Me, Myself, and AI
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In the time before Me, Myself, and AI returns for Season 10, we're pleased to bring you a special episode from our friends at the Modern CTO podcast. From Modern CTO: Today we’re talking to Sam Ransbotham, professor at Boston College. Sam shares with us the reason that the vast majority of companies are falling behind the AI curve, why most people just slap AI onto a problem instead of fixing it, and the ways in which technology can improve not only our business processes but also our quality of life.
Joelle Pineau’s curiosity led her to pursue a doctorate in engineering with a focus on robotics, which she describes as her “gateway into AI.” As vice president of AI research at Meta, Joelle leads a team committed to openness in the service of high-quality research, responsible AI development, and community contribution. In this episode, Joelle, who is also a professor at McGill University, weighs the advantages industry and academia each have for conducting artificial intelligence research. She also describes specific AI research projects Meta is working on, including scientific discovery initiatives focused on addressing societal problems like carbon capture. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Joelle Pineau is vice president of AI research at Meta and a professor at McGill University. Her research focuses primarily on developing new models and algorithms for planning and learning in complex, partially observable domains. She also applies these algorithms to robotics, health care, games, and conversational agents. Pineau serves on the board of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and the Journal of Machine Learning Research. She has a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Waterloo and master’s degree and doctorate in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Andy Goffin. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
If you’ve played with Photoshop’s Generative Fill feature or worked in Nvidia’s Omniverse platform, you’ve touched tools that Patrick Hebron’s work has made possible. A dual major in philosophy and film production, Patrick approaches creative pursuits with a deep curiosity and the belief that if a “tool gets used in exactly the way that we anticipated, then we have really failed catastrophically.” He believes that emerging digital design tools will elevate human creativity, and he aims to develop technology solutions that will empower creative end users to continue to push boundaries. On this episode, Patrick describes some of the technical challenges in building generative AI solutions for creative pursuits, as well as their vast potential. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Patrick Hebron is a designer, software developer, teacher, and author. His work explores the intersection of machine learning, design tools, programming languages, and operating systems. In particular, he has focused on the development of AI-driven digital design tools. He founded the Machine Intelligence Design groups at Nvidia and Adobe and was vice president of R&D at Stability AI. He is the author of Machine Learning for Designers, published by O’Reilly Media, as well as numerous articles, including Rethinking Design Tools in the Age of Machine Learning and A Unified Tool for the Education of Humans and Machines. He has also worked as an adjunct graduate professor and scientist in residence at New York University. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Andy Goffin. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
When Mario Rodriguez emigrated from Cuba to the United States at age 14 with his parents — a university professor, and a teacher turned electrical engineer — they had already instilled in him the value of education and a love of learning. That passion has guided him throughout his career — as a program manager with Microsoft; then as part of GitHub, following Microsoft’s 2018 acquisition of the developer platform; and as a cofounder of a charter school in North Carolina. Now, as senior vice president of product at GitHub, Mario oversees the team developing the GitHub Copilot AI-assisted software development tool. Mario joins this episode to share his views on product development, GitHub Copilot’s effect on productivity and job satisfaction, and a future in which more people can easily develop their own software. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Mario Rodriguez leads the GitHub Product team as senior vice president of product. His core identity is that of a learner, and his passion is creating developer tools — so much so that he has spent the past 20 years in leadership roles across Microsoft and GitHub. His most recent work involves overseeing GitHub’s AI strategy and launching and growing the GitHub Copilot product line across thousands of organizations and millions of users. Rodriguez also cochairs a charter school that he cofounded in an effort to help progress STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) education in rural regions of the United States. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Andy Goffin. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Paul Romer once considered himself the most optimistic economist. He rightfully predicted that technology would blow up as an economic driver coming out of the inflation of the 1970s but acknowledges he did not foresee the inequality that technology advances would lead to. On this episode, Paul shares his views on AI advances and their implications for society. Rather than pave the way for full automation, he is a proponent of keeping humans in the loop and believes that, rather than slowing down technology, it can be pointed in a direction for more meaningful and beneficial use, citing education as an area ripe to benefit from AI. Listen to the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Andy Goffin. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Actor Tye Sheridan may not consider himself a technology expert, but his knowledge of visual effects (VFX) processes led him to cofound AI-driven startup Wonder Dynamics. With the company’s new product, Wonder Studio, creators can upload 2D video and transform it into 3D animations at a fraction of the cost of the motion-capture animation process typically used by Hollywood studios. Tye joins this episode to talk about the genesis of his company, plus he shares his views on artificial intelligence’s impact on creativity in the film industry and the opportunities it can offer creators. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Tye Sheridan is an actor and producer who has appeared in a number of films, including Ready Player One and X-Men: Apocalypse. In 2017, with Nikola Todorovic, he cofounded Wonder Dynamics, a technology company that’s creating AI-powered film production tools. Its proprietary AI software, Wonder Studio, uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically animate, light, and compose computer-generated characters in live-action scenes. The company is on a mission to build AI tools that enable creators to produce studio-level visual effects and CGI-heavy content for a significantly lower cost than the traditional motion-capture process. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Andy Goffin. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Jeff Cooper parlayed his interest in neuroscience and human behavior into a career in data science and today works as a senior data science director for online retail subscription service Stitch Fix. Jeff joins Me, Myself, and AI to share how the company pairs human employees with intelligent technologies to keep up with customer preferences while realizing operational efficiencies. He also talks about how the company sustains extremely high feedback rates from consumers and how humans are training models, as well as vice versa, leading to interesting feedback loops. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Jeff Cooper is a senior data science director at Stitch Fix, the global leader in personalized styling, where he oversees the Client Algorithms team, which develops models for product recommendations, style, and growth. He previously held data science leadership roles at Tradesy, FabFitFun, and Disney, as well as research roles in decision neuroscience at Caltech and Trinity College Dublin. Jeff has a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Like many product leaders in the technology space, Jackie Rocca took a somewhat circuitous path to that role. After beginning her career in management consulting with Bain, she earned her MBA at Stanford and then worked at Google, where she helped launch YouTube TV. Now, she serves as vice president of product at Slack, where she focuses on the collaboration platform’s Slack AI product. As a product leader, Jackie had continually heard from users that they were experiencing a common challenge: It was a struggle to keep up with the pace of information and prioritize where to focus their attention and energy. So she looked to AI as a potential source of solutions and is now leading a team that’s focused on launching AI-driven features to address user pain points. The Slack AI team’s work is already helping customers take advantage of the wealth of knowledge within Slack exchanges by providing features such as channel recaps, thread summaries, and the ability to ask questions to surface information that’s embedded within conversations. On this episode, Jackie describes how her team approaches new product design in the generative AI space and offers up some predictions for what lies ahead. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio Jackie Rocca is vice president of product at Slack. In that role, she oversees the vision and execution of Slack AI, which brings generative AI natively and securely into the collaboration platform’s user experience. Rocca has delivered on a number of AI initiatives in her five years with the company and is now on a mission to help customers further accelerate their productivity and get even more value out of their conversations, data, and collective knowledge. Before joining Slack, Rocca spent more than six years as a product manager at Google, where she helped launch and grow YouTube TV. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Daniele Petecchi didn’t realize how complex the process of producing tires was until he joined Pirelli, a company that’s been in the business of manufacturing tires for more than 150 years. But now, as head of data management and AI, he’s focused on leveraging the company’s wealth of data to meet the stringent technical, quality, and performance requirements of the Formula One racers and luxury vehicle makers — like Ferrari, Lamborghini, and BMW — that rely on Pirelli’s premium tires. In this episode, Daniele explains why virtualization and data are key to managing the complexity of an R&D and production cycle that includes using digital twins to predict how a tire will sound on the road and maximizing efficiency at plants that manufacture millions of tires each year. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio Daniele Petecchi is head of AI and data managementat Pirelli, where he leads critical initiatives that harness artificial intelligence technology to drive innovation and efficiency for the premium tire manufacturer. Petecchi earned his degree in telecommunications engineering, specializing in digital signal processing, which laid the foundation for his career in technology. He subsequently earned a Master of Science degree in information management, which equipped him with a strong strategic perspective. In 2018, he further reinforced his skill set by completing the General Management Program at ESCP Business School, enabling him to navigate the intricate intersection of technology and business. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
