The AI in Business Podcast

Today’s guest is Saurin Patel, Digital Transformation & Analytics Lead at Symrise AG. Symrise  AG is a German chemicals company specializing in flavors and fragrances, with sales reaching 4.6 billion euros in 2022. Saurin joins us in the program to give listeners a deep dive into the complex journey of digital transformation within procurement and supply chain functions, particularly in the food and beverage (F&B) sector. The conversation addresses critical challenges that arise from operating in multiple countries and managing a vast network of suppliers and acquisitions. To access Emerj’s frameworks for AI readiness, ROI, and strategy, visit Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Mark Surman, President of the Mozilla Foundation. In conversation with Emerj CEO and Head of Research Daniel Faggella from 2023, Mark speaks at length about the shifting paradigms of privacy, security, and data governance in the age of generative AI. Throughout the episode, Mark explains how privacy concerns have evolved from simple data protections in the early days of the internet to complex issues involving data provenance, consumer trust, and ethical AI governance. As businesses increasingly rely on AI-powered services, leaders must address not only compliance but also new expectations around customer respect and transparency. Their conversation highlights the importance of building privacy and governance expertise into leadership teams, encouraging proactive engagement with evolving regulations and emerging technologies. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Patrick Simonnet, Chief Audit Executive for Bank of China’s US operations. Patrick joins us on today’s show to explore the evolving landscape of financial risk management. As technology reshapes the financial sector, Patrick shares practical use cases of generative AI in audit workflows and cybersecurity, touching on how these technologies assist financial institutions in staying ahead of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. His conversation with Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello also covers the long-term future of audit, emphasizing the importance of merging data science skills with traditional audit practices. This episode is sponsored by MindBridge. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Joe Gelman, Platform Marketing Manager at Riskified. Riskified is a publicly traded SaaS company that specializes in fraud and chargeback prevention. Joe joins us to talk about the evolving landscape of fraud prevention for retail and eCommerce. As the holiday season approaches, with forecasts projecting $240 billion in U.S. online shopping, merchants face increasing challenges balancing customer-friendly policies with the risk of policy abuse and sophisticated fraud schemes. Joe explains how the pandemic reshaped consumer behavior, normalizing liberal return policies but also creating opportunities for fraud. He highlights how policy abuse—such as repeat returns or fake claims—differs from more organized fraud operations manipulating shipping systems or repackaging defective products. This episode is sponsored by Riskified. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Juan Ferres, Corporate Vice President and Chief Data Scientist at Microsoft. Juan returns to the program to explore how to win buy-in for sustainable AI projects. As a leader in the AI4G Lab and author of the new book AI for Good, Juan shares insights on navigating complex digital transformations, particularly when it comes to initiatives where the return on investment is philosophical rather than immediately measurable. Throughout the episode, Juan and Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello discuss the challenges of managing up and driving forward AI innovations that aim to benefit society as a whole. If you’re interested in unlocking our AI best practice guides, frameworks for AI ROI, and specific resources for AI leaders, visit emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Luke van der Waals, Demand-to-Deliver Value Stream Owner at SLB. SLB is a global technology company driving energy innovation for a balanced planet. They are the largest offshore drilling company by revenue as of 2022 and were ranked 349th largest company globally by the Forbes Global 2000 list that same year. Luke joins us on today’s show to explore the evolving complexities of global supply chains and procurement. He shares insights on the challenges of maintaining resilience amid geopolitical tensions, inflation, and post-pandemic disruptions—especially in the energy sector. Luke also offers a candid look at how conflicts, such as those in Ukraine and the Red Sea, amplify supply chain risks and emphasizes the importance of balancing local sourcing with global constraints to control costs and ensure seamless operations. This episode is sponsored by Arkestro. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Chloe Rice, Director of Global Customer Experience at Shutterstock. Shutterstock is a New York-based provider of stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools with a library of nearly 200 million royalty-free stock photos. Chloe joins us to explore the rapidly changing landscape of media and the role AI plays in shaping customer interactions. Throughout the episode, Chloe shares her insights on the emerging trends in customer experience, from the ethical use of AI to building transparent policies that ensure authenticity across all content channels. To access Emerj’s frameworks for AI readiness, ROI, and strategy, visit Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Ermir Qeli, Head of Data Science in AI at Swiss Re. Ermir returns to the program to discuss strategies for gaining executive buy-in and scaling AI within the insurance industry. Throughout the discussion, Ermir highlights the role of data infrastructure, particularly for legacy institutions, in ensuring that data is clean, structured, and distributed effectively across the enterprise. He also delves into how change management is crucial for driving AI adoption, emphasizing the need for collaboration from day one, upskilling teams, and building trust in the technology from the beginning. Download our PDF brief “AI in Insurance: Executive Cheat Sheet” at emerj.com/ins1.

Today’s guest is Paulo Ruy, Head of Terminal Procurement for Latin America at A.P. Moeller-Maersk. A.P. Møller–Maersk, a Danish shipping and logistics company with over 100 years of history, is a publicly traded family business. In 2023, the company generated $51.1 billion USD in revenue and was ranked by Forbes as the 174th largest public company globally. Paulo joins host Matthew DeMello to explore the complexities of global shipping and procurement. Their conversation provides critical insights into how geopolitical conflicts, such as the Ukraine war and Red Sea challenges, are impacting global supply chains and contributing to inflation. Throughout the episode, Paulo discusses the need for flexibility in contract negotiations and the ongoing shift in shipping routes. To discover more AI use cases, best practice guides, white papers, frameworks, and more, join Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Frédéric Rivain, CTO of Dashlane. Dashlane is a password manager and digital wallet app, available through subscription, designed for macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android platforms. Frédéric joins Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello on the program today to examine trends in how AI is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape, presenting both significant risks and opportunities for enterprises. As AI tools become more sophisticated, they are changing the dynamics of cybersecurity — from automating complex attacks to enhancing defense strategies. This episode is sponsored by Pieces. To learn more about Emerj Media and how to reach the Emerj audience, visit emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Matthias Steinberg, Chief Financial Officer of MindBridge Analytics. MindBridge is a software company that has developed an AI-powered risk and anomaly detection platform at the cutting edge of accounting and financial service workflows, driving deep business insights in the process. Matthias joins us in today’s program to talk about the trouble that financial professionals face across industries when adopting AI. Later, we touch on the difference between short- and long-term ROI as we see more support for automation across finance teams in every kind of enterprise. This episode is sponsored by MindBridge Analytics. Find out more about sponsored content and how to engage with the Emerj audience at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Ylan Kazi, Chief Data and AI Officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield North Dakota. Ylan returns to the program today to surmise the progress in new generative AI tools and LLMs over the past two years. We examine the new challenges they pose in the healthcare industry. With ChatGPT and similar tools gaining traction, what strategic shifts are needed for data management and utilization? We explore how healthcare leaders can navigate these emerging challenges, leverage data strategies, and adapt to the evolving landscape. Visit emerj.com/beg1 to learn more about the practical steps for AI deployment for non-technical professionals. 

Today’s guest is Nate Bell, Corporate Functions Business Data Leader at Wells Fargo. Nate joins us on today’s show to discuss the growing role of AI in the financial services sector, focusing on reconciling infrastructure investment with innovative use cases. With a unique vantage point from the data side, Nathaniel explores three main challenges in data management: the cost of good data management, navigating new AI-related risks, and the complexities of anthropomorphizing AI. These issues, he explains, can lead to misconceptions both within management and in customer-facing environments, where AI’s “people-pleasing” capabilities are often misunderstood. To discover more AI use cases, best practice guides, white papers, frameworks, and more, join Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Stephanie McReynolds, Vice President of Product and Portfolio Marketing at OneTrust. OneTrust is a security and privacy platform provider with over 12,000 employees and a $5 billion valuation established to address the growing need for compliance with emerging internet privacy regulations and laws. Stephanie joins us on the program today to delve into the barriers businesses face in AI adoption and the critical data challenges that need to be addressed to successfully implement AI systems. She shares insights on the recent EU AI Act that came into effect on August 2, 2024, and what businesses must consider to comply with these new regulations. This episode is sponsored by OneTrust. To learn more about Emerj Media and how to reach the Emerj audience, visit emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Urvashi Tyagi, Advisor and Former CTO at ResMed. Urvashi joins us on today’s podcast with Emerj Senior Matthew DeMello to discuss the unique challenges healthcare leaders face in driving software development efficiencies for medical devices and customer-facing mobile applications. As the med tech industry strives to balance innovation with regulatory compliance, many companies find themselves navigating complex approval processes that can delay product launches and stifle progress. This episode is sponsored by Pieces. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Ylan Kazi, Chief Data and AI Officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield North Dakota. Ylan joins us on today’s program to discuss the complexities faced by leaders in legacy industries, such as healthcare, as they navigate the balance between infrastructure investments in cloud technologies and end-point storage to meet business goals. Throughout the episode, Ylan shares insights on developing a robust business strategy for cloud migration, highlighting common pitfalls like cost overruns and outdated mindsets. This episode is sponsored by MinIO. Find out more about sponsored content and how to engage with the Emerj audience at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Steve Jones, Executive Vice President of Data Driven Business & GenAI at Capgemini. Together with Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello, Steve joins us on today’s program to examine the evolving landscape of AI development and the critical need for trust and ethical guardrails in deploying AI systems across enterprises. Drawing on insights from a recent VentureBeat event focused on AI transformation, Steve shares his perspective on the state of AI and the challenges that lie ahead. This episode is sponsored by Capgemini. To learn more about Emerj Media and how to reach the Emerj audience, visit emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Brian Weiss, Chief Technology Officer at Hyperscience. Hyperscience is a software company that provides back-office services and helps automate document processes to turn unstructured content into structured, actionable data. Brian joins us on today’s program to dive into the pressing challenges facing business leaders across financial services and insurance sectors as they grapple with digital transformation. His conversation with Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello centers around the persistent struggle to digitize and automate processes traditionally handled through paper-based workflows. Despite the long-standing goal of moving towards a more digital future, early technologies like intelligent document processing, optical character recognition, and robotic process automation have often failed to deliver due to their limitations, creating a trade-off between high automation and low accuracy. This episode is sponsored by Hyperscience. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Bill Armstrong, Chief Innovation Officer at Moss Adams. Moss Adams is one of the 15 largest public accounting firms in the US, providing accounting, tax, and consulting services to public and private middle-market enterprises across industries. Bill joins Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello on today’s show to dive into the rapid mainstream adoption of AI tools in the accounting industry, as highlighted by a recent Moss Adams survey from December 2023. The survey reveals an unexpected trend: 69% of accountants are bullish or optimistic about the role of AI in their profession. What’s fueling this optimism, and how will it shape the future of the industry? We break down these findings to explore the key drivers of AI growth in accounting and their broader implications.

Today’s guest is Raul Martynek, CEO of DataBank. DataBank is a technology company helping organizations drive AI edge capabilities through IT infrastructure and effective data storage solutions. Raul joins Emerj CEO and Head of Research Daniel Faggella on today’s show to explore the evolving landscape of data centers, compute, hardware, and storage. As data centers become increasingly integral to our digital experience, the conversation begins by examining the fundamental role these centers play in today’s internet-based world. Raul discusses how data centers are not just massive buildings but the foundational infrastructure enabling the rapid growth and consumption of digital technology. To access Emerj’s frameworks for AI readiness, ROI, and strategy, visit Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Robert Wenier, Global Head of Cloud and Infrastructure at AstraZeneca. Robert joins us on the program to explore the complex decisions faced by leaders in legacy industries as they balance infrastructure investments between cloud technologies and end-point storage. How can they align these investments with their business goals while managing the competing forces of performance, risk, and cost? We break down the strategic considerations: ensuring technology delivers the required performance, carefully monitoring risks like security and capacity, and managing costs to create value and maintain margins. This episode is sponsored by MinIO. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Abhijeet Kumar, Lead Customer Acquisition and Engagement for Digital Business at Amazon. He joins Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello on today’s episode to offer advice to retail leaders striving to enhance the customer experience at their organizations. With AI driving significant changes in how customers interact with brands, what are the biggest challenges product managers face today? We discuss the importance of crafting a compelling value proposition using AI to connect more personally with customers right now and explore what products, communication strategies, and customer engagement methods are most effective. To access Emerj’s frameworks for AI readiness, ROI, and strategy, visit Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Andrew Rabinovich, Vice President of Machine Learning and AI at Upwork. Andrew joins us on today’s podcast to discuss the evolving role of AI in transforming work marketplaces and expediting hiring workflows. With Upwork’s recent launch of a suite of AI products, including Uma, an AI-powered assistant, the conversation focuses on how these innovations aim to streamline the platform’s core functions and enhance collaboration between clients and freelancers. This episode is sponsored by Pieces. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guests are George Williams, Head of Small Business at Nationwide Insurance, and Heather Wilson, CEO at CLARA Analytics. Nationwide is an investor in CLARA Analytics, an AI-as-a-service (AIaaS) provider that improves casualty claims outcomes. The pair join Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello on today’s episode to explain the impact of generative AI workflows on Insurance spaces. Later in the episode, both George and Heather share a broader vision for what the insurance landscape will look like once “proactive” approaches are commonplace. This episode is sponsored by CLARA Analytics. To learn more about Emerj Media and how to reach the Emerj audience, visit emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Fabio Raffone, Vice President of Customer Service Operations for Americas at Tetra Pak. Tetra Pak is a Swedish multinational company specializing in food packaging and processing solutions. The company provides a range of offerings, including packaging materials, filling machines, and processing equipment for various products such as dairy, beverages, cheese, ice cream, and prepared foods. Fabio joins Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello on the program today to discuss the pressing challenges faced by field service leaders and the growing relevance of AI in overcoming these hurdles. With a team of 700 field service professionals across the Americas, Tetra Pak is navigating complex market-specific challenges, from attracting and retaining talent in a growing U.S. economy to advancing competence development in other regions.

