Defrag This has covered machine learning and AI at a higher level—but never before have we had the chance to dive into how autonomous applications work by design. Today is our lucky day, because our guest is AI designer Jeff Smith, data scientist, developer, and author of Reactive Machine Learning Systems, available in Fall 2017.

After a couple of years as an AI architect over at x.ai, Smith recently launched a new startup called John Done, an AI that makes telephone calls for you. “Pretty much everything I’ve ever built is a tool that augments someone else’s intelligence,” Smith said.