AI and the Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Business, Ethics, HR, and IT for AI Enthusiasts, Leaders and Academics

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Binny Gill, Founder and CEO of Kognitos, discusses how LLMs like ChatGPT are making us all programmers Feb 06, 2023

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Binny Gill started his career as a programmer after studying CS and Engineering at IIT Kanpur and later UIUC, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He 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.

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Daphne Jones, best-selling author of "Win When They Say You Won't" and serial CIO, shares advice for anyone who has ever experienced imposter syndrome Jan 30, 2023

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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. Daphne’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...

SE 5: Special episode: Dave Kellogg, serial CEO, investor, and SaaS pioneer, shares his (provocative) tech predictions for 2023 Jan 23, 2023

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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. He 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

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Carter Busse, CIO of future of work unicorn Workato, shares why it's hard to own technology... at a technology company Jan 16, 2023

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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 8x8 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.
Carter 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".

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Darren Murph, Head of Remote at GitLab and Guinness world record holder, discusses what's required to make remote-first work cultures succeed Jan 09, 2023

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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.
Before 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...

AI wins and losses in 2022... and predictions for 2023 with two AI legends: tech futurists Peter Scott and David Wood Jan 02, 2023

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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".
Today'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

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Rich White, UserVoice founder and Fathom CEO, discusses the future of meetings and how he made Zoom calls suck less Dec 25, 2022

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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.
Rich 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

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SE 4: Special episode live from the BOUNDARYLESS Future of Work event in SF: Rani Mavram, Complete CEO, and Ankit Jain, Aviator CEO Dec 18, 2022

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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.
Listen 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

Merve Hickok, one of the "top 100 most brilliant women in AI ethics," shares what you need to know about the blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights Dec 11, 2022

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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.

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!

Listen 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...

Emmanuel Turlay, Founder and CEO of Sematic and machine learning pioneer, discusses what's required to turn every software engineer into an ML engineer Dec 04, 2022

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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.

I’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

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