AI and the Future of Work
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Episode Number : 157
We often discuss the future of work for enterprise employees. What technology will they use, how will people and machines interact, and how teams will be organized when geography and language are no longer barriers. Few have spent more time in and around enterprise service management than today’s guest and few are better qualified to share insights about what’s ahead.
Show moreShow lessAndi Mann has been a technology leader in technology companies around the world since the 90s. He founded Sageable, the digital transformation advisory services practice, in 2015 and has also recently served in roles that include CTO for DevOps at Splunk and VP Products and Strategy at CA which is now part of Broadcom. Andi and I both did time at BMC Software in the early 2000s. Andi is the author of multiple books including The Innovative CIO, he’s a sought after speaker, and tech provocateur who is never shy about what’s wrong with IT and where the world of digital is headed.
Thanks to friend of the podcast Steve Kaplan for the intro to Andi.
Listen and learn…
- Why Andi summarizes his career this way: “I make computers do more work to allow people to do more creative things”
- The best use of enterprise AI Andi has seen
- How Andi helped an industrial transportation company save a billion dollars
- Why “less complex systems can’t understand more complex systems”
- Why the best use of AI is targeting “known knowns” by augmenting vs. replacing human intelligence
- How to overcome the lack of trust in AI
- Why AI won’t eliminate any jobs… and why it will create many new ones
- Skills to invest in today that will never be replaced by automation
References in this episode…
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Episode Number : 156
Meredith Broussard is one of the most visible, vocal leaders in the emerging field of algorithmic accountability. Professor Broussard is a data scientist and Associate Professor at NYU whose research focuses on AI in investigative reporting and using data analysis for social good. Meredith is the author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World and the forthcoming More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech.
Show moreShow lessAmong other things, Professor Broussard was featured in the seminal documentary Coded Bias. Today’s discussion is about one of the most important topics in our field and in this episode, we explore it with someone whose name is on a shortlist of AI ethics pioneers. You’ve heard me say repeatedly that coursework in AI ethics should be required for every student graduating with a technical degree. Here’s why!
Listen and learn…
- How AI reveals bias encoded in society
- Why it’s important to always ask “what could go wrong”
- What is the new field of “algorithmic accountability reporting”
- What the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights may mean for bad acting companies
- What’s the right role for the federal government in AI regulation
- How to assign an “accountability score” to algorithms
- The ethical issues related to AI we’ll be discussing in a decade
References in this episode…
- More Than a Glitch, Professor Broussard’s new book… and her “love letter” to an amazing group of women who are pioneers in the emerging field of algorithmic accountability
- Professor Broussard’s personal website
- The racist soap dispenser
- Joy Buolamwini’s Algorithmic Justice League
- Rumman Choudary, formerly head of the META team at Twitter
- Cathy O’Neil’s ORCAA
- The ethical judgments built into generative AI models
- Google’s “stochastic parrots” debacle
- The Agnes Irwin School outside Philadelphia
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Episode Number : 155
Arvind Jain , Glean CEO and Rubrik co-founder, started Glean in March 2019 to make it easier to find answers strewn across myriad SaaS apps. Prior to Glean, Arvind had an incredible run at data security company Rubrik which he co-founded in 2014. Prior to Rubrik Arvind was a distinguished engineer at Google. Glean became a unicorn last year having raised $100M in May from a list of iconic investors including Lightspeed, General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, and Sequoia.
Show moreShow lessEnterprise search is one of the best examples of a field that was in desperate need of disruption. In this episode, we meet one of the disruptors.
Listen and learn…
- Where there’s a gap in traditional search technology including Google
- How to retrieve the best answers across hundreds of SaaS apps
- How to understand what users need even when they don’t know the right way to ask for it
- How to use LLMs like ChatGPT to improve search accuracy
- How products like Alexa and Siri are teaching us to ask questions using natural language rather than searching with keywords
- How to personalize enterprise search without improperly using user data
- What is the future of knowledge management
References in this episode…
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Episode Number : 154
Parul Saini has been a technology leader at tech-first companies like Zuora, Splunk, and Uber for more than a decade in roles with increasing responsibility.
Show moreShow lessShe has had a birdseye view of AI tech trends and the future of work. In her current role at Uber, her service portfolio includes contact center, employee productivity, and identity management applications.
Today, we learn from an expert how to manage enterprise apps that support thousands of employees for a rapidly growing global company.
