Applied AI Pod

It is not just difficult to bring AI to production, it is difficult to keep AI in production. We dive into the real estate space to understand how AI/ML is used by Structurely, and we talk with its Co-founder, Nate Joens. Nate is the Co-Founder, Head of Innovation and past CEO at Structurely. His business processes conversations in the real estate industry, and builds proprietary conversational AI that 99.9% of consumers believe is human. With over 3.5 million conversations with their AI Assistant Structurely’s Real Estate data set is nearing 10MM individually labeled messages.

Tech unicorn, Tradeshift, recently surpassed $1 trillion transactions processed. Listen to a conversation with their Principal Product Manager for Data and Analytics, Lloyd Humphreys, on how they are using AI at scale. Lloyd gives people the option to dial up or down AI. He believes AI is a tool in a toolbox - not the only tool, but a critical one. Running Tradeshift's data team means he gets close to the source of how it is creating data and how people expect to use it to make decisions. Originally, he was a freelance UX designer.

Tradeshift is a leader in e-invoicing and accounts payable automation. Their technology is able to benchmark their models performance against person-led processes and offers predictive modeling showing how the technology can maximize outcomes, like gained efficiency and cost-savings.

Join a conversation with Dustin Coates - Voice Search Lead at Algolia, author of Voice Applications for Alexa and Google Assistant, co-host of VUX World, the practical voice podcast, and Alexa recognized champion.

And Hannes Heikinheimo - Speechly Co-Founder and CTO, ex-Rovio, ex-Reaktor, worked on the 1st version of NLU for Apple’s Siri for Finnish, ML and NLU seasoned specialist.

> Algolia is a site search and discovery API company with unique differentiators for all important aspects of search, text and voice, all for dynamic digital experiences.

> Speechly is the fast, simple and accurate voice UI API that is optimized for efficient UI task completion. It is designed to work alongside other UI modalities such as touch and visual especially in the context of web, mobile, and e-commerce applications.

Join a conversation with Marc von Wyl, Sr ML Engineer @Algolia. Marc is teaching Natural Language Processing @EPITA, and is an experienced computer scientist specialized in Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, and languages in general. Together, we dig into: unstructured data, improving error and ambiguity, and future of NLP.

In this episode we talk about the importance of best practices methodologies for AI projects, why it's important to use methodologies, and how projects can get derailed or fail if you don't have a plan in place. We get to hear first hand from the builders of the CPMAI methodology by Cognilytica, Kathleen Walch and Ronald Schmelzer.

Kathleen is a principal analyst, managing partner, and founder of Cognilytica, an AI research and advisory firm, and host of the popular AI Today podcast. She is a serial entrepreneur, savvy marketer, and tech industry connector. Prior to her work at Cognilytica, Kathleen founded tech startup-up HourlyBee, an online scheduling system for home services where she quickly became an expert in grassroots marketing, networking, and employee management. Before that, Kathleen was a key part of the direct marketing operation for Harte Hanks managing large scale direct mail campaigns for clients including Bed Bath and Beyond and BuyBuyBaby. Managing big data analytics, she created efficiencies in the process saving thousands of dollars and days of processing time from each campaign. Kathleen graduated from Loyola University with a degree in Marketing. In her spare time she enjoys hanging out with her husband and two young girls and working out – you can frequently find her on jogging paths and workout studios.

Ron is principal analyst, managing partner, and founder of the Artificial Intelligence-focused analyst and advisory firm Cognilytica, and is also the host of the AI Today podcast, SXSW Innovation Awards Judge, founder and operator of TechBreakfast demo format events, and an expert in AI, Machine Learning, Enterprise Architecture, venture capital, startup and entrepreneurial ecosystems, and more. Prior to founding Cognilytica, Ron founded and ran ZapThink, an industry analyst firm focused on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Cloud Computing, Web Services, XML, & Enterprise Architecture, which was acquired by Dovel Technologies in August 2011. Ron received a B.S. degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and MBA from Johns Hopkins University.

Creativity and Artificial Intelligence music in all of its forms, with Valerio Velardo. Valerio is both a domain and technology expert that researched, taught, developed new technology in the space, built a startup and consulting firm around it.

