The AI with Maribel Lopez (AI with ML)

Latest Episodes:

AI with Maribel Lopez: IBM Granite Models with Kate Soule Mar 10, 2025

Show notes

Episode Summary

In this episode, Maribel Lopez interviews Kate Soule, Director of Technical Product Management for IBM's Granite products. They discuss IBM's third-generation AI models, their focus on efficiency and enterprise readiness, and the latest advancements including vision capabilities and reasoning features.

Guest

Kate Soule - Director of Technical Product Management for IBM's Granite products

Key Topics & Timestamps

00:04 - Introduction

Maribel introduces the show and Kate Soule
Brief overview of IBM Granite as fit-for-purpose, open-source enterprise AI models

00:48 - What is IBM Granite?

Designed as core building blocks for enterprises building with generative AI
Focus on efficiency with smaller model sizes
Monthly innovation updates to keep pace with rapidly evolving field

02:19 - Understanding AI Reasoning

Explanation of reasoning capabilities in AI models
How allowing models to generate more text at inference time can improve performance
Cost/benefit tradeoffs of reasoning features

03:13 - Enterprise AI Model Selection Criteria

Moving beyond "one model to rule them all" thinking
Importance of fit-for-purpose models
Why smaller models can be customized more easily
Trust and transparency considerations

05:38 - AI Governance and Safety

How to evaluate models for governance requirements
Safety evaluations and benchmarks as table stakes
Systems-based approach to safety with guardrails
IBM's Granite Guardian and protection mechanisms

08:55 - Benefits of Smaller Models

Why size matters: cost, latency, and customization advantages
Smaller models are easier to customize and require less computing power
IBM's transparent approach to training data

10:13 - Future of AI Evaluation

Performance per cost becoming the key evaluation metric
The growing importance of flexibility in model selection
How the "efficient frontier" between cost and performance will differentiate providers

12:41 - IBM's Vision Models

IBM's pragmatic enterprise focus for multimodal capabilities
Vision understanding (image in, text out) for practical business use cases
Specialization for documents, charts, and dashboards
Delivering powerful capabilities in only 2 billion parameters

15:25 - Understanding Model Size Context

Evolution from millions to billions of parameters
Practical considerations of deploying different-sized models
Finding the right cost-benefit trade-off for specific use cases

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Analyst Commentary on AI and the Customer Experience At Zoho Day 2025 Feb 19, 2025

Show notes

This conversation explores the transformative impact of AI on business, particularly focusing on Zoho's evolution as it aims to enhance its enterprise offerings. The speakers discuss the importance of understanding customer data, the global dynamics of AI adoption, and Zoho's unique culture that fosters innovation. They also touch on the future of enterprise software and the integration of AI, emphasizing the need for a holistic view of customer engagement.

Takeaways:

Massive interest in AI is changing markets and valuations.
Tools are only as effective as their application in serving customers.
Zoho is aggressively moving into the enterprise space with a focus on AI.
Integration of data is crucial for a comprehensive customer view.
The concept of customer 360 is often misunderstood.
Global market dynamics affect how AI is adopted in different regions.
Zoho's culture promotes innovation and responsiveness to customer needs.
AI will soon be an integral part of enterprise operations.
Not every enterprise is a fit for Zoho's offerings.
The future of enterprise software will be driven by AI and data integration.

Chapters

00:00
The Rise of AI and Its Impact on Business

01:59
Zoho's Evolution and Enterprise Focus

06:10
Understanding Customer Data and Integration

10:08
Global Perspectives on AI and Market Dynamics

13:54
Zoho's Unique Culture and Approach to Innovation

21:56
Future of Enterprise Software and AI Integration

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AI in Supply Chain: Transforming Industry Through Innovation Feb 11, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, Maribel Lopez of Lopez Research interviews Kevin McInturff Chief Technology Officer of Logility. We explore the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on supply chain management and the key considerations for successful implementation. Our discussion covers critical insights for business leaders and practitioners navigating the AI landscape.
Key Discussion Points
Throughout our conversation, we delve into how artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping supply chain operations. The democratization of information through generative AI has opened new possibilities, though organizations continue to grapple with data integration challenges. We examine the critical balance between innovation and responsibility, particularly regarding ethics and data security in AI deployment.
The discussion reveals how real-world applications of AI are enhancing decision-making processes across supply chain operations. We explore emerging AI technologies that are revolutionizing forecasting methods, while acknowledging the ongoing evolution of ROI measurement for AI investments. Building trust in AI systems emerges as a fundamental requirement for successful adoption.
Our conversation emphasizes the importance of practical experimentation with AI solutions. Organizations must understand the interplay of different roles and technical languages in AI implementation. This approach allows companies to develop effective, tailored solutions while maintaining ethical considerations and data security.
## Episode Resources
If you'd like to learn more about the topics discussed in this episode, follow me on social media at Youtube for the video version of this podcast and LinkedIN and X (Twitter) for AI research updates and insights.

