AI Business Podcast

This week, the editorial team at AI Business looks at the most important stories of the summer – and attempts to predict which will make the biggest impact on the AI landscape. We start with the idea of a metaverse/omniverse that is gaining serious traction, with Nvidia now offering businesses tools to create detailed 3D copies of their real-world assets that operate based on real-world data. Virt...

This week, we look at the technological race between the US and China, and its implications. The latest development in what is shaping up to be a proper, old-fashioned cold war is the US Innovation and Competition Act , which was passed by the senate earlier this month. The set of legal measures is clearly designed to combat China’s growing technological might, as well as addressing the ongoing gl...

This week, we discuss ethics, government regulation, and similarities between AI and cars in the 1910s with Natalia Modjeska, research director for AI and intelligent automation at analyst firm Omdia. Natalia joined Omdia just a few months ago, having spent years implementing and benchmarking AI and analytics projects across organizations like PwC and Info-Tech Research Group – you can find some o...

This week, we cover the chaotic developments around synthetic voices, their generation, and ownership. We start with the news about Marvel.ai, the new service from American AI vendor Veritone that promises to enable celebrities to monetize their voices . The company calls this Voice-as-a-Service, or VAAS. The main problem with synthetic voices is it’s currently challenging  (well, pretty much...

We talk about the rapid uptake of self-driving vehicles in China, the climate impact of video streaming, and the English town of Milton Keynes, which has emerged as one of the primary hubs for autonomous vehicle tech in the UK. All of this, and more, is discussed in What’s the News With Wodecki, a segment in which Ben takes us through the stories of the week, with the podcast team deciding whether...

This week, we share some thoughts on the ransomware attack against the Colonial Pipeline – which will be discussed for years to come as one of the first notable examples of a successful cyber attack against physical infrastructure. This is nightmare fuel for the CISO. This is not a story about AI – but it goes to show the dangers of indiscriminate data collection, and once again highlights the pit...

This week, we mourn the death of the Digidog and descend into the greasy, fragrant world of robot-powered kitchens. Miso Robotics, the company responsible for Flippy, the burger-flipping robot , has launched a commercial service for restaurants that uses computer vision and AI to automatically identify and track ingredients, dishes and tasks. But would you pay more for robot-made food, or would yo...

This week, we observe how lofty ambitions are crushed against the jagged rocks of reality: Lyft is selling Level 5, its self-driving car business, to Toyota, just a few months after Uber announced it would offload its autonomous vehicle lab to Aurora. Where does this leave the autonomous car dream? According to Sebastian, the reasons are likely financial, rather than technological: you can only be...

This week on the AI Business podcast, we look at the draft European Regulation on artificial intelligence, a.k.a. the Artificial Intelligence Act. This long-expected piece of legislation will be the first attempt to regulate AI on a super-national level – but does it go far enough to meet the aim of stopping AI systems that pose a ‘clear threat’ to citizens’ rights and livelihoods? Is not just a d...

We discuss the announcements from last week’s GPU Technology Conference, along with AI hardware news from elsewhere, and look at Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of language AI specialist Nuance for $16 billion – actually closer to $20bn once you account for debt. We start with our regular segment chronicling the revolution in hardware for AI – it’s Chip Wars! When Joe Biden is waving around silic...

This week, we welcome our new reporter Ben Wodecki – and make him defend his favorite news stories of the week in a public forum. Because we’re nice like that. We also discuss Microsoft, after the company’s early bet on augmented reality finally paid off in a military hardware contract with the US Army worth up to $22 billion. A lot to unpack here. We start with the epic story of super-helmets for...

This week, we look at Boston Dynamics as it faces the dreary task of commercializing its incredible robot tech, and the amazing career of Eric Emerson Schmidt – who has just donated $150 million to fund a center dedicated to AI for biological research. We begin by the latest from Boston Dynamics: having recently charged ownership, the robotics wunderkinder have launched what could be considered th...

This week, we talk massive shifts at at Intel, poke gentle fun at Peloton, and explore the not-so-wonderful world of robot poetry. Peloton has purchased three AI-powered startups, namely voice assistant developer Aiqudo, smartwatch company Atlas Wearables, and interactive workout mat startup Otari. But will it be enough to keep the company competitive? Can Peloton hang on to the market niche it cr...

