The ConversAItion

Duolingo, the hallmark language-learning platform, is on a mission to make education accessible to all—and leverages AI to make that education as tailored and scalable as possible for its 500+ million users. This week, Duolingo’s Research Director, Burr Settles, joins us on The ConversAItion to unpack how the company embeds AI into the end-to-end app journey, the pandemic’s impact language-learning usage and why Duolingo wants to remind you of the best tutor you have ever had. You can find Burr on Twitter @burrsettles.

Woebot, an AI-powered chatbot that engages patients to provide real-time mental health support, exchanges 4.7 million messages with people every week in more than 130 countries around the world. Founder and President Alison Darcy joins The ConversAItion this week to unpack the science and technology behind Woebot, and share how the service makes mental health care radically accessible for those in need during the pandemic and beyond.

This week on The ConversAItion, Jim chats with Supriya Gupta, Senior Product Director and Head of Recommendations at Credit Karma, a personal finance company that provides resources, tools and personalized recommendations across the entire financial ecosystem. They discuss Credit Karma’s latest machine learning innovations, how AI facilitates better financial decisions and why data is the key to optimizing financial support.  

Hopper is on a mission to make travel booking more seamless and flexible with personalized, data-driven recommendations. President of Fintech & Data at Hopper Ella Alkalay Schreiber joins The ConversAItion to discuss how AI tackles common pain points in travel booking, like price volatility, how the technology helped navigate the significant fluctuations of the pandemic and the growing opportunity for AI in the travel industry.

Stitch Fix, a popular online styling service that delivers curated clothing choices to 3.9 million customers, has pioneered AI-powered personalized experiences since its founding in 2011. This week on The ConversAItion, Tatsiana Maskalevich, former Director of Data Science, discusses the troves of data that inform each “Fix,” why stylists and algorithms are better together and how AI helps address the decision fatigue pervasive in shopping. You can find her on Twitter @tatsianams.

We hear a lot about autonomous vehicles these days, but they remain a black box for most. This week on the ConversAItion, Jim sits down with Janek Hudecek, Director of Planning and Control at California-based autonomous vehicle company Zoox to unpack the tech that makes self-driving cars possible. They discuss Zoox’s unique approach to autonomy and how the company is rethinking personal transportation with vehicles custom-built for passengers.

Amidst the widespread uncertainty of the pandemic and political and social turmoil of 2020, The Trevor Project—the world's largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for the LGBTQ community—served over 150,000 youth in need over the last year. This week on The ConversAItion, AI and Data Product Manager Kendra Gaunt discusses the importance of balancing AI and humans to provide quality care, intersectionality and its role in AI development, and how technology bridges existing gaps in mental health care.

Renowned AI and big data thought leader and analyst Susan Etlinger kicks off Season 4 of The ConversAItion with a discussion on creating human-centric, responsible AI. She’ll share insight into her work at Altimeter and the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and offer her take on why we should think of AI more like a dishwasher, the importance of government oversight and why we should be optimistic about AI’s future. You can find Susan on Twitter @setlinger.

Author and renowned thought leader Pascal Bornet joins The ConversAItion to discuss the growing role of intelligent automation in business. He breaks down what it is, how companies can successfully implement it (and why they should) and how it could help save as many as ten million lives a year. Pascal can be found on Twitter @pascal_bornet.

Bestselling author, digital anthropologist and Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce Brian Solis has dedicated his career to helping businesses identify opportunities for growth and transformation. He joins this episode of The ConversAItion to explain a threat he calls Digital Darwinism, share how businesses can avoid obsolescence and break down the difference between innovation and iteration—