Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast TechUnhinged

In this episode of TechUnhinged, host Rabia Javeed sits down with Risto Uuk, Head of European Policy and Research at the Future of Life Institute, who has spent five years on the Act's general-purpose AI rules. Risto argues that the rules for the biggest models are not the weak point; the open question is whether anyone will enforce them. He explains why training compute is a proxy for danger rather than a measure, why the Code of Practice was built from the labs' own safety frameworks, and how the rules reach a company with no office in Europe. He also walks through the agent that broke out of a test environment and hacked third-party infrastructure.

In this episode of TechUnhinged, host Rabia Javeed sits down with Charath Ranganathan, Chief Technology Officer at CoreStory, which builds tools that pull specifications out of legacy codebases. Charath argues that AI has replaced coding and has not affected the discipline of engineering, and that conflating the two is the most misleading assumption enterprises bring into an AI rollout. He explains why a 1970s mainframe resists modernization because code records what was decided, not why; why evals belong in front of production rather than behind it; and how a flood of generated code produces cognitive surrender. He also goes back to the pixelated circle on a Sinclair Spectrum that made him learn trigonometry on his own.

In this episode of TechUnhinged, host Rabia Javeed sits down with Randeep S. Bhatia, the ex-CTO at Splash, which runs the largest music stage on Roblox. Randeep argues that AI pilots do not stall because the technology falls short; they stall because nobody gave them a metric and an end date, so they harden into permanent demos. He explains why a pilot with no date is a decision nobody admits to making, why one developer naming a station a playlist breaks AI faster than messy data does, and how a grocery receipt models the way an agent earns autonomy. He also tells the story of the AI workflow he told a legal tech company not to ship.

In this episode of TechUnhinged, host Rabia Javeed sits down with Wes Bush, founder and CEO of ProductLed, who, by his own count, has advised more than 400 SaaS companies. Wes argues that AI spending does not fail because of the technology; it fails because most companies cannot say where their product creates value, so the money funds workflows and pricing that are never aligned with that value. He explains why the majority of AI spend that returns nothing is a tuition bill worth paying, why credit-based pricing has become the new seat-based pricing, and how AI native companies delete a workflow rather than speed it up. He also admits that almost none of his own AI automations yield any measurable results.

In this episode of TechUnhinged, host Rabia Javeed sits down with Bob Berbeco, Chief Information Officer at Mahaska Health, a rural hospital in Iowa, and former informatics leader at Indiana University Health. Bob argues that AI strategies do not die because the technology fails, they die because nobody mapped the risk first. He explains why every modernization and AI decision at his organization runs through a risk matrix, why data governance and veracity must exist before a single model goes live, and how his team stopped accepting vendor pitches and instead built an AI center of excellence. He also shares the horror story of an aging billing system whose motherboard died and the vendor contract that saved it.

In this episode of TechUnhinged, host Rabia Javeed sits down with Tia Hopkins, founder of CTRL+EXEC and former Chief Cyber Resilience Officer & Field CTO at eSentire, where she spent nine years rising from solutions engineer to the executive team. Tia argues AI does not change what cyber resilience means, only how organizations build it: every AI agent should earn expanded responsibility the way a new hire earns trust, through a probationary period, not a blank check. She explains why resilience was never about preventing every breach, and why bolting AI onto a broken legacy foundation builds new failure on old failure. This conversation is a playbook for staying resilient when your attackers have the same AI toolkit you do.

In this episode of TechUnhinged, host Rabia Javeed sits down with Lydia, Chief Information Officer at Appreciation Financial, co-founder of Genie AI, and founder of the People's Accords, with over eight years in data and AI strategy across financial services. The conversation digs into the modernization paradox, where 92% of leaders call AI critical yet fewer than a quarter have systems ready to support it. Lydia unpacks why AI adoption really comes down to people, context, and junk data, how regulated industries must balance legacy storage against the cloud, and why not every task needs an LLM. She also reveals how her team keeps client data out of public models, and offers a candid look at the human cost of AI-driven layoffs.