Today’s guest is Supriya Gupta, General Manager and Vice President of Product at Credit Karma. Credit Karma is a multinational personal finance brand under Intuit that makes products free to consumers and helps them find lenders. Supriya returns to the platform today to dive deep into the evolving landscape of financial services, highlighting the challenges and opportunities facing the industry today. We explore Credit Karma’s journey from its inception as a “born digital” company to its innovative use of generative AI, such as the development of Intuit Assist - an AI-driven tool that acts as a financial co-pilot, offering real-time, personalized financial advice and insights. Supriya offers an insider’s look at how these systems go beyond traditional customer service roles to create proactive and context-specific interactions. To access Emerj’s frameworks for AI readiness, ROI, and strategy, visit Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Shardul Vikram, CTO and Head of Data & AI for SAP Industries and Customer Experience. Shardul joins Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello on today’s program to explore the evolving landscape of cloud adoption and storage solutions within the life sciences and financial services industries. A decade has passed since cloud technology burst onto the scene with great promises, yet today, not everything resides “on the cloud.” As the hype around new technologies like AI starts to cool, Shardul offers legacy and regulated industry leaders actionable insights on driving a balanced approach—leveraging both cloud and endpoint storage to achieve their unique goals. Today’s episode is part of a special series sponsored by MinIO for a deep dive into the challenges and opportunities at the intersection of infrastructure investment, technology strategy, and competitive advantage in today’s evolving landscape. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Akash Gupta, CEO and Co-founder of GreyOrange. GreyOrange is a warehouse robotics and software company that works in apparel, retail, consumer electronics, and home improvement, among other industries. He joins Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello on today’s episode to explore the critical challenges currently facing manufacturing and logistics leaders and why AI is becoming an increasingly vital tool in addressing these obstacles. As global supply chains become more complex and demand greater efficiency, AI offers new ways to optimize operations, reduce costs, and enhance decision-making. To access Emerj’s frameworks for AI readiness, ROI, and strategy, visit Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guests include two senior executives from Sanofi’s manufacturing division, Head of Data & AI for Manufacturing & Supply Chain Kartik Pant and Head of AI & Data Products, Manufacturing & Supply Shreyas Becker, respectively. The pair join us on today’s podcast to identify disconnects between marketing and supply chain workflows that commonly lead to issues such as stockouts and fulfillment delays. Later, they share insights on building what they describe as an ‘end-to-end control tower capability’ for data tools to solve these and similar logistics challenges in life sciences spaces. If you’re interested in unlocking our AI best practice guides, frameworks for AI ROI, and specific resources for AI consultants, visit emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Dr. Raghav Vadhera, Lead Technical Architect for AI/ML Platform & Services at Raytheon Technologies. Dr. Vadhera returns to the program today to talk about a new initiative from the Biden administration in partnership with Raytheon to improve flood prediction capabilities using AI and cutting-edge technologies. Throughout our conversation, Dr. Vadhera explores the capabilities of AI in weather prediction and emergency response systems, including analyzing long-term data, identifying trends, and predicting weather events associated with specific cloud formations. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today's guest is Andrei Tadique, Director and Head of Manufacturing Science at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Andrei joins us on today's podcast to discuss the biggest challenges for Life Sciences leaders in driving logistics and supply chain workflows. In the course of his conversation with Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello, Tadique identifies and explores three key challenges: data integration, process standardization, and talent acquisition and retention. Throughout, he offers leaders actionable advice for working around remaining paper-based workflows, creating a global digital ecosystem, and digitalizing chemistry and manufacturing controls to unlock AI's value. If you've enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Akash Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of GreyOrange. GreyOrange is a warehouse robotics and software company that works in apparel, retail, consumer electronics, and home improvement, among other industries. In a special series focusing on software development challenges sponsored by Pieces, Akash joins us on today’s program to talk about the challenges faced by AI startups in balancing short-term priorities with their long-term vision. Later, he and Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello explore the importance of prioritization, understanding the value of features, and striking a balance between progressing towards long-term company goals and meeting immediate operational needs. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Brenda Kahl, Senior Director of Service and Support at Illumina. Illumina is a San Diego-based biotechnology company founded in 1998 that develops and markets systems for genetic analysis, serving sequencing, genotyping, gene expression, and proteomics markets in over 155 countries. Brenda joins us on today’s program to pull apart training challenges for field service operations in biotech spaces and the technology infrastructure necessary to build solutions. Throughout the episode, Brenda gives actionable insights for driving efficiency and cost savings with call center metrics and digital tools, such as tribal knowledge systems that can accommodate new working styles like remote work. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is David Thompson, Chief Technology Officer at American Express Global Business Travel. American Express Global Business Travel – better known as Amex GBT and officially known as Global Business Travel Group, Inc. – is a multinational travel management company based in New York City. Employing 18,000 people across over 140 countries, Amex GBT operates independently from American Express, which maintains a minority interest in the company. David joins us on the program today to quantify the challenges business leaders face in driving business travel workflows with AI. From predicting travel disruptions to personalizing customer experiences for enterprise clients, David explains the enormous efficiencies AI can create in business travel over the coming decade and what they mean for leaders across industries. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Jane Chen, Director of Commercial Analytics for Women’s Cancer at Novartis. Jane joins us on the program today to highlight challenges in identifying and segmenting specific patient groups, particularly those with rare or niched diseases. Throughout the episode, she sheds a spotlight on privacy concerns in healthcare data, including blind spots due to HIPAA regulations. Later, she explains the ways healthcare leaders are testing the waters for generative AI applications in healthcare. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Juan Lavista Ferres, Microsoft Chief Data Scientist and Corporate Vice President. Juan joins us on today’s program to talk about his new book AI for Good, which showcases his philosophy in driving AI capabilities toward altruistic and responsible outcomes and the work of his team at the AI for Good labs at Microsoft. Throughout the episode, Juan explains how his team works with multiple organizations to develop AI solutions that align with human values, emphasizing the need for AI interventions to address growing health issues across the globe that didn’t exist decades ago. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Poonam Goyal, Sector Head and Senior eCommerce and Athleisure Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Given post-pandemic retail and logistics trends, athleisure is frequently a ‘canary in the coalmine’ for many cross-sector business challenges. Poonam returns to the program to talk about her reporting on the athleisure space and how her findings reflect more significant retail and eCommerce trends, from supply chains to Nike’s shrinking moat in critical markets. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Dr. Raghav Vadhera, Lead Technical Architect for AI/ML Platform & Services at Raytheon Technologies. Dr. Vadhera joins us on today’s episode to offer business leaders advice on the challenges private-public partnerships face in aligning objectives, regulatory compliance, financial constraints, and cultural differences. Throughout his appearance, Dr. Vadhera offers essential criteria for driving AI adoption in the public sector, such as following evidence-based approaches that enhance decision-making, improve transparency, and streamline operations. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Joe Meloche, Business Line Manager for Service in North America at Atlas Copco. Joe joins the program to talk about the various challenges facing field service leaders, especially around new equipment obstacles and the multi-decade “brain drain” much of the industry has faced in an ever-changing workforce. Later, he and Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello dive into how service organizations can deploy AI in the form of ‘tribal knowledge’ to best capture expertise and deep insights, especially for large enterprises, where problems are solved locally but not documented systematically. This episode is sponsored by Aquant. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Chris Helsel, Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Chief Technology Officer at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Chris returns to the program to explore use cases in tire intelligence and what they can tell us about the future of driving transportation efficiencies with AI, from maintenance to autonomous vehicles. Later, Chris delves into the strategy behind Goodyear’s investments in seed-to-growth age startups like the rideshare platform Revel and the autonomous middle-mile delivery company Gatik. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Prashant Natarajan, Vice President of Strategy and Products at H2O.ai. H2O.ai is a tech company whose platform, the H2O AI Cloud, enables businesses, government entities, nonprofits, and academic institutions to make, operate, and innovate with different AI capabilities like machine learning and AI-enhanced middleware. Prashant joins Emerj CEO and Head of Research Daniel Faggella on today’s episode to discuss the impact generative AI is having on the healthcare industry and what leaders can do to drive adoption safely across the enterprise. To access Emerj’s frameworks for AI readiness, ROI, and strategy, visit Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Nishtha Jain, Head of Innovation and Digital Technology at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Her role expands across Global R&D Quality in driving digital and data initiatives from concept to execution, leveraging emerging technologies and design principles. She joins us on the podcast today to talk about the efficiencies that AI can drive in the drug development space and how that benefits the entire value chain in life sciences. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Prasanna Dhore, Chief Data Officer at Fiserv and President of Data Commerce Solutions. Prasanna joins us on the program today to discuss credit challenges for those in the “invisible” category, including lack of awareness and information asymmetry, and what AI can do to bring these folks in from the cold. Later in the episode, Prasanna touches on the essentials for predicting creditworthiness using new data sources like cell phone records and rental payments. To discover more AI use cases, best practice guides, white papers, frameworks, and more, join Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Barclay Blair, Senior Managing Director of AI Product Innovation at DLA Piper. DLA Piper. DLA Piper is among the world’s leading law firms, and as you’ll be able to tell from Bennet and Danny’s input today, they have some fascinating use cases at the cutting edge of AI applications in the legal realm. Barclay joins us on the program to help us imagine what the Gen-AI-driven law firm of the future will look like and what law firms and their leadership will need to know to navigate the challenges therein. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Matt Madrigal, Vice President and General Manager of Merchant Shopping at Google. Matt returns to the program today to talk about data-based solutions for SMB retail challenges surrounding product imagery and translating brick-and-mortar customer experiences to the digital world. Throughout the episode, Matt pulls apart what small businesses will need to take advantage of the growing microservices market as generative AI tools become more commodifiable. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Scot Burdette, Global Division CIO for Measurement and Analytics at ABB. ABB is an electrical equipment manufacturer based in Sweden that specializes in industrial automation, robotics, as well as power generation, transmission, and distribution. Scot joins us on the program to talk about the unique challenges to field service teams that are making AI increasingly relevant in B2B workflows, with many parallels to the developments we’ve seen in their B2C counterparts. Throughout the episode, Scot lays out a vision for the future of AI in field services, particularly for addressing workforce challenges and retaining subject matter expertise in the organization through retirement waves and talent shortages. This episode is sponsored by Aquant. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Sheri Crawford, Director of Data Governance at Scotiabank. Sheri joins us on the program today to discuss the biggest challenges for data management teams to drive the systems and the infrastructure necessary to capitalize on new data-heavy emerging use cases in generative AI. Throughout the episode, Sheri gives business leaders in financial services and beyond actionable insights into balancing consumer needs with infrastructure changes in the digital transformation process. Today’s episode is sponsored by MinIO. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Ermir Qeli, Head of Data Science in AI at Swiss Re. Ermir joins us on the program to talk about the array of challenges facing insurance leaders at this stage of AI adoption across the sector and how the pace for which is marked by the fundamentally unstructured data at the heart of insurance tech stacks. Throughout the episode, Ermir offers his perspective on scaling systems dealing with these and similar issues, offering numerous use cases in generative AI and beyond to assist in these processes along the way. To discover more AI use cases, best practice guides, white papers, frameworks, and more, join Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

Today’s guest is Carm Taglienti, Chief Data Officer at Insight. Insight is a leading IT solutions provider that specializes in streamlining enterprise data infrastructure. Carm returns to the program to advise business leaders on the importance of keeping humans in the loop for AI development and what human-centered company cultures look like when they’re effectively leveraging the latest data tools. Throughout the episode, Carm lays out specific criteria and projected outcomes for driving AI adoptions in the workplace that drive productivity gains by building trust across the enterprise. This episode is sponsored by Insight. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Tomas Ohlson, Founding Engineer at Einride. Einride is a Swedish-based logistics and technology company best known for pioneering automated transportation solutions and leveraging data to drive cost efficiencies across supply chains. Together with Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello, Tomas explains how electric and autonomous vehicles are streamlining inefficiencies in logistics workflows and providing cost reductions in everything from energy use to inventory prediction. Later, they explore how an automation-first approach is giving us a new perspective on the best places for human judgment in supervising supply chains. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Rupam Baijal, Director of Procurement at Algoma Steel. Algoma is a fully integrated steel producer based in Ontario that sells hot and cold rolled steel products, including sheet and plate. Rupam joins us on the program to talk about legacy data challenges in extractive industries and the need for digital transformation across the sector. Throughout the episode, Rupam measures the expertise gap between data science vendors and heavy industry subject matter experts and explains why it hinders collaboration. This episode is sponsored by Arkestro. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Jeff Otto, CMO of Riskified. Riskified is a publicly traded SaaS company that specializes in fraud and chargeback prevention. In conversation with Emerj CEO and Head of Research Daniel Faggella, Jeff explains the ethical and business dilemmas surrounding chargebacks in online retail – particularly those for first-party fraud. Throughout their conversation, Jeff pulls from Riskified research and surveys with merchants across the globe to illustrate the enormity of the problem and why both chargebacks and first-party fraud are on the increase. This episode is sponsored by Riskified. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Dr. Milind Sawant, Founder and Lead of the AI/ML & DFSS Centre of Excellence at Siemens Healthineers. Dr. Sawant joins us in today’s program to talk about the top impediments to developing and deploying AI in any organization and avoiding the typical mistakes that life sciences and healthcare firms tend to make in the process. Later in the program, Dr. Sawant talks about the enormous changes that AI capabilities are bringing to diagnostics workflows and what the future of these industries will look like as these changes become more commonplace. This episode is sponsored by iMerit. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Ranjan Sinha, IBM Fellow, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of WatsonX and IBM Research AI. Ranjan joins us on today’s program to discuss driving responsible AI and data governance practices through corporate operations. Throughout the episode, Ranjan highlights challenges and novel approaches for operationalizing AI with confidence and trust, emphasizing the importance of end-to-end lifecycle tracking, automated processes, and scalability. This episode is sponsored by Pieces. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Edwin Pahk, Senior Vice President of Customer Success and Customer Pre-sales at Aquant. Aquant. Aquant is an AI-powered tech company that builds a co-pilot platform for service workflows. Edwin joins us on today’s show to talk about how AI can help service industries retain their organizational knowledge – or tribal knowledge, as it gets called – in the face of turnover and other expertise challenges. Throughout the episode, Edwin emphasizes the importance of personalization on both sides of B2B workflows and how these same tools can often enhance the work-life experiences of subject matter experts across workflows. This episode is sponsored by Aquant. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Hossein Zahed, Senior Director of Data Science and Machine Learning at Capital One. Hossein joins us on today’s program to talk about the value that financial leaders tend to misplace in emerging generative AI systems. Where many managers place too much stock in customer-facing applications, Hossein insists it’s ‘behind the curtain’ that the true ROI of generative AI can be found. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guests are Tom Hayes and Gareth Dabbs, Senior Director of Product Strategy & Commercialization and Global Technology Product Strategy Lead at IQVIA, respectively. In today’s episode, they come to share two use cases helping to drive quality patient experiences between healthcare and insurance workflows. The first focuses on optimizing omnichannel marketing for compliance. The second use case centers on building trust and value in caretaker support systems through personalized insights. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights in this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Carm Taglienti, Chief Data Officer at Insight, a leading IT solutions provider that specializes in streamlining enterprise data infrastructure. Carm joins us on today’s program to advise business leaders across industries on best strategies for AI adoption teams in picking the right tools and technological approaches for driving digital transformation across the enterprise. Throughout the episode, Carm details at length the features and ingredients of robust systems focused on serving organizational goals efficiently. This episode is sponsored by Insight. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Aman Thind, Chief Architect at State Street. He joins us in the program today to talk about practical applications of AI across asset management workflows and what advanced generative technologies will mean for the sector in the long term. Throughout the program, Aman makes a finer point about the possibilities for content generation, administration, and data governance as these technologies advance in the coming years. This episode is sponsored by Deloitte. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Tsavo Knott, Co-founder and CEO of Pieces. Pieces is an AI-driven software company that builds a platform to enable software developers to work more efficiently. Tsavo returns to the program with Emerj CEO and Head of Research Daniel Faggella for the second in a special two-part conversation on the challenge for software developers as generative AI drives greater heights in computing power and enterprise infrastructure. This episode is sponsored by Pieces. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Jason Aubee, Senior Vice President of Sales at TechSee. TechSee is a software company that develops visually-driven solutions for customer experience workflows. Jason joins us on the program to talk about the value that can be unlocked in call centers and other service environments when we move away from audio-exclusive communication channels. Later in the program, he explains at length the wealth of data and customer insights that these approaches can unlock. This episode is sponsored by TechSee. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Ryann Foelker, Strategy Director at American Family Insurance Group. American Family Insurance Group is a private mutual company that provides property, casualty, auto, commercial, life, and health insurance. They also offer homeowners coverage and retirement planning products. Ryann joins Emerj CEO and Head of Research Daniel Faggella for a wide-ranging conversation covering AI adoption throughout the insurance industry. Together, the pair peruse potential use cases and the importance of a cross-functional team with deep industry expertise to drive successful AI solutions. This episode is sponsored by Deloitte. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Anand Babu Periasamy, Co-founder & Co-CEO of MinIO, Inc. MinIO is a software company that develops High-Performance Object Storage systems that are API compatible with the Amazon S3 cloud storage service. Anand joins us on today’s podcast to discuss opportunities for IT and infrastructure leaders to scale AI across the enterprise. Throughout the episode, Anand explains at length what he sees as the critical ingredients for ensuring sustainable growth in infrastructure systems and the advantages of object storage regardless of industrial sector. This episode is sponsored by MinIO. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

