Pondering AI

Ryan Bishara and Christian Lau team up on an AI and data playbook that delivers an engaging, penalty free experience for LAFC employees and fans on and off the pitch.     Ryan, Christian and Kimberly discuss LAFC’s innovative ethos; building an analytics and data program from the pitch up; LAFC’s AI plays; making mistakes and continuous learning; keeping AI onside with responsive governance; prior...

Maitreya Shah disables harmful notions and aspires to a world in which AI systems honor the humanity and agency of disabled persons rather than using them as a shield.     Maitreya and Kimberly discuss digital tech done well; how society views disabled persons; engaging people with disabilities as leaders and developers; ableist narratives; why ‘fixing’ disabilities misses the mark; confusing acce...

Courtney Radsch reports on the political and economic impact of synthetic media and the stultifying consequences of our increasingly low-quality, high-fat media diet.   Courtney and Kimberly discuss the range of journalistic endeavors; synthetic media’s entrée on the scene; disinformation vs. propaganda; competing with AI in the marketplace of ideas; content verification, labeling and trust; how s...

Olga Goriunova rejects digital abstractions as mirror images of ourselves and reflects on why we concern ourselves with representations that aren’t concerned about us.   Olga and Kimberly discuss how cultural imagination is shaped by technology; digital subjects as unnatural constructs; the distance between individuals and their digital profiles; banal categorization and subjective truth; how stat...

Mel Sellick readies for AI by going beyond literacy to address the psychological, cognitive, and relational capacities required to ensure AI works for humans.          Mel and Kimberly discuss AI literacy vs. human readiness; the contours of human vulnerability; AI as a social actor; collective understanding and emotional regulation; instrumental AI dependency; the non-reciprocal nature of AI; the...

Drew Burdick designs AI systems to multiply human capacity, prioritizes great experiences, and values the serendipitous magic of human connection and collaboration.       Kimberly and Drew discuss building with badass teams; curiosity and innovation; building momentum with AI; human relationships and rapport; proprietary knowledge and expertise; long-term thinking; AI agents as teammates; pricing...

Helen Edwards and Dave Edwards are in awe of AI and passionate about course correcting to preserve human authorship and ensure AI systems are for, not from, people.   Kimberly, Dave and Helen discuss human authorship; AI as a cultural technology; generative AI as a cognitive tool; biological imperatives and cultural as a countervailing force; cognitive pairing; metacognition and why perception mat...

Afua Bruce explains that public interest tech is about solving complicated problems with real impact for real people, not just fuzzy feelings and philanthropy.       Afua and Kimberly discuss misconceptions about Public Interest Tech (PIT); PIT beyond philanthropy; why tech for good isn’t always; purposeful productivity; “solving” non-profits; tech funding traps; PIT design principles; cross-secto...

Seth Rabinowitz uses AI with intent by studiously prioritizing learning, actively resisting dependency, promoting ethical practices, and seeing people in the data.      Seth and Kimberly discuss his shift from fearing AI to fearing (some) people using AI; expertise and critical thinking; how different cohorts use AI; resisting dependency and intentional use; the role of educators; developing soft...

Taka Ariga hits all the right notes for AI at scale: clarity of purpose, strong foundations, sustainable innovation, engaged ownership, and a confident workforce.      Taka and Kimberly discuss going beyond novel AI prototypes; the limits of automation; context building; data sovereignty and integrity; the unstructured data deluge; the unique sensitivities and needs of public agencies; valuing own...

Theodora Lau banks on AI becoming our financial GPS and OS but flags required waypoints to protect consumer data rights, maintain trust and close the digital divide. Theo and Kimberly discuss the progression toward a financial GPS powered by AI; consumer data rights and trust; the billion dollar question for 2026; analog identify verification; reducing risk and improving the customer experience; v...

Gretchen Stewart knows she doesn’t know it all, always asks why, challenges oversimplified AI stories, champions multi-disciplinary teams and doubles down on data.     Gretchen and Kimberly discuss conflating GenAI with AI, data as the underpinning for all things AI, workflow engineering, AI as a team sport, organizational and data siloes, programming as a valued skill, agentic AI and workforce re...

Dr. Chris Marshall analyzes AI from all angles including market dynamics, geopolitical concerns, workforce impacts, and what staying the course with agentic AI requires. Chris and Kimberly discuss his journey from theoretical physics to analytic philosophy, AI as an economic and geopolitical concern, the rise of sovereign AI, scale economies, market bubbles and expectation gaps, the AI value horiz...