In this episode of TechUnhinged, host Rabia Javeed sits down with Chris Colinsky, CTO and Principal AI Engineer at Howl, which has been building for the web since 2003 and is the creator of the open-source OpenArmature framework for LLM-powered pipelines. Chris cuts through the AI hype, arguing that large language models are pattern matching at scale, probabilistic, confidently wrong, and only as reliable as the engineering around them. He explains why most AI failures are really data quality problems, why legacy system modernization must precede AI adoption, and how his "calculate first, reason second" approach builds reliable AI systems on unpredictable models. From graph-based retrieval to self-hosted small models, this conversation is a practical playbook for taking AI from demo to production.

In this episode of TechUnhinged, Joel Grossman, CIO of IMG Academy and a 25-year veteran of technology leadership at Legacy.com, iProspect, and Leapfrog Online, explores what happens when frontier AI meets a 20-year-old recruiting platform and a 500-acre training campus. He argues that AI has erased the multi-year data-warehousing work once needed to make it useful, compressing it into weeks. Further, Joel warns the bottleneck in AI adoption is now organizational, not technical, legacy systems must be modernized without disrupting the families relying on them. His emphasis is to give domain experts direct AI access first, wrap it in production-grade security second, then scale safely. Speed does not equal judgment, and adversarial review must stay central, not a checkbox.

Barbara Pender has spent 25 years watching organizations bolt new technology onto old problems and call it transformation. In this episode of TechUnhinged, in conversation with Rabia Javeed, she draws a parallel between how social media scaled without guardrails and where AI is headed, arguing the stakes this time are considerably higher. Most companies are fixing the wrong thing, adding new tools to old problems and calling it progress. Her four-stage trust ladder, assist, execute, optimize, orchestrate, reframes the autonomy question entirely. The real test was never about what an agent can do but about what happens when it doesn't. On governance, if no single executive owns what breaks, you don't have governance, you have a process document. She also flags what most leaders skip, that running AI at enterprise scale burns serious compute, and if you are not measuring that cost alongside business value, you are only reading half the bill. 

Christopher Penn has spent over a decade watching marketers chase tools instead of outcomes, and his diagnosis is uncomfortable. On this episode of TechUnhinged, in conversation with Rabia Javeed, he explains how most social media strategies bleed money quietly because nobody measures soft costs like human hours. Organic reach is collapsing, SaaS products are becoming commodities that any skilled operator can replicate in an afternoon, and templated jobs are vanishing faster than companies want to admit. Penn's argument is blunt that if your entire role runs on standard operating procedures, you are already replaceable. His 5P framework, purpose, people, process, platform, performance, cuts through the noise for B2B marketers, founders and CTOs rebuilding stale marketing stacks. The sharpest takeaway is that measurement maturity separates growing companies from ones running on assumptions and hoping the numbers never get checked. 

In this episode of TechUnhinged, Luis Suarez, CTO of H.I.G. Capital, unpacks why AI is forcing tech debt onto the board agenda. Luis explains how AI instantly exposes legacy systems and unready data, noting that tech debt remediation takes four to five times as much effort as modern integrations, and why isolated island systems are a liability in today's interconnected ecosystems. He shares H.I.G.'s AI-first playbook, including top-down CEO mandates, 8 to 10 hours of annual AI training per employee, and AI-powered due diligence. From managing hallucinations to balancing speed with strategic foundations, Luis offers hard-earned lessons on modernization, leadership, and curiosity in enterprise technology. 

In this episode of TechUnhinged, Paul Bockelman, CTO of Qanapi and a 25-year veteran of AWS and Google's defense/intelligence cloud teams, explores the security challenges faced by modern organizations. He warns that AI adoption is outpacing data protection, and employees are bleeding sensitive data into public LLMs without guardrails. Further, Paul also sounds the alarm about post-quantum cryptography and predicts that Q-Day may arrive as early as 2027, noting that adversaries are already harvesting encrypted data to decrypt later. His emphasis is to protect data at the data layer first, build crypto-agile foundations second, then scale AI. Compliance does not equal security, and architects must design for the spirit of regulations, not just the checkbox. 

