400M in 2011 then went on to lead Talkdesk which most recently raised $230M at a $10B valuation. Gadi's a serial entrepreneur and a deep thinker who believes in the power of AI to make people better. 

Listen and learn:

1. Why we hate calling customer support... and how AI is making the experience better
2. Why automation beyond IVR is saving contact centers
3. What happens when AI makes bad decisions
4. When it's ok to "nudge" users to work with the bot... even when they ask for a human
5. The ethical implicatio ns of bots pretending to be human 
6. What new careers  will be created when call center agents are replaced by bots

References in this episode:

• Replicant on Twitter
• The Replicant blog
• The Open Ethics AI initiative
• Krishna Gade from Fiddler on AI and The Future of Work
• John Oliver's riff on automation

Tamara Steffens is a seasoned tech executive with a remarkable track record in scaling teams, infrastructures, and products. She has contributed significantly to early mobile and SaaS pioneers, including Boingo, Software.com, Fusion One, and Color. Tamara has held executive roles at Microsoft and Openwave, leading large teams and driving innovation. Her tech career began at Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics, where she architected partnerships that defined entire industries. Tamara holds a BS in finance from Michigan State University and is actively involved in shaping the future of business and innovation as a board member at the Broad Business School and a member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the U.S. Department of Commerce. She currently works as an MD at Thomson Reuters Ventures; we are thrilled to welcome Tamara to AI and the Future of Work.

In this episode,  we discuss:

1. Corporate Venture Capital Insights: Tamara shares her journey from working at tech companies like Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics to leading Thomson Reuters' venture fund. She explains how her extensive go-to-market experience shapes her investment strategy.
2. Investment Strategies in AI: We explore how Thomson Reuters' corporate venture arm approaches AI investments, emphasizing the importance of product-market fit, revenue generation, and strategic alignment with the company's broader goals.
3. Differences Between Corporate and Traditional VCs: Tamara outlines the unique considerations of corporate VCs, such as potential go-to-market synergies and strategic benefits, compared to traditional VCs which primarily focus on financial returns.
4. Case Studies of AI Investments: We delve into specific investments, like WiseDocs and CentML, highlighting the processes, investment theses, and strategic benefits these companies bring to Thomson Reuters and their respective industries.
5. The Impact of AI on the Legal Industry: Tamara discusses how AI is transforming the legal sector, enhancing efficiency, and changing the nature of legal work, particularly for junior lawyers and paralegals.
6. Responsible AI and Data Governance: We talk about the importance of responsible AI, data privacy, and governance in AI investments. Tamara explains Thomson Reuters' approach to ensuring ethical AI practices and compliance with legal standards.

Resource

Connect with Tamara 

AI fun fact article

An episode you might like about breaking into venture capital

Krish Ramineni, Fireflies CEO and Microsoft alum, learned the value of NLP working with Skype and Office as a Product Manager. He set out to solve a problem he had: note-taking in meetings and following up afterward. Fireflies has been used by more than 60,000 organizations to make meetings more efficient. Krish has raised nearly $20M from an A-list group of investors including Canaan Partners and Khosla Ventures. 

Listen and learn...

1. The evolution of speech recognition technology in the enterprise
2. How Krish and the team build an AI voice assistant that joins  meetings in 100 countries every day
3. How to start with 85% ASR (automated speech recognition) accuracy and make it better using AI
4. How to mitigate the impact of biased training data where foreign accents and uncommon speech patterns are underrepresented
5. Who owns voice transcripts used to train AI models
6. How being recorded changes participant behavior in meetings
7. The future of "voice-first" computing

References in this episode:

• Krishna Gade from Fiddler discusses AI explainability
• Fireflies on Twitter 
• A whole breast, AI-based ultrasound system was cleared by the FDA to improve mammogram accuracy
• Dentists now use AI to improve the accuracy of spotting cavities

Joel Eagle, McDonald's Senior Director of Technology and Architecture, started his career in healthcare and logistics before being promoted to technology leadership roles at one of the world's most iconic companies. Joel and his team manage the cloud infrastructure that powers 40,000 restaurants for two million employees... and helps serve happiness in 120 global markets to the equivalent of the  world's population every 100 days. The technology that makes McDonald's work is phenomenally complex. Joel makes it sound simple. Hear from the expert. Oh, and stick around to the end for McDonald's fun facts!

Listen and learn...

1. How Joel channels Ray Kroc's vision when architecting systems: "restaurants should run themselves... it should be as simple as a shoebox with money going in and going out."
2. Why Joel says "if it's easier for the crew it's better for the consumer."
3. How AI, wearables, IoT, and AR are all parts of the McDonald's technology vision.
4. Why the shift supervisor at a McDonald's restaurant has one of the hardest jobs in the world. 
5.  The anatomy of a McDonald's restaurant: "...they're mini factories run by a server."
6. How AI is improving the drive-thru experience and personalizing the dining experience.
7. What's required to support the McDonald's app which generates 16% of the company's revenue and is the world's most downloaded food ordering app.

