AI-Ignited

What happens when video game characters stop forgetting everything you do?In this episode of AI Ignited, host Elif Baser welcomes returning uest Duru Apak to explore the rise of AI-powered NPCs with memory.

From Stanford's research on generative agents to NVIDIA’s work on autonomous game characters, we look at how NPCs could remember conversations, friendships, and player habits across hours—or even days—of gameplay.

Could this create worlds where every player experiences a different story? Elif and Duru discuss adaptive enemies, memory-driven relationships, privacy concerns, emotional attachment, and the future of game writers in a world where characters can improvise and remember.
The result could be a major shift in game design: not just smarter NPCs, but virtual worlds that build a history around you.

AI can predict markets, jobs, inflation, consumer behavior, and even human decisions with astonishing accuracy, but prediction is not the same as understanding why something happens.

In this episode of AI Ignited, host Elif Baser welcomes Doruk Cakin to explore the growing intersection of artificial intelligence and econometrics. He breaks down the difference between correlation and causation, explain why more data does not automatically mean better answers, and look at how economists use tools such as counterfactuals, causal inference, and Double Machine Learning to move beyond prediction. Drawing on current research, including 2026 work on machine learning prediction errors and causal estimation, the conversation asks a question that becomes more important as AI grows more powerful: if AI can tell us what is likely to happen next, can it also tell us what would happen if we changed something?

In this episode of AI Ignited, host Elif Baser sits down with Duru Ece Apak to explore one of the biggest debates coming out of Gamescom 2026: how artificial intelligence could reshape the future of game development.

A recent Gamescom Dev Speaker Survey found that 83% of surveyed speakers expect AI to affect development-team structures or productivity over the next three years. But developers remain divided over what that future should look like.
Elif and Duru discuss how AI could help smaller studios prototype faster, assist with coding, testing, NPCs, and world-building, while also raising concerns about job losses, repetitive AI-generated content, copyright, and the risk of games becoming less distinctive.The central question: Will AI give developers more freedom to create or simply allow companies to make more games with fewer people?

Investment banking is famous for billion-dollar deals, high pressure, and brutal working hours, but could AI finally change that?

In this episode of AI Ignited, host Elif Baser welcomes Ece Koyustu to explore how artificial intelligence is transforming the future of finance and investment banking.

From automating pitch books, financial research, and due diligence to using AI agents for deal sourcing and market analysis, new technology could dramatically reduce the repetitive work traditionally handled by junior bankers.

Drawing on research from BCG, McKinsey, Accenture, PwC, EY, and Goldman Sachs, Elif and Ece discuss whether AI will actually shorten the infamous 100-hour banking week, or simply allow banks to do more work in less time.

They also examine what future investment bankers will need most: not just technical skills, but judgment, strategy, communication, and the ability to work effectively alongside AI.

What happens when video game characters stop forgetting everything you do?In this episode of AI Ignited, host Elif Baser welcomes returning guest Duru Apak to explore the rise of AI-powered NPCs with memory.

From Stanford's research on generative agents to NVIDIA’s work on autonomous game characters, we look at how NPCs could remember conversations, friendships, and player habits across hours—or even days—of gameplay.

Could this create worlds where every player experiences a different story? Elif and Duru discuss adaptive enemies, memory-driven relationships, privacy concerns, emotional attachment, and the future of game writers in a world where characters can improvise and remember.
The result could be a major shift in game design: not just smarter NPCs, but virtual worlds that build a history around you.

AI can interpret scans, analyze medical records, detect patterns, and support clinical decision-making, but can it truly understand a patient?

In this episode of AI Ignited, host Elif Baser welcomes returning guest Ece Cirpan to discuss TIME’s article, “The Most Important Thing AI Cannot Do in Medicine.” They explore the growing role of artificial intelligence in healthcare while asking where technology still falls short: human observation, curiosity, trust, empathy, and understanding what a patient may not say out loud.From AI-assisted diagnosis to the future of medical education, Elif and Ece examine why the future of healthcare may not be AI versus doctors, but rather how AI can help doctors spend more time doing what machines cannot fully replace—caring for the person behind the diagnosis.

On this episode of AI Ignited, host Elif Baser welcomes returning guest Zeynep Nihan Aksoy to explore how computer science could reduce—and eventually replace parts of—traditional animal testing. They break down how graph neural networks represent molecules, computer vision analyzes organoids, multimodal AI combines biological data, and digital twins simulate human responses to drugs. The conversation also dives into the CS challenges behind the science: overfitting, data leakage, class imbalance, explainable AI, uncertainty detection, active learning, and the danger of models being confidently wrong. From AI toxicity prediction to human-in-the-loop systems, this episode asks a bigger question: can better algorithms make drug development not only faster and more ethical, but also more accurate for humans?

On this episode of AI Ignited, host Elif Baser is joined by Ayris Erten to explore how artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering could transform the way doctors monitor organ-transplant patients.

They discuss emerging research using implantable sensors, wearable devices, AI-enabled ECGs, donor-derived cell-free DNA and machine-learning models to identify the earliest signs of transplant rejection—sometimes before conventional symptoms or laboratory markers appear.

The episode features work from researchers at institutions including Northwestern University and Mayo Clinic, along with expert perspectives from biomedical engineers, transplant specialists and AI researchers. Elif and Ayris also examine the limitations: false alarms, invasive sensors, small datasets, differences between patients, and why AI should function as an early-warning system rather than replace transplant physicians.

A conversation about the future of personalized medicine and one powerful question: Could AI detect that a transplanted organ is in danger before the patient even knows something is wrong?

On this episode of AI Ignited, host Elif Baser sits down with Lara Uluözen to explore how artificial intelligence is transforming industrial engineering and the global supply chains behind nearly everything we buy and use.
From AI-powered demand forecasting and predictive maintenance to digital twins, smart factories, and adaptive logistics networks, Lara explains how engineers are using data and machine learning to make complex systems more efficient, resilient, and sustainable. The conversation also explores supply-chain disruptions, cybersecurity, Industry 5.0 and 6.0, agentic AI, and the changing role of industrial engineers in an increasingly automated world.

As AI moves from simply analyzing operations to actively supporting real-time decisions, what will the factories and supply chains of the future look like—and what skills will tomorrow’s engineers need?

Tune in to AI Ignited for a look at how smarter machines are helping us build smarter systems.

AI may feel invisible, but the infrastructure behind it is anything but.

In this episode of AI Ignited, host Elif Baser welcomes Tughan Turkmen to explore the physical and environmental reality of artificial intelligence. From massive data centers and rapidly rising electricity demand to water-intensive cooling systems, semiconductor supply chains, and critical minerals, the conversation examines what it actually takes to power the AI revolution. Drawing on research from the International Energy Agency, Carbon Brief, Brookings, the German Environment Agency, and recent academic studies, Elif and Tughan unpack how data centers are reshaping energy grids and becoming part of a wider geopolitical competition over compute, chips, and resources.They also weigh the benefits and drawbacks of centralized AI clusters versus smaller edge-based systems, discuss emerging cooling technologies and energy-efficient models, and ask a critical question: can AI innovation continue at scale without shifting environmental costs onto local communities?

The future of AI will not be determined by algorithms alone. It will also depend on how intelligently we manage the energy, water, and infrastructure that make those algorithms possible.