The AI Element

Taha Jaffer: The AI Successes You’re Not Hearing About Guest: Taha Jaffer, Head of Wholesale Banking and Global Treasury AI at Scotiabank At a moment when most organizations are still in fairly early stages of their AI journey, Taha Jaffer, Scotiabank’s Head of Wholesale Banking and Global Treasury AI, gives us a preview of what to expect: it’s a transformative journey, and one that’s worth taking, even though elements like data, technology and governance all take time to develop. Taha talks...

This is a special, short episode with a summary of lessons complementing our full-length interview with Element AI’s CTO Jeremy Barnes on “The 4 Personas of AI Adoption”. A lot of Jeremy’s work has him involved in the top level strategy of AI implementation for the Global 2000, and he’s recently synthesized “7 sins of Entreprise AI Strategies” based off of the common mistakes he has observed. From managing risk to accounting reforms to cultural enablement, these “sins” also come with...

If you’re tight on time, there is a short complimentary episode with our guest where he summarizes the key takeaways in “The Seven Sins of Enterprise AI Strategies”. While business leaders may know AI needs a mindset shift to get the most out of the technology, communicating what exactly needs to change is challenging. Jeremy Barnes, Element AI’s CTO, has an incredible ability to find and make sense of the connecting thread between AI technology and business. In this long-form interview,...

This special episode was recorded on Monday, March 30th for the beta release of the COVID-19 research platform that leverages technology from the Element AI Knowledge Scout product. Guest: JF Gagne, CEO and Co-Founder of Element AI Research data and reports are being published at an unprecedented pace as organizations scale up their efforts to respond to COVID-19. In order to help clinical and scientific researchers, public health authorities and frontline workers navigate that wealth of...

S2E7: Global Competition Policy and Japan’s Society 5.0 Guests: Philippe Aghion, Economist and Professor at College de France, The London School of Economics, and Harvard University Yuko Harayama, Former Executive Member of Japan’s Council for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy This week on The AI Element we zoom out to look at how AI is impacting, and is being impacted by, global economic policies. Policy is hugely important for AI’s development and implementation. Though each...

S2E6 - Histories of AI: Ancient Greek Myths and the Last AI Boom In 2020, and for our first episode in the new decade, we thought it would be good to continue to dig deeper into how AI has developed over time. Learning about the roots of AI, we are reminded that the north star of this field has always been what we tend to call artificial general intelligence today, intelligence that reflects the full breadth of human intelligence. This puts in context why the recent breakthroughs have been...

In this bonus interview, historian, researcher and former TV star Jonnie Penn is joined by our Head of Public Policy and Government Relations Marc-Etienne Ouimette to talk about the history of AI. In the interview, Jonnie looks to the past to help answer a number of important questions about the future of AI. For instance, what parts of our social system do we not want to optimize? Who does this technological progress actually benefit? And how can more young people get involved in decision...

Bonus Episode - An Interview with Yohsua Bengio Can AI be used to help solve Climate Change? If so, how? In this bonus interview, world renowned machine learning researcher Yoshua Bengio joins host Alex Shee to talk about AI’s role in solving the climate crisis. Segments of this interview was featured on our episode about sustainability, in which he shared some examples of how AI is being used to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In the full-length interview he shares his personal...

This week we’re exploring if and how AI can help build a sustainable future. From solving climate change to improving health care, AI is being seen as a technology that can solve some of the world’s biggest problems. But can AI really save us? How can we be sure that AI for Good initiatives are actually helping the people they’re trying to reach? What role can, or should, AI practitioners play in finding solutions? Urvashi Vaneja explains why we should be skeptical of AI for Good initiatives...

Will AI take our jobs? AI’s main application is in the workplace and is being applied along all levels of the payscale. Critics are worried that this could lead to job loss but like any new technology application, it depends on how we implement it. How then can we create AI products that will enhance our capacity for work, not replace it? MIT Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu sheds light on AI’s impact on the job market and how AI could help both low skilled and high skilled workers alike....