Kevin McInturff Expert Bio:
Kevin McInturff, Chief Technology Officer of Logility, has 20+ years of experience in product and engineering roles. He spent his early career as an engineer on a plant floor working in industrial automation and plant information systems before moving into enterprise SaaS software. Under his leadership Logility has accelerated the pace of innovation and focused on delivering high quality product, a superior user experience and solutions that enable supply chain organizations to anticipate disruptions as opportunities to reap competitive advantages. He is passionate about understanding and meeting client needs with innovative solutions while building great engineering and product culture within his team.
Outside of his work with Logility he actively volunteers with the 501st Legion a non-profit who partners with other organizations to brighten the lives of the less fortunate and to bring awareness to positive causes on both a local and global scale. Kevin is a lifelong learner, an artist, and avid practitioner of the art of tsundoku.
He has earned a BS in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Masters of Science, Management of Technology from Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business. Kevin lives in Smyrna, Georgia with his wife and three daughters.

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How Amazon Web Services Quicksight and AI Enhance GoDaddy's Business Jan 29, 2025

Show notes

Maribel Lopez of Lopez Research hosted a podcast at AWS Reinvent, discussing QuickSight with ATracy Daugherty GM, QuickSight at Amazon Web Service and Travis Muhlestein, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at GoDaddy. QuickSight, a cloud-based BI tool, enables real-time data sharing and decision-making through dashboards, pixel-perfect reports, and Q for asking data questions. In the podcast, Muhlstein shares how QuickSight has transformed GoDaddy's approach from static dashboards to real-time, interactive data exploration and analysis, enabling more agile, data-driven decision-making across the organization.
Follow the guests at:
Maribel Lopez https://www.linkedin.com/in/maribellopez/
Travis Muhlestein, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at GoDaddy https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-muhlestein/
Tracy Daugherty GM, QuickSight at Amazon Web Services https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-daugherty-28a1014/

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AWS Re:Invent Announcement Highlights With Lopez Research and ZK Research Jan 22, 2025

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Wendy’s Serves Up AI to Enhance the Customer and Employee Experience Jan 15, 2025

Show notes

Every industry, including the quick service restaurant (QSR) market, plans to transform its business with artificial intelligence (AI). Several years ago, Wendy's embarked on its AI journey, leveraging cloud services and generative AI to enhance employee and customer experiences. The drive-thru experience presents numerous challenges for QSR restaurants due to the complexities of menu options, limited-time offers, special requests, and ambient noise.

Wendy's chose to tackle the drive-thru experience with AI because 75 to 80 percent of Wendy's customers choose the drive-thru as their preferred ordering channel. The company saw a tremendous opportunity to improve the customer experience by creating a seamless ordering experience using AI automation in the drive-thru.

In an interview with Lopez Research, Wendy's CIO Matt Spessard shared how its AI program had advanced over the past year and shared advice for other leaders looking to tackle AI within their business.

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AWS Re:Invent Recap with Tim Crawford and Liz Miller Jan 08, 2025

Show notes

At Amazon Re:Invent, Maribel Lopez met with several industry analysts to discuss their perspectives on what happened at one of the industry's premier cloud computing and AI trade shows.
https://reinvent.awsevents.com/

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The Shifting Enterprise Security Landscape a Conversation with Cisco's Tom Gillis Dec 31, 2024

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Dell Technologies Chief AI Officer Shares Insight Delivering Successful AI Implementations Dec 18, 2024

