The Boundless Podcast

💬 “In reality, making more sustainable choices is not always black and white. I think we need to make the ethical choice or better choice, an easy one so that people not only choose it, but stick with it.” @Jon Thor Sigurleifsson

🎙️ My Friday Co-Host for the Infinite Leaders series is Jon Thor Sigurleifsson. Growing up in Iceland, Jon Thor had a lot of questions about the world and always knew that he wanted to explore it but the more he learned, the more he realised he didn't just want to explore it, he wanted to change it.

🎧 In this episode Jon Thor and I discussed our insights and observations prompted by this week’s episodes with:

1) Ferdinando Villa, Basque Centre for Climate Change: A Digital Knowledge Symphony
2) Bistra Dilkina, Center on AI in Society at USC: Using AI on real-world problems

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💬 “Overall the engagement of computer science in sustainable development has really been slow to start and less strong than I believe it should be.” @Bistra Dilkina

This is a conversation with Bistra Dilkina

🎙️ Bistra is Associate Professor of Computer Science and co-Director of Center on AI in Society at University of Southern California. She works on developing scalable solution techniques for solving large-scale real-world optimization problems. To do this she merges ideas from algorithm design, operations research and machine learning. Bistra is keen on bringing these state-of-the-art methodologies to problem domains that have important societal impact. In particular, she works on predictive and optimization problems related to wildlife conservation planning and anti-poaching, among others.

The University of Southern California Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society (USC CAIS) has a mission is to conduct research in Artificial Intelligence to help solve the most difficult social problems facing our world. When they consider what problems to tackle, they focus their efforts on low resource communities in the United States and globally. They draw inspiration from the Grand Challenges of Social Work, the Grand Challenges of Engineering, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Based on these goals, their initial projects focus on ending homelessness, fighting substance abuse, preventing suicide, improving access to health care, social responses to global climate change, reducing gang violence, and protecting wildlife.

This is the Infinite Leaders series on the Boundless Podcast, we are exploring how Digital Transformation, Data and Artificial Intelligence can promote, provide engagement and deliver environmental sustainability.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-boundless-podcast--4077400/support.

💬 “For sustainability, we have already written the book of knowledge. But the book is written in too many languages. We don't need new scientific discoveries in order to save the world, we just need to be able to read the book that’s already been written” @Ferdinando Villa

🎙️ Ferdinando is an Ikerbasque Research Professor at the Basque Centre for Climate Change. He holds a PhD in theoretical Ecology and had a long parallel career as a scientific software designer and engineer. After working in many fields of Ecology, from theoretical island biogeography to spatially-explicit decision analysis, he discovered the joys and pains of interdisciplinary research during a long career in ecological economics at the universities of Maryland and Vermont.

He has since expanded the focus of his research to the interface of policy, ecology and economics, concentrating on artificial intelligence approaches to assist environmental decision making and natural system assessment and valuation.

Dr. Villa’s best known project is ARIES (Artificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services), which is producing a next-generation web application meant to make environmental decisions easier and more effective. The ARIES project builds on a partnership of international experts, NGOs, and academics, and pairs user and expert knowledge with advanced artificial intelligence to construct a model of a case study, making sure that no relevant data or knowledge is overlooked.

This is the Infinite Leaders series on the Boundless Podcast, we are exploring how Digital Transformation, Data and Artificial Intelligence can promote, provide engagement and deliver environmental sustainability.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-boundless-podcast--4077400/support.

💬 “I think there are far too few of us that have made the connection between the climate crisis and the rise of this pandemic.” @Jon Thor Sigurleifsson

🎙️ My Friday Co-Host for the Infinite Leaders series is Jon Thor Sigurleifsson. Growing up in Iceland, Jon Thor had a lot of questions about the world and always knew that he wanted to explore it but the more he learned, the more he realised he didn't just want to explore it, he wanted to change it.

🎧 In this episode Jon Thor and I discussed our insights and observations prompted by this week’s episodes with:

@ Alex Dehgan, CEO at Conservation X Labs

@ Marianne Haahr, Director Green Digital Finance Alliance

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-boundless-podcast--4077400/support.

💬 “Our financial regulators have discovered that climate risks are financial risks” @Marianne Haahr

🎙️ Marianne Haahr is Director of the Green Digital Finance Alliance, a non-profit focused on harnessing the power of fintech to unlock financing for the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, co-chaired by the UN Environment Program and Ant Financial Services Group and is a partner to the UN SG’s Task Force for Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals. Marianne has served as External Advisor on TechVelopment to the Danish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Previously, she was Executive Leader at Sustainia leading the development of the Global Opportunity Explorer. The beginning of her career was dedicated to designing solutions for financial inclusion and climate finance in emerging markets.