Listen and learn…
- Why “empathy” is the baseline for IT
- How to hire and retain IT talent
- How to navigate the dual challenges of being a technology leader and people manager simultaneously
- How to use AI to increase the velocity of hiring decisions
- Why great CIOs… are also great at sales and marketing
- What Parul has learned from Shantanu Narayen, Adobe CEO, and Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO
- One thing only Uber insiders know
- Parul’s advice for aspiring female IT leaders
References in this episode…
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Episode Number : 153
Binny Gill started his career as a programmer after studying CS and Engineering at IIT Kanpur and later UIUC, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Show moreShow lessHe then had an impressive eight-year run as a technology leader at Nutanix, the hyper-converged infrastructure company, eventually becoming its CTO for cloud services. In January 2021, Binny left Nutanix to start Kognitos based on a bold vision to make everyone a programmer. In this discussion, we learn about his journey and how generative AI just may change everything.
Thanks to Steve Kaplan for the intro to Binny.
Listen and learn:
- Binny’s inspiration for starting Kognitos: “…why should humans need to think like machines… when machines can now think like humans?”
- What makes programming so hard.
- Why the future of programming is using natural language to describe the features you want.
- How computing interfaces restrict us from communicating like humans when programming.
- Why Binny says “generative AI is the new electricity.”
- The most important leadership lesson Binny learned working alongside iconic leaders at IBM.
References in this episode:
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Episode Number : 152
Today’s guest belongs on the Mt. Rushmore of amazing female leaders we’ve interviewed on this podcast. Daphne and I met in November while co-presenting at the HMG Strategy event in New York City.
Show moreShow lessDaphne’s energy is infectious. Her passion for inspiring leaders was obvious on stage and even more obvious when we met afterward. Daphne’s new book Win When They Say You Won’t: Break Through Barriers and Keep Leveling Up Your Success became an instant best seller. Listen to this one, and you’ll understand why.
Before becoming an author, Daphne started The Board Curators to help others prepare for serving as paid company directors. She serves on numerous boards, including AMN Healthcare and Masonite International. Earlier in her career, Daphne was a serial CIO serving in IT leadership roles at companies including IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and GE Healthcare.
Listen and learn…
- Daphne’s remarkable path from poor kid in rural Illinois to global CIO
- How to overcome racial bias as a black female
- The subtle ways bias infiltrates organizations
- Where imposter syndrome originates… and how to conquer it
- How to “version your life” to adopt a growth mindset
- How to use Daphne’s EDIT process to achieve your goals
- Why DEI “won’t be a thing any more” in a decade
References in today’s episode…
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Episode Number : 151
This is one of my favorite episodes of the year. It’s our third annual long, strange trip into the mind of a Silicon Valley legend. Dave Kellogg is one of the best marketers, CEOs, tech provocateurs, and board whisperers around.
Show moreShow lessHe was an executive at iconic companies like SAP, MarkLogic, and Salesforce turned investor and board director who is now an executive in residence at Balderton Capital.
In this episode, we discuss, well, just about everything that matters for the tech economy… startup growth metrics, generative AI, how to get funded in 2023, and of course, our favorite jam band.
Listen and learn:
- What Dave got right… and not so right… in his 2022 predictions
- How startups can survive downturns
- How to fix the problems at Salesforce, Amazon, and Facebook
- What single theme will characterize 2023 in Silicon Valley
- What will happen to startups that raised massive rounds in 2021
- Why virtual companies won’t outperform companies built around hubs in tech centers
- What’s ahead for consumption-based pricing and PLG
- Why generative AI poses an existential threat to Google
References in this episode:
- Dave’s (excellent) blog
- Peter Fishman, Mozart Data CEO, on AI and the Future of Work
- Derek Steer, Mode co-founder, on AI and the Future of Work
- How ChatGPT can detect Alzheimer’s disease
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Episode Number : 150
Carter Busse has been leading IT organizations for more than two decades. He has been an IT leader at successful, high-growth organizations ranging from Salesforce to MobileIron to 8×8 to Cohesity Among his many accolades, he was recently named a 2022 ORBIE Bay Area CIO of the year and was also the first IT leader hired at Salesforce back in 2000.
Show moreShow lessCarter understands the challenges of managing tech infrastructure for high-growth tech companies where there’s zero margin for error because everyone thinks they know tech better than you. CIOs are like plumbing: nobody appreciates them when everything’s working but they’re the first to get blamed when there’s a blockage.
He’s now the CIO of rising star Workato, the integration automation platform that has raised more than $400M, was most recently valued at nearly $6B, and has about 1,000 employees in 13 offices around the world.
Listen and learn…
- What a CIO does.
- Why CIOs have the shortest tenure in the C-suite.
- The role of AI to improve employee experiences.