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Episode Summary:
In this episode, Maribel Lopez speaks with Dell’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Officer John Roese about Dell’s enterprise AI technologies from their development to their future. Roese explains how the initial magical thinking around artificial intelligence has shifted into a more practical approach that aims to maximize the benefits of each implementation. He also discusses the emerging trends and ideas that he is seeing in the AI space.
Key Themes:
Maribel and John start by delving into enterprise AI and AI markets in general. John explains the types of AI markets and how enterprise AI differs from other applications. The conversation then moves into the challenges of AI and the steps that Dell is taking to address them.
Next, John and Maribel reflect on the near-universal reactive approach that companies took to AI two years ago and how parts of that approach backfired or fizzled out. While this technology could have been approached better, its widespread use has provided companies with a real world understanding of LLMs and their applications. Now, companies take a more practical approach to AI while continuing to innovate.
The key innovation that Roese highlights is agentic architecture. This technology differs from previous generative AI applications because it can operate autonomously and is highly specialized. Individual “agents” can have job descriptions that they are trained for much like a human being, and they can interact with each other as a human team would.
For detailed show notes, navigate the episode using the time stamps below:
[1:26] Maribel introduces the guest of the episode, John Roese. Roese is the CTO and Chief AI Officer at Dell Technologies.
[1:59] The AI market is not a singular market – there is a traditional market, a training market, and an enterprise market. The enterprise market is very pragmatic in its applications.
[4:10] Maribel asks about the challenges businesses see in enterprise adoption. Early discussions of new AI technology treated it like magic. Now that we have real world use cases and a better understanding of the technology, Dell is able to have grounded conversations about AI applications with real impacts.
[7:48] Roesch explains the challenges that Dell is facing with AI. One of the challenges was determining where to prioritize as a company. Another is the process by which you develop application ideas. Dell had this issue when bringing ideas that were not fully formed to their legal team.
[11:44] No one got AI perfectly right. Almost universally, companies reacted at the technical level before looking at business priorities. Roese encourages companies to move toward a more thoughtful approach to AI technology.
[13:36] Dell learned that its goal was to add in the minimum sufficient AI structure to address the maximum use cases. In Dell’s case, half of their use cases were related to converting proprietary data into generative outcomes. Creating one model to handle all of these cases is the most efficient approach.
[15:05] Maribel asks Roese about the trends Dell is seeing in AI. Roese points to the emergence of agentic architecture. The idea behind agentic architecture is that they are autonomously performing agents with very specialized purposes. They can be combined much like a team of human beings.
Follow John Roese: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnroese/
Learn more about Dell’s AI solutions: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/scc/sc/artificial-intelligence
Follow Maribel Lopez on X/Twitter: https://x.com/maribellopez
Subscribe to Maribel Lopez on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MaribelLopezResearch
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How Cloud Computing Provides Flexible Options to Design Your AI Strategy Nov 19, 2024

Show notes

Episode Summary:
In this episode, Maribel Lopez speaks with Google Cloud Product Manager Bobby Allen about the current benefits and future possibilities of artificial intelligence in the context of Google’s AI services. They explore the flexibility of Googles services that sets them apart, the environmental impacts of LLMs in comparison with their predecessor NLMs, and how companies can take a human approach to AI to make peoples lives better.
Key Themes:
Maribel and Bobby begin by discussing Google’s AI services. Allen explains the wide variety of AI services offered by Google, which fall into three main categories: building AI, building with AI, and using AI. Most organizations are currently interested in using AI, and they have seen tangible benefits from doing so.
Bobby refers to these benefits as the “four I’s”: insight, increase, improvement, and innovation. Companies that adopt AI can see increases in productivity, gain insights into large documents through AI summarization, and more. Ai also has growing applications in compliance and query creation to analyze large datasets.
Last, Maribel and Bobby discuss the future of AI. Bobby points to a human-first future with a focus on the impacts of AI applications, including sustainability and marginalization. He believes that AI should solve real problems and male peoples lives better.
Follow Bobby Allen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ballen-clt/
Learn more about AWS: http://aws.amazon.com/
Visit Maribel Lopez’s Website: https://www.lopezresearch.com/
Follow Maribel Lopez on X/Twitter: https://x.com/maribellopez
Subscribe to Maribel Lopez on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MaribelLopezResearch
Follow Maribel Lopez on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/maribellopez/

STAY CONNECTED

Subscribe to the AI with Maribel Lopez audio podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1947446
Subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter — AI Decoded with Maribel Lopez: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/ai-decoded-with-maribel-lopez-7312533413582827520/
Lopez Research blog: https://www.lopezresearch.com/research/
Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maribellopez/
Follow me on X: https://x.com/MaribelLopez

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