This is the Infinite Leaders series on the Boundless Podcast, we are exploring how Digital Transformation, Data and Artificial Intelligence can promote, provide engagement and deliver environmental sustainability. And now here’s my conversation with Marianne Haahr

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-boundless-podcast--4077400/support.

💬 “Rather than looking at conservation as a cost, we should be looking at it as an opportunity to reinvent our economies for the future. And when the entrepreneurs and VCs see those opportunities, then I think they’re going to be incredibly successful.” @Alex Dehgan

This is a conversation with Alex Dehgan

🎙️ Alex is a creative serial innovator, entrepreneur, scientist, and experienced diplomat and development leader, specializing in creative approaches to taking on and solving grand challenges in conservation, development, and foreign affairs, with a record of success in more than 80 countries on six continents. He is the CEO and Co-Founder of Conservation X Labs, an organisation that seeks to create a new model for conservation. They call themselves a conservation technology open foundry focused on creating and scaling new revolutionary innovations that have the power to transform the future of conservation. Conservation X Labs launches grand challenges that use open innovation, prizes, mass collaboration and the power of the market to develop new conversation technologies.

This is the Infinite Leaders series on the Boundless Podcast, we are exploring how Digital Transformation, Data and Artificial Intelligence can promote, provide engagement and deliver environmental sustainability.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-boundless-podcast--4077400/support.

💬 “Consumers have the right to know their risks. A truly consumer-centric approach is about making artificial intelligence risks visible and predictable.” @Nikita Lukianets

🎙️ Nikita Lukianets, a Founder of the Open Ethics initiative that fosters the inclusive dialogue between experts and citizens to design systems where humans and AI successfully work together. Nikita is also a Founder and CTO at PocketConfidant AI, a 24/7 coaching technology powered by artificial intelligence.

Previously, as a fellow with SIGNALIFE Ph.D. program in life sciences in France, Nikita worked on supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms for neuronal classification, bridging approaches in neurobiology and statistical learning.

Nikita Lukianets has more than 10 years of experience in Human-Computer Interaction and has partnered with multiple organizations to help them build human-centered interfaces.

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💬 “A lot of fortune 100 CEOs, they're playing for two to five years, that's how long their tenure is. They're not playing for the long game. We will get a new class of leaders in tune with the long game and interested in how their companies affect not only their stakeholders and their employees and their customers, but also the greater world.” John Thompson

🎙️ John is an international technology executive with over 30 years of experience in the business intelligence and advanced analytics fields. Currently, John is responsible for the global Advanced Analytics & Artificial Intelligence team and efforts at CSL. Prior to CSL, John was an Executive Partner at Gartner and responsible for the advanced analytics business unit of the Dell Software Group. John is the author of the bestselling book – Analytics Teams: Leveraging analytics and artificial intelligence for business improvement. The book was published in June 2020 and outlines how to hire and manage high-performance advanced analytics teams. This is the second time that John has appeared on the show, and this time we talked about the dynamics of leadership, including how the best leaders use data and how leaders are developing new skills this decade to respond to the changing world that we live in.

🎧 In this episode of the Boundless Podcast, John talks about:
💡 1.) why data driven decision making can raise overall level of employee performance, but won’t affect the outliers
💡 2.) similarities and differences in the leadership styles of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos
💡 3.) how the corporate leadership skillset is changing this decade

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-boundless-podcast--4077400/support.

💬 “AI regulation? I think this war is lost already. AI was an invisible enemy, and until it was too late, we didn’t notice or we didn’t care.“ @Denis Rothman

This is a conversation with Denis Rothman

🎙️ Denis is an Artificial Intelligence designer, author & developer. He created one of the first AI cognitive Chatbots and an AI resource optimisation system which reduces resource consumption, energy and power. Denis’s latest books include: Artificial Intelligence By Example: Acquire advanced AI, machine learning, and deep learning design skills, 2nd Edition and Explainable AI with Python: Interpret, visualize, explain, and integrate reliable AI for fair, secure, and trustworthy AI apps.

In this episode, Denis gave me a free rein to have an open conversation about some of the most challenging questions about Artificial Intelligence power and control and human significance. I hope you enjoy hearing how he addressed these questions.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-boundless-podcast--4077400/support.

This is the Boundless Podcast with me your host Richard Foster-Fletcher and my resident Friday co-host Dr. Naeema Pasha from Henley Business School.

💬 “Working with people who think differently forces you to make new connections.” @Dr. Naeema Pasha

🎙️ My Friday Co-Host is Naeema Pasha. She works for Henley Business School focussing on future strategy, vision and operations of business education and leading on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion global strategy.

🎧 In this episode Naeema and I discussed our insights and observations prompted by this week’s episodes with:

1) Stylianos Taxidis, Head of Data Science & Products at CDP: How to live in the data age

2) Yonah Welker, Explorer and Innovator: Reframing 'inclusion' to 'zero-exclusion'

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-boundless-podcast--4077400/support.