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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Peter Scott, popular author, TedX speaker, and futurist, discusses how to ensure AI is used for good… despite the potential for it doing harm Sep 18, 2022

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

Listen and learn:

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

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Kia Kokalitcheva, Axios tech reporter and co-author of the Pro Rata newsletter, discusses what Adam Neumann’s new company Flow means for the future of work Sep 11, 2022

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

Listen and learn…

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

References in this episode:

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

Deon Nicholas, CEO of Forethought, discusses how human-centered AI improves the customer experience Sep 04, 2022

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Deon Nicholas, Forethought Co-Founder CEO, grew up in inner city Toronto stocking shelves in a pharmacy before learning to code at an early age. He started Forethought in 2017 after learning the value of answering customer questions working for companies like Facebook and Pure Storage.
Deon has since raised $92M from an exceptional group of investors including funds like Steadfast Capital and NEA plus celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashton Kutcher, and Robert Downey Jr. Deon won the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield startup competition in 2018 and is a member of the Forbes 30 under 30. He’s also a mentor and advisor to founders of color.
Listen and learn...

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

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Jim Lawton, worldwide authority on industrial robots, discusses how humans and machines are partnering to improve safety and efficiency in manufacturing Aug 28, 2022

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

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

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Kamal Ahluwalia, Eightfold President, discusses how he grew a unicorn and how AI helps find the right career for everyone in the world Aug 21, 2022

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

Listen and learn…

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

References in this episode:

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

Turn the tables! Former guest, author, and QSTAC CEO Ben Brennan interviews Dan Turchin about AI and the future of work Aug 14, 2022

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

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

References in this episode:

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

Gadi Shamia, CEO at Replicant, discusses the future of bots for contact center automation to improve customer service Aug 07, 2022

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

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

References in this episode:

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

Krish Ramineni, Fireflies CEO, discusses the future of AI voice assistants to make meetings more productive Jul 31, 2022

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

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

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Joel Eagle, Senior Director at McDonald's, shares how AI helps serve 70 million meals every day Jul 24, 2022

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

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

References in this episode...

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

Ben Brennan, QSTAC CEO and author of Badass IT Support, discusses how to quantify the employee experience Jul 17, 2022

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Ben Brennan, QSTAC CEO, author, and former IT exec at Yahoo and Verizon Media, is a world traveler, a musician, and a trained psychologist with passions for philosophy and psychotherapy. Not exactly the traditional background for an IT leader. Early roles at Pivotal Labs and Jawbone taught Ben that bringing humanity to technology is the future of work. He since published Badass IT Support and started QSTAC to measure the employee experience.
Listen and learn...

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

References in this episode...