The Applied AI Podcast

Using AI on your own is easy. Deploying it across an organization of tens of thousands of people is a different problem entirely. In this episode, host Jacob Andra sits down with Bharathi Rajan, who leads enterprise digital, data, and AI at Swire Coca-Cola USA, one of the top five Coca-Cola bottlers in the country, with six manufacturing plants across 13 states and brand partners including Coca-Co...

What does it actually take to make AI work in corporate finance, not in theory, but in practice? In this episode, Talbot West CEO Jacob Andra sits down with Reshma Pillai, a finance and AI transformation leader who made an unlikely journey from accountant to AI professional. Reshma brings a uniquely grounded perspective: she's not a computer scientist, and that's exactly why her insights cut throu...

Josh Boshard, COO of Savory, discusses the integration of AI in the restaurant industry with Talbot West CEO Jacob Andra. The to talk about the challenges and opportunities that Savory faces with its complex portfolio. Josh emphasizes the importance of human interaction and the role of AI in supporting and enhancing the customer experience. The conversation also delves into the complexities of AI...

Send us a text Enterprise AI projects fail at alarming rates. MIT research shows most organizations struggle to achieve meaningful ROI from their AI investments. In this episode of The Applied AI Podcast, host Jacob Andra sits down with Cydni Tetro to explore why enterprise AI transformation is fundamentally different from individual productivity gains, and what separates successful deployments fr...

Send us a text YouTube Video Description Law firms face a civil war over AI adoption. On one side, a model that's worked for decades, generating revenue and establishing power structures. On the other, an intelligence revolution that won't disappear in ten years. In this episode, host Jacob Andra sits down with Adam Wardel, an attorney with 12+ years of experience spanning in-house and law firm ro...

Send us a text Lumawarp delivers 7% higher accuracy than leading ML models while running 300+ times faster. On the TabArena HELOC default prediction benchmark, it topped the accuracy leaderboard while training on a gaming laptop in about an hour. Competing methods required hundreds of hours on large compute clusters to achieve worse results. This is the breakthrough that breaks the accuracy/speed...

Send us a text Talbot West CEO Jacob Andra interviews Clarion AI CEO Bennett Borden on ensemble AI approaches.  Bennett Borden served eight years as a CIA data scientist identifying patterns in digital trails, he went to Georgetown Law and specialized in automated decision systems. Now as CEO of Clarion AI, he runs the only law firm that operates as both legal counsel and development shop, buildin...

Send us a text While people fear wholesale workforce replacement, the actual transformation is far more complex and ultimately more optimistic for organizations willing to adapt strategically. This episode cuts through the hype to examine three distinct zones of AI capability. First, tasks where AI excels at things humans never could do well, like fraud detection algorithms or protein folding anal...

Send us a text Two major ideas are shaping the next era of artificial intelligence: agentic AI and neurosymbolic AI. Talbot West CEO Jacob Andra and Lucidity Sciences CEO Dr. Alexandra Pasi bring together their complementary perspectives. They unpack the confusion surrounding the term “agentic.” The most common misuses fall into three categories. 1.Digital employee. This use assumes an AI can full...

Send us a text Large language models have captured headlines, but they represent only a fraction of what AI can accomplish. Talbot West co-founders Jacob Andra and Stephen Karafiath explore the fundamental limitations of LLMs and why neurosymbolic AI offers a more robust path forward for enterprise applications. LLMs sometimes display remarkable contextual awareness, like when ChatGPT proactively...

Send us a text Most enterprise AI projects fail because companies hold back their data. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars training models on sanitized datasets, afraid to expose sensitive information. They get generic answers that create no competitive advantage. In this episode, Scott Peiffer from i4Ops cuts through the AI hype to address the real challenge facing enterprises: how to de...

Send us a text Dr. Alexandra Pasi (Lucidity Sciences) joins Talbot West CEO Jacob Andra to explore why conflating AI with large language models creates blind spots in enterprise technology strategy. With 15 years in machine learning, Dr. Pasi brings mathematical rigor to practical AI deployment. Key discussion topics Jacob identifies the linguistic synecdoche in AI discourse: taking LLM characteri...

Send us a text Jason duPont, COO of NEXA Mortgage, reveals how AI transforms mortgage operations from 54-minute loan processing to autonomous underwriting systems. NEXA processes $10 billion annually through 3,300 loan officers and targets $15 billion using agentic AI partnerships. This episode demonstrates practical AI implementation beyond chatbots. DuPont shares NEXA's partnership with Tidalwav...

Send us a text Rick Meekins achieves 4-6x productivity gains using ChatGPT and automation tools in precisely the ways Talbot West recommends to enterprise clients: low-risk, high-reward applications that deliver immediate ROI without exposing sensitive data. Rick uploads podcast transcripts to ChatGPT, not proprietary business data. He generates social media content, not confidential reports. This...

Send us a text Jacob Andra, podcast host and CEO of Talbot West , interviews Bill McCalpin, investment banker and chair of The Alliance of Merger and Acquisition Advisors. Bill McCalpin reveals why companies with identical revenue and profits sell for vastly different prices: one for $2 million, another for $12 million. The difference comes down to digital transformation readiness. In this Applied...

Send us a text Kevin Williams, founder and CEO of Ascend Labs AI, joins Jacob Andra, CEO of Talbot West, to discuss the reality of enterprise AI adoption. Despite the hype, most companies still aren't implementing AI effectively. Kevin breaks down the four pillars that drive real ROI: dev tools, product augmentation, workflow optimization, and strategic positioning against disruption. Insights fro...

Send us a text Jacob Andra sits down with Stephen Karafiath, technical co-founder of Talbot West, for a wide-ranging discussion on practical AI implementation in enterprise. They cut through the hype to address what actually matters: how businesses can achieve concrete efficiency gains through thoughtful AI deployment while avoiding common pitfalls. Topics Covered The State of Enterprise AI Innova...

Send us a text Welcome to The Applied AI Podcast. We're all about practical results. Hosted by Jacob Andra, the CEO of Talbot West, The Applied AI Podcast focuses on value creation from AI. We also cover the pitfalls and concerns companies need to address when implementing AI. Talbot West is a digital transformation consultancy and AI enablement partner for companies and other organizations. We he...