References in this episode...

• McDonald's by the numbers
• Meta Research is improving NLP accuracy with less training data by using our understanding of how humans learn languages
• Giselle Mota, TEDx speaker and top 100 "Future of Work" thought leader, on AI and the Future of Work

1. What Ben learned managing 100 people and supporting 15,000 employees at Yahoo
2. How the culture at Pivotal Labs inspired Ben's philosophy on quantifying the employee experience
3. How Ben convinced a former Apple leader why QSTAC is better than NPS
4. Why CSAT scores don't actually correlate with how satisfied employees are at work
5. How the principles of Design Thinking can be used to run IT
6. What IT must do to avoid being "Uber-ed" like the taxi industry

• Dion Hinchcliffe on AI and the Future of Work
• Tim Crawford on AI and the Future of Work
• Matt K. Parker on AI and the Future of Work
• O'Reilly's 2021 AI adoption in the enterprise survey
• QSTAC

Francois Candelon, Managing Director at the BCG Henderson Institute, has spent 30 years researching how companies adopt modern technology.  His research spans business, technology, economics, and science. Francois is a popular speaker, author, and advisor who has been featured at events including Mobile World Congress, TED@BCG, Politico AI Summit, and Wuzhen Internet Conference. Francois is also a leader on BCG's GAMMA AI@Scale team. 

Listen and learn...

1. The one company Francois says best illustrates how AI can transform legacy industries
2. Why "artificial intelligence" isn't really "intelligent"
3. What is an "AI strategy"... and what are the four questions to ask to define yours
4. How a fintech company in the UK reduced costs to transfer money by 90% with AI
5. What's required to earn the public's trust in AI
6. Why every company should be required to have a "social license" to use AI

References in this episode...

• Fortune article on human-machine collaboration by Francois
• Francois' "BCG Expert" profile
• Dr. Eric Daimler, Obama's AI authority, on AI and the Future of Work
• The McKinsey "AI in 2020 Survey"

Stephen Messer, founder of Collective[i], was an attorney and teacher before discovering his passion for entrepreneurship. He started LinkShare (acquired by Rakuten in 2005) which made it possible to pay for clicks on the web. He changed how the web works and now he's using AI to change the world of B2B sales. The world needs more visionaries like Stephen. Hear what fuels him and learn about his process for disrupting legacy industries.

Listen and learn...

1. The four words that define what all the best entrepreneurs do better than everyone else
2. Why sales is the only job function where "30% productivity is the norm"
3. What's required to use AI to help B2B sales people
4. How to use RPA to automatically update CRM systems
5. How Stephen's winning against Salesforce, Microsoft, and HubSpot
6. What to look for in a mentor

References in this episode...

• The Collective[i] blog
• Stephen on Twitter
• Google PaLM
• Mahesh Ram, Solvvy CEO (acquired by Zoom), on AI and the Future of Work

In this special episode, we unpack the controversy surrounding the sentient chatbot that "worries about its future". Google engineer Blake Lemoine published a transcript of a conversation with the chatbot LaMDA that generated strong reactions from technologists and AI ethicists. It conjured images from science fiction movies that always capture the public imagination.

Tiernan Ray, ZDNet writer, accomplished tech journalist,  and good friend of the podcast, joined host Dan Turchin to reflect on the story based on his analysis of the 5,000-word LaMDA transcript.

Listen and learn...

1. What will it be like to co-habit a world with thinking machines?
2. What does it mean for an AI to be sentient? Why should we care?
3. Should AI be protected under the 13th amendment?
4. How do we know LaMDA's not sentient from the transcript?
5. What are the ethical implications of developing sentient bots?
6. Did Google act responsibly in developing a bot that is sentient-like?

References in this episode...

• Tiernan's analysis of the LaMDA transcript
• Melanie Mitchell on MSNBC
• Blake Lemoine's interview with Steven Levy in Wire 
• Alan Turing's Imitation Game

Kevin Dewalt, CEO of Prolego, built his first neural net at Stanford in 1995 after graduating from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. He popularized the term "AI abundance" to describe the path of exponential technologies and how AI adoption is five years from becoming mainstream. He now applies 25 years of studying AI to help organizations embrace the future. 

Listen and learn...

1. What every company needs to know to succeed with AI.
2. How the most successful organizations approach AI investments.
3. Why Kevin says: "...we haven't had a single project where we've used AI to eliminate jobs."
4. What Kevin feels is the most disruptive field within AI research.
5. Practical applications of NLP and large language models (LLMs) 
6. Kevin's contrarian view on AI ethics

References in this episode:

• The world's first AI comic book
• Kevin's book: Become an AI Company in 90 days
• Kevin's company: Prolego
• Snorkel to automate data labeling
• Andrew Yang on AI
• "D" Das, Founder and CEO of Sorcero, on AI and the Future of Work

Giselle Mota, Future of Work principal at ADP, overcame dyslexia and discovered passions for math and AI. Her parents immigrated from the Dominican Republic and taught Giselle the power of perseverance. Now she speaks frequently to global audiences about the importance of using AI responsibly to hire and nurture talent.

