Stay ConnectedThe AI in Business Podcast is for non-technical business leaders who need to find AI opportunities, align AI capabilities with strategy, and deliver ROI.
Each week, Emerj research staff and journalists interview top AI executives from Fortune 2000 firms and unicorn startups – uncovering trends, use-cases, and best practices for practical AI adoption.
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Copyright: © Daniel Faggella, 2014
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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