A musician at core, and AI for sound and audio engineer building The Sound of AI community day to day (the largest community in the world on AI, music, audio, and signal processing). Studied music and astrophysics at Bachelor's degree level. > Master's degrees in music composition, conducting and piano performance. > PhD in Music and Artificial Intelligence. Add on top contributions in the AI music space like: Developer of an AI music system that simulates a society of virtual songwriters, which generate rock songs and evolve their compositional style. Composer of dozens of pieces for piano, orchestra, video games and films. Adaptive music advocate. OR AI music consultant, data scientist, and programmer. Founded 2 startups, launched the leading academic journal and conference in music and AI, published research in international academic journals. AND expect an amazing episode that gives so much food for both mind and soul.

It's all things music and audio. Jump in!

As the power of sensors and processing rises and their costs drops, artificial intelligence (AI) holds the potential for greening many systems, including itself. So how can AI help? There are two approaches to Green AI – using AI to solve sustainability challenges, and using AI in a more sustainable way.

We talk to Kordel France - ML Engineer and AI startup founder. Kordel is the founder and CEO of Seekar Technologies, a technology startup that builds artificial intelligence products for a variety of industries. Outside of maintaining Seekar's vision and developing the capability of its AI, he is usually writing code but also enjoys rolling jiu-jitsu. He is constantly furthering his knowledge of artificial intelligence and his ultimate career goal is to simulate consciousness through AI and robotics. He also acts as a consultant for other technology startups. Prior to joining Seekar full time, Kordel was an engineer for missiles and target acquisition systems for Raytheon and other defense contractors.

The company was founded in 2018 based on four principles:

1) Make artificial intelligence mobile (without the need for a cloud connection).

2) Make artificial intelligence more secure and trustworthy by removing bias from models and giving users control over their data.

3) Build artificial intelligence so that it can explain its decisions, just as a human can - relieve the "black box" stereotypes.

4) Build artificial intelligence that augments the efficiency, safety and throughput of current jobs, not replaces them.

A whole new world of possibilities opens when using AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to gather value from unstructured text data. Katherine Munro, tells us about NLP, its applications, and its future.

Katherine is a Data Scientist and Data Science Ambassador in the e-commerce domain, conducting training in AI, machine learning and data science. With a background in computational linguistics and (deep) machine learning, she has worked in research and development for Mercedes-Benz and the Fraunhofer Institute, specialising in user interfaces and natural language understanding. She has also worked as a university lecturer, Team Leader and Sales Coach, and is now education Lead for Women in AI Upper Austria and volunteer mentor at Female Coders Linz.

The entrepreneurs/scientists in the deep tech space are not put off by big problems—or the time and effort it takes to solve them or make a deep tech startup run. At the same time, there has been no shortage of venture capital infusion into small companies focused on deep tech. At the same time, governments around the world understand the shift and the role of the new AI technologies and support new tech R&D more.

We continue the conversation of the two worlds - VCs and deep tech founders - with two main actors in this space:

> Alexander Piskunov - partner of the San-Francisco based VC fund Ruvento Ventures, a deep-tech venture capital fund, specialising on AI, robotics and quantum computing investments in emerging markets.

> Amandine Flachs - CEO & co-founder of WildMeta - AI for video games, supporter of early stage startup founders for the past 10yrs, and a VC scout for UK-based BackedVC.

Two worlds in one episode. Without further ado: hope you enjoy it!

In 2018, technology company Reaktor and the University of Helsinki came together with the goal to build a free online course to teach the basics of AI to people from a wide range of backgrounds. Elements of AI was brought to life, on a mission to create a worldwide movement that helps people be empowered, not threatened by AI. What makes Elements of AI so great for being ranked world’s #1 AI course, we find out from its one of the very creators, prof Teemu Roos, Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki. Teemu Roos is an expert and educator in AI, machine learning, and data science.

The course includes modules on machine learning, neural networks, the philosophy of artificial intelligence and the use of artificial intelligence to solve problems. It consists of two parts: Introduction to AI and its sequel, Building AI. The course explains the implications of AI in real-life situations with interactive exercises.

Stats: 600,000+ citizens and best user ratings around the world. Across 170 countries. 40% of course takers are female, and 25% are over 45 yrs old. 2 ECTS credits, 25h avg completion time, 6 chapters, 25 exercises. Age, profession or country doesn't matter.

After taking the course, students can:

* Understand some of the major implications of AI

* Think critically about AI news and claims

* Define and discuss what AI is

* Explain the methods that make AI possible

Fun fact: As a gift marking the end of Finland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Finland is on a mission to extend free access to the Elements of AI course in all EU languages during 2020/2021 and educate 1# of the EU citizens into the basics of AI.