Welcome to yet another episode of the AI Business podcast in which we discuss the chip shortage and new AI hardware with special  guest Rodrigo Liang, co-founder and CEO of silicon design startup  SambaNova. We start by talking about the ongoing chip supply crisis  which has sent server component prices skyrocketing, and saw American  auto-makers having to idle plants as tech-h...

We return after a short break, to talk about empathy, advertising, and Palantir, an AI company that built a business worth $15 billion with 30 salespeople – now featuring in its very own drinking game! We begin by talking about Moods, a service from Vevo, the company that owns and manages most music videos on the Internet. Moods now uses AI to identify the tone and emotion of music in order to hel...

This week, we ask whether automated moderation tools can help recover the toxic wastelands of the Internet, and debut a new segment called ‘ Fast & Autonomous. ’ We look into the origins of Google’s Jigsaw, analyze some of the social implications of moderation tech, and remember how an AI-based system once tried its best to prevent Sebastian from joining ISIS. We also cover: The Iraq war! Virt...

We talk Jeff Bezos and the Breakfast Octopus philosophy We talk about Jeffrey Preston Bezos – the man who has reshaped the world to an extent preciously reserved for empires and great military leaders. Bezos is leaving the CEO post at Amazon, the company he founded, and will instead become executive chairman. What better time to look back at his career, the importance of Amazon Web Services, and t...

This week, we talk about Google: one of the world’s largest IT companies is frequently in the news, and not always for the right reasons. We find out what happens behind the scenes from our guest Roland Szabo , a software engineer who started his career by developing machine learning services at Google, before striking out on his own as an ML consultant. Also in this episode: Reasons to like Googl...

Machine learning has its sinners, and its saints... This week, we look at surprising crimes of machine learning experts, investigate the role of AI in manufacturing, and ask whether Pat Gelsinger can save Intel (from itself). We also mention: Inauguration! The new administration! Taiwan! Regulation!

A failed coup is a godsend to journalists: this week we discuss civil liberties, digital dissent, online publishing, and the surprising artificial intelligence legacy of Donald Trump. We also mention all the good stuff: Gab! Hate Mail! Deplatforming! Censorship! Alex Jones! Vint Cerf! (Even job openings at AI Business).

This week, we will look at the potential of artificial intelligence to revolutionize financial planning and analysis (FP&A) - the budgeting, forecasting and analytical processes that support an organization's financial health and business strategy. Guiding us on this journey is Amaresh Tripathy – senior vice president and Analytics Business Leader at Genpact, and expert on data science for ent...

This week we look at the major scientific breakthrough achieved by DeepMind’s AlphaFold, consider some of the some of the first commercial use cases for neuromorphic computing, and learn the secrets of dataset creation with Aristotelis Kostopoulos, VP for AI product solutions at Lionbridge. Also in this episode: Zombies! Queen’s Gambit! Detecting COVID-19 by smell!

Welcome to another episode of the AI Business podcast, in which we anxiously await the news of a vaccine, and continue to slander robots in the workplace. We are cranky, but maybe that’s because the pubs in the UK are closed. And a robot once broke Sebastian’s arm, but that’s a story for another time... We also cover: Lockdown! Nice drugs! Retail therapy! Minimum wage! The gig economy!

Welcome to another episode of the AI Business podcast, in which we are not going to talk about the US election . But we are going to discuss the accuracy of the polls, the power of advertising, and QAnon. Meanwhile, in our ongoing Chip Wars segment, we talk about the recently announced mega-deal in which AMD is buying FPGA chip designer Xilinx , bringing its decades-old rivalry with Intel to a bra...

Welcome to another episode of the AI Business podcast, with your (almost) weekly dose of AI news and editorial chaos. This time, we discuss defense contractors, cyber security of chastity belts, and the challenge of keeping up with the robots in the workplace. And finally, we reveal our favorite depictions of AI in movies – the line-up includes War Games, Alien, and… Terminator: Salvation?