Listen and learn...

1. How AI accelerates the process of learning new skills
2. How to mitigate the impact of bias in automated decision-making
3. The dangers of using facial recognition in recruiting and hiring processes
4. How to design organizations that celebrate cognitive diversity
5. How to optimize hiring processes to avoid confirmation bias
6. How many jobs will be created by AI before 2025 according to the World Economic Forum
7. Giselle's coaching for females and under-represented minorities in STEM fields

References in this episode:

• Your $250 discount from Hello Landing using Giselle's promo code: giselle_itg
• Bernard Marr, Futurist
• Joy Buolamwini, AI social justice advocate
• Bryan Talebi from Ahura AI on AI and the Future of Work
• Kai Nunez from Salesforce on AI and the Future of Work

Harish Batlapenumarthy always believed culture is more important than anything else at work. He and the team at Emtropy Labs set out to identify how groups communicate in companies using machine learning. They ultimately landed on listening to customer feedback to automatically generate insights into customer experience metrics like churn risk. 

Listen and learn...

1. A better way to identify customer sentiment using supervised machine learning
2. What techniques are most effective for labeling training data
3. Why traditional methods of measuring customer satisfaction are poor at understanding actual customer satisfaction
4. How to mitigate the impact of bias in training data
5. How Harish defines "responsible AI"
6. Why there will always be a need for human customer success managers

References in this episode...

• Emtropy Labs
• Chandra Khatri from Got It AI on AI and the Future of Work

Eric Daimler advised the Obama administration on how to have conversations about AI. His work led to the creation of the AI office within the Science Advisory Group of The White House which has now become a cabinet-level position reporting to The President. Eric's a walking encyclopedia about AI policy and he shares all in this fascinating discussion about the future of technology, ethics, and society.

Listen and learn...

1. What it's like to shift from academia to venture capital to entrepreneurship to public service
2. How the growth of data sources as well as data creates an unimaginably large number of data relationships
3. How Conexus applied categorical algebra to bring together 300k databases at Uber
4. Why it's data integration limitations that are constraining AI innovation more than compute, storage, or algorithms
5.  How category theory is required for smart contracts on blockchains and quantum computing
6.  How Eric thinks about when AI should make autonomous decisions vs. requiring human intervention
7.  The role of regulation in managing job elimination due to AI
8.  The ethical framework Eric proposes for evaluating what decisions AI can and should make
9. The challenges of enforcing data policies like GDPR in the EU
10. How Eric defines "responsible AI"

References in this episode...

• Eric's company, Conexus
• The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
• Aftershock which includes a chapter by Eric
• Eric on Twitter

Roy Atkinson is a renowned thought leader in IT service management and customer service. A prolific writer, speaker, analyst, and podcaster, Roy's expertise has been featured in major tech publications. CIO Insight described him as a model for the future digital leader, and Nextiva named him one of the top 50 customer service experts of the decade (2010 to 2020). Roy's extensive career has included roles as an IT supervisor at the Jackson Laboratory, group principal analyst at Informa Tech, and CEO and principal advisor at Clifton Butterfield.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Roy’s Multifaceted Journey: Discover how Roy's diverse background as a polymath, polyglot, and musician influenced his career in customer service and IT.
• Language Learning and Cultural Insights: Gain insights into Roy's extensive language studies, including Spanish, French, Latin, German, Italian, and Serbian, and how this passion has enriched his personal and professional life.
• Customer Service Roots: Understand how early work experiences, from delivering newspapers to working in a busy supermarket and a bank, shaped Roy's interest and expertise in customer service and customer experience.
• Music Industry Adventures: Hear fascinating stories about Roy's 20-year career as a professional musician, his achievements, and notable collaborations with renowned artists like John Mayall, Todd Rundgren, and Don McLean.
• Transition to IT and Technology: Learn about Roy's transition from music to IT, his role in managing IT systems, and his involvement with HDI, highlighting the parallels between the evolution of digital technology in music and business.
• Evolution of Employee Experience: Explore the changes in the employee experience over the past two decades, including the shift from a technology-centric approach to a focus on user experience, the impact of consumerization, and the rise of AI in IT management.

Resource

Connect with Roy 

AI fun fact article

An episode you might like about preventing AI from ruining us

Mahesh Ram, founder and CEO of Solvvy, set out to "give everyone back time". His company was recently acquired by Zoom to improve customer experiences using conversational AI. Mahesh was inspired by his work using speech recognition to improve business English learning at Global English. Solvvy was founded in 2015 and has raised funding from an exceptional group of investors including previous "AI and the Future of Work" guest Rory O'Driscoll from Scale Venture Partners. 

Listen and learn...