- How to recreate the Apple Genius Bar at work… for at-home employees.
- How generative AI will be used in the enterprise.
- Key questions to ask when evaluating new uses of AI.
- How CIOs deliver strategic value and avoid being “technology traffic cops”.
References in this episode:
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Episode Number : 149
Darren Murph has been Head of Remote at GitLab for 3.5 years and has been a part of its rise to prominence. His leadership helped shape GitLab’s remote-first culture. GitLab went public in 2021 and has about a $7B market cap. It’s one of the leading DevOps platforms and has grown its team to more than 2k employees.
Show moreShow lessBefore GitLab Darren has been an entrepreneur, journalist, and author. Oh, and by the way, he holds one of the most awesome records in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Listen and learn:
- How to make work an organizational principle instead of a perk or policy
- What a Head of Remote does… and why every company will soon hire one
- Why there’s no such thing as “hybrid” work
- The number one mistake organizations make when transitioning to remote work
- How remote-first teams make the most of in person team
- How GitLab uses the personal “readme” to help remote employees get to know each other
- How to Zoom happy hours with “community service hours”
- How Darren earned his place in the Guinness Book of World Records
References in this episode…
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Episode Number : 148
Today’s episode first appeared on Peter Scott’s (excellent!) AI and You podcast.
Peter Scott and David Wood are two of the most recognized AI futurists. Both are respected authors, speakers, and visionaries. Peter is a popular TEDx speaker and long-time NASA engineer. David was recently named one of the “top 100 most influential people in technology”.
Show moreShow lessToday’s discussion is a must-listen in which we discuss the future of technology, the future of work, and the future of humanity. In this one, Peter hosted and the three of us had a round table discussion about everything from generative AI to sentience. Let us know what you think after listening. Our DMs are open on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Listen and learn…
- Where AI won and lost in 2022
- Our predictions for AI in 2023
- What will the impact of ChatGPT be on the future of technology
- What tasks are best-suited for generative AI
- How we’ll regulate generative AI when it spews nonsense
- What is artificial general intelligence (AGI) and when we’ll achieve it
- What is sentience and are today’s bots sentient?
- How and where the US AI Bill of Rights falls short vs. AI regulation in the EU
- What we should be doing to systematize the practice of responsible AI
References in the episode:
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Episode Number : 147
We’ve met some brilliant product minds on this show over the years. If you’re a long-time listener you hopefully enjoyed discussions with legends like Phil McKinney, former CTO of HP, and Philippe Cases, founder and CEO of Topio Networks, among others. Today’s guest belongs on that list.
Show moreShow lessRich and I first met when he was starting UserVoice around 2010 and I was at ServiceNow. I love his approach to innovation. He pioneered the idea that listening to customers can be as easy as adding a feedback tab to every web page back when all that existed were clunky survey tools. Today, thousands of sites use the widget he invented.
He’s now out to make meetings more productive by helping attendees focus on conversations while an app transcribes them and offers simple buttons to annotate what’s happening. It’s obvious once you’ve used Fathom that this is the future of meetings.
Rich White is not only a serial innovator but also a repeat entrepreneur who has raised from a group of exceptional investors over the years and was part of the YC Winter 2021 batch. Enjoy!
Listen and learn…
- As a product expert and innovator, how to know when you’ve found “an itch worth scratching”
- What is “product-market fit” and how to know when you’ve achieved it
- What is a viral coefficient and how do you calculate it
- How the “jobs to be done” framework led Rich to develop the key feature of Fathom
- The hardest problem Fathom has solved… has nothing to do with voice transcription
- How Fathom trains developers to practice responsible AI
References in this episode:
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Episode Number : 146
Special episode this week! We recorded two live discussions from Turing’s BOUNDARYLESS “Future of Work” event in San Francisco. In the first, Rani Mavram , Complete.so CEO, discusses using data to transform compensation policies from being a liability to an asset for high-growth companies. In the second, Ankit Jain , Aviator CEO, discusses using automation to improve developer productivity for remote-first engineering teams.
Show moreShow lessListen and learn…
- From Rani Mavram:
- Why compensation policies have an outsize impact on employee engagement
- What’s required to make compensation plans transparent
- The difference between compensation plans and “total reward” packages
- Where innovation is happening in the field of employee compensation
- From Ankit Jain:
- How to make remote-first engineering teams successful
- Using automation to improve developer productivity
- How startups can replicate the developer experience at Google and Facebook
- The future of generative AI and GitHub Copilot in assisting human developers
References in today’s show:
- Turing’s BOUNDARYLESS event
- Complete.so for compensation transparency
- Aviator to improve developer productivity
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Episode Number : 145
Merve Hickok is one of the most recognized thought leaders in the emerging field of AI ethics. Merve is the founder of AIethicist.org and Lighthouse Career Consulting. Her work is at the intersection of AI and data ethics along with social justice and DEI policy and regulation.