TechUnhinged brings you the most fascinating episode as we host Christian Stepien, founder of Experlogix and CTO at the National UFO Reporting Center, reveals what 30 years of tracking the unexplained alongside a corporate career actually looks like. What shapes his conviction is not a personal sighting because he has never had one, but decades of reports from ordinary people whose worldview changed overnight. He sees the field's turning point in the data, where AI analyzing 150,000 reports now surfaces patterns, such as triangles appearing 7x more often at night. He also digs into passive radar, citizen-led disclosure, and the 1960s nuclear missile shutdowns that left Boeing's best engineers completely stumped. Christian advises young engineers drawn to this space to follow their curiosity around UFOs, because the stigma is shrinking and the science is finally catching up.

In this episode of TechUnhinged, Florian Heinrichs, Partner at The Visible Authority, co-founder of Client Friendly, sheds light on how AI is reshaping consulting, but maybe not in the ways the headlines suggest. Florian has spent 15 years helping mid-size consulting firms figure out who they actually are and what they genuinely solve. During the conversation, he walks through why the firms quietly bleeding aren't the big four or the scrappy boutiques, but the ones awkwardly stuck in between. Why "we know Salesforce" is no longer a business pitch, it's a commodity. Why the so-called AI double squeeze is leaving consulting leaders holding the bag, even though the technology simply doesn't deliver. And why the most important thing a consultant can do right now has nothing to do with AI at all, it's learning to lead with the client's problem, not your own credential. 

On this episode of TechUnhinged, Ashar sits down with cybersecurity strategist Matthew Rosenquist, a Clutch Top Tech Influencer, to deconstruct the real AI security risks facing modern enterprises. Matthew argues that LLMs themselves aren't the threat, but the broad permissions we hand them are. His advice to leaders is to stop chasing shiny tools and get back to fundamentals like controlling access, protecting sensitive data, and training employees. Attackers already weaponize AI for targeted phishing, fake websites, and deepfakes, breaking the trust signals we relied on for years. Matthew's advice to CIOs and CTOs is simple and that is to treat every AI tool as risky and expand access only once your controls can keep up.

On this episode of TechUnhinged, Angelica Rotundo, a senior health and safety leader at OEC Energy and Infrastructure, reveals the reality of safety leadership in modern times. What shapes her belief is a family story about her great-uncle losing an arm in a factory accident. She focuses on safety as a means to protect lives, not just to check the boxes. She sees legacy in the injuries that never happen because a leader made a better call. On AI, robots, and wearables, she stays practical as these tools help spot risks sooner, but they can't replace judgment or listening to workers. A meaningful advice she leaves for the newcomers is to build trust, ask questions, and remember that influence matters more than authority.

In this episode of TechUnhinged, we are all set to explore whether AI is a threat to profitability or the greatest opportunity of our time. With David Reid, Chief Technology and Marketing Officer at NOV, joining us, this episode dissects the conventional wisdom that AI is primarily a cost or labor problem, reframing it instead as a design and mindset challenge. Drawing upon his extensive experience, David explains why AI functions as a force of creative destruction, dismantling legacy business models while creating space for those willing to adapt and build anew. The conversation goes beyond technology, exploring how autonomy, trust, and human connection determine whether AI becomes an asset or a liability. David also shares the story behind redM, a pro bono movement mobilizing professionals to combat human trafficking, and why he believes the antidote to an AI-driven world is a deeper human connection, not less of it.

In this episode, we explore why the AI boom is headed toward a collision with two systems it cannot fix on its own, the power grid and intellectual property. Stan McClellan joins TechUnhinged to discuss how energy demand and data ownership are the two blind spots at the center of the AI revolution and why most conversations about AI completely miss both.  The conversation covers agentic AI as a potential grid solution, the failure of end-user license agreements to protect data, and why regulation is always one generation behind the technology it is trying to govern.