1. About the three waves of chatbot technology
2. Why "more deflection" doesn't need to translate into "lower satisfaction"
3. How Calm uses Solvvy to deliver automated customer service
4. Why AI based on semantic similarity is better than traditional scripted chatbots
5. Why "putting the user first" and "not hiding the live agent" is essential for gaining consumer trust in chatbots
6. How to address latent bias in data used to train AI models
7. Why bots will never replace live agents

References in this episode...

• Rory O'Driscoll from Scale Venture Partners on AI and the Future of Work
• Solvvy acquired by Zoom
• Chandra Khatri from Got It AI on AI and the Future of Work 

Chandra Khatri,  Chief Scientist and Head of AI at Got It AI, was a key team member in the early days of AI at eBay, Amazon, and Uber. He has been on the cutting edge of NLP research for more than a decade and now leads AI at Got It AI. Chandra and the team are making it easier for customers to have conversations with bots.  He's making innovative use of transformers and active learning to use "small data" to train sophisticated large language models to automatically answer customer questions in fields as diverse as healthcare, financial services, education, and defense.

Listen and learn… 

1. What the AI culture is like at eBay, Amazon, and Uber 
2. About transformers, why they’re important, and how they're improving NLP accuracy 
3. How we’ve moved AI from search ranking (recommender systems) to other use cases including operations and bots 
4. How the rise of open source and no-code tools is making “Google-like” AI maturity accessible to every company 
5. How startups with limited access to data can use transfer learning to improve AI accuracy 
6. What’s holding back broader adoption of AI in the enterprise 
7. How the rise of Technical Product Managers (TPMs) is bridging the gap between engineers and business analysts 
8. How to eliminate bias from training data 
9. How long before we’ll all have a personal JARVIS 

References in this episode… 

• Got It AI 
• Chandra on LinkedIn 
• Hugging Face
• Christopher Nguyen on AI and the Future of Work

Paul Lee, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Synesis One, combined his love of games with a passion for NLP and AI. He realized language ontologies can be developed by players solving problems in games. They can be rewarded with NFTs backed by tokens on a blockchain. A brilliant idea... from a Renaissance man who is also a medical doctor and the founder of a care marketplace for veterinarians. This is a fascinating one! 
 
Listen and learn...

1.  The future of large language models  (LLMs)
2.  How ontologies can be crowd-sourced using games with NFTs as rewards
3. How Synesis One is gamifying data yield farming with tokens on a Solana blockchain
4. About the first graphic novel that is also an NFT-based sci fi game
5. Why Paul selected  Solana instead of the more popular Ethereum blockchain
6. How to mitigate bias from entering ontologies generated by gamers

References in this episode:

• Synesis One
• Mind AI
• Quantum Noesis
• Edmundo Gonzalez from Marpai Health on AI and the Future of Work 

Phil Johnson, founder and CEO of Master of Business Leadership (MBL) and veteran tech exec, overcame adversity as a kid when he was diagnosed with dyslexia. Phil taught himself to learn differently. He has helped organizations generate more than $1.5B by teaching leaders how to improve their emotional intelligence.

Listen and learn...

1. Why emotional intelligence is the most important skill for leaders.
2. Why Phil says leaders battle our "500 million year old brain that doesn't like change."
3. What Phil means by this: "we're the virus on the planet and we need to adapt to change to survive as a species."
4. Why toxic environments are leading to record low employee engagement that is costing businesses over a trillion dollars per year.
5. What Phil means by "we're born with an unconscious mind that gets wired as we grow to form habits."
6. How leaders can endure pain and channel passion to get more energy and feel more motivated.
7. How Apple's hiring practices and Putin's invasion of Ukraine are related.
8. Questions to ask to hire candidates with the highest EQ.

References in this episode...

• Matt K. Parker on AI and the Future of Work discussing "radical enterprises"
• The Master of Business Leadership program

Dipanwita ("D") Das, Founder and CEO of Sorcero, is an award-winning technology entrepreneur and AI innovator.  She is the CEO & Co-founder of Sorcero, a venture-backed AI Saas product startup, focused on using AI and NLP to inform critical decisions to improve lives.  Prior to starting Sorcero, D was the founder & CEO of 42 Strategies, managing digital transformation projects for Richard Branson's Virgin United, Al Gore's Climate Reality Project, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. 

Listen and learn...

1. Why D says "...doing something that leaves a legacy of good" is a core element of Sorcero's mission.
2. What D means by "...humans plus AI is greater than humans alone."
3. How Sorcero strives to "accelerate vs. automate" decisions.
4. How Sorcero helped doctors diagnose a rare form of metastatic breast cancer and save a life.
5. What it means for patients that healthcare data is growing at a 36% CAGR.
6. How Sorcero marries heuristics with NLP and transfer learning to help researchers. 
7. D's advice to females in male-dominated fields: "The only way to win is to persist."

References in this episode...