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Merve was recently listed among the top 100 most brilliant women in AI ethics and in the past she lectured at the University of Michigan’s School of Information on Data Science ethics. Merve’s at the forefront of this emerging field that will define how we live and work for the next several decades. This is an important conversation. Enjoy!Show lessListen and learn…
- What led to Merve founding AIEthicist.org
- How the AI ethics conversation has evolved over the past year
- What the White House got right (and wrong) in the blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights
- What responsible AI means to Merve
- Why regulation doesn’t necessarily constrain innovation
- How AI policy and regulation are different around the world
References in this episode…
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Episode Number : 144
Emmanuel Turlay spent more than a decade in engineering roles at tech-first companies like Instacart and Cruise before realizing machine learning engineers need a better solution. Emmanuel started Sematic earlier this year and was part of the YC summer 2022 batch. He recently raised a $3M seed round from investors including Race Capital and Soma Capital. Thanks to friend of the podcast and former guest Hina Dixit from Samsung NEXT for the intro to Emmanuel.
Show moreShow lessI’ve been involved with the AutoML space for five years and, for full disclosure, I’m on the board of Auger which is in a related space. I’ve seen the space evolve and know how much room there is for innovation. This one’s a great education about what’s broken and what’s ahead from a true machine learning pioneer.
Listen and learn…
- How to turn every software engineer into a machine learning engineer
- How AutoML platforms are automating tasks performed in traditional ML tools
- How Emmanuel translated learning from Cruise, the self-driving car company, into an open source platform available to all data engineering teams
- How to move from building an ML model locally to deploying it to the cloud and creating a data pipeline… in hours
- What you should know about self-driving cars… from one of the experts who developed the brains that power them
- Why 80% of AI and ML projects fail
References in this episode:
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Episode Number : 143
Kevin Mulcahy, co-author of the Future Workplace Experience, has been thinking and writing about the future of work since 2016. Six years ago the future of work was dramatically different. Reading Kevin’s book makes him seem like a clairvoyant who predicted the future.
Show moreShow lessIn addition to being a successful author Kevin is a sought after speaker on all topics related to the future of work and workplace trends. In the past, he also lectured on entrepreneurship at Babson College.
Listen and learn:
- What HR teams need to know about delivering great employee experiences
- How Airbnb created a culture of measuring and improving the employee experience
- What are progressive employers doing to make the transition back to office work easier
- The three “soft leadership” questions every manager should get great at asking
- How to measure the quality of employee experiences
- How AI can be used to detect changes in tone in employee engagement
- Where to start when using AI to improve the employee experience
- How the metaverse will improve remote work
References in this episode:
- Twitter boss Elon Musk fires the entire ethics team as one of his first acts of “leadership”
- Charlene Li on AI and the Future of Work
- Gary Bolles on AI and the Future of Work
- Mark van Rijmenam on AI and the Future of Work
- Burn In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution by P.W. Singer and August Cole
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Episode Number : 142
Today’s guest is the co-founder and CEO of vAIsual, the company pioneering the use of generative AI to create synthetic stock media. All of those photos you see online and in print publications of people promoting products usually are human models posing in generic ways. Their pictures are sold by companies like Getty Images in marketplaces that are inefficient and limited in scope.
Show moreShow lessMichael Osterrieder and his partner Nico are legends in the world of stock media who realized there’s a better way. They created what they call an algorithmic camera and launched vAIsual last year to scratch their own catch. Michael is a serial entrepreneur and photographer based in Budapest and he’s out to test the limits of generative AI.
Listen and learn:
- How growing up listening to heavy metal inspired Michael’s career in visual media
- What are the challenges of using generative AI to create synthetic stock images of people
- How visual media content creation has evolved
- The ethics of generative AI
- What Michael describes as “the biggest art heist in history”
- How vAIsual extends human photos using machine vision and human labeling
- Can an AI be the owner of copyrighted material it produces?
- What is the definition of consciousness?
References in this episode…
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Episode Number : 141
Otto Soderlund co-founded Speechly in 2016 with Hannes Heikinheimo in their hometown of Helsinki. He believes voice should be a first-class citizen for all apps and making it easy for developers to add voice support from any platform will unlock new innovation.
