The AI4U Podcast

Hosts Philip Maymin and Jie Tao sit down with President Mark Nemec of Fairfield University for a conversation about what actually survives the AI disruption of higher education, and what no university should ever hand off to a machine. This time the U stands for University. The argument starts with time horizons. Students think in weeks, faculty in semesters, deans in years, presidents in decades....

Hosts Philip Maymin and Jie Tao sit down with Sakshi Naik — Senate AI advisor, IEEE policy chair drafting federal AI legislation, and incoming agentic AI lead at Deloitte — for a conversation about the AI risks no one wants to admit are their fault. The dark side isn't just malicious actors. It's the 86% of enterprises that have an AI ethics board but only 26% that have committed real resources to...

Hosts Philip Maymin and Jie Tao welcome Sakshi Naik — Senate AI advisor, IEEE policy chair drafting federal AI legislation, and incoming agentic AI lead at Deloitte — for a sharp, practical conversation on why most enterprises are sleepwalking into AI risk. Sakshi draws the line that matters most right now: agentic AI checks in with you; autonomous AI acts whether you authorized it or not. Without...

Hosts Philip Maymin, Jie Tao, and Chris Huntley continue their conversation with Stella Maymin, a Harvard sophomore who has worked behind the scenes training models through Outlier. Stella walks through her experience grading outputs, correcting reasoning, and teaching systems to improve at math and image editing, sparking a broader discussion about why process matters more than product when it co...

Hosts Philip Maymin and Chris Huntley welcome special guest Stella Maymin, a sophomore at Harvard double majoring in economics and English. Stella shares how she built an AI hackathon-winning project that simulates the experience of chronic migraine to help others understand invisible conditions, flipping the script on technology and mental health by using it to build empathy rather than replace t...

Jay Heinrichs returns for Part 2 to explore AI-to-AI persuasion, Werewolf game experiments where AI deceives AI, what cats teach us about alien intelligence, and whether machines can have souls. A conversation that goes from Aristotle to shrimp, and everywhere in between. In this second half of our conversation with bestselling author and rhetoric expert Jay Heinrichs, the discussion goes deeper,...

Persuasion expert Jay Heinrichs joins the AI4U crew to explore what Aristotle's rhetoric reveals about AI trust, the "people pleaser" problem, memory vs. reasoning, and whether words alone can get us to AGI. What can Aristotle teach us about artificial intelligence? In this episode, world-renowned persuasion and rhetoric expert Jay Heinrichs, author of Thank You for Arguing, joins co-hosts Dr. Phi...

In this episode of AI4U, hosts Jie Tao, DSc and Professor Philip Maymin sit down with special guest Maya Maymin, a student, writer, presenter, and early adopter of generative AI. Together, they explore how young learners are using tools like ChatGPT to study, create, and gain confidence in and beyond the classroom. Maya shares honest reflections on what AI gets right, where it falls short, and why...

In this episode of AI4U, Fairfield University faculty leaders explore how the Charles F. Dolan School of Business is preparing students to thrive in an AI-driven world. Dean Zhan Li shares the vision behind a school-wide AI literacy initiative that moves beyond a single course to a fully integrated approach to curriculum, workshops, and certifications, ensuring all Dolan students become AI-ready,...

In this episode hosts Philip Maymin and Jie Tao, DSc explore the next evolution of Health Buddy, an AI tool built to help users navigate complex medical information safely and reliably. Jie explains how version 2 introduces a self-healing architecture. One that can recover from failure, rebuild workflows, and adapt through “editor-in-chief” and “planner” agents working together. He discusses what...

In this episode Jie Tao, DSc shares the story behind building Health Buddy, an AI-powered assistant designed to help people make sense of complex medical information. What began as a personal late-night search for answers evolved into a sophisticated multi-agent system built entirely by one developer with the help of AI. Jie breaks down the design process, from automating research and review to in...

Go from being an AI user to an AI architect. This episode provides the blueprint for automation, teaching you how to use "Context Engineering" to make your AI a specialist and when to choose a simple workflow versus a powerful agentic system. Learn more about  Fairfield Dolan's AI and Technology Institute .

Hosts Philip Maymin and Dr. Jie Tao, from Fairfield Dolan and the University’s new AI & Tech Institute, show how to move beyond “prompt and pray” toward reliable, structured results with AI. Hear why most one-shot chats fall short, how to “flip the switch” so AI asks clarifying questions, and why treating AI like a brilliant, but clueless, intern leads to better outcomes. You’ll learn the four...