• The Sorcero Life Sciences Intelligence Platform
• D on Twitter
• Paddy Padmanabhan on AI and the Future of Work

Christopher Nguyen, serial entrepreneur and CEO of Aitomatic, realized big data isn't the only answer when training AI models. In fact, when doing preventive or predictive maintenance on industrial equipment, only small data is available. He and his team asked what if instead of relying on automated data collection we codify expertise in the heads of a small number of experienced technicians. And thus human-first AI was born. Aitomatic was launched in 2021 to productize the new field. It builds on Christopher's legacy of innovation having spent time in academia, at Google, and other startups including Arimo before its acquisition by Panasonic.

Listen and learn...

1. Why human-first vs. data-first AI may disrupt traditional approaches to machine learning.
2. How automation problems in physical-first vs. digital-first industries require different solutions.
3. How to build machine learning models when there isn t enough data.
4. Why the world is in short supply of human expertise.
5. How people feel about having their jobs automated away.
6. Why the topic of ethical AI is controversial.
7. The science behind neuromorphic computing.

References in today's episode...

• Aitomatic
• Christopher on Twitter
• Gordon Wilson, CEO of Rain Neuromorphics, on AI and the Future of Work

Thanks to Tess Hau from Tess Ventures for the introduction to Christopher! 

Matt K. Parker, author and engineering leader formerly at Pivotal Labs, profiled 13  collaborative work cultures in his book A Radical Enterprise. They're devolving control to employees and rethinking traditional organizational structures to give teams unprecedented levels of freedom. Not surprisingly, they're more successful than their peers. 

Listen and learn:

1. What is a radical enterprise and what is radical collaboration?
2. Why do employees do better work when they have freedom to define their own rules?
3. What are the benefits of embracing the concepts of self-organizing and self-managing teams?
4. Why do traditional performance management techniques like annual reviews create implicit threats in the workplace that demotivate employees?
5. What does it mean to make every employee "a company of one"?
6. Why, according to Deming, "a bad system will beat a good employee every time."

References in this episode:

• Matt's website and a link to his Slack community
• A Radical Enterpise published by IT Revolution
• Gary Bolles on AI and the Future of Work
• Jason Corsello from Acadian Ventures on AI and the Future of Work
• Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet

Jaime Ramirez, CEO and Founder of Preventor, and stalwart of the Miami tech scene, shares how banks and brands are using new authentication technology to make life online safer. Automating authentication to verify age and other personal attributes is cheaper than manual verification and also more accurate. The stakes are high if automated decisions are wrong.  Hear Jaime explain the best way to automate the process of verifying your age or gender with AI.

Listen and learn:

1. How banks are automating authentication processes to comply with know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) regulatory requirements
2. How the US compares with other countries, specifically Latin America, when it comes to KYC compliance and enforcement
3. When it's ok to use technology to automate identity verification vs. when humans need to intervene
4. Which forms of biometric data are most accurate for identity verification
5. How to mitigate the risk of bias when using AI plus selfies to verify age
6. When we'll finally move beyond passwords for identity management
7. What's fueling the net outflow of tech talent from Silicon Valley to Miami

References in this episode:

• John Whaley from UnifyID on AI and the Future of Work
• Jaime's blog posts
• Preventor
• Privy

Edmundo Gonzalez, Co-founder and CEO of Marpai Health, realized our health plans have a significant impact on the quality of our health. Using AI to predict who will need care and when can lead to better health care plans and a healthier population. Edmundo's on a mission to make it easier for all of us stay healthy... which first requires the traditional healthcare system to be disrupted.

Listen and learn:

1. How to turn America's "sickcare" system into a true "healthcare" system.
2. How AI can make better decisions about who is likely to need care and when.
3. How to use data to recommend treatment early to prevent significant, more costly procedures later.
4. How to optimize deep learning models using patient data to balance accurately predicting who will need care (precision) with how many recommendations are made  (recall).
5. The ethical implications of using patient data to make healthcare decisions.
6. Why Big Tech doesn't own the future of healthcare.

References in this episode:

• Paddy Padmanabhan on AI and the Future of Work
• Marpai Health 

Doug Kerwin is an engineering leader and entrepreneur who recently published "Riley and Bot: Jobs for Robots and Jobs for Me". By day, he's a Vice President of Cloud Engineering at Prudential. After hours, he's a dad who wants the best for his daughter and needed to answer her questions about the impact of AI on jobs.

Listen and learn...

1. What inspired an engineer without an AI background to write a kids book about AI
2. Why Doug concludes that "no job will be completely AI-resistant"
3. New careers that are being created by the introduction of AI-related technology
4. How GitHub Copilot is helping programmers write better code faster
5. Which innately human skills will never be automated

References in this episode:

• Riley and Bot: Jobs for Robots and Jobs for Me 
• Woebot Health
• GitHub Copilot

Kendall Clark is the co-founder and CEO of Stardog, a leading enterprise knowledge graph platform with prestigious customers like Morgan Stanley, Raytheon, Bosch, and NASA. He founded the company in 2016 with a vision of making data access more meaningful. Self-taught in coding during his 20s, Kendall is on a mission to help people experience "aha" moments with data more frequently. Stardog recently launched VoiceBox, a conversational data platform enabling knowledge workers to interact with enterprise data using natural language.