A retrospective sampling of ideas and questions our illustrious guests gifted us in 2025 alongside some glad and not so glad tidings (ok, predictions) for AI in 2026. In this episode we revisit insights from our guests and, perhaps, introduce those you may have missed along the way. Select guests provide sparky takes on what may happen in 2026. Host Note: I desperately wanted to use the work progn...

Masheika Allgood delineates good AI from GenAI, outlines the environmental imprint of hyperscale data centers, and emphasizes AI success depends on the why and data.    Masheika and Kimberly discuss her path from law to AI; AI as an embodied infrastructure; forms of beneficial AI; if the GenAI math maths; narratives underpinning AI; the physical imprint of hyperscale data centers; the fallacy of c...

Kati Walcott differentiates simulated will from genuine intent, data sharing from data surrender, and agents from agency in a quest to ensure digital sovereignty for all. Kati and Kimberly discuss her journey from molecular genetics to AI engineering; the evolution of an intention economy built on simulated will; the provider ecosystem and monetization as a motive; capturing genuine intent; non-be...

Paula Helm articulates an AI vision that goes beyond base performance to include epistemic justice and cultural diversity by focusing on speakers and not language alone.   Paula and Kimberly discuss ethics as a science; language as a core element of culture; going beyond superficial diversity; epistemic justice and valuing other’s knowledge; the translation fallacy; indigenous languages as oral go...

Jordan Loewen-Colón values clarity regarding the practical impacts, philosophical implications and work required for AI to serve the public good, not just private gain. Jordan and Kimberly discuss value alignment as an engineering or social problem; understanding ourselves as data personas; the limits of personalization; the perception of agency; how AI shapes our language and desires; flattening...

Keren Katz exposes novel risks posed by GenAI and agentic AI while reflecting on unintended malfeasance, surprisingly common insider threats and weak security postures.  Keren and Kimberly discuss threats amplified by agentic AI; self-inflicted exposures observed in Fortune 500 companies; normalizing risky behavior; unintentional threats; non-determinism as a risk; users as an attack vector; the O...

Maximilian Vogel dismisses tales of agentic unicorns, relying instead on human expertise, rational objectives, and rigorous design to deploy enterprise agentic systems.    Maximilian and Kimberly discuss what an agentic system is (emphasis on system); why agency in agentic AI resides with humans; engineering agentic workflows; agentic AI as a mule not a unicorn; establishing confidence and accurac...

Henrik Skaug Sætra considers the basis of democracy, the nature of politics, the tilt toward digital sovereignty and what role AI plays in our collective human society.  Henrik and Kimberly discuss AI’s impact on human comprehension and communication; core democratic competencies at risk; politics as a joint human endeavor; conflating citizens with customers; productively messy processes; the prob...

Dr. Rebecca Portnoff generates awareness of the threat landscape, enablers, challenges and solutions to the complex but addressable issue of online child sexual abuse.   Rebecca and Kimberly discuss trends in online child sexual abuse; pillars of impact and harm; how GenAI expands the threat landscape; personalized targeting and bespoke abuse; Thorn’s Safety by Design Initiative; scalable preventi...

Hiwot Tesfaye disputes the notion of AI givers and takers, challenges innovation as an import, highlights untapped global potential, and charts a more inclusive course.  Hiwot and Kimberly discuss the two camps myth of inclusivity; finding innovation everywhere; meaningful AI adoption and diffusion; limitations of imported AI; digital colonialism; low-resource languages and illiterate LLMs; an Ice...

Dietmar Offenhuber reflects on synthetic data’s break from reality, relates meaning to material use, and embraces data as a speculative and often non-digital artifact.   Dietmar and Kimberly discuss data as a representation of reality; divorcing content from meaning; data settings vs. data sets; synthetic data quality and ground truth; data as a speculative artifact; the value in noise; data mater...

Pia Lauritzen questions our use of questions, the nature of humanity, the premise of AGI, the essence of tech, if humans can be optimized and why thinking is required.  Pia and Kimberly discuss the function of questions, curiosity as a basic human feature, AI as an answer machine, why humans think, the contradiction at the heart of AGI, grappling with the three big Es, the fallacy of human optimiz...