Show moreShow lessSpeechly is a member of the YC Winter 22 batch. Otto and I recently co-presented at the VOICE22 event in Washington DC although I presented remote so this is the first time we’re actually meeting. I heard good things about his talk so I was eager for this discussion. It didn’t disappoint.
Listen and learn…
- Why voice is the new app and what it means to develop “voice-first” apps
- How RAIN Agency uses Speechly to help auto technicians use voice assistants to fix cars
- How to accurately detect and transcribe speech when dealing with common challenges like background noise and accents
- When speech detection achieved “superhuman” levels of accuracy
- How Speechly combines speech recognition with natural language understanding (NLU) on the local device
- How Otto thinks about exercising responsible AI
- Why “voice technology won’t exist as a separate field in a decade”
References in this episode…
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Episode Number : 140
Jonathan Frankle Jonathan Frankle, incoming Harvard Professor and Chief Scientist at MosaicML, is focused on reducing the cost of training neural nets. He received his PhD at MIT and his BSE and MSE from Princeton.
Show moreShow lessJonathan has also been instrumental in shaping technology policy related to AI. He worked on a landmark facial recognition report while working as a Staff Technologist at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law.
Thanks to great guest Hina Dixit from Samsung NEXT for the introduction to Jonathan!
Listen and learn…
- Why we can’t understand deep neural nets like we can understand biology or physics.
- Jonathan’s “lottery hypothesis” that neural nets are 50-90% bigger than they need to be…but it’s hard to find which parts aren’t necessary.
- How researchers are finding ways to reduce the cost and complexity of training neural nets.
- Why we shouldn’t expect another AI winter because “it’s now a fundamental substrate of research”.
- Which AI problems are a good fit for deep learning… and which ones aren’t.
- What’s the role for regulation in enforcing responsible use of AI.
- How Jonathan and his CTO Hanlin Tang at MosaicML create a culture that fosters responsible use of AI.
- Why Jonathan says “…We’re building a ladder to the moon if we think today’s neural nets will lead to AGI.”
References in this episode…
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Episode Number : 139
Eric Olson , CEO and co-founder of Consensus, is a collegiate athlete turned data scientist turned entrepreneur who needed faster access to reliable data while working at DraftKings. Consensus is a search engine that uses a large language model to find answers in peer-reviewed research articles. Eric’s living proof that the best entrepreneurs start by solving a problem they’ve encountered. Hear how Eric’s scratching his own itch.
Show moreShow lessListen and learn…
- Why Google isn’t the answer for scientists seeking evidence-based answers online
- Why a business model that relies on ads can’t solve the “unbiased answer” problem for researchers
- How Consensus addresses the problem of conflicting information online from credible resources
- How to use labels to improve search retrieval accuracy… without introducing bias into results
- How to use extractive large language models (LLMs), to extract relevant portions of documents and match them to NLP questions
- Why generative AI like GPT-3 can’t answer “what’s the consensus opinion out there” when multiple potential answers exist
- Who is responsible if Consensus delivers answers that lead to harmful outcomes
- What Eric learned as a division I NCAA athlete (Go Wildcats!) that has helped him as a high-tech entrepreneur
References in this episode:
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Episode Number : 138
Mona Akmal , CEO of sales intelligence platform Falkon, is the outspoken co-founder behind an emerging leader in a hot space. Mona migrated to the United States at age 20 with a CS degree and little else. She had an impressive 12-year run as a product leader at Microsoft where she helped scale OneDrive and Office. She subsequently led product and technology organizations at places like Code.org and Amperity. Two decades later, Mona’s the CEO of Falkon AI, an intelligence platform for go to market teams. Falkon recently raised $16M from a group of A-list investors that includes Greylock and Madera among others.
Show moreShow lessListen and learn…
- Why Mona’s philosophy revolves around two words: “efficiency” and “excellence”
- What makes a standout sales rep great.
- How do find signal in noisy sales and marketing data
- How many touches are required from stage one to closing a B2B deal
- How to fix the CRM data hygiene problem
- Why econometrics approaches perform better than machine learning to solve the “small data problem”
- Why “everyone needs to be coached and nobody needs to be managed”
- Mona’s (legendary) mental health advice to entrepreneurs
References in this episode…
- Barr Moses from Monte Carlo on AI and the Future of Work
- Derek Steer from Mode on AI and the Future of Work
- Peter Fishman from Mozart Data on AI and the Future of Work
- Stephen Messer from Collective[i] on AI and the Future of Work
- Kamal Ahluwalia on AI and the Future of Work
- Leading scientists fear AI could lead to nuclear war by the end of the century