In this episode, you will learn

• Kendall Clark's journey from AI research to founding Stardog.
• The unique intersection of data management and knowledge management in the enterprise.
• The evolution and impact of AI on data management practices.
• The launch and significance of Stardog's new conversational data platform, VoiceBox.
• Real-world applications of knowledge graphs, particularly with NASA.
• The importance of democratizing data access for non-technical knowledge workers.
• Much more

Resource

Connect with Kendall

AI fun fact article

An episode you might like about limiting AI’s adverse effects

Phil McKinney, former HP CTO and one of the "50 most innovative" thinkers on the planet according to Fast Company, has helped develop products used by more than a half billion people.  Hear Phil put on a master class in how to turn ordinary teams into innovation machines.

Listen and learn...

1. Phil's seven rules of innovation.
2. What it means to have a "T-shaped" career... and why you should want one.
3. How Phil got his start in podcasting... in 2005! 
4. Phil's secrets for how to become more creative.
5.  The top skill CEOs look for in new hires. 

References in this episode:

• Phil's TEDx talk on the impostor syndrome
• Bob Davis, Phil's mentor
• Phil's website
• Phil's Killer Innovations podcast

Thanks to Dr. Mamoun Samaha for the introduction to Phil.

Rene Steenvoorden, Chief Digital Officer (CDO) at HR behemoth Randstad, started in IT 30 years ago when technology was a distraction and IT gear was relegated to server rooms in the basement. He's a two-time CIO of the year award winner and a visionary in HRTech.  Rene's an evangelist for using technology to improve the employee experience having served in similar roles at Rabobank, McKinsey, and Procter & Gamble.  You might ask why a 60-year old staffing firm needs a CDO. Well, you won't after meeting Rene!

Listen and learn:

1.  How chatbots are eliminating the "black hole of recruiting"
2. Why you may land your next job in the metaverse
3. The single biggest factor that determines how candidates rate the recruiting process
4. Which disruptive technologies are improving the hiring process
5. Why retaining existing employees is much less expensive than recruiting new ones 
6. The role of technology in blue collar vs. white collar hiring processes 
7. How to mitigate the impact of bias when training ML models to select candidates

References in this episode:

• Randstad's future of work insights
• Bryan Talebi from Ahura AI on AI and the Future of Work
• Panos Siozos from LearnWorlds on AI and the Future of Work

Gordon Wilson, CEO and founder of Rain Neuromorphics, turned a childhood fascination with science fiction into an entrepreneurial passion to recreate the human brain on a chip. Neuromorphic computing is an emerging field of AI that strives to build synthetic nervous systems for use on edge computing devices. The challenges are numerous but if Gordon and his team succeed they may make Isaac Asimov's bold visions of life with robots seem quaint in a decade.

Listen and learn:

1. How a love of science fiction combined with being raised in a home with entrepreneurial parents led to the founding of Rain Neuromorphics.
2. How to create neurons, synapses, and massively deep neural nets with code
3. Which core technologies from 1985 and 1999 enabled today's AI revolution.
4. The difference between the "physics-based" AI used in neuromorphic computing and traditional digital AI .
5. What Gordon hears from venture investors who don't get neuromorphic computing.
6. Why Gordon says "...any sufficiently complex technology is indistinguishable from magic."
7. Where we are today with neuromorphic computing and the path to a full artificial nervous system.

References in today's episode

• Rain Neuromorphics
• Gordon on Twitter
• Rob May on AI and the Future of Work

Thanks to Rob May for the intro to Gordon!

Jason Corsello, Founder & General Partner at Acadian Ventures, didn't set out to be a venture capitalist. He was a tech industry analyst and product manager before falling in love with HRTech and the future of work. He has become one of the most prominent investors focused on disruptive technologies defining the new employee experience based in part on what he learned growing Cornerstone OnDemand from $40M to over $500M ARR.

Listen and learn...

1. What Jason learned about entrepreneurship and the challenges of post-IPO life as part of the leadership team at Cornerstone OnDemand 
2. Recent Acadian investments... and what got Jason excited enough to invest 
3. The evolution of software delivery from on-prem to SaaS to self-assembly 
4. The challenges and benefits of being a solo GP vs. a corporate VC 
5. How startups can disrupt LinkedIn.... and payroll 
6. The single biggest predictor of startup success 

References in today's episode:

• Compa: deal desk for talent acquisition 
• Merge: open AI to integrate with all HR, accounting, recruiting, and payroll platforms 
• Panos Siozos from LearnWorlds on AI and the Future of Work 
• Bryan Talebi from Ahura AI on AI and the Future of Work 
• Gary Bolles on AI and the Future of Work 
• Acadian Ventures

Thanks to Dave Kellogg for the intro to Jason!