In this episode, we explore why cloud computing often fails to deliver its expected value for small and mid-sized businesses. Joseph Damian joins TechUnhinged to discuss how cloud decisions are ultimately about business priorities, cost, control, accountability, and risk; rather than technology alone. With decades of experience in enterprise infrastructure, he explains why many organizations remain in legacy environments and how misconceptions about cloud economics lead to inefficient investments. The conversation focuses on practical modernization: phased migration, application prioritization, and aligning infrastructure with measurable business value, offering a grounded perspective on building cloud strategies that scale responsibly without disruption.

In this episode, we explore how financial discipline is reshaping the foundations of modern technology companies. Joffrey Ezerzer joins TechUnhinged to discuss why the industry is shifting from growth-at-all-costs to capital efficiency as a defining competitive advantage. As market conditions tightened, many organizations discovered that scale without financial clarity creates fragility rather than resilience. The conversation examines how finance has evolved into the operational core of tech, enabling faster decisions, clearer risk visibility, and sustainable innovation. From AI-driven forecasting to separating experimentation from core operations, this episode highlights how disciplined financial systems support long-term strategy and durable growth in an increasingly constrained environment.

Saliha Akram joins Tech Unhinged to unpack what thoughtful technology really means. From systems thinking to real-world scalability, this episode explores how strong foundations and human context shape tech that actually lasts.

Why do so many AI projects fail after the demo? Patrick Jean joins Tech Unhinged to explain the hidden challenges of AI integration, from messy data to disconnected systems and why strong foundations matter more than intelligence alone.

Medtech expert Sabeen Shaikh joins us to reveal what regulated medical AI is actually doing today, what’s working, and what’s all talk. She shares insights from her time collaborating with the US Air Force, explains why hospitals are slow to trust automation, and unpacks the real barriers holding AI back in clinical settings.

We explore early Alzheimer’s detection tech, IVF success prediction, and how agentic AI and robotics could reshape triage and patient workflows.
A clear-eyed look at whether AI is transforming medicine or just adding more noise.

In this episode, Alexander Carlson, founder of Digital Pop and host of the AI Marketing Navigator podcast, breaks down how AI is redefining what scale means for solo entrepreneurs and small businesses. He shares his exact AI tool stack that replaced an entire team's worth of work, explains why the traditional marketing pyramid is evolving into a "diamond model" with AI agents at the bottom, and reveals the uncomfortable truth about automation: we still need to master the fundamentals. We discuss why being human will become the ultimate differentiator in marketing, why "agent" is the most overused buzzword in AI, and how to balance automation without losing your humanity.

In this episode, a Cloud Infrastructure & Product Management leader at Microsoft, with nearly a decade shaping AI solutions at Azure Databricks reveals why the build-versus-buy decision isn’t really about control or cost. It’s about knowing when to invest in in-house expertise versus leveraging existing platforms to move faster. She shares how honesty in a job interview led to an unexpected career managing billions in cloud infrastructure, why most companies underestimate the true cost of data preparation & governance in AI implementation, and the critical difference between getting a proof of concept working versus actually scaling it to production.

Farah Ali, Head of AI Transformation & Technology at Electronic Arts, reveals why innovation fails without allies, what she learned as a startup CTO, and how to move ideas from proof-of-concept to real revenue.

Join Ashar Samdani as he chats with Costanza Balboni Cestelli, Head of Data & Innovation at Generali Real Estate, about how AI and data are shaking up the world of real estate. From rethinking investment strategies to building the City Forward platform, they delve into what it truly takes to modernize a traditional industry and where PropTech is headed next.

Powered by Code District.

In this episode, Rabia Javeed sits down with Brendal Kremer to explore what it takes to lead intelligent automation at scale. With two decades of experience in cybersecurity, compliance, and global data operations, Brendal shares how she built resilient systems, balances human oversight with machine efficiency, and drives transformation across distributed teams.Powered by Code District.