On this bonus episode, we head to the World Bank offices in Washington, D.C., where hosts Sam and Shervin joined organizers Jonathan Timmis and Timothy DeStefano from the World Bank and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business for the day-long conference, “How is Artificial Intelligence Transforming Firms?” in December 2023. In our final of three bonus episodes derived from this event, we explore how AI has shifted policy discussions, and what new types of management are needed. This episode offers an abridged listen to the panel discussion; for the full session video, please visit the conference’s website. Guest Bios Carol Corrado is a distinguished principal research fellow, conference board & senior policy scholar at Georgetown University. Olivia Igbokwe-Curry is head of U.S. congressional and political affairs at Amazon Web Services. Scott Wallsten is president and senior fellow at The Technology Policy Institute. Nikolas Zolas is a former senior economist at the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau. Sam Ransbotham is cohost of Me, Myself, and AI and a professor of analytics at Boston College. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
While Me, Myself, and AI is on winter break, we hope you enjoy this episode. Jennifer Strong, longtime journalist and creator of the SHIFT podcast, joins Sam and Shervin to talk about their favorite Me, Myself, and AI episode Find the additional podcasts mentioned in the episode below: SHIFT podcast In Machines We Trust WSJ’s The Future of Everything Guest Bio: Jennifer Strong is an audio journalist covering the impact of AI on the way we live and work. She’s the creator of several tech podcasts for newsrooms, including ProPublica, The Wall Street Journal, and MIT Technology Review. Her podcast SHIFT, with the Public Radio Exchange, covers "the far-reaching impact of automation on our daily lives," according to Apple Podcasts. Her reporting has been widely recognized, including six Webby and three Podcast Academy Award nominations. Her narrative podcasts were finalists at the New York Festivals for the last two years, and a finalist for Podcast of the Year by The Drum Awards in London for a taping she did inside an experimental fighter plane. Strong has also produced a business show for NPR and reported on national security for PRI. She’s been a keynote stage host and moderator at the AI for Good Global Summit, The Future of Everything Festival, Web Summit, among others. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Alanna Hooper. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
On this bonus episode, we head to the World Bank offices in Washington, D.C., where hosts Sam and Shervin joined organizers Jonathan Timmis and Timothy DeStefano from the World Bank and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business for the day-long conference, “How is Artificial Intelligence Transforming Firms?” in December 2023. In our second of three bonus episodes derived from this event, we explore how AI is used in manufacturing. Sam hosts this panel featuring Shervin alongside Ness Shroff, director of the AI Edge Institute at Ohio State University, and Matthew Wilding, colead of U.S. Steel’s Digital & Artificial Intelligence Program. This episode offers an abridged listen to the panel discussion; for the full session video, please visit the conference’s website. Guest Bios Ness Shroff is director of the AI Edge Institute at Ohio State University. Matthew Wilding is colead of U.S. Steel’s Digital & Artificial Intelligence Program. Shervin Khodabandeh is cohost of Me, Myself, and AI and a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group. Sam Ransbotham is cohost of Me, Myself, and AI and a professor of analytics at Boston College. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
While Me, Myself, and AI is on winter break, we hope you enjoy this episode. Tom Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, joins Sam and Shervin to talk about their predictions for AI trends in 2024. Find the additional studies and resources mentioned in the episode below: Tom Davenport’s articles with MIT SMR 2024 CDO Insights: Data & Generative AI(form required for download via AWS) Why Companies That Wait to Adopt AI May Never Catch Up What the data says about Americans’ Use of Artificial Intelligence (Pew Research) What do AI chatbots really mean for students and cheating? (Stanford Graduate School of Education) Randy Bean’s 2024 Executive Survey Guest Bio Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, a visiting professor at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, and a fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. He is coauthor of Working With AI: Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration (MIT Press, 2022). Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