Dr. Mamoun Samaha, CTO at the International Technological University and Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University, is an operator and academic with a long track record of success in the classroom and board room. His research spans the areas of mobility, security, and networking. He has strong opinions about what it means to be human in an age of automation. Worth a listen to hear his insights about how technology will change our lives in the next decade. 

Listen and learn...

1. What's required to be a great CTO.
2. Why Dr. Samaha says "change is now exponential... it's no longer linear."
3.  Why AI-powered security solutions at the edge of the network are critical.
4. Tips for startups selling technology to CTOs.
5. The one product Dr. Samaha would purchase today if it existed.
6. The skills every high schooler should learn that will never be replaced by AI.

References in this episode...

• Phil McKinney, Dr. Samaha's role model
• John Whaley on AI and the Future of Work
• Intrinsic ID

Paddy Padmanabhan, CEO of Damo Consulting, has spent 20 years educating healthcare CIOs about digital transformation and writing about healthcare innovation. Damo helps organizations turn new technology into better patient outcomes in areas like telemedicine, electronic health records, and patient engagement platforms. Paddy shares wisdom about innovative solutions that will improve our quality of life for decades ahead.

Listen and learn...

1. Paddy's single biggest insight from research for his book "Healthcare Digital Transformation"
2. Which HealthTech trends are getting the most attention from venture capitalists
3. The role of the digital health experience in patient adoption of healthcare services 
4. Which upstarts are disrupting HealthTech incumbents
5. How the pandemic gave rise to telemedicine and how that is impacting the future of healthcare
6. How limited access to patient data will constrain AI-related innovation in healthcare
7. Whether or not Apple, Amazon, and Google - owners of your data - will replace hospitals as primary healthcare providers

References in this episode...

• Teladoc acquires Livongo
• Oracle acquires Cerner
• Amazon Care
• The Big Unlock

Dave Kellogg, serial CEO, investor, and advisor, is a prolific blogger over at Kellblog.com. His annual predictions are a must-read for anyone in tech. This year's insights were no exception. Dave recently joined Balderton Capital as an executive in residence. His illustrious career has spanned exec stints at iconic companies like Host Analytics, Salesforce, MarkLogic, and Business Objects before it was acquired by SAP. Among other accolades, Dave’s SaaStr talks routinely rank in the top few most watched.

Dave owns two dubious distinctions: in over 100 episodes, he’s one of only three repeat guests on the podcast. He’s also the biggest Grateful Dead fan we know. The two are only loosely correlated.

Listen and learn:

1. The single SaaS metric that matters most in 2022
2. Dave's advice to innovators: "don't pave cow paths"
3. What's different about the venture ecosystems in Silicon Valley and Europe
4. What's ahead for Web3 and blockchain in the enterprise
5. Why the future of decentralized services requires centralized platforms
6. If 2021 was a Grateful Dead song...

References in this episode:

• Dave's 2022 predictions
• Dave's favorite marketing book: They Ask You Answer
• Moxie Marlinspike on Web3
• Anshu Sharma and the privacy vault
• Causal inference wins the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics

Graham Brown,  storyteller extraordinaire, has traveled the world learning about work, culture, and technology. He's a cognitive psychologist with a passion for AI but also a student of history and art who is on a personal mission to link the present and future with great stories from the past. Graham's also the CEO of Pikkal, a podcast agency, and the host of the Asia Tech Podcast.

Listen and learn:

1. What entrepreneurs need to know about the art of great storytelling
2. What the cave paintings in Lascaux, France from 15,000 BCE teach us about artificial intelligence
3. How archetypal stories like Star Wars and Harry Potter use the same plot lines as a Steve Jobs product launch
4. Why startup pitch decks need to "create maps for the audience"
5. What it means to be human in the age of machine intelligence
6. Why Henry Ford famously chose black as the color for the Model T Ford

References in this episode:

• The Asia Tech Podcast
• Pikkal, Graham's podcast agency
• The cave paintings in Lascaux, France
• The first computers (who were humans... and mostly women)

Rob May, serial AI entrepreneur and investor,  started as a hardware engineer but realized he could have more of an impact as an entrepreneur and investor. Since then, he has started companies including Backupify (acquired by Datto) and Talla (conversational AI)  and invested in over 100 startups. Rob's a deep thinker and the author of the popular Inside AI weekly newsletter and Investing in AI podcast.

Listen and learn...

1. What's holding back AI adoption in the enterprise
2. New approaches to address the "small data" AI problem
3. About the ethics training we should require for AI algorithm developers
4. Why those who fear bots taking over are the modern equivalent of Luddites
5. What it means to be human when machines are sentient
6. The moonshot AI idea Rob's most excited about

References in today's episode:

• Krishna Gade from Fiddler on AI and the Future of Work
• AdeptID for matching helping employees upskill
• Mythic for edge AI

Elliot Shmukler, CEO and founder of Anomalo, needed a better way to monitor data quality at scale. He previously led growth teams at Wealthfront, Instacart, and LinkedIn and experienced firsthand the impact of incomplete or inaccurate data. Anomalo has now raised nearly $40M from amazing investors including Norwest, Two Sigma, and Foundation to make data problems a thing of the past.