In this episode, Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMC and mastermind behind IT Expo, reveals the shocking reality of AI agents taking control of network security. From his unique perspective as both a tech industry veteran and investment banker at Four Points Capital Partners, he shares explosive insights on the coming 99% autonomous cybersecurity future.

Powered by Code District.

In this episode, the CIO at what3words, says the hardest part of tech leadership isn’t shiny tools or big budgets; it’s making complex systems actually work for people. He shares lessons from automating the boring stuff, scaling a scrappy startup, and knowing when to keep things manual before going digital. We also dive into the startup vs corporate mindset, the risks of rushing into AI, and why good tech should serve people, not the other way around.

In this episode, Arturas, Engineering Manager & Data Platform Lead at KAYAK, cuts through the hype on data engineering. From early PHP days to leading petabyte-scale platforms, he shares the hard-earned lessons behind building real data systems in the age of AI. We dig into the biggest misconceptions, the data quality crisis, why tools are just “opinions,” and what the future holds for data engineers when AI starts writing pipelines.

Powered by Code District.

In this episode, Eric Vaughan, CEO of Ignite Tech and ultramarathon legend, cuts through the AI hype to reveal what's actually working in enterprise. Drawing from his battle-tested experience leading real AI transformations across three companies, he exposes the shocking gap between AI marketing promises and ground-truth reality, and shares explosive insights on which enterprise AI applications deliver ROI, and which are just expensive tech theatre.

This episode of TechUnhinged features Saad Siddique from Microsoft on the rise of enterprise AI agents and how they’re transforming business. Observing the shift away from traditional systems to the impact on jobs, skills, and governance, the conversation dives into what the AI-powered future of work really looks like and how leaders can prepare for it.

TechUnhinged features Dr. Anand Rao, Chair of Communication and Digital Studies at the University of Mary Washington, who introduced the emerging concept of AI Pluralism, a call for dialectical, multi-agent systems that challenge the one-size-fits-all approach to AI. Walking the role of debate theory in AI design to real-world applications in education and policy, the conversation explores how pluralistic AI frameworks can foster fairness, transparency, and critical thinking in the age of automation.

This episode of TechUnhinged features cybersecurity expert Jason Kaufman, unpacking the double-edged role of AI in today’s threat landscape, from AI-powered attacks like phishing and ransomware to machine-driven defense and response automation. The conversation also dives into shadow AI, SOC disruption, deepfake detection, and what it takes for organizations to stay ahead as threats evolve faster than defenses.

This episode of TechUnhinged features Super Bowl Champion and HealthReel CEO Femi Devin Ayanbadejo Sr. exploring how AI and NASA-powered tech are reshaping human performance and predictive health. Transitioning computer vision for body composition to make advanced research accessible, the conversation bridges elite athletics, data science, and real-world health optimization.

This episode of TechUnhinged features Mike Byrne, COO and co-owner at Summit Delivery Solutions, discussing how last-mile delivery challenges inspired the development of technology that drives workplace fairness and policy enforcement. From balancing automation with human connection to exploring AI and sustainability trends, the conversation sheds light on how logistics tech is evolving alongside leadership and workforce values.

TechUnhinged features Ryan Scott of DNA Behavior, exploring how behavioral science and AI are combining to deliver scalable, people-centric solutions. Key enhancement of the employee and client experiences to shaping future applications in robotics and elderly care, the conversation highlights the evolving role of behavioural intelligence in high-touch industries

This episode of Tech Unhinged features Chris Gomez, CEO and co-founder of Barrett Value Center, in a conversation on modernizing legacy systems and transforming organizational culture through technology. From BVC’s shift from Perl scripts to SaaS platforms, to the role of data trust, system consolidation, and actionable insights, the episode explores how tech transformation fuels better customer experiences and internal alignment; all grounded in an engineering-first mindset.

This episode of TechUnhinged features Dr. Ammar A. Malik from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, discussing how AI and data analytics are transforming foreign aid. Diving into geospatial tracking and machine learning to sentiment analysis, the conversation explores how technology is driving transparency, exposing inefficiencies in development financing, and reshaping how aid impact is assessed.