On this bonus episode, we head to the World Bank offices in Washington, D.C., where hosts Sam and Shervin joined organizers Jonathan Timmis and Timothy DeStefano from the World Bank and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business for the day-long conference, “How is Artificial Intelligence Transforming Firms?” in December 2023. In our first of three bonus episodes derived from this event, we explore how AI is used in retail in a discussion facilitated by Shervin featuring Walmart’s Prakhar Mehrotra (who you may remember from the very first episode of Me, Myself, and AI!) and Tapestry’s Fabio Luzzi. This episode offers an abridged listen to the panel discussion; for the full session video, please visit the conference’s website. Guest Bios Prakhar Mehrotra is corporate vice president, applied AI at Walmart. Fabio Luzzi is head of data and analytics at Tapesty. Shervin Khodabandeh is cohost of Me, Myself, and AI and a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
When Mark Surman produced a pro-peace public service announcement for his local TV station as a self-proclaimed “punk rock kid” in the 1980s, he wasn’t thinking about a future career evangelizing fair, equitable, and trustworthy technology access for everyone. But today, as president of the Mozilla Foundation, he is focused on exactly that. Mark went on to study filmmaking and has parlayed his communications expertise into technology leadership roles, where he has continued to work to “change hearts and minds by telling the truth.” On this episode, Mark shares his take on the roles of both big tech and startups in the responsible AI conversation and also describes a recent report on trustworthy AI from the Mozilla Foundation. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Mark Surman is president of the Mozilla Foundation, a global nonprofit that does everything from developing the Firefox web browser to advocating for a more open, equitable internet. His current focus is fueling Mozilla’s efforts to invest in responsible tech startups (via Mozilla Ventures) and to create foundational technology for more trustworthy AI (via Mozilla.ai). Before joining Mozilla, Surman spent 15 years leading organizations and projects that promoted the use of the internet and open-source technology for social empowerment. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Growing up in a multilingual community, Prem Natarajan became interested in language at a young age. Eventually that interest, aptitude, and curiosity translated into an interest in machine learning and technical development, and today Prem works as the chief scientist and head of enterprise AI at financial services company Capital One. Prem joins this episode to share how Capital One’s technology teams are delivering value to customers by applying artificial intelligence in areas like fraud detection, how generative AI’s strengths stand to transform the developer experience, and why the right combination of product, science, and engineering expertise is key to successful AI and machine learning initiatives. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: As chief scientist and head of enterprise AI at Capital One, Prem Natarajan leads technology strategy, architecture, and development for the company’s enterprise data, analytics, and AI and machine learning initiatives, including advancing its AI capabilities, tools, and research efforts. Natarajan has more than two decades of experience leading science, technology, and commercialization efforts in natural language processing, speech recognition, computer vision, forecasting, and other applications of machine learning. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
When Vandi Verma saw the Spirit and Opportunity rovers land on Mars while she was working toward a Ph.D. in robotics, it set her on a path toward working at NASA in space exploration., Perhaps unsurprisingly, today, as chief engineer for robotic operations at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Vandi sees the biggest opportunities for artificial intelligence in robotics and automation. She describes the ways in which the Mars rovers rely on AI, including the technology’s use in digital twin simulations that enable JPL scientists at to practice their driving skills before actually controlling the rovers on Mars. She also discusses how NASA’s use of AI — and its approach to risk — offer lessons for organizations that are looking to simulate real-world scenarios here on Earth. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. Guest bio: Vandi Verma is a principal engineer and the deputy section manager for the Mobility & Robotics section at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She also serves as chief engineer of robotic operations for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. She was previously the assistant section manager of the Mobility & Robotics section, the supervisor of the section staff group, and the supervisor of the Operable Robotics Group. Verma works on new robotics capabilities, including R&D; mission design; prototyping; flight development, testing, and launch; and landing and surface operations. She has been engaged in robotic operations on Mars since 2008 with the Mars Exploration Rover mission's Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity rover, Perseverance rover, and Ingenuity helicopter. Before joining JPL, she led the NASA Ames Research Center team that developed PLEXIL (Plan Execution Interchange Language) for operating autonomous systems, as well as the development of technology that has been deployed on rovers and human spaceflight projects. Verma earned a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Ellen Nielsen, Chevron’s first chief data officer, sees data as the common thread throughout a career that has spanned systems, digital data, procurement, and supply chain. In her current role, she applies what she’s learned to Chevron’s wide-ranging AI and machine learning initiatives, including the use of robots and computer vision to inspect tanks, digital twins to simulate operations, and sensors to monitor equipment in refineries. On this episode, Ellen shares examples of the petrochemical giant’s use cases for machine learning and generative AI, and she describes the company’s citizen development program, which puts safe, secured AI and machine learning tools in the hands of employees throughout Chevron. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. Guest bio: Ellen Nielsen is the chief data officer at Chevron, where she focuses on creating a data-oriented culture partnered with value-chain thinking. A multidisciplinary leader, Nielsen has over 30 years of global experience as an executive in IT, digital, data, procurement, and supply chain. She has worked with industry leaders in oil and gas, fast-moving consumer goods, automotive, manufacturing, retail, and banking and insurance. Nielsen is a regular speaker at industry events and has received numerous awards and recognitions, including being named to CDO Magazine’s 2023 Global Data Power Women list. She was also ranked fifth on the 2023 DataIQ 100 list of the most influential people in data in the United States. She also serves on a variety of boards, including PIDX (Petroleum Industry Data Exchange) International and Women Leaders in Data & AI. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Miqdad Jaffer brings a background in engineering to his role as director of product for digital marketplace platform Shopify. Users might recognize the commerce platform as one that enables a fast and secure online checkout experience. On the merchant side, Shopify enables business owners to set up e-commerce sites where they can list and sell their products. Using generative AI, the platform also now offers merchants the ability to complete administrative tasks much more quickly, including writing product descriptions and customizing their sites. As Miqdad explains, a key to enhancing Shopify’s offerings with generative AI technology is ensuring that users always remain in control. He shares Shopify’s approach to doing this while incorporating cutting-edge tools to help entrepreneurs start, operate, and grow their businesses more efficiently. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Miqdad Jaffer is the director of product for Shopify, where he is responsible for the oversight and development of the company’s AI-powered offerings. He joined the company in 2018 and has overseen the launch of Shopify Magic, its suite of AI-powered tools, and Shop.AI, an AI-powered shopping assistant. Before joining Shopify, Jaffer was the director of product management for the mobile consumer marketplace app Flipp. He has more than 15 years of product development and oversight experience. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
As an assistant professor at Harvard Business School and cofounder of the Customer Intelligence Lab at the school’s Digital Data Design Institute, Ayelet Israeli’s work is focused on how data and technology can inform marketing strategy, as well as how generative AI can be a useful tool in eliminating algorithmic bias. One of the products of her recent work is a paper she coauthored with two Microsoft economists and researchers on how generative AI could be used to simulate focus groups and surveys to determine customer preferences. Ayelet joins the Me, Myself, and AI podcast to discuss the opportunities and limitations of generative AI in market research. She details how the research was conducted and how artificial intelligence technology could help marketers reduce the time, cost, and complexity associated with traditional customer research methods. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Ayelet Israeli is the Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business Administration in Harvard Business School’s Marketing Unit. She is also the cofounder of the school’s Customer Intelligence Lab at the Digital Data Design Institute. Her research focuses on data-driven marketing, with an emphasis on how businesses can leverage their internal data, customer data, and market data to improve outcomes. Her research interests include retail, pricing strategy, channel management, marketing analytics, and algorithmic bias. Israeli has a Ph.D. in marketing from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
A former startup employee herself, Shilpa Prasad knows the level of commitment and effort required to begin a new venture. That’s what led her to join LG Nova, electronics manufacturer LG’s innovation incubator, as an entrepreneur in residence. In her role, Shilpa identifies promising startups — particularly those working with AI — and coaches and nurtures entrepreneurs while keeping a close eye on the products that might one day find their way into LG’s ecosystem. On this episode, Shilpa explains how keeping a finger on the pulse of startups helps LG Electronics stay open to innovation and new business opportunities. She also discusses why artificial intelligence is at the forefront of her work with startups, and the promising future she sees for using augmented reality and AI technologies to change how skills training is delivered. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Shilpa Prasad is an experienced leader in the startup ecosystem with a strong passion for entrepreneurship and corporate startup engagement/innovation. She brings over 15 years of global experience in corporate startup strategy and venture-building to her role as entrepreneur in residence at LG Nova, where she is helping the company identify market trends and build partnerships. Prasad has been instrumental in driving innovation for various open innovation projects across corporations, governments, and accelerators and in establishing new partnerships across the global startup ecosystem. An experienced founder, she has also contributed her time to mentoring and advising startups. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Starting a career with the ambition of becoming a medical doctor and ending up a technical leader for a major automaker might seem an unlikely path, but for Anders Sjögren, who leads data and AI innovation projects for Volvo Cars, it was a perfect trajectory. On this episode, Anders joins Sam and Shervin to explain the ways the carmaker uses data and artificial intelligence to inform manufacturing — ensuring that parts are made consistently and as efficiently as possible — as well as driver experience and safety. He also outlines some specific ways smart technology keeps drivers alert and aware of conditions around them and describes Volvo’s approach to technology-driven innovation. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. Guest bio: Anders Sjögren is senior technical leader for Volvo Cars. He focuses on strategy, research, innovation, and transformation, with the key objective of ensuring that the automaker understands and executes within the continuously emerging areas of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence. Application areas include creating AI-enabled intelligent customer functionality and using AI to reform Volvo’s operations and development activities. Sjögren has an academic background in mathematical statistics (large-scale and computational aspects) and an industrial background in data-centric methods development and software product development. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
At Amnesty Tech, a division of human rights organization Amnesty International, Damini Satija and Matt Mahmoudi leverage their expertise in technology and public policy to examine the use of AI in the public sector and its impact on citizens worldwide. In Part 1 of Matt and Damini’s conversation with Sam and Shervin, they described scenarios in which AI tools can put human rights at risk and how their work is helping to expose those risks and protect people from the technology’s misuse. In this episode, they resume their conversation and dig deeper into the ways AI regulations can limit the negative use of AI at scale. Matt and Damini also caution us about what a dystopian future might hold and point to specific ways leaders in the corporate world can help limit the harms of AI. Read this episode's transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. Guest bios: Matt Mahmoudi is a lecturer, researcher, and organizer. He’s been leading Amnesty International’s research and advocacy efforts on banning facial recognition technologies and exposing their uses against racialized communities, from New York City to the occupied Palestinian territories. He was the inaugural recipient of the Jo Cox Ph.D. scholarship at the University of Cambridge, where he studied digital urban infrastructures as new frontiers for racial capitalism and remains an affiliated lecturer in sociology. His work has appeared in the journals The Sociological Review and International Political Sociology and the book Digital Witness (Oxford University Press, 2020). His forthcoming book is Migrants in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Control (University of California Press, 2023). Damini Satija is a human rights and public policy expert working on data and artificial intelligence, with a focus on algorithmic discrimination, welfare automation, government surveillance, and tech equity. She is head of the Algorithmic Accountability Lab and a deputy director at Amnesty Tech. She previously worked as an adviser to the U.K. government on data and AI ethics and represented the U.K. as a policy expert on AI and human rights at the Council of Europe. She has a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Amnesty International brings together more than 10 million staff members and volunteers worldwide to advocate for social justice. Damini Satija and Matt Mahmoudi work with Amnesty Tech, a division of the human rights organization that focuses on the role of government, Big Tech, and technologies like artificial intelligence in areas like surveillance, discrimination, and bias. On this episode, Matt and Damini join Sam and Shervin to highlight scenarios in which AI tools can put human rights at risk, such as when governments and public-sector agencies use facial recognition systems to track social activists or algorithms to make automated decisions about public housing access and child welfare. Damini and Matt caution that AI technology cannot fix human problems like bias, discrimination, and inequality; that will take human intervention and changes to public policy. Read the episode transcript here. For more on what organizations can do to combat the unintended negative consequences arising from the use of automated technologies, tune in to our next episode, Part 2 of our conversation with Matt and Damini, airing September 13, 2023. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. Guest bios: Matt Mahmoudi is a lecturer, researcher, and organizer. He’s been leading Amnesty International’s research and advocacy efforts on banning facial recognition technologies and exposing their uses against racialized communities, from New York City to the occupied Palestinian territories. He was the inaugural recipient of the Jo Cox Ph.D. scholarship at the University of Cambridge, where he studied digital urban infrastructures as new frontiers for racial capitalism and remains an affiliated lecturer in sociology. His work has appeared in the journals The Sociological Review and International Political Sociology and the book Digital Witness (Oxford University Press, 2020). His forthcoming book is Migrants in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Control (University of California Press, 2023). Damini