Listen and learn...

1. What Elliot means when citing Jeff Weiner from Linkedin: "If you're launching a rocket even a one degree course change can mean you won't land on the moon."
2. About the data quality issue nobody noticed at Instacart that impacted millions of users.
3. How the role of the data scientist will change as AI platforms automate data quality monitoring.
4. When there's a need for humans in the loop to override AI systems.
5. Why every product will soon be as good at personalization as Spotify and Netflix.
6. The number one skill every student needs to learn that will never be replaced by machines.

Past episodes referenced in today's discussion:

• Milin Desai, Sentry CEO
• Barr Moses, Monte Carlo CEO
• Derek Steer, Mode Analytics CEO
• Peter Fishman, Mozart Data CEO
• Krishna Gade, Fiddler CEO
• Charity Majors, Honeycomb CTO

Allison has spent over a decade pioneering the of future of work as an employee, investor, and author. Her book, Breaking into Venture, offers a human perspective on succeeding in venture capital. As a General Partner at Semper Virens, she invests in technology transforming workforce, healthcare, and financial services. Allison contributes to Forbes, lectures at Columbia Business School and UC Berkeley Haas, and has a rich background including roles at Goldman Sachs, General Assembly, Fresco Capital, and Trinity Ventures. She holds a BA in Economics with honors and a minor in Film Studies from Harvard.

In this episode, you will learn how

• Allison grew up in the Midwest, witnessing her parents' jobs being disrupted by technology, which influenced her dedication to understanding the future of work.
• After the financial crisis and seeing algorithmic job replacement at Goldman Sachs, she decided to focus her career on technology and innovation.
• Working at General Assembly introduced her to venture capital, where she saw the influence VCs have on startups, leading her to co-found Fresco Capital and later join Semper Virens.
• She emphasizes the importance of creating a unique value add in venture capital, highlighting the significance of building and activating a powerful network.
• Allison believes AI will augment jobs by taking over specific tasks rather than replacing entire jobs, advocating for a responsible AI implementation process to mitigate risks.
• Keys to picking a career that won’t be automated by a bot.

Resources

Connect with Allison

AI fun fact article

An episode you might like about limiting AI’s adverse effects

Luke Arrigoni started Arricor in 2012 to help large companies make sense of their data. Since then, he and the team have taught organizations like Goldman Sachs, AT&T, and Thomson Reuters about the principles of AI. His secret? Focus on the business problem and the right technology approach becomes obvious.

Listen and learn...

1. How UPS uses AI to automatically assign the right tax code for packages
2. What responsibility AI developers have for the decisions their algorithms make
3. How to clean dirty data to make it ready for AI model training 
4. When to use neural nets vs. gradient-boosted trees
5. Which tasks are good candidates for classifier models vs. NLP
6. Which job skills are future-proof... and which are likely to be replaced by automation 

References in this episode:

• Fish from Mozart Data on AI and the Future of Work
• Airflow for data pipeline automation

Peter Fishman ("Fish"), co-founder and CEO of Mozart Data, had a vision for making it easy for any business to unlock the value of their data via a modern data stack. He and his co-founder believe rote data engineering work shouldn't require teams of in-house data engineers. Fish turned his PhD in Economics and passion for statistics into a successful, venture-backed YC company that is defining the future of data analytics.

Listen and learn...

1. Why Fish believes "not every business gets value out of their data... but every business can."
2. The role of data pipelines in automating the cleaning and transforming of data.
3. Fish's prediction for where humans will be needed for data analysis in a decade.
4. What Fish learned working with David Sacks at Yammer.
5. How bacon hot sauce inspired the founding of Mozart Data.

References in this episode:

• Barr Moses from Monte Carlo  on AI and the Future of Work
• Derek Steer from Mode on AI and the Future of Work
• Fivetran for simplifying data integration

Shawn Merani, entrepreneur and venture investor, has started two venture funds and been an operator at early stage companies including Liquidnet and ReachLocal. Shawn has invested in some amazing companies including Clubhouse, Dollar Shave Club, and Stance. He shares his definition of "hustle" and the challenges of raising money for a venture fund vs. raising money for a company.

Listen and learn...

1. How to raise your first venture fund.
2. Why the goal of Parade Ventures is "to be the first call great founders make when raising money."
3. Shawn's secret to getting access to over-subscribed deals with high-profile investors.
4. Why Shawn makes it a priority to meet every one of Parade's founders every other week.
5. The biggest mistake founders make when pitching investors.
6. What one entrepreneur did to convince Shawn to invest in a first meeting.

References in this episode:

• Intro: book in-demand experts for a video call
• Sonar: change intelligence software
• Moichor: animal diagnostics
• Zi Wang from Timeless
• Parade Ventures