Me, Myself, and AI
Discover what separates AI success from AI hype. In this series from MIT Sloan Management Review, AI winners share their secrets and success stories from the front lines. Explore the future of artificial intelligence with leaders from companies like YouTube, Cisco, and Hugging Face who are turning AI's potential into measurable business value.
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Industrial AI for the Physical World: Siemens’s Peter Koerte
<p>In this episode, Sam talks with Peter Koerte, member of the managing board and chief strategy and technology officer of Siemens, about how industrial AI is quietly transforming the infrastructure that powers everyday life.</p> <p>While consumer AI grabs headlines, Peter explains how artificial intelligence is improving factories, transportation systems, energy grids, and buildings behind the scenes. The conversation explores what makes industrial AI different — from the need for near-perfect accuracy to the challenge of working with proprietary, domain-specific data.</p> <p>Peter shares examples like predicting train door failures days in advance, optimizing building energy use, and ac...
Disintegrating the Org Chart: ServiceNow’s Jacqui Canney
<p>In this episode, Sam is joined by Jacqui Canney, chief people and AI enablement officer at ServiceNow. Jacqui outlines how the software company has embedded AI agents into processes like employee onboarding to automate tasks, personalize experiences, and free up people’s time to focus on higher-value work. She emphasizes that successful adoption of artificial intelligence requires strong change management, workforce training, and a focus on talent — not just technology — including companywide AI skill assessments and personalized learning paths. Tune in to learn why Jacqui sees AI as a human capital opportunity. Read the episode transcript here.</p> <p>*Please...
Shifting AI From Fear to Optimism: U.S. Department of Labor’s Taylor Stockton
<p>In this episode, Sam speaks with Taylor Stockton, chief innovation officer at the U.S. Department of Labor, about how artificial intelligence is reshaping the workforce. Taylor emphasizes that AI is having an economywide impact, transforming tasks within nearly every job rather than affecting only certain industries or specific roles. He stresses the importance of helping workers and businesses adapt. </p> <p>He also argues that AI literacy is becoming a foundational skill and should be prioritized alongside soft skills like relationship building, which will remain essential for differentiation in an AI-driven economy. Taylor calls for shifting the public...
An Industry Benchmark for Data Fairness: Sony’s Alice Xiang
<p>On today’s episode, Sam talks with Alice Xiang, global head of AI governance at Sony and lead research scientist for AI ethics at Sony AI, about what it actually takes to put responsible artificial intelligence into practice at scale. </p> <p>Alice shares how Sony moved early on AI ethics and why governance, not just principles, is now the real challenge as AI spreads across products and workflows. The conversation dives into FHIBE, Sony’s publicly available and ethically sourced benchmark for evaluating bias in computer vision, and why measuring fairness is often harder than fixing it. Along the...
AI Is Not Improving Productivity: Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu
<p>In this bonus episode, Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu joins Sam to challenge some of the most common assumptions about artificial intelligence’s future. Drawing on his book Power and Progress, Daron argues that technology doesn’t have a fixed destiny — and that today’s choices will determine whether AI boosts workers or simply accelerates automation and inequality. He makes a case for focusing on new tasks that complement human skills, rather than replacing them, and warns that current incentives push AI toward centralization and automation by default. The conversation tackles productivity myths, reliability risks, and why regulation should proactiv...
Connecting Language and (Artificial) Intelligence: Princeton’s Tom Griffiths
<p>In this bonus episode, Princeton University professor and artificial intelligence researcher Tom Griffiths joins Sam to unpack The Laws of Thought, his new book exploring how math has been used for centuries to understand how minds — human and machine — actually work. </p> <p>Tom walks through three main frameworks shaping intelligence today — rules and symbols, neural networks, and probability — and he explains why modern AI only makes sense when you see how those pieces fit together. </p> <p>The conversation connects cognitive science, large language models, and the limits of human versus machine intelligence. Along the way, Tom and Sam dig...
Hungry for Learning: Wendy’s Will Croushorn
<p>On today’s episode, Wendy’s product manager Will Croushorn joins Sam to share how FreshAi, the fast-food restaurant’s voice-based AI ordering system, is reinventing the drive-through experience for millions of customers. From handling 200 billion ways to order a Dave’s Double burger to making fast food more accessible for guests in multiple languages, Will reveals how empathy and innovation will positively impact the future of convenience. Learn how his team turns speech data into insight, builds trust in automation, and can even hide a few Easter eggs in your next order. Read the episode transcript here. That's a wrap o...
Science, Innovation, and Economic Growth: OpenAI’s Ronnie Chatterji
<p>On this episode, OpenAI’s chief economist Ronnie Chatterji describes how artificial intelligence is reshaping both the economy and scientific innovation. Ronnie discusses the dual economic impacts of AI — the near-term boost from infrastructure investments like chips and data centers, and the longer-term productivity gains as AI tools integrate into enterprises and consumer life. Beyond consumer convenience, he notes, the key question for economists and corporate leaders alike is when — and how — AI will unlock sustained economic value inside organizations.</p> <p>Tune in for Ronnie's perspective on how AI can help researchers test ideas faster, combine insights across discipli...
Creating More, Not Less, With AI: GeekWire’s Todd Bishop
<p>AI isn’t taking jobs — it’s changing what jobs are. On today’s episode, GeekWire’s Todd Bishop joins host Sam Ransbotham to dive into how artificial intelligence is reshaping work, learning, and creativity — not by replacing humans but by amplifying what we can do. </p> <p>From classrooms where students use AI on exams to newsrooms rethinking how news stories get written, they explore the opportunities (and headaches) of this new era. It’s a smart, funny, and refreshingly real look at how we’re all learning to work with our newestcoworker — artificial intelligence. Read the episode transcript here.<...
From Rabbit Holes to Recommendations: Reddit’s Vishal Gupta
<p>Vishal Gupta, engineering manager, machine learning at Reddit, joins the podcast to explain how the social media community platform uses artificial intelligence to improve user experience and ad relevance. Much of the advertising work relies on increasingly sophisticated recommender systems that have evolved from simple collaborative filtering to deep learning and large language model–based systems capable of multimodal understanding.</p> <p>Vishal and Sam also explore the philosophical and ethical aspects of AI-driven platforms. Vishal emphasizes the importance of balance — between exploration and exploitation in recommendations, between advertiser goals and user experience, and between human- and machine-generated content. He a...