Today’s guest is Steve Astorino, General Manager of Product Development, Data, AI & Sustainability and Canada Lab Director at IBM. Steve returns to the program to discuss the biggest challenges in establishing ethical AI practices from an infrastructure standpoint. Throughout the episode, He offers advice to leaders across industries for winning executive buy-in for responsible AI practices. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Alan Boehme, Former Chief Technology Officer at H&M. Alan has also served at a number of Fortune 500 companies, assisting them through their digital transformations, including Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble. Alan returns to the program today to discuss his pet peeves regarding the ‘Enterprise Deep State’ – or what he sees as those forces inside the modern-day American corporation that enforces a status quo that will always keep an organization from its true innovative potential. Later, he explains why AI capabilities will help reveal the ‘deep state’ inside every organization, hopefully rendering them a permanent place in the history books. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Tsavo Knott, Co-founder and CEO of Pieces. Pieces is an AI-driven software company that builds a platform to enable software developers to work more efficiently. Tsavo joins Emerj CEO and Head of Research Daniel Faggella for the first in a special two-part conversation on the challenge for software developers as GenAI drives greater heights in computing power and enterprise infrastructure. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Today’s guest is Matt Berseth, Co-founder and Chief Information Officer of NLP Logix. NLP Logix is a fast-growing AI services firm based in Florida that serves both the public and private sectors. Matt joins us on today’s program to talk about the last decade in AI development and how natural language processing became such a central driver of adoption for so many industries over that period. This episode is sponsored by NLP Logix. Find out more about sponsored content and how to engage with the Emerj audience at emerj.com/ad1.

Tim Stevens is Editor in Chief at Engadget, and he's one of the first people outside of Google to wear Google Glass. In this podcast, Tim talks about his experience with "Glass" (as it is often called), in addition to some potential visions of future augmentation, and the natural extensions of technologies like Glass. We then explore potential possiblities and concerns of Virtual Reality, Personal Security, and the reasons behind the spread of technology use.

Jim Karkanias is a Partner in Applied Research and Technology at Microsoft. His formal training is in the domain of information systems, and he's now working with a team at Microsoft (Health Solutions Group) in the area of genetic technologies. His perspective on the seeming inevitability of human enhancement involves Positivism in medicine, and taking biology / genetics from a "black box" to a "white box" situation (understanding the real functions and mechanisms of what makes us tick).

Karl F. MacDorman received his PhD in Machine Learning from Cambridge University, and went on to teach at Osaka University - where he worked with some of the world's top roboticists. His research and writings are widely published, and his past experience as a CTO of two different venture companies gives him an even wider scope of the applications and implications of emerging technology. Here we discuss the potential of moving beyond human potential.

Massimiliano is CEO of Neurala, a Boston-based Robotics Startup company whose mission is to develop autonomy in machines. In this interview, we talk about the founding of the Startup team, Massimiliano's advice to keeping a diverse team cohesive, and his predictions for the ramifications of robotics and "telepresence" in society and work. Some notable quotes: "People will drive to work less often, and 'beam' to work more often," "People will not do dull tasks, they will be robot managers." Needless to say, it gets interesting.

How does the development of video games relate to AI's increasing role in our lives? How can games provide us with insight for applications everywhere? Jeff Orkin is a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from MIT, and co-founder of GiantOtter, a technology company built around Jeff's own work at MIT - where he took the data from real people playing "roles" in video games, and used that data (rather than some pre-programmed notions or ideas of his own) to create virtual "characters" to interact with. In this interview we talk about the future of Jeff's own innovations, as well as the progression and proliferation of artificial intelligence itself.

What's up with the Japanese and all their robots? What makes the Japanese perspective on robotics and technology so much different than out own here in America? Reno has spent over a dozen years in Japan, and continues to be a prolific writer and contributor in the domains of transhumanism, emerging technology, technology and social change, and robotics. In this interview we delve into the social and religious ideals that may account for the Japanese appraoch and emphasis in technology, as well as the future of emerging technology in general. How do the ideals of Shintoism play a part in the development of Androids? Tune into this episode to find out.

As far back as Homer's Illiad (and beyond), man has written about creating autonata to do the tasks we don't want to do. Generally, this is the dull, the dirty, and the dangerous work that no human would want to do. Interestingly, in most - if not all - of the historical examples of robot and android servants, they turn against their creators and lead to their downfall. Coincidence? Is this an engrained fear in the human psyche, beyond the effects of culture? Dr. Kevin LaGrandeur "wrote the book" on the history of our thinking about android servants, and sheds some fascinating light on how these historical perspective may influence and even define our perspectives on robots and androids today. Tune in!

Dr. Ben Goertzel is widely recognized as the father of Artificial General Intelligence - or the study of super-human artificial intelligence that is not limited to a certain subject, activity, or domain. Through his leadership this "AGI" field has taken shape, and his leadership at the OpenCog Foundation continues to be a driving force in the progress towards human-level intelligence in machines. In this interview we discuss the status and future of AI, as well as some of Ben's own predictions and projects. For more information, check out www.TechEmergence.com or see the full interview article online at: http://sentientpotential.com/ben-goertzel-interview-humans-not-the-sharpest-pencil-in-the-pack/

Aubrey de Grey is possibly the most well-known proponent of the anti-aging movement. His work at the SENS foundation has been pivotal in bringing attention and legitimate scientific gusto to the problem of eliminating aging as a cause of death and detriment. What does he think about "death as a good thing," or about the progress made thus far on curing aging? Tune into the intereview here.

Dr. Robin Hanson is a recognized thought leader in the ramifications of emerging technology on economics and society. Being a featured speaker at the Singularity Summit, a research advisor for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and a prolific writer on the topic of existential risk and emerging technology. In this interview, we cover the trouble of honestly looking at future topics, and how current "future" issues are often just sensationalized versions or present concerns. Dr. Hanson says "Few people are ACTUALLY focused on the ACTUAL future." How can we improve, innovate, and collaborate despite this? Listen in. For additional insights from this interview, visit: http://sentientpotential.com/dr-robin-hanson-on-the-difficulty-of-making-progress-towards-beneficial-future/

Dr. Helgi Helgason points out the the field of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has really only been around since 2008, but that at last there is an interdisciplinary effort to attain a level of general intelligence in machines. In our interview we talk about his research, the most promising applications of AGI, and potential issues with the development of the field today.   Full interview online now at: SentientPotential.com

Klint Finley has written for a vast number of technology media sources, including TechCrunch - and his present job with WIRED. One of his most popular topics is "Big Data," and in this interview we break down this buzz-word into an understanding of it's meaning and it's implications (including potentially unexpected ways it's being leveraged today). For the full interview and article visit: SentientPotential.com

Dr. Thomas Ray spent years studying life in the rainforest after earning his PhD in Biology from Harvard. Years later - fascinated with evolution and the idea of replicating the evolutionary process, he founded the Tierra project - one of the first successful research projects to replicate evolutionary adaptation in a digital environment. In our interview here, we discuss Dr. Ray's views on the potential impossibility of a man-machine merger, or of machines housing consciousness. In addition, we talk about the very real possibility of biological enhancement, and Dr. Ray's concerns about how we might already be "losing our humanity."   For more, visit: SentientPotential.com

Peter Voss started a technology company as a young man and brought it to the Johannesburg stock exchange, and sold it. Financially independent, Peter explored research in artificial intelligence, and then came back into business ten years later with his company "Adaptive Artificial Intelligence."  In our interview, we discuss the applications / ramifications of AI in business, as well as Peter's beliefs as to how genuine exploration of general intelligence is in many ways negated by commercial interest. For more interviews: www.SentientPotential.com www.TechEmergence.com

Ari Popper is a renown consultant and businessman in the technology domain. Also an avid writer - Ari's present business venture at SciFutures involves crafting a story and positive, flourishing future trajectory for companies. His other company, A2O Technologies, uses emerging technology (like augmented reality [AR] and 3-D printing) to bring those visions to life. Learn more online at: www.Sentientpotential.com www.Techemergence.com

Neil Patel co-founder of KISSmetrics, CrazyEgg, and HelloBar - and has for years toured the country speaking on web marketing and web business. Many people know him from his massively popular blog "QuickSprout" (www.quicksprout.com), or from his many appearances at major web and web business events. In this episode, I pick Neil's brain with regards to some common questions around founding a fast-growing company, and bringing fresh talent onboard. For more interviews and insights on the crossroads of Emerging Technology, Investment and Entrepreneurship, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

Sagie Davidovich has founded and served as CTO for a number of startups in the technology field, including the semantic web. Now, Sagie's focus has shifted with his new company SparkBeyond - to the future of software. Namely, it's increasing adaptability to entirely new levels of modification and evolution. Sagie discusses his own work in developing "Liquidware," and the forces at play today in the evolution of software.  More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: www.SentientPotential.com

With a burning desire to combine his passions for digital fabrication, biology and computer science, Charles Fracchia came to MIT and Harvard eager to learn. Going to “bio to bits” (gleaning meaningful information from biological data) is something that Charles had never had an opportunity to do at such a high level, and he had high expectations.  “I thought: Oh, surely, I’m coming to these awesome labs here in Boston… I’m sure I’ll come in and have an awesome dashboard to work with, like the movie Iron Man. I’ll have my cell growth rate here, heart rate here… you know… something fantastic.”As it turns out, the technology some of the best labs are using to extract data from biology has – at least in some respects – stayed the safe for half a century. Charles was shocked “Then I’d get this blank look like… well… here’s your notebook and your timer.” [ Listen to the Entire Episode ] For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: www.SentientPotential.com

John build business number 1, then sold it (landscaping company). He then got his MBA, and built business number 2, then sold it (engineering / manufacturing company). His focus then shifted to investing, where John actively invests with the other members of Cherry Stone Angle group in Rhode Island.  In this interview, John covers the essential preparation steps that entrepreneurs should make before stepping up the angel investors, as well as some of the pitfalls he's seem some startups fall into when it comes to presenting / pitching their idea to investors. This interview will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand an investor's point of view - particularly from the standpoint of angel investments. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: www.SentientPotential.com

When most people comment on robots having feelings, they're talking about emotional intelligence. Eduardo Torres-Jara is talking about the sense of touch. As he explains, touch is an often neglected robotic "sense," and it's a sense that we as humans are more likely to take for granted than sight or sound. Why does touch make for safer robots in the factory, or robotcs better able to walk upright? Find out in this week's podcast. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: www.SentientPotential.com

A task doesn't need to be completed by a robot perfectly suited for that task. Instead, it can be completed by a team of robots with a mission, and an ability to learn. This notion could change the course of development in robotics - from lunar exploration to excavation. By programming different teams of robots with different sensors access and different "libraries" of behavior patterns, ASU's Dr. Jekan Thanga is able to "evolve" the proper set of inputs and behaviors that make a team complete a complex job right. How might this apply to the future of clean energy? Tune into this week's podcast to find out. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

Dr. Charles Sidman recieved his Masters and then PhD in Harvard in Immunology - and made the transition from tenured professor to seasoned investor. Charles takes his insights in the "process of discovery" in research to be a more rational investor, and in this episode, he shares some useful advice about how startup founders might tweak their presentation for different groups or investors. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Dayakar went from entrepreneurship to the VC world, and hasn't lost a bit of his enthusiasm for finding opportunities for an agile, ambitious team. In this interview, he talks to us at TechEmergence about his ideas of how startups can make a big opportunity with the current state of big data (and some successful case studies to boot). For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Paul Silva started as an entrepreneur with a crazy idea: "What if we could create video games for blind people?" As you can imagine, getting the attention of investors wasn't easy, but despite a limited market and an admittedly off-the-wall concept, Paul made it work, and swiftly got involved in the limited (but earnest) startup scene of Western Massachusetts. He now runs a maker space (ClickSpace), manages a mentorship group for new startups and startup investors (Valley Venture Mentors), and continues to keep the plates spinning to get all aspects of his area's startup ecosystem flourishing. In this interview, Paul shares some insights on what startup founders and startup teams can do to get access to capitol and expertise within their ecosystem, as well as the lesser-known ways of tapping into the expertise already around them. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Bob Lamkin is a veteran of the sales and marketing world. Having held a number of high positions (currently with Marketing Advocate Inc.) and authoring his own book on sales, he's now managing director for Bay Angels in Boston, MA. In this interview Bob talks with me about some common sales pitfalls of startup companies - and how you can avoid them. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com  