Satija is a human rights and public policy expert working on data and artificial intelligence, with a focus on algorithmic discrimination, welfare automation, government surveillance, and tech equity. She is head of the Algorithmic Accountability Lab and a deputy director at Amnesty Tech. She previously worked as an adviser to the U.K. government on data and AI ethics and represented the U.K. as a policy expert on AI and human rights at the Council of Europe. She has a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Jeremy King leads a team of 1,400 passionate engineers working on the continuous improvement of Pinterest’s image-driven platform. With a background that includes heading up a translation team at eBay and overseeing the technology behind Walmart’s U.S. retail stores and e-commerce business, Jeremy is now responsible for technology operations at Pinterest. To support the company’s mission to inspire people to “create a life that they love,” he and his team rely on advanced AI, machine learning, and a graph database to index and build a network of images so users can find inspiration — particularly when they aren’t completely sure what they’re looking for. On this episode, Jeremy joins Sam and Shervin to talk about some recent advances Pinterest has made in the image-recognition space and shares his views on how generative AI will transform image-based content like Pinterest’s. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. Guest bio: Jeremy King is senior vice president of technology at Pinterest, where he leads the company’s technical vision and the engineering organization responsible for building and scaling a visual discovery engine. Before joining Pinterest, he was CTO and senior vice president at Walmart, where he led the team responsible for the technology behind U.S. retail stores and e-commerce for Walmart and Jet, and oversaw customer, merchant, and supply chain technologies across cloud and data platforms. King has also held executive-level technology roles at Walmart Labs, LiveOps, and eBay. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
When Zan Gilani came to the U.S. from Pakistan to complete his undergraduate studies, he chose to study Chinese because it was rumored to be a difficult language. At the time, the tech industry was booming, and he quickly became interested in applying his passion for foreign languages and learning more generally in a technology-rich environment. Those interests led Zan to Duolingo, where he has been working in product management for eight years and now oversees the app company’s experiential AI team. What excites him about working at the language-learning app company is his ability to help build solutions that enable personalized education at scale: The app boasts over 16 million daily active users, and AI-driven functionality motivates them through frequent notifications, personalizes learning experiences by adjusting the difficulty of questions in practice sessions, and observes and critiques learners’ performance. Zan joins our podcast to outline the specific ways Duolingo uses AI and machine learning to drive user engagement, and discuss how the technology can be used to support learning more generally. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. Guest bio: Zan Gilani is a principal product manager at Duolingo. For the past eight years, he has helped grow the company’s learner base from 3 million to 16 million daily active users by working on retention, acquisition, growth in Asia, gamification, and the new-user experience. He currently leads Duolingo’s Experimental AI team, which uses generative AI to build features that teach learners more effectively. More broadly, Gilani is working on setting Duolingo up for success using generative AI, through external partnerships and internal education. Gilani grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, and is currently based in New York City. He has bachelor’s degrees in political science and East Asian studies from Columbia University. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Naba Banerjee’s identity as a “forever learner” led to her become the first female engineer in her family. That curiosity has informed her career choices as well, leading her to companies as varied as Tata, Cognizent, Walmart, and AAA. Now, as director of trust product and operations at vacation rental platform Airbnb, she is continuing let her curiosity be her guide as she applies her previous data science experience to the travel industry. On this episode, Naba joins Shervin and Sam to talk abouthow she and her team use AI and machine learning to increase the safety of the guests and hosts who use Airbnb’s platform. She also discusses collaboration between humans and machines and the importance of recognizing that neither is an infallible decision maker. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. Guest bio: Naba Banerjee is the director of trust product and operations at Airbnb, overseeing the company’s efforts to combat fraud, build trust between hosts and guests, and stop bad actors from using the platform. Her most recent work includes the development of Airbnb’s reservation screening technology, which helps to identify users making potentially high-risk reservations and prevent them from taking advantage of the platform. Banerjee has over two decades of experience building products that deliver innovative, customer-centric solutions. She joined Airbnb after spending 13 years at Walmart.com, where she played an instrumental role in the evolution of product management, including shipping packages to customers more quickly and building mobile apps to enable customers to check out faster. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.
As CEO of Aboitiz Data Innovation, David Hardoon oversees the operations of a technology conglomerate focused on using data science and AI to support its businesses in a range of sectors, including banking, financial services, utilities, agriculture, and construction in Singapore and the Philippines. In his role, David is leading some unexpected — but practical — uses of artificial intelligence, including using voice and image recognition to detect stress in livestock, and analyzing internet-of-things data to reduce waste and CO2 emissions in the cement R&D process. David joins this episode to discuss the broad scope of the organizations he’s responsible for, the role of AI regulation and governance in helping to spur innovation, humans’ sometimes problematic role in shaping AI outputs, and how a high school detention led to a career in artificial intelligence. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. Guest bio: David Hardoon is the CEO of Aboitiz Data Innovation and chief data and AI officer of Union Bank of the Philippines. He is concurrently the chief data and innovation officer of the Aboitiz Group and chief data officer of UnionDigital Bank. Previously, he was the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s first appointed chief data officer and head of the Data Analytics Group, as well as a special adviser on AI. Hardoon has a doctorate in computer science (machine learning) from the University of Southampton and a bachelor’s degree from Royal Holloway, University of London, in computer science and AI. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.
When Elizabeth Anne Watkins started her doctoral program, she landed a research role studying journalists’ use of security and privacy technologies — but she found the security tools confusing and difficult to use. Today, as a research scientist in the social science of AI at Intel Labs, she advocates for other end users faced with understanding and working with new technologies. Elizabeth employs social science to understand the concerns of technicians performing complex chip manufacturing processes so that new AI systems will be developed to better serve those human experts. During this process, she also helps the technicians recognize AI’s role as a supporting technology — even a coworker — rather than a human replacement. She joins this episode to discuss her role as a social scientist working in tech and some of the ways Intel is applying AI technologies like computer vision and natural language processing to improve semiconductor manufacturing processes. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. Guest bio: Elizabeth Anne Watkins is a research scientist in the Social Science of Artificial Intelligence at Intel Labs and a member of Intel’s Responsible AI Advisory Council, where she applies social science methods to amplify human potential in human-AI collaboration. Her research on the design, deployment, and governance of AI tools has been published in leading academic journals and has been featured in Wired, MIT Technology Review, and Harvard Business Review. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton and has a doctorate from Columbia University and a master’s degree from MI We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.
Hina Dixit’s interest in supporting people and solving problems has its roots in her family’s call office business, where she helped people place telephone calls when she was growing up in India. Later, after earning her bachelor’s degree in computer science, she was quickly recruited into the tech space, where her problem-solving and customer service skills have served her well as both a software engineer and tech investor. From a developer role at Symantec, to project leader at Apple, to an AI investor role at Samsung Next, Hina continues to leverage her communication and connection skills in seeking out and supporting innovations in artificial intelligence, as well as robotics, Web3, and other tech sectors. On this episode, Hina shares the criteria she considers when making investments in new entrepreneurial ventures. She also highlights the focus areas that are of most interest right now, explains why she enjoys mentoring other technologists, and shares her views on what the future of AI looks like. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. Guest bio: Naba Banerjee is the director of trust product and operations at Airbnb, overseeing the company’s efforts to combat fraud, build trust between hosts and guests, and stop bad actors from using the platform. Her most recent work includes the development of Airbnb’s reservation screening technology, which helps to identify users making potentially high-risk reservations and prevent them from taking advantage of the platform. Banerjee has over two decades of experience building products that deliver innovative, customer-centric solutions. She joined Airbnb after spending 13 years at Walmart.com, where she played an instrumental role in the evolution of product management, including shipping packages to customers more quickly and building mobile apps to enable customers to check out faster. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.