What is data feudalism? Should machines adapt to us or should we adapt to machines? How can we reinstate agency and control when it comes to our personal data? In this bonus episode, Neil Lawrence, Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge, joins Element AI’s Head of Government and Public Policy Marc Etienne Ouimette to answer these questions and many more. Neil was featured in a previous episode of The AI Element, “In Data We Trust?”, in which he spoke about data trusts...

Guests Richard Zuroff, Director of AI Advisory and Enablement at Element AI Tanya O'Carroll, Director of Amnesty Tech at Amnesty International Alix Dunn, Founder and Director of Computer Says Maybe Jesse McWaters, Financial Innovation Lead at World Economic Forum AI is a powerful tool and with that power comes a great deal of responsibility. How can we be sure that we’re in control of AI systems? And what should the governance look like? Data governance is an existing practice that covers a...

We don’t have enough control over our data—how it is collected, by whom, what it’s used for. We’re used to hitting “accept” to whatever agreement we need to use the online platforms, mobile apps and other digital services that run our daily lives. Yet public awareness is growing about the importance of privacy and data control. Major data breaches and scandals about the misuse of data have shown the failures of the private sector when it comes to self-regulation. Now, governments and...

“Explainability” is a big buzzword in AI right now. AI decision-making is beginning to change the world, and explainability is about the ability of an AI model to explain the reasons behind its decisions. The challenge for AI is that unlike previous technologies, how and why the models work isn’t always obvious — and that has big implications for trust, engagement and adoption. Nicole Rigillo breaks down the definition of explainability and other key ideas including interpretability and...

Many have dystopian projections of what our future with AI will look like, but professionals working in AI see things differently. For some, our future with AI may simply mean more free time and cheaper access to quality services. We check in with Jordan Fisher, Daniel Gross, Natacha Mainville and JF Gagné who together paint a picture of what a not-so-distant future might look, especially in retail and insurance. They may not know exactly what the year 2050 will look like, but they are...

Every touchpoint with a prospect is an opportunity to nurture that relationship, but also a potential entry point for hackers. Given that cybercriminals are more resourceful than ever, cybersecurity experts need to be just as sharp. Oren Falkowitz is combining past experience at the NSA and US Cyber Command with AI to combat phishing attacks worldwide. In this episode, Alex Shee speaks to him and cybersecurity expert Frederic Michaud about how AI is currently being used to make businesses...

Societal hype around AI is a byproduct of a few recent scientific breakthroughs — speech recognition, computer vision, natural language processing — in short, a computer’s ability to acquire human senses and mimic the human brain. Yoshua Bengio (world-renowned professor and head of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms) has been at the front lines of the Deep Learning Revolution that has enabled this kind of innovation. In this episode, he gives an overview of where the tech is...

Successful adopters of AI develop an AI-first strategy supporting all functional areas of the business: marketing, product development, customer support, sales, and beyond. What does this look like in practice? Naomi Goldapple of Element AI, who consults with execs about AI strategy on the regular, provides some insight. Alex also talks to Chris Benson who was hired at Honeywell to inject AI into the traditional-but-transforming manufacturing and logistics space. He shares some case studies...

As AI seeps into every industry, businesses are being forced to adapt. Old school industries may not be as lean or quick to pivot as startups, but they have access to a motherlode of funding and data. Still, red tape and outdated infrastructure may block them from the timely AI transformation they need to stay afloat tomorrow. Alex Shee speaks with serial AI entrepreneur JF Gagné about this tension between startups and more corporate environments. Then, 15-year veteran of the insurance...

Charles C Onu is using AI to detect birth asphyxia in babies. His story is inspiring because of its impact on society and the field of healthcare (in 2016, 1,000,000 babies died from asphyxia), but also because of his humble beginnings. In this episode, Charles shows us that a passion for solving problems can help you overcome many obstacles. Host Alex Shee also sits down with Rediet Abebe, co-founder of Black in AI, to expand on how others are using AI to change not just their industry, but...