Dr. Jessica Richman is a character, but a brilliant one at that. This Oxford / Stanford educated scientist is working on getting the world of citizen scientists united to crack the code of the human microbiome - the countless "bugs" that live on an inside us - in order to determine their relevance for our health. In this interview she talks about her unique startup story with uBiome, and the entrepreneurial opportunities in the new world of genetic data. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

Why does raising money from family sometimes make Angel investors believe even more in a startup founder? How do Angel "funds" and independent Angel groups differ in their dynamics for funding startups? In this episode, get the investor perspective with Sammy Abdullah from the Dallas Angel Network. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

In this episode, my business partner Edmond Lowell hosts an "Investor's Perspective" interview with Emerging Markets investor Dean van Drasek. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Emerson Spartz is a middle school dropout. Not because he was forced to work on a family farm, or because he moved to a foreign country, but because he wanted to homeschool himself - and his parents permitted the transition. In addition, the 12-year old was already in business and didn't want to wait any longer.  In 2009, the 22-year-old Spartz founded Spartz Media, creator of - among dozens of other successful websites - www.OMG-Facts.com, which by itself receives 30 pageviews per month. Virality became Emerson's focus, and his company of content creators and data scientists continue to pump out successful site after successful site, all based on psychological and empirical notions of "virality." In this episode, Emerson goes through a number of quick and immediately useful tips for any startup or organization looking to add "virality" into their marketing efforts. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

Anyone awarded 30 honorary degrees is likely to be enough of an expert to have on the podcast here at TechEmergence. Dr. Susan Greenfield of Oxford University is not only one of the world's best known psychologists, she's also a member of England's House of Lords. In 2000 she was elected to an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and in 2007 to an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was appointed Chancellor of Heriot Watt University in 2005. She is the author Outspoken about many issues related to emerging technology, this in this interview, we hone in on her thoughts on the ammeliorative and potentially post-human potential of drugs and brain-machine interfaces. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Josh Maher started off in Microsoft, and since has become engaged in nearly every level of the startup ecosystem in Seattle. His blog at www.JoshMaher.com covers his musings in investing, networking, and more. Now he runs TechCafe (a startup networking event), and is involved in a number of other events in the Seattle startup scene. In this interview, Josh talks about the way HE likes to be approached by founders (as an investor himself), and goes into detail about WHERE and HOW to meet investors, and a few simple "no-no"s of contacting networkers (maybe you've done a few of these yourself). For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Dan Bacher is a Senior Research and Development Engineer at Brown University. He is also the Founder of the Speak Your Mind Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization that emerged out of the BrainGate lab at Brown University and Massachusetts General Hospital. In this interview, Dan speaks about the synthesis of electrical engineering and neuroscience, which ultimately led to the creation of Brown's BrainGate Group & the Speak Your Mind Foundation. Bacher discusses the future of assistive technologies & the new technologies that BrainGate is currently developing. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

In this episode, my business partner Edmond Lowell hosts an "Investor's Perspective" interview with Technology entrepreneur & investor Sergey Gribov. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

In this episode, I interview Justin Brooke, Founder of IMScalable and renowned Media Buyer & Consultant. Justin talks about his strategies for setting up Facebook campaigns & implementation tips for startups to effectively leverage Facebook ads to scale their customer base and revenue. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Businesses in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

In this episode, I interview Arthur Hughes, founder of The Database Marketing Institute, Ltd.  From IBM to Nestle’, Arthur has helped set up databases for companies with massive market share and he’s helped them market “at scale.” In this interview - Arthur shares his perspectives on smart email marketing strategies. One must-hear takeaway for any startup is Arthur's three easy-to-implement email marketing “musts."  You can read the the full article of my interview with Arthur Hughes here --- For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:  http://www.SentientPotential.com

In this episode, I interview Graham Lawlor, Founder/CEO of Ultra Light Startups. In this interview - Graham Lawlor gives his thoughts on individual founders vs. startups founded by teams and shares what he believes to be the most important focus areas that any bootstrapped startup should have right out of the gate.     --- For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:  http://www.SentientPotential.com

In this episode, I interview CEO/Founder of Clarity.fm, Dan Martell. Dan grew up in a small town in Canada, where he began his entrepreneurial career & quickly learned that solid business advice was hard to come by. After building a multi-million dollar consultancy, Dan went on to found Clarity.fm, a service for on-demand business advice. In this interview - Dan shares the 3 MUSTS for Startup Marketing. -------------- For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:  http://www.SentientPotential.com      

In this episode, I interview Howard G. Zaharoff from Morse Barnes-Brown Pendleton. With over 30 years in business law, intellectual property & technology  - Howard helps companies not only secure their assets from infringement but also secure various licensing & distribution channels and other strategic alliances. During this interview - Howard focuses on common mistakes & oversights that companies often make when pursuing patents, trademark & other licensing arrangements.  He also discusses several valuable resources that companies can access online when researching strategies to protect their intellectual property. -------------- For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:  http://www.SentientPotential.com

In this episode, I interview Co-Founder & Partner of NextView Ventures, David Beisel. NextView Ventures focuses on consumer web, mobile, SaaS, and other internet startups. During our interview, I probe David about the strategic nuances & details of starting a venture fund and the important elements of searching for other investors/growing your fund. -------------- For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:  http://www.SentientPotential.com

In this episode, I interview Douglas Burdett who is the founder of Artillery Marketing. Douglas discusses the importance of "zero'ing in" on buyer persona along with the nuances & key differences of marketing B2B vs. B2C. -------------- For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:  http://www.SentientPotential.com

In this episode, I interview Tom Pick, a Digital Marketing & PR Director at KC Associates. We focus on the "Dos & Don'ts" of B2B marketing for startups & Tom mentions tactical & strategic advice for new client/customer acquisition & B2B relationship building. -------------- For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Businesses in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:  http://www.SentientPotential.com

In this episode - I interview Chris Mirabile, Managing Director at Launchpad Venture Group. Chris named one of XConomy's "Top Angel Investors in New England" for 2012 and formerly served as CFO for IONA Technologies PLC. Chris discusses the important tenets & principles behind successful angel investing along with insights on tuning out the "noise" and staying alert for various market signals.

"3-D" printing is a hot term right now, and it sure makes for some fun YouTube videos and interesting prototypes - but where is it's "transformative" effect being felt today? Where is it most likely to gain traction in the coming 5 years? In this episode, we talk to Jeremy Fryer-Biggs, co-founder of Mebotics, a personal 3-D printer company - specifically about 3-D printings present and future impact on work and life. Tune into the episode here, and remember to find similar articles online at: www.TechEmergence.com

In this episode - I interview Brad Burge, Marketing and Communications Director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).   Brad gives an overview of the real history of psychedelics, where they got a bad name and how they can be used now for the benefit of the human mind and psychoterapy. 

Dr. Patrick Hopkins is a philosopher and bioethicist. In this interview, we don't contemplate traditional bioethic concerns of animal testing or disease treatment. Instead, we discus some important considerations of how emerging technologies might alter our bodies, minds, personalities, and gender - and indeed, what "human" might imply in the first place. For more interviews on the intersection of technology and psychology: www.TechEmergence.com

Randal Koene, Ph.D. is CEO and Founder of CarbonCopies.org and one of the world's foremost experts on neurology as it relates to uploading human minds. "Uploading" is still the stuff of science fiction, but it's a life mission for Dr. Koene - and legendary futurists and scientists like Ray Kurzweil expect it to be possible within just a few decades of progress. In this interview, we talk about how far along science has come now, and what aspects of research need to evolve in order to replicate human consciousness in another substrate. For more interviews on the intersection of technology and psychology, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

Ariel Waldman loves space, and once wanted to work for NASA. Badly. So badly, in fact, that NASA could sense it when they read her letter to them - stating that she wanted to be involved in any way. Though she got to learn about dark matter and black holes, and though she got to send objects into space, she realized she didn't need NASA for this job. So, she took off to start SpaceHack.org, a site dedicated to getting "regular" people involved in space exploration via disruptive citizen science projects that almost anyone has access to. In this episode we explore the ways that science fiction has (and can continue to) shape the future, and how citizen science is allowing people from around the world to help break ground in science, and get credit for it. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Dr. Gholson Lyon is a psychologist, speaker, and researcher at Cold Spring Harbor. He is outspoken about the impact of genomic research in the medical world. In this episode, we talk about the impact of genetic research and integrating of the personal genome in the coming 5 years. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Peep Laja has worked with large and small companies to help them convert more visitors to leads and buyers. As co-founder of the firm Markitect, he's seen it all, and he breaks down the common mistakes that startups make when split-testing. My guess is that if you're a founder or marketer, you're making these same errors - here's how to convert MORE. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

There's a lot of talk about Augmented Reality, and when it might become "mainstream." Many leading experts believe that workers who are in front of "screens" all day (office and desk workers) might not be the first to be immerser in augmeted reality - it might just be the mechanic and the warehouse worker wearing headsets and seeing holographic displays in front of them. Augmate CEO Pete Wassell explains talks about his predictions. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Howard Rheingold has a knack for understanding the future. In the 1980's he wrote "Tools for Thought," a book about the personal computer and the coming era of mind-expanding technology, and recently he's published "Net Smart" about how humanity can help itself through collaboration on the web. He teaches a class on collaboration at Standford, and in this episode, shares some of his biggest lessons about the past and potentially revolutionary future of how humans share and collaborate to make everyone's life better. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

"Bunnies in Newspapers" is what Trak Lord thinks of as "gimmicky augmented realty." You know the stuff, the little character that jumps from the magazine page when you hover your smartphone over it. It usually doesn't ad much value to the user's experience, some people feel that it might be a detriment to the industry. So what does the head of US marketing for one of the world's first Augmented reality companies think WILL be helpful for the field of AR? Listen up. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Waygo is a company that involves more aumented reality and artificial intelligence than most of us would understand, but they've managed to do real-time translation of asian languages with no connection to the internet. In this episode, Waygo founder Ryan Rogowski talks about how he got into an accelerator, raised serious money from the infamous 500 Startups fund, and got featured in the New York Times. Startup founders - tune in. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Dr. Amit Goswami is a theoretical quantum physicist, and renown speaker and author on the topic of understanding consciousness and human existence. The western view of the mind implies that what is real is physical, and what is not physical is not real. Dr Goswami speaks to his experience in physics - and eastern perspective of the mind - that might just shake your current assumptions. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Dr. Mihail Lebedev is a widely published brain-machine interface (BMI) researcher currently at Duke University. In this episode, we cover the past of BMI technology, dating back to the 1950's, into a surprising and unknowable future of enhanced human potential. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

Joe Rampolla was like any other police officer assigned to a cybercrime unit. But after seeing the posibilities for extreme good and potential abuse with VR and AR technologies, he wanted to go deeper. He's not one of the most connected people in the Augmented Reality community, and in this interview he talks about the considerations that responsible people might want to make now with respect to the "good" and "bad" use of technology. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

Ariel Garten is the founder of Interaxon, the neurofeedback company that developed the well-known Muse headband, one of the first "non-invasive" brain-machine interface headbands on the market. Ariel talks about why the Muse headband is focused on helping users calm their minds and gain clarity and focus, and on what other non-invasive BMI technologies may allow for in the coming 5 to 10 years. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com

Brown's BrainGate project is hailed as one of the premier research projects in the entire field of brain-machine interface. Researchers here have given paralyzed patients the ability to move robotic arms and check emails with their thoughts alone - thanks to experimental neural implants in their motor cortex. Dr. Beata Jarosiewicz has been with BrainGate project for years, with a specific focus on interpreting neurological signals and turning them into actionable outputs. In this interview, she talks about the science of making sense of the brain's inner electrical activity, and how it might be used to control nearly any device if calibrated correctly. The ramifications here are increadible.  For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property:   http://www.TechEmergence.com

Augmented reality, for the most part, is still relegated to smartphones and relatively novel headset experiences. We've come a long way in the last 15 years since Georgia Tech's Blair MacIntyre first got involved in AR, and in this episode he explains what the future might look like as get closer and closer to an immersed AR experience. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property:   http://www.TechEmergence.com

Dr. Christoph Guger is founder of g.Tec, a company that focuses on creating devices and parts for the field of brain-machine interface. In this particular interview, Christoph shares with us the direction and progress of brain-machine interface, as well as explaining the concept of "embodiment," where a person truly "feels" that a device controlled by their thoughts is a part of themselves, and extension of themselves. Where might these technologies make their jump into the mainstream? Listen to Christoph's interview here. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property:   http://www.TechEmergence.com

Anton Þórólfsson is working on letting you work from "home"... or from the Amazon jungle, or from the moon. Well... not the actual moon, or your real "home," but a virtual one. His company, MURE VR (he sits today as co-founder and COO) is working on allowing indiviuals to interact with all of their computer programs in a totally virtual world thanks to the help of the Oculus Rift. This would allow a user to strap on a headset and headphones, and escape into whatever virtual environment he or she liked, accessing a potentially unlimited number of "screens" (displays) and computer programs all at once. The task, as you might image, isn't easy, and in this interview, Anton talks to us not only about how the entire idea of "work" might change in the coming decades, but about the technological hurdles that companies like his will have to cross to get there. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:  http://www.SentientPotential.com

Prof Nick Bostrom is widely respected as the premier academic thinker on topics related to strong artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and existential risks. His talks, books, and articles cover all of these topics, and his vocation involves bringing attention and critical thought to these most pressing human issues. He is the Founder and Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, and author of the new book "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies." In this episode, Nick and I explore the topic of identifying "existential" human risks (those that could wipe out life forever), and how individuals and groups might mediate these risks on a grand scale to better secure the flourishing of humanity in the coming decades and centuries. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com For more information on Nick Bostrom himself, please visit his personal website at: http://www.NickBostrom.com  

Rand Fishkin started SEOmoz.org in 2004, while working with his mother in a small marketing company she'd started in Seattle. After years of languishing in obscurity, Rand's little site turned out to be one of the most respected sources for quality "white hat" SEO advice, and creator of a variety of SEO-related tools for businesses. Hitting 100 employees in 2012, the business continues to grow, and it's working hard on expanding its offerings to business owners and marketers everywhere. In THIS interview, Rand tells us what's new (and what's NOT new) about SEO today - and what companies he admires for phenomenal content marketing that any startup could learn from.  For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   www.SentientPotential.com

Chris Kelly founded Survata with an idea of changing the way that the survey marketplace works. With a drive to make his company exceptional, Chris applied to Y-Combinator, Silicon Valley's hottest startup accelerator. In this interview, he talks about his advice for getting into an accelerator, how to make the most of the experience, and how to keep up the momentum of an accelerator when you leave - making the entire experience as beneficial as possible.   For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   www.SentientPotential.com

