In this episode, Ather speaks to Mehrdad Mamaghani, Volvo Group’s Head of Data Science. They discuss AI’s role in predictive maintenance, financial forecasting, and sustainability. Merdad critiques the hype around AGI, emphasizing transparency and practical applications, and highlights the need for AI talent and expertise in Europe. 

Merry Christmas folks! This week, guest host (Sifted's) Mimi Billing and Ather discuss December's AI news updates. Highlights included Uber's entry into AI data labeling, Google DeepMind's Genie 2 for training AI in simulated environments, and Amazon's collaboration with Anthropic to develop a mega AI supercomputer. We covered the importance of new algorithms over mere scaling and the potential of agentic AI to bring advancements toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). The year saw record AI funding rounds, with Databricks leading at $10 billion, while disappointments included unmet expectations for reasoning capabilities in AI models. Looking ahead, we anticipate innovations in AI model architectures, memory integration, and task automation tools.

This week, guest host (Sifted's) Mimi Billing and Ather discuss November's AI news updates. Topics include; OpenAI’s Slush presentation, which revealed both innovation and cultural challenges, and the diminishing returns of AI scaling laws. They explore the rise of specialized models, new players like Gemesis and Mistral, and OpenAI's ChatGPT search feature. The episode also examines AI’s growing role in medicine, highlighting its diagnostic potential alongside concerns about biases and reliability, while reflecting on the balance between rapid progress and persistent challenges in AI development.

Christian Guttmann, Executive Director of the Nordic AI Institute, discusses AI as both a philosophical aspiration and a practical tool. He highlights applications like personalized banking recommendations and data querying with large language models but notes their limitations in reasoning and understanding. Advocating for hybrid AI models and richer data, he emphasizes the need for multimodal approaches that integrate various forms of input, such as speech and gestures, to advance AI capabilities. He also warns that Europe risks falling behind in AI development without greater investment and bold innovation.

This week we welcome back; Reggie Townsend, Vice President of Data Ethics at SAS Institute and member of President Biden's National AI Advisory Council. We discussed AI development and regulation in the US. He stressed balancing innovation incentives with government restraint and cited the CHIPS Act as key for AI infrastructure, though most investments are private. He highlighted that AI trustworthiness varies, suggesting risk-based assessments. Townsend underscored the importance of AI education and common standards. On regulation, he noted a risk-focused, citizen-protective approach with inevitable dissent. Lastly, he urged AI to remain a bipartisan issue, avoiding politicization similar to electricity, with current bipartisan support.

This episode, recorded live, at the third installment of AI-Podden live at Epicenter, features Ingrid af Sandeberg, Strategic Advisor at Epicenter and Chairman of the board at Stockholm AI. She joins Ather & Mimi on the stage to discuss AI trends and tools, including Notebook LM, highlighting the shift toward smaller, specialized models like those on Hugging Face. She emphasizes the challenges of regulating AI in rapidly evolving fields and advocates for outcome-based regulations. Despite Sweden's strong AI expertise, she notes a slow adoption rate and calls for better collaboration between AI experts, domain professionals, and regulators.

This episode, recorded live, is the third installment of Ather and Mimi's special news updates at Epicenter Stockholm. They discuss Elon Musk's We, Robot controversy, OpenAI's $6.6 billion funding round, and AI limitations like pattern matching. They also highlighted neurosymbolic AI’s potential, Nobel winners in machine learning, and the rapid adoption of generative AI tools, and noted the unreliability of current AI agents and the promise of Google’s Notebook LM.

Ted Schönbeck, Nordic CTO, Google Cloud discusses the current and future landscape of AI, emphasizing its ability to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, with machine learning allowing systems to learn independently. Google, an "AI-first" company since 2016, has integrated AI into products like Maps and Search. Schönbeck highlights recent advancements in large language models and generative AI, particularly the use of large token windows for analyzing extensive datasets and the rise of multimodal AI, which processes diverse data types like text, images, and audio. He also addresses the challenges businesses face in scaling AI, recommending fine-tuned, specialized models over generalized large ones.

This week, Anna Baecklund, Head of Data and Analytics at Handelsbanken, discusses AI's role in banking. She highlighted its potential to improve customer experience, compliance, risk management, and financial literacy. Though AI mimics human behavior, it lacks true human intelligence. Anna sees AI driving personalized banking and efficient systems while urging banks to adapt to new technologies and regulations. She recommended "Papers with Code" for learning more about AI.

This episode features special guest, Tom Sodestrom, AWS Enterprise Strategist, speaking on the latest trends in AI and edge computing. Tom shares his insights on the upcoming trends in the next 5-10 years, including the rise of generative AI, increased data volume and importance, productive edge computing, and digital twins and simulation at scale.