John Danaher attained his PhD from University College Cork in Ireland, and presently writes on various topics related to ethics and human enhancement for organizations like the Institute for Ethics and Emergence Technology. He is currently a lecturer in law at NUI Galway. In this episode, we explore the concept of human "enhancement" from a philosophical and legal standpoint, and consider it's implications in the coming decades of technological development. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:   http://www.SentientPotential.com

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 to be the biggest hurdles in augmented reality today, as well as the trajectory of the industry and where he believes AR will have the strongest impact in the coming 5 years. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

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 experience of flying like a giant hawk. In this episode, I ask Max about the components of a truly “immersive” VR experience, and about his predictions about the coming decade in VR technology. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

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 well outside the world of gaming. Tune in: For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

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 and interaction alive with technology that doesn’t make us lose what’s “human.” For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

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. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

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 and what kind of developments she’d love to see from the tech and maker communities to help more ALS patients worldwide. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com  

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 of how technology and psychology are beginning to integrate and what it might imply for consumers and humanity. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

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 lessons learned), Matt speaks to us about how to create a unique virtual reality experience that people will enjoy as not just novel, but fun and worth revisiting again and again. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness: http://www.SentientPotential.com

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 of qualitative data, polling questions, and customer interviews in order to discover a true picture of the customer’s needs in order to deliver a killer product and soaring sales. If you’re involved in a tech startup - or plan to “feel out” an idea for a company or technology of your own - you won’t want to miss this interview. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:

Ofer Leidner is co-founder of Happify, and 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. For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:  

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 do. What happens when we can’t tell the difference? For More Information, Visit the HUB of Startups / Business in Emerging Technology. From Robotic Limbs to Getting Angel Investment, from Biotech to Intellectual Property: http://www.TechEmergence.com Interested in the Future of Humanity and the Ramifications of Emerging Tech? Sentient Potential Covers the Ethical Considerations and Future Projections at the Crossroads of Technology and Consciousness:  

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 a beneficial future - a job done in large part by pointing out what we want to avoid most, says David. If you’re an entrepreneur, researcher, or writer yourself, David’s insights into “imagination” as a force for good are important to listen closely to.

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 swamp robots are best suited for. In many cases, argues McLurkin, a group of smaller, inexpensive robots can perform a job much better than a single, more capable robot. Dr. James also sheds light on when and how swarm robots might become a part of everyday life and industry in the coming decades.

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. Brent Williams  is the director of the iTeach Center at KSU, and he landed in WIRED magazine for some of his work on tDCS. In this episode, he talks about the potential future of tCDS to enhance normal human function and potentially allow us more control over our emotional state and mental performance, as the technology progresses. It’s enough to make you want to go to Radio Shack and build one yourself.

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.

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 his thoughts around the most transformative technological developments in understanding the mind in the last 10 years - as well has his predictions as to which technologies and approaches will break the most ground in the future of diagnosing and treating mental illnesses.

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 culture to take issues like life extension and brain-machine interface. We discuss how modern skepticism of religious dogma plays a role in the social shift towards transhumanism.

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 initiatives he’d get behind as a president, as well as his own thoughts as to how concerns of merging technology might be brought to the forefront of American awareness (without a disaster, that is).

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 his thoughts about it’s most meaningful impact in the coming 10-20 years.

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 decades - he says “I don’t see the brain giving up it’s secrets in the next couple of generations.”

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.  

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) is available in over 30 languages worldwide. In this interview, Dr. Taylor explains her perspective on the place and purpose of the left and right hemispheres, and how an understanding of neuroanatomy might help us make sense of our own desires / drives, and help us lead a more fulfilling or productive life.

Decades ago, Cornell’s Dr. Joe Halpern wrote a book called “Reasoning with Uncertainty.” In this interview, we discuss alternative 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 potential alternatives to “probabilities,” and opens up the door to other, potentially more robust methods of managing large, uncertain, important questions for humanity’s future.

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 in Boston, MA.   In this interview we discuss Juan’s thoughts about the most relevant technologies that might “tinker with what’s human,” and which such technologies might be the first to require serious ethical consideration from humanity as a whole, in the public and private sectors.

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 transhumanism - namely - the potential economic impacts (and gross inequality) of enhancing humanity. Dr. Fuller shares why he considers these issues as the best path forward for bringing human enhancement concerns to modern politics.

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 of emerging technology for what he sees as a healthier and more informed future generation.

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   In this interview, Dr. Omohundro shares his thoughts about how we might “scaffold” our security measures to match the intelligence of our machines in order to prevent them from getting out of hand.        

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 perspective on the relation of thought, the “self,” and free will - as well as his perspective on human enhancement and evolution (which he believes will occur at a biological and genetic level, not through a merger with machines).

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 about what he sees as the most important neuroscience developments of the past decade, his hopes for the next decade ahead, and his ideas about the future of brain-machine interface technologies.

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 Qualcomm X-Prize. In this interview, Tracy talks about three reasons why healthcare is often slower to adopt new technologies, as well as his predictions about the coming 10 years of healthcare progress and the innovations that he believes may be most useful for patients and physicians alike.

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 our underlying core moral values, and her belief that society must be strong yet flexible enough to deal with the moral quagmire of new technologies / values / ways of living as we transition into the future..

Dr. Al-Rodhan spent decades studying the human mind, and it helped him form a theory of humanity, its nature, and its technological future. Namely, that our very nature will inevitably bring us to go beyond nature - not merely in the extension of our capacities through devices - but through a literal enhancement and extension of our bodies and minds.   In his belief, human beings are emotional creatures with a moral compass that exists for their own egotistical needs. Our desire for power, profit, pleasure, pride and permanency - says Neyef - will drive us beyond the bounds of our physical condition, and it's the role of governments (not corporations) to regulate that process of enhancement and experimentation for the good of humanity. If you're interested in human motivation and the next 20 years of enhancement technology, this is an interview you won't want to miss.

Dr. Jonathan Moreno’s book “Mind Wars” has contributed to his current reputation as one of the most prominent bioethicists in America today.   In this interview, Dr. Moreno shares his thoughts about the government agencies like DARPA and the NIH are invested in and involved with the latest biotechnology initiatives, from neuro-prosthetics to psychedelics and beyond. He also shares with us his ideas about how civilian needs are often a prime driver of the direction of biotechnology development (even for behemoths like DARPA).

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 humans aren’t capable of making alone. In addition, he provides his insight as to where the intersections of artificial intelligence and “creativity” might really lie.  

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 the right times given our own objectives. He explains why he believes such a project is not on Google’s agenda, and what he believes might be required to create such an AI.

Sean Blacknell has spent the last year working on a filmed 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 meaningful lessons he’s gained about the future of humanity from all of the interviews for his own film.

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 to blur the line between man and machine, as well as his predictions for how car cyborgs will progress in the coming decades (including the integration of drone technology, brain-machine interface, and more).

Dr. Joanne Pransky received her doctorate 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 the world to technology and it’s ethical implications. In this interview, Dr. Joanne speaks with me about the virtues and vices of how the media portrays AI to the public… and why she likes recent AI movies like “Her” and “Ex Machina,” but questions scandalous newspaper headlines about industrial robots “killing people”, as well as her thoughts about the types of conversations that she believes America (and world) should be having in order to move technology forward safely and fruitfully.

Dr. Gary Marcus is the Director of the NYU Center for Language and Music, and Professor of Psychology at New York University, and is author of well known books such as The Birth of the Mind, The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and Cognitive Science, and the New York Times Editor’s Choice called Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind.   In this episode, Dr. Marcus gives us some insight as to what the brain is good and bad at, and why - in addition to what this might imply for the future of human enhancement.

Dr. Peter Boltuc has a PhD in Philosophy and is currently a Professor at University of Illinois Springfield.  His background in Moral and Political Philosophy has leveraged his research into the subjectivity of moral experience and the moral implications of machine consciousness. In this episode, Peter discusses whether machines could ever be granted consciousness.  He believes, hypothetically, that we could create such machines, and elaborates from an ethical perspective on why we may want to “curve moral space” in a way that values human-level sentience and moves us toward living harmoniously with such machines.

Dr. Bruce MacLennan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee Knoxville (UTK), as well as past editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Nanotechnology and Molecular Computation. His research in natural computation has led to active, interdisciplinary involvement in the fields of neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy. In this episode, Bruce discusses how studying the mind has influenced, and will continue to influence, the development of artificial intelligence. In a largely digital world, he 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.

Do lobsters really have something to teach us about developing AI and robotics? Dr. Joseph Ayers, a professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences at Northeastern University,  has dedicated his research and work to the subject and has paved new directions for the future of AI and robotics in the domain of biomimetics. In this episode, Dr. Ayers provides a comprehensive overview of his development of autonomous underwater robots that help discover and destroy dangerous underwater land mines, and the potential for other animal-like robots to perform other “dull and dangerous” services for humankind. He provides a concluding perspective on two major obstacles facing robotics, one of which is the concept of autonomy, providing valuable insight in light of the current events around autonomous AI.

Stephan Vladimir Bugaj is a modern visionary with extensive experience in screenwriting, technical artistry and directing in animation and games. He is the Creative Director at Hanson Robotics, where he specializes in robot personality and functional design. He is also a writer-director for WakingUp media and Visioneer studios, two screenwriting and production companies, and part of the story "brain trust" for Limitless VR. Stephan worked for over 10 years as a screenwriter and technical director with Pixar Animation Studios, and before that was a multimedia researcher at Bell Labs and artificial intelligence developer at Intelligenesis/Webmind. In this episode, Stephan draws on his robotics background to articulate what it takes to give a humanoid robot a "personality", and explains the differences between responses and propensities. Androids are already making news in the entertainment and retail industries, but we delve into why the health sector is next, and how culture might influence social acceptance.

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 this interview, he discusses the concept of normative function and self maintenance in entities, and why this matters when it comes to thinking.

We talk a lot about the future of technology on TechEmergence - 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, Associate Professor of Computer Science at University of Illinois and Co-Founder of Parknav and AI Incube, Inc., gives his zoomed-in perspective of the types of technological progress that he believes will be relevant in the next 5 to 10 years.

  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” of other entities is arbitrary, and ask what a biased process might imply when we create other aware entities.

Could we one day upload ourselves into a computer or chip? Keith Wiley thinks that one day, we might be able to replicate consciousness within another entity. In this episode, Dr. Wiley speaks to us about why uploading human identity in a computer substrate might be possible in the coming decades, and the type of progress we’re making today in the areas of computing and mapping the brain.

Katherine Hayles is best known for her work as a postmodern social and literary critic. Now a professor at Duke University, Hayles joins TechEmergence 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 on how the technologies of the future may impact human consciousness and the very role of human being

Daniel Berleant is an expert in information science and artificial intelligence, and is the author of the book he 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 landscape of our economy, but also our conception of what it means to work and earn a living.

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 as machines start to govern and make more decisions in our everyday interactions.

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 wrote a book on the topic, in part inspired by a particular AI study that provoked his grave concern for where AI may take us in the future.

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 and reinforcement learning.

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 prone to receiving misuse?; why do people misuse these agents in ways that they would not treat a human?; and, what types of regulations will we need as AI improves and becomes more intelligent?

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 lessons, what’s built into our genome, and apply that to construct a more generally intelligent AI, in a way that is not being done today.

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 by technologies that we never return to our past ways of life.

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 can grant them the necessary emotional intelligence. Though a lot of progress has been made in field of intelligent agents in the last 10 years, many researchers who are in the same camp as Samsonovich are now on a mission to develop human-like intelligence, cognitive abilities, emotional and social intelligence, and common sense reasoning.

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 the intersection of the technical, spiritual, and often mystical. In this episode, we discuss how our gut reactions to AI often spring from evolutionary or cultural reasons, and how this shapes our reactions to technology and guides our development of it in the 21st century.

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 idea. Dr. Goel also speaks about his perspective on where machines are becoming more creative, and what the future might look like if machines begin to reflect on their "identities" as humans do.

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 about some of the potential 'super' AI risks to cyber security and touch on what can be done now to help hedge the unknown.

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. Stephen Thaler gives us some insight today on how neural networks create what we call creativity, and provides his perspective on how a neural net eventually merges to give way to consciousness.

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 way to exist as a society. In a more automated world, is this contract the best long-term structure for the common welfare? Pistono and I discuss what a future society might be like with an altered social contract i.e. a general minimum wage for all, how this might affect our approach to "work", and the avenues for testing out such a contract in society today. .

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 be able to move beyond this resistance as they become a more active part of the social fabric of our society.

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 images, another task that was not possible 10 years ago. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Irfan Essa, an expert in Computer Vision at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GA Tech), about progress made in machine vision over the last 10 years, related projects in the works today, and where machine vision may be headed in the next decade.

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 by the latter argument. As Co-Founder for the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, he has spent a good part of the last decade trying to create an international ban on such robots. In this episode, he speaks about the developments in the domain of autonomous killer robots, as well as how groups of global leaders might come together to convince nations and other global policy platforms to adhere to such an agreement for the benefit of all humankind.  

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 time of day by autonomously communicating with local electricity providers? In this episode, we discuss multi-agent intelligent systems with Computer Scientists Dr. Mehdi Dastani, who provides a perspective on how this emerging dynamic technology is changing the landscape of how and how companies and governments operate, allowing for greater systemic change that might not be possible otherwise.

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 commercial applications of recommendation engines. We talk about how this technology works, and how it comes to learn from reviews, ratings, and consumer interactions. Gabriel also gives perspective on how these engines might be enhanced and applied in the future, a good topic for those of you in the startup world.

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 how these various connections work together to make us sentient. In this episode with Dr. Olaf Sporns, who is in part credited with coming up with the term Connectomics, we explore the progress that’s been made in this new field in the past decade, and take a tentative but hopeful look ahead at what the next decade might bring as the field progresses into its adolescence.

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, Dr. Pei Wang, is of the belief that building a Artificial “General” Intelligence (AGI), what researchers define as an entity with human-like cognition, is a separate question from figuring out AI applications in the more narrow sense. In this episode, Dr. Wang lays out three differentiating factors that separate AGI from AI in general, and also talks about three varied and active approaches being taken to try and accomplish AGI.

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

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

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 described study is happening at University of Pennsylvania and is led in part by Dr. Lyle Ungar. In this episode, we talk about the focus of his work - on finding patterns between users and their language on social media content, and building an understanding for how this information might help individuals and communities in the future.

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 creative tasks? Can these also be optimized? If we want to give a computer information and tell it to create powerpoint slides, is there an optimal way to create such slides? Dr. Philippe Pasquier’s computational research is focused on artificial creativity. In this episode, we talk about how to define a very new field, train machines in this area, and also discuss trends and developments that might permit such technology to thrive in the next 10 years.

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 book "Our Final Century", published in 2003, Rees warned about the dangers of uncontrolled scientific advance, and argued that human beings have a 50 percent chance of surviving past the year 2100 as a direct result. In this episode, I asked him why he considers AI to be among one of the foremost existential risks that society should consider, as well as his thoughts around how we might best regulate AI and other emerging technologies in the nearer term.

TechEmergence 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 two or three times in the last 50+ years. In this episode, Dr. Pieter Mosterman speaks about the shift in this approach and why neural networks have gone in and out of favor, as well as where the pendulum may take us in the not-too-distant future.

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 timer” in the field of AI who tells us we might be too preemptive about our concerns of AI that will threaten our existence; instead, he suggests that our attention might be better  honed in thinking about how humans and AI can work together in the present and near future.

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 Bengii about how the neural nets in computer software have become more ubiquitous and powerful, with deep learning algorithms and neural nets permeating research and commercial applications over the past decade. He also discusses likely future opportunities for deep learning in areas like natural language processing and individualized medicine. Bengio was a researcher at Bell Labs with Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton, now at Facebook and Google respectively, and was working on neural nets before they were the "cool" new AI technology that they're seen as today.

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 the advancements that most of us are bound to miss. In this episode, Dr. Dan Roth explains what the last 10 years of progress in natural language processing (NLP) have brought us, what’s happening with approaches in developing this technology today, and what the next steps might be in a computer capable of real conversational speech and understanding language in context.

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 thinks may be more 'hype' than reality. He gives a an idea about applications that Baidu is working, to potentially influence billions of mobile and computer users worldwide. If you're interested in the developments of speech recognition and natural language processing, this is an episode you won't want to miss.

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. In this episode, we speak about his 'disappointment' in how automation has been used by many industries without regard for employees' long-term well being, and how a cultural shift in industry priorities may be what's needed to make automation beneficial for the majority.

You’re a business, and you’ve collected data - now how do you now make sense of it? Bring in a technology called ‘sentiment analysis’, a form of machine learning that determines whether text is positive or negative. Slater Victoroff’s company Indico provides a sentiment analysis API product that specializes in this task. In this episode, we talk about about the common misconceptions that businesses have about where ‘big data’ may be applicable, and the lessons he’s learned by gaining more tangible insights from smaller sets of data for companies. He explains why big data is not necessarily better, and discusses the steps that companies should take early on to make sure they’re prepared when it’s time to apply machine learning to their processes.

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 the belief that intelligence may involve more than just mental algorithms and may need to include the capacity to sense rather than just run a program. Vincent focuses on cognitive systems as an approach to AI, and in this episode he talks about what this means and implies, how this approach is different from classical AI, and what this might permit in the future if the field is developed.

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 research in how games can help us develop AI. We discuss how simple AI has been used in more common video games; the ‘smoke and mirrors’ effect that is more often used to mimic AI; and the more innovative ways that AI are being used in gaming at present, setting precedents for the future role of AI in gaming.

Tad Slaff is the founder of Inovance, the creator of TRAIDE - a strategy creation platform that use 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 on how future applications of machine learning and trends may alter what gives an edge to one hedge fund or institutional investor over another.

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 machine learning systems at companies including eBay, GoDaddy, and Aardvark. In this interview, Charles talks about the areas in AI that he believes are ripe for implementation in a business context, and where he sees businesses getting AI ‘wrong’ before getting to the hard work of implementing systems that work for them.

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 start an AI startup. At least, this is exactly what CEO Praful Krishna did when he moved to San Francisco to start Coseer, an AI company focused on understanding natural language and unstructured data. In this week’s episode, we speak about where unstructured data lives in a business, and how a business can be changed if the right data is unlocked. Krishna also discusses his experience in how executives are making decisions around how or how not to leverage AI in their companies.

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 of the industry by focusing on assessing job listings and related information in the field of data science. If you’re a company that is interested in finding someone with in-demand data science and related skills, or if you’re in the market to find a position in this field, this episode will likely be very useful!

Ten 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, and how a focus on deep learning has helped transform the prevalence and capabilities of NLP in the industry. For the last 17 years, Havasi has been working on a project through the MIT Media Lab called ConceptNet, a common sense lexicon for machines. She is also Founder of Luminoso, which helps businesses make sense of text data and improve their business processes.

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 data? In this episode, Research Director of Capital Markets at Celent Securities discusses the focus on emerging technologies in trading and finance. He talks about the way that analytics and machine learning have affected the ways banks operate, the kinds of data that hedge funds and individual investors now have at their fingertips, and what that means for the future implications of AI-related technology in the finance world.

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 about them when we hired them, how they perform qualitatively, these are things that are often difficult to discern in team dynamics. That being said, big teams like Google are applying machine learning (ML) to some of their HR choices, and our guest today believes more companies will be doing the same in future. CEO of Humanyze Ben Waber applies ML  to HR decision-making, helping people get better employees and better performance by measuring and improving using data science in new ways.

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 decades, and she does lots of consulting work in implementing these technologies with companies in the Bay area. In this episode, Lorien provides her unique perspective on decades of development and adoption in AI as we ask, where is the traction today in places where it wasn’t 5 or 10 years ago? We also discuss where Lorien thinks machine learning applications in business and government seem to be headed in the near term.

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 and how companies small and large can make faster and better decisions around what technologies to use, how to integrate and streamline the processes, and how to integrate machine learning into the mix (which Yahoo has been using for the past decade). This episode provides important insights for those looking to scale such technologies within their own businesses.

“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 Nervanasys, which works on full stack solutions to help companies solve machine learning (ML) problems at scale. In this week’s episode, Rao speaks about certain domains in industry where he feels optimistic about machine learning (ML) making a difference in the next five to 10 years, providing interesting perspectives that include advances in the areas of agriculture and oil & gas.

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 applications in small and big businesses, as well as the public sector. Swami Chandrasekaran is Chief Technologist of Industry Apps and Solutions for IBM, and he speaks in this episode about what he sees as some of the low-hanging fruit for applying predictive models to business data. Swami has seen this technology applied in a variety of contexts, from automotive and shipping to telcos and more, providing an informed perspective for industry executives, data scientists, and anyone else interested in the intersection of predictive analytics and business.

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 other emerging technology issues. In this week’s episode, Wendell talks about the problems of governing technologies that are developing faster than we can possibly assess all the risks, a topic that Wendell has thought about in-depth through both his extensive consulting, speaking and writing.

We’ve spoken in the past about computer vision on the TechEmergence 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 with Google, Amazon, and Adobe. Nathan delves into the topic of business apps that can “see”, and touches on what that means for the industry, some of the exciting developments that he’s seen over last the 10 years, and what he sees coming up in the next few years.

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 to search by unique criterion. Doing so involves some conceptual work with NLP to make things findable. Samiur talks about what Mattermark is doing with this technology now and where he thinks the future may take the field, and interesting topic for investors and founders alike.

A lot of companies in the San Francisco Bay 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 learning into their operations, including predicting business results from actual attendees. DoubleDutch is at the beginning of its journey with predictive analytics, having to make hard choices around what sort of information and thought processes they need in order to use machine learning and remain profitable. Nicholas gives his perspective on these decisions, as well as how he thinks DoubleDutch’s efforts will impact the conference/event industry at scale.

Today we have a guest who has interviewed more futurists than anyone else I know. While at TechEmergence 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, and many others. We speak today about the trends he’s seen aggregated (if any) amongst futurists, and about how technology may be dragging us farther into a transhuman future, whether that be closer to a utopia or a dystopia.

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 speak about where Wrike is currently applying machine learning and AI in their fast-growing, data-driven company. He shares his insights as to why he thinks marketing might be the most ripe for disruption by AI, and also discusses how most companies can prepare to take advantage of machine learning in any industry.

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, Ph.D. is Vice President of Data Science at Casetext, a startup working on improving search and natural language processing and democratizing legal information. In this episode, he speaks about the current bottlenecks for people trying to get more out of legal case documents, as well as some of the apps on which the Casetext team is working, to make these processes easier and to gain a strategic advantage in this industry.

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 personalization in a way that improves the customer experience.

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 made AI and machine learning a ‘requirement’ of modern data security strategy, something that has changed significantly in the last decade. Igor sheds light on these issues and likely future trends in cybersecurity over the next five to 10 years.

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 a large team of data scientists busy for years. I speak with Zoher Karu, eBay’s Chief Data Officer, about how eBay leverages data and machine learning to create a better experience for its customers and also their sellers, shedding light on important lessons for anyone looking to sell a product online.

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 and convincing experience for users. Rowell also touches on non-gaming VR apps that he and his company are excited about launching in the future.

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 can glean us better ideas and get to answers faster than humans could do alone.

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 approaches to AI that are blended together in order to yield optimal results, and touches on the sometimes stark differences between what AI can do in the lab versus the functional application for tens of thousands of people. If you're interested in the diverse applications of AI and the challenges in running a startup, Dr. Berlucci's makes for an interesting episode.

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 the gravity of his present work. Today, I speak with Nando about a topic well known through his research at Google, deep learning. de Freitas gives his perspective on the basics of deep learning, the applications in conversational interfaces and recognizing images and videos, and what the future of this technology might look like in the nearer future.

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 across industries. He speaks about his investment hypothesis in the future of AI, why he’s decided to hone his funds in this domain, and the different domains where he believes AI is ripe to disrupt on a global level in the coming few years.

This week's interview was recorded live at Nuance's Silicon Valley office with guest Charlie 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 advancements brought us to where we are today, and where progress might take NLP in the coming years ahead (both at Nuance and beyond).

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 Seidel, who is managing partner of Motus Ventures, an investment firm focusing on autonomous Vehicles and the IoT. Seidl talks about various data sources and the people and networks from which investors draw information when they don’t have what they need on-hand and need to make important investment decisions. He also shares his perspective on the high-energy and competitive investment world of AI, including his thoughts on the most exciting (and confusing) areas in the industry.

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, Harris speaks about how Sojern and other businesses are using a combination of their data and other sources of data (what he calls third and "second" data sources) in order to make informed marketing decisions and better market their services to buyers. Harris sheds light on the direct ROI for big data in different businesses, and it's an interesting episode from the perspective of an executive who is using big data to make decisions on business directions.

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. Skip Simms speaks on how to convey complex technologies to investors who don’t necessarily have your technical expertise, and still close the deal and get the investment. Simms talks about companies he’s seen do this well (and not so well), and how aspiring companies can do a better job of convincing investors to get in on new or unfamiliar technologies, something many AI company founders will have to deal with in some shape or form in launching a new entity.  

Our guest in this episode has spent a large part of his life on figuring out how to make machines more intelligent. LoopAI 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. LoopAI works on getting AI to make sense and meaning of unstructured text, and Ehlen talks about the potential business applications for this technology and where it's making way its way into industry. Ehlen also touches on the implications for developers in the nascent AI field - like LoopAI - that are vying to implement its technology as an industry standard, and how such organizations will have to market themselves and deliver services to develop a thriving AI ecosystem.

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 his company does and how smart executives are starting to make decisions how to choose and decide on the a smart, user-friendly platform that fits their business' needs.

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 runs Unanimous AI, a company focusing on harnessing swarm intelligence with human beings. In this episode, Rosenberg speaks about how this collective-intelligence approach has been applied to human beings in terms of garnering improvements in a range of predictions, and he also touches on what this type of swarm intelligence might mean when we talk about multiple AI’s in the future.

This episode's guest is Uri Sarid, CTO at Mulesoft. 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 they each serve their individual purposes. He also speaks on his belief that companies will get used to dealing with disparate ML technologies and that finding ways to connect these technologies will be an important path for future trends in technology development.

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 multiple AI approaches is being used to make our information safer. Dr. Sal Stolfo has been a professor at Columbia in Computer Science since 1972 and is now also the CEO of Allure Security, with a focus on engineering network intrusion detection solutions using AI applications. In this episode, Stolfo talks about the various styles of AI and statical methods that have been and are being used to detect malicious activity, as well as how he believes the future of security is going to have to adapt as increasing amounts of data become available.

Big data is often a buzzword, 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 Analytics Officer and Economist for Zillow, speaks about where they're leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence (hint: almost everywhere), and what he believes are the keys for deriving real ROI opportunities using this technology. Humphries also offers insights for how other companies can model the successful decision-making processes and implementation strategies used by Zillow.

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 Analytics, tells us about how his company is working on helping companies make better decisions before they hire by applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to various data points on a given applicant, including information from aptitude tests that may help predict not only performance but retention.

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), where he believes this technology is headed in the future and where it's driving value now, and how companies are applying NLP in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

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 'white collar' jobs (as opposed to blue) are at a higher risk for automation, and gives his predictions on how automation and robotics will impact the job market over the next 5 to 10 years.

We've interviewed a number of guests on TechEmergence, 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 application that works in marketing for small businesses and was acquired by Shopify in April 2016. In this episode, Perry speaks about how Kit and Shopify leverage AI on a daily basis, and how a “non-tech” person with no formal background in AI or data science can build a team  for an AI project. 

In one of our most recent consensus, we took a close look at future trends in artificial intelligence consumer applications, but it's also interesting to see what’s happening now in businesses. Chris Nicholson is the CEO of Skymind.io, which offers deep learning applications that integrate with Hadoop and Spark. In this episode, Nicholson sheds light on current trends that he sees across industries and best practices for implementing AI solutions to gain consistent return on investment.

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 day-to-day human conversational templates in machine learning technology in order to better approach the tough task of replicating human expertise through a machine. Berkan talks about the edge layer of his company's “secret sauce”, and touches on the future applications of what might manifest in this field in 5 to 10 years in medical and other consumer applications.

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 Richard Craib, founder of Numerai, about the company's model for pooling data science talent, using "anonymous" models to train financial data, and competing against one another, in which winners are rewarded in bitcoin to exchange through virtual markets. Craib speaks about his overarching vision for the company, and also delves into the past, present, and future of AI applications in finance.

Accenture is a pretty large company in the tech space, providing services to many of the Fortune 500 and global equivalents. They recently conducted a study of their own, combined with expertise from economists and AI researchers, about the longer-term economic impact of artificial intelligence on economies around the world. In this episode, I speak with Chief Technology Officer Paul Daughtery, who has been with Accenture since 1986, who was joined by Global Technology R&D Lead Marc Carrel-Billiard. We met up at a coffee shop after an AI Summit in San Francisco, and I asked Paul and Marc about what they had learned from this newly-published study and what they consider to be the significant impacts of AI and automation on the future job market.

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, Powell spoke with TechEmergence about GPUs and the factors that are making them easier to use, how Nvidia and others are working to make this technology more accessible to small businesses and startups, and about some of Nvidia’s and other similar players' innovations in the deep learning field.

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 is something that CEO Igal Raichelgauz and his team are working on at Cortica, a machine learning company that is not focused on deep learning, but is instead taking a more "shallow" approach. In this episode, Raichelgauz articulates Cortica's approach, which is based on neurology and goes against some of the current approaches in getting machines to learn. We discuss some of these primary differences and dive into Cortica's goals for applying machine vision in consumer products.

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 with the sole purpose of ensuring that the future of man and machines is a friendly one, and that the concentration of power and intelligence isn’t centralized in a way that would make AI a dangerous tool. In this episode, we speak with Ilya Sutskever, research director for Open AI. This was a fun but frustrating interview; Sutskever held his cards close to his chest, but we gain some perspective on what he considers to be areas of importance regarding the future of AI and considerations for safely furthering advances in the field.

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 Lit IQ, 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 most useful and legitimate, what the legal landscape in relationship to machine learning may look like in the next few years, and how this technology may apply across industries.

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 on where he sees an opportunity for applying continual learning in domains like vehicles, consumer apps, etc., and improving abstract levels of understanding by machines.  

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 their actions, but as it turns out, there are a lot more serious consequences to ensuring behavior change through observation, and one area where this matters is medicine. Today, there’s a major issue with people who don't adhere to their medical regimens, only to relapse or experience more serious symptoms later on. This week's guest, Cory Kidd, CEO of Catalia Health and known for his work at MIT on human-robotic interaction, is working to help solve this problem by developing a robot that adds some of that physical presence and accountability. This is likely one of many novel medical AI applications that we're likely to see roll out in healthcare over the next decade.

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 AI at Publicis.Sapient, speaks in this episode about the future of advertising attribution with machine learning. Specifically, Sutton discusses how his team of publicists is working on managing, tracking, and determining cohorts and attribution across more channels and numerous clients, and touches on ways that the company is applying ML to make sense of marketing data and spend marketing dollars more effectively.

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 facets? A relatively small group is helping people do just that i.e. getting organizations and countries to think through how they could hedge against the grander risks inherent in a world powered by AI. In this episode, we speak with Jerome Glenn, head of the Millennium Project, an initiative that focuses on research implementing the organizational means, operational priorities, and financing structures necessary to achieve the Millennium Development Goals or (MDGs). Glenn talks about how he gets principalities of the world to bring their big industrial players and the public to talk through possible scenarios that are 30, 40, even 50 years in the future, and about ways we might potentially hedge against risks and make the most of the upsides of AI in a global economy.

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 in AI in the past, and more are starting to tap into the financial applications of machine learning (ML) and deep learning. This week, we’re joined by CEO and Co-founder of Kavout Alex Lu, whose company offers AI trading applications for enterprises and individuals. Lu speaks today about the kinds of patterns that traders now have access to in finance, and he gives examples of ways Kavout and other institutions are using artificial intelligence in stock trading to build better and more personalized products and services.  

What are executives missing the boat on and what do they need to think about when it comes to AI and ML? This week, we speak with John Straw, who has had a number of businesses in the UK and US, currently a senior advisor to McKinsey & Co., and who works with a lot of executive teams in terms of finding new applications for AI and finding ROI for those technologies in industry. We speak this week about how executives can get up to speed, what degree of knowledge and in what way they should learn it so they can find opportunities in their own companies. Straw also touches on what he sees as the biggest areas of oversight, in terms of preventing companies from finding those applications that can keep them up to speed with competitors and the big technology players.

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 machine learning and dives into how companies can catch up with this technology by thinking through, assessing ROI, and making sense of the dynamics of big data. Listen for Cukier's apt analogy in comparing machine learning technology to the dynamics of computing from decades ago.

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 to reconstruct what happens in a collision - a unique solution in a big and untapped market. In this episode, Shir gives his vision of a world where the roads are filled with cyborgs, rather than autonomous robots, i.e. people augmented with new sensory information that trigger notifications, warnings or prompts for safer driving behavior, amongst a network of cloud-connected cars.  He also touches on what the transition might look like in response to the question - when will autonomous cars be mainstream?

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 of automation technologies applied to white collar environments. Rage Frameworks has developed intelligent machines that have been able to take over process that, prior to the emergence of AI and automation technologies, would have required thousands of people to accomplish. These developments are a microcosm of what is to come, and the process is not without its ethical considerations (as discussed in a previous interview with Yoshua Bengio). But Dasgupta's insights provide a concrete glimpse into how these processes are being automated in the knowledge workplace today and what that might mean or look like decades from now.

In marketing, there are lots of applications in AI and machine learning (ML), from recommendation engines to predictive analytics and beyond. At the company Adgorithms, 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 budget of a company. Or Shani, CEO of Adgorithms, focuses on the quantitative aspects and optimization of online advertising, using algorithms to improve advertising processes. In this interview, Shani talks about how Adgorithms' smart marketing platform "Albert" meshes with humans’ role in marketing, and also discusses how these roles might change over the next 5 to 10 years as we move towards ever more automated marketing processes.

When it comes to finding an expert on interviewing and finding machine learning (ML) 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 like eBay, but he's been on the unique side hiring of ML and AI talent. Today, Kulkarni works full-time as Head of Data Science at Hired, Inc., a giant platform for hiring top talent in tech and other areas. In this episode, he provide an interesting distinction between what individuals with experience in data science look for in potential hires versus those who do not have the tech background tend to look for, and also dives into the supply-and-demand landscape for data scientists now and in the future—an interesting interview for anyone looking to hire or be hired in the ML and AI space.

Uday Veeramachaneni is taking a new approach to machine learning in infosecurity, AKA infosec. Traditionally, infosec has approached predicting attacks in two ways: through a system of hand-designed rules, and 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 ratio is too low. In this episode, Veermachaneni discusses how his company, PatternEx, is using machine learning to provide more accurate attack prediction. He also discusses the cooperative role of man and machine in building robust AI applications in data security and walks us through a common security attack scenario.

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 grasp and understand leveraging related technologies in industry. Recently, I talked with Benjamin Levy of BootstrapLabs in San Francisco, who I met through an investment banking friend in Boston. BootstrapLabs invests in Bay area companies, and Levy also travels around the world speaking about investing in AI companies and raising funds for new ventures. In this episode, Levy gives his perspective on what investors and executives get wrong about ML and and AI, and discusses how they can get up to speed on the applications for these technologies and leverage them and related expertise to really make a difference (i.e. increased ROI) in their businesses.

In this episode, recorded live at Canvas Ventures in Portola Valley, I speak with Ben Narasin, a partner with Canvas and an avid venture investor in AI and ML companies, some of which we've interviewed (Crowdflower and Mulesoft), along with many others that we haven't (like Siri). Ben doesn't look for AI to invest in; instead, he looks for companies to invest in, a subtle but important difference in a business world increasingly caught up in the explosion of AI and ML technologies. From investments in Nuance to more recent one such as Houzz, Narasin has solid ideas as to what makes an investment interesting when AI is involved, what might actually add value to a model with AI, and what's wholly irrelevant when it comes to overall business model. Besides making important distinctions on where investments can make a return and how to raise money for your AI startup, this interview is also chock full of great analogies (give me golden dragons all day long—anyone?)

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, goes into some of the cutting-edge methods for getting tuning done, and shares advice on how businesses using machine learning algorithms can continue to refine and adjust their parameters in order to glean greater results.

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 headlines, contextual information, and financial data from the seemingly endless stream of social, blog, and other information on the web today. Signal is a company that uses ML specifically for these purposes. In this episode, we speak with Signal Media's Chief Data Scientist and Co-founder Dr. Miguel Martinez, who dives into real business use cases illustrating the use of machine learning for media monitoring across industries.  

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 information. In this episode, we speak with the CTO and Co-Founder of one such company—Palo Alto-based Cloudera. CTO Amr Awadallah, PhD, speaks with us this week about where he sees "data lakes" (or "data hubs", Cloudera's preferred term) and warehouses play an important role in ML applications in business. Based on his experiences helping a variety of companies in many countries set up data lakes, Amwadallah is able to distill and communicate these uses in three broad categories that apply across industries as companies look to solve tougher problems and ask more complex questions using unstructured data.

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 artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) companies. Lo speaks about when he saw AI take off in China and the differences in that rise compared to the U.S. He also gives valuable insight on consumer differences in how the two populations interact with technology, and how these differences in the Asian market drive different business opportunities in China than in the U.S.

There is in fact a dark side to AI, although we’re certainly not at the point where we need to fear terminators, but 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 also being use by the “bad guys” to try and steal that information and break into those systems. In this episode, I speak with Justin Fier, director of cyber intelligence at Dark Trace, who speaks about the malicious uses of AI and how companies like Dark Trace have been forced to fight these “AI assailants”.

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 enterprise software company, whose product suite turns data into written insight, explanations, and narrative. In this episode we interview Yseop's Vice President Matthieu Rauscher, who talks about the fundamentals of natural language generation in business, and what conditions need to be in place in order to drive key objectives. Rauscher also addresses the difference between discover-oriented machine learning (ML) and production-level ML, and why different industries might be drawn to one over the other.

Getting beyond the marketing and jargon on the homepage of AI companies and figuring out what's actually happening, what results are being driven in business, is part of our job at TechEmergence. Shaking those answers out of founders is not always easy, but we didn't have to do much shaking with Yohai Sabag, chief data scientist for Optimove, a marketing AI and automation company in Israel. In this episode, he speaks about what humans are needed for in the optimization process, and what facets can be automated or distributed to a machine. Sabag gives an excellent walk-through of how marketers can use the "human-machine feedback loop" to optimize individual campaigns at scale.  

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. We recently interviewed Dr. Jay Perrret, CTO of Aria Networks, a company that uses genetic algorithm-based technology for solving some of industry's toughest problems, from optimization of business networks to pinpointing genetic patterns correlated with specific diseases. Dr. Perrett has been working for years in this domain, testing algorithms that use variations of parameters in order to gradually arrive at a best result, when there's no simple way to program a solution. In this episode, Dr. Perrett discusses how genetic algorithms (GA) work and ways that they can be tested and applied in a business context. He provides two very useful case studies, including a recent example with Facebook that involved planning out an optimal (and massive) data network.  

In some ways, investors in AI have to do a lot of what we do at TechEmergence, 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 flop. In this episode we're joined by Li Jiang, a venture capitalist with GSV Capital whom I was connected with through Bootstrap Labs as a pre-event interview — we'll both be at Bootstrap Labs' Applied AI event in San Francisco on May 11. This week, Jiang speaks about the current areas of AI applications that he sees driving value in business, as well as what technologies he believes will make a long-term impact in terms of automation. His insights on where AI automations are generating cost savings and increased efficiency, as well as what roles might be completely replaced or significantly augmented by AI, are useful nuggets for companies who are thinking through some of their own business processes and are eager to identify low-hanging fruit.

At TechEmergence, we like to look around the corner at where AI is impacting industries and how people can make better business decisions based on that information. AI and software is an emerging topic of interest to many companies, and in this episode we get a venture capitalist's perspective on where AI will play a vital and necessary role with real results in software and industry. Jake Flomenberg, a partner with venture capital firm Accel in Palo Alto, shared his insights on how software can integrate AI in intuitive and valuable ways for users. He cites some of the companies that Accel has invested in to illustrate some of the potential software features that may be introduced to the enterprise in the next five years or so. Flomenberg's insights may be useful for anyone building a business or planning to buy a product or service from a software vendor in the near future. If you're interested in getting other founders' perspectives on the feedback and interest shown by investors in their startups, our AI startup consensus on investor sentiment is a good place to start.

I'm always a little shocked when I see how much venture investing goes into the healthcare space, which brings me 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 sees being brought to light, and touches on which innovations have a better chance of getting blocked and redirected by parties of interest and those that have more promise in being accepted and rolled out sooner. By the end of this episode, listeners will have a more clear picture of practical considerations in healthcare technology adoption, reasons that are often less about quality or potential of the technology and more about clarity on ROI for investors.

In this episode, we speak with Co-founder and CEO Alex Holub of  Vidora, about how AI can be put to work to improve marketing results. Holub touches on 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 not yet set up to be leveraging AI, while others should be seriously considering taking the leap to using machine learning. Holub draws some firm lines as to what kinds of businesses are primed to take advantage of AI, and what it takes to flip the switch and make AI a useful and inspired revenue driver in the marketing domain.

One of the most clear insights from our recent consensus in marketing and advertising 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 this dynamic and describes how gaming companies are taking advantage of digital trails and applying machine learning technologies. We don't cover much gaming on the TechEmergence podcast, so this interview is a bit off the beaten path. Bulsara speaks about how dialed-in and instrumented the mobile gaming environment is and how data is used to leverage higher conversions over time, as well as how Scopely's systems are set in place to ensure success of their business model. We think his insights on how gaming companies leverage higher conversions with (and without) machine learning can serve as an analogy for companies in other industries that are considering how to set in place similar, optimal digital processes over time.

The upsurge of malware and sophisticated attacks continue to keep cybersecurity in the spotlight, but new developments in AI and deep learning offer more advanced solutions to combat security threats. This week, we catch up with Eli David, CTO of Deep Instinct—a company founded in Israel with US headquarters in San Francisco—that applies deep learning to information security. David spoke with us about why and how the deep-learning approach to AI is relevant to the future of cybersecurity. Companies that are actively building their own security infrastructure, or are in growth mode and know they will eventually need to, should find this interview particularly relevant. David shares his perspective on how and where potential cyberthreats focus their attacks and the resulting ramifications for industries as they look for best ways to respond and prevent attacks.  

Getting an investor's perspective in AI is always a good idea for companies looking to raise money, in terms of understanding of excites VC's, but even more broadly an investor's perspective can point to emerging  factors in how AI is going to impact a particular industry, shining a light on industry developments, including the commonalities that matter for any company, in any industry, leveraging these tools that are increasingly embedded with AI. In this episode we interview Polaris Partners' Gary Swart, who speaks about elements of companies that are laying the right foundations for using AI optimally and making a more defensible, durable company in an increasingly competitive landscape.

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 about AI investing and the future of software in general. Her high-level insights embody an interesting emphasis on the dynamic of human-machine interactions and relationships cross industries, including the constant workflows and interactions of people using software and bolstering the predictive and prescriptive analytics capabilities of that software. While forward-thinking, Miura-Ko also paints a picture of how these synergistic relationships between humans and machines are happening with companies today.

If there's any industry ripe for disruption by AI and ML applications, it's healthcare. This week, we speak with ElevenTwo Capital's Founder and Managing Partner Shelley Zhuang, whose investment focus (among other spaces) is on innovative healthcare services. In addition to discussion how AI is helping propel genomics, diagnostics, therapeutic treatment, and other innovations, she touches on what the healthcare space might look like in the next 10 years. For healthcare startups looking to break into the healthcare market, Zhuang doesn't pretend to have simple answers; however, she identifies commonalities among companies that have been successful in smart preparation for meeting regulatory and other industry considerations. This interview was recorded live in San Francisco at Re-Work's Machine Intelligence in Autonomous Vehicles Summit in March 2017.  

Guests Will Jack and Nikhil Buduma co-founders of Remedy Health Inc discuss the challenges involved in collecting, setting up and structuring data in order to implement AI in healthcare. By the end of this episode, listeners will have gained insight into the challenges of healthcare data systems, and the potential solutions to cleaning and organizing this data for healthcare AI applications.

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 have more and more impact as it develops further. Guest Alexander Fleiss and his team at Rebellion Research are developing and using AI which uses quantitative analysis to pick investments. Fleiss discusses the current status of machine learning in the world of finance as well as lesser-known niche applications that don’t make headlines - but do make a big impact on how businesses are run. He then goes on to explore the effects of future innovative applications of AI in the financial domain.

Unlike the field of self-driving cars, the fields of construction, mining, agriculture, and other classes of “heavy industry” involve a huge variety of equipment and use-cases that go beyond traveling from A to B. The heavy industry leaders of today are no farther behind automakers in their understanding that AI and automation will be essential for the future of their companies. In this episode, guest Dr. Sam Kherat discusses the areas in heavy industry where AI is currently playing a role in heavy industry, what type of capabilities and functions are automatable, and at what level. He also shines a light on how AI might affect the future of the industry within the next 2-3 years, and in what ways we can expect large equipment to become more autonomous.

Fraud attacks have become much more sophisticated. Account takeovers are happening more often. Many security attacks involve multiple methods and unexpected attacks can devastate businesses in just a few days, as we saw with Neiman Marcus and Target. False promotion and abuse is seen not only on social media sites but is also targeted at business. To combat these risks, fraud solutions need to be smarter to keep pace with fraudsters to prevent attacks and react quickly when they do happen. This requires a fast-learning solution with the ability to continually evolve. In this episode we talk to Kevin Lee from Sift Science and examine the shifts in the info security landscape over the past ten or fifteen year. Lee also highlights what new kinds of fraud are now possible and what machine learning solutions are available. See more episodes at: www.TechEmergence.com  

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 the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, about the developments in core machine learning technology that need to be made, and that researchers and scientists are working, on to further the application of machine learning in autonomous vehicles. We also touch on some of the impact that might be made if machine learning is able to overcome its own boundaries in terms of computational research, in terms of certain algorithms, and what kind of impact that might have in the arena of autonomous driving and in the realm of natural language processing (NLP). See more episodes online at: www.TechEmergence.com

Marshall Brain discusses how wetware (the human brain) is increasingly becoming a part of a bigger system which may in itself be managed by software systems. The roles and relationships of humans and machines are rapidly changing. With the increasing advances in technology, there are fewer and fewer skills or activities that an enterprise needs from human beings, and they only need those until they can be replaced by software or hardware. For example, computer vision systems are often still not as effective as the human eye, so we still need human vision systems to recognize text or to recognize object placement, and take action accordingly (in a store, warehouse, or other setting). A human can fill that role as a piece of wetware until the software or the hardware catches up. How will man and machine collaborate in the future? We explore these dynamics in depth in this week's interview. For more interviews and insights from leading thinkers in AI and automation, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

If you work in healthcare, or in an established business that is looking to implement AI for the first time - then this won't be an interview you'll want to miss. AYASDI is one of those rare AI startups that has raised over $100MM since its inception in 2008. This week on the "AI in Industry" podcast,

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 and still another department that wants to begin using AI for fraud and risk analysis. How do you manage to put all these pieces together? That is exactly the situation that Muriel Serrurier Schepper found herself in.  Muriel is the Business Consultant Advanced Data Analytics & Artificial Intelligence at Rabobank Digital Bank in Naarden, Netherlands. In this episode, Muriel and I discuss the Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence at Rabobank, where she manages projects and has connected ad virtual and physical team across the company which is comprised of over 60,000 employees spread across the world. For more interviews on the applications of AI in industry, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

The big tech giants, such as Amazon, Google and Netflix, tend to set the stage in a lot of different domains and set public expectations to raise the aggregate tide of consumer experience. Our online experience is somewhat different each time we use these and other sites. This is because many of these tech giants alter their experience user per user in a real time iterative fashion in order to create sticky experiences and to beat their competitors. 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 continually alter user experience and what industries and sectors might be impacted by this aggregate trend as it moves forward. See more interviews with AI industry innovators at: www.TechEmergence.com

A huge percentage of digital advertising dollars today go to Google and Facebook, who dominate that sector - and are inevitably central for the future of programmatic advertising. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the growth in digital advertising in the last two to three years has gone almost entirely into their coffers. At least for the foreseeable future, Facebook and Google will retain the ability to dominate that space. The ability to be able to bid for the attention of particular target audiences, whether they’re searching for a specific term, live in a specific place or they like a specific sports team, is something that doesn’t seem to be going away, and seems to be rather efficient, thanks in the large part to Artificial Intelligence. 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 what the future of programmatic advertising may look like from an advertiser’s perspective. For more executive interviews on the applications of AI in Industry, visit: TechEmergence.com

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 intelligence may be working its way to accomplish both of those goals in the not-so-distance future. This week we interview Tilak Katsuri, CEO of Predii, a predictive maintenance AI company based on Palo Alto. Predii focuses on helping service people by using AI and sensor data to prescribe proper repairs. In this episode, Tilak speaks with us about what's currently possible within the world of "predictive maintenance," as well as the possible ramifications of industrial IoT and AI in the next 5 years. For more interviews about the real-world applications of artificial intelligence in business, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

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 needed a new type of cable or input every time you wanted to jack your computer into the wall? Imagine if you needed different hardware to pick up wifi in every location you moved around to? Imagine if all websites had totally different protocols for how they were loaded or served to your computer? If this were the case, it would be extremely challenging for a robust "ecosystem" of internet companies and technologies to emerge, because the technology wouldn't scale or work well at all. This week we interview Konstantinos Karachalios,? Managing Director of the Standards Association at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Konstantinos holds a PhD in Physical and previously worked for 25 years at the European Patent Office. He speaks with us this week about the kinds of AI standards that may need to arise in order for AI to be safe and trusted enough to support a business ecosystem. Konstantinos also speaks to us about some of the current AI standards that IEEE is working on developing currently, and the implications they might have businesses everywhere.

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 world of work, and I ask Kevin some important questions, including: What skills are least "automate-able" in the next decade? What middle class professions have the greatest risk of automation, and what should those professionals be doing now to hedge against job loss? What should business leaders be doing now to prepare for "phasing out" work while still taking care of their employees? For more interviews with AI executives and researchers (and more insight on applying AI in your organization) - visit us online at: www.TechEmergence.com

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 help with automating data entry, automating email and phone reminders, and even prompting salespeople with the right phone scripts in real time. In addition to covering "what's being done now" - spend the end of the interview asking Bastiaan about his predictions of the most likely AI-for-CRM capabilities that will become commonplace in the next 5 years. For more AI executive interviews, and insights into current and future AI trends that are shaking up industries, visit: www.TechEmergence.com  

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 is making it's way into the procurement process, and what it means for the future of this job function. For more executive interviews about the applications and implications of AI, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

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 application (maybe an iPhone app or a recreational DSLR camera), you probably want it to be visually appealing and clear to the human eye. As it turns out, machines don't need pretty images, they need to do their jobs. If a computer vision system needs to detect road signs, or suspicious people in an airport, or the presence of weeds in a cornfield - it may create images that are ugly to the human eye, but perfectly calibrated for being interpreted by machines for their jobs. As it turns out, this is a complicated AI-related problem itself, and Allan walks us through it. If your business uses cameras heavily - or may do so in the future - this interview will provide an around-the-corner look at what it takes to create effective computer vision applications. For more expert interviews about the business applications of artificial intelligence, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

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 a much harder problem to solve, but we are indeed making progress. Our guest this week is Paul Kruszewski, an computer science PhD who's spent nearly the last 20 years focused on 3D modeling and artificial intelligence. Today, he's CEO of Wrnch, a Montreal-based AI company focused on reading and understanding human body language. Paul explains how advances in 3D modeling and computer vision have allowed researchers to get machines to "understand" the posture, movements, and intentions of human being - and he also helps explore the future applications that this technology might have in security, retail, sports, and more. For more interviews on the applications of AI in business, visit: TechEmergence.com

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 enablement, or eCommerce. In this week's episode of AI in Industry we interview Narjes Boufaden, computational linguistics PhD and CEO of Keatext, an NLP company based in Montreal. Narjes explores the possible business applications of NLP - specifically for customer service and customer experience - and she also explains (in layman's terms) how NLP systems are trained and integrated into businesses today. The ROI on this episode (in my opinion), is a firm understanding of what NLP can and cannot do, and what business applications it can realistically solve today. I was fortunate to meet Narjes in person during my Montreal trip, and I'm glad we were able to bring her on the program shortly thereafter. For more expert interviews on the business applications of AI, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

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. For more interviews on AI applications in business, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

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 reference. Murali and I discuss the surge of medical information and data in the medical industry, the role of artificial intelligence in developing drugs for treatments to various diseases, and the future of AI in drug discovery. For more in-depth interviews on the business applications of artificial intelligence, find us online at: www.TechEmergence.com

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 are in use today, but he also breaks down some of his own predictions about what these computer vision systems might make possible in the workplace of tomorrow. For more interviews and use-cases of AI in industry, visit: TechEmergence.com

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 and sheds light on the back-end "tweaking" required to keep NLP productive in a changing business environment. For more interviews on the applications of AI in business, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

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 purchase something on the Internet, we might use a search engine that provides us with a list of sites we can browse in order to find ourselves a resolution for that intent. This week’s guest, Chief Scientist at Conversica, Dr. Sid J Reddy, talks about how AI and ML can usher in the next a new era of search software, one that will bring you a faster, more accurate resolution to your intent. Most importantly, Dr. Reddy discusses how chatbot technology can be integrated into areas such as customer service, product support, and lead engagement. By the end of the episode, listeners will have a better idea of the importance of collecting data and how they can use that data to  to build chatbot templates they can use in multiple domains and applications. For more interviews on the business applications of AI, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

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. For more interviews on the applications and implications of AI in business, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

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 best generate engagement is a task reserved for a human. He or she shifts through images and video clips that may work for an audience based on anecdotal evidence and perception of past post success. Learn how, according to Thomas, machine learning could help you save time and money, generate you a better ROI, and build you a larger list with more accurate targeting on social media. For more interviews with AI experts, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

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 Bachrach. Yoram succinctly outlines the current applications of chatbots—what they can and can’t do—and details how business can best prepare to automate their customer service. For more interviews about the applications of AI in industry, visit us online: www.TechEmergence.com

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 rule systems and the massive piles of data. They hope to find a middle ground of sorts, one that mitigates their individual disadvantages. One such company is Montreal’s fuzzy.ai. In this episode, we interview its founder, Evan Prodromou about the state of the middle ground, so-called hybrid systems. The middle ground is an elusive, still mostly theoretical concept, but businesses can take steps to prepare for when it becomes accessible to them. What exactly would a hybrid system provide to businesses in terms of automation? How accessible are they now, and what can businesses do to best integrate them when they’re ready? Find out in this episode of the podcast. For more interviews about the business applications of AI, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

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 - CEO of SingularityNET - is our guest this week. For more expert interviews about the business applications of AI, visit: TechEmergence.com

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 Georgia Tech. He explores the manipulative elements of game design, and how some of the same AI approaches are likely being used at tech giants like Amazon and Facebook. In this episode you learn how businesses leverage the "illusion of choice" with subtly influential AI techniques. Charles also helps us understand which businesses will be most able to use AI to guide user behavior in the years ahead. For more interviews about the applications of AI in industry, visit: www.TechEmergence.com

This week on AI in Industry, we explore IoT security with Bob Baxley (Chief Engineer at Bastille). This includes information on how different IoT security is compared to infosec, the unique challenges IoT security presents (for detecting and scanning wireless network traffic that runs on various protocols and for classifying types of cyberthreats), what the future of IoT security might look like, and how deep learning and machine learning tools can be used to better classify and detect threats and attacks in the cyberspace. For more insight on the applications of AI in industry, visit: TechEmergence.com

This week on AI in Industry, we speak with Equifax's Dr. Rajkumar Bondugula about how the dynamics, composition and requirements of the data science team have evolved over the years. Raj also shares valuable insights on how to build a robust data science and machine learning team, use its collective intelligence to solve problems, and retain the team by engaging them with the right problems they expect to solve. For more insights from AI executives, visit: TechEmergence.com

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 specializes in using AI and machine learning to detect cancer in its early stages so that oncologists can make quicker, more accurate diagnoses for patients. AI is a useful  tool in the detection of breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer. It can even detect genetic mutations, something humans certainly cannot. Learn just how important AI has been over the last two decades in developing the medical infrastructure necessary for patients to have a chance at surviving and even curing their cancer. See the full interview article - with images and audio included - on TechEmergence: TechEmergence.com/the-future-of-medical-machine-vision-possibilities-for-diagnostics-and-more

This week, AI in Industry features Dr. David Franke, Chief Scientist at Vast. David talks about how AI can work with scarce transaction data to derive meaningful analytics for big purchases, such as cars and houses. He elaborates on how the AI can glean information from user interaction and marketplace data to provide customers with the relevant product fit, deals and recommendations on big purchases. He also discusses the future trends and business benefits for early adopters of AI for purchase recommendations of high-cost items.  For more insights on this topic, go to www.techemergence.com  

This week, AI in Industry features Jeremy Barnes, Chief Architect at Element AI. Jeremy talks about the common mistakes some businesses might make while adopting AI to solve broad business problems. He also sheds light on the problem areas that could raise the market value of businesses through AI adoption, hiring the right talent with the right combination of subject matter expertise and business experience, and the business and technical aspects executives should consider before contemplating the adoption of AI. For more insights on the B2B applications of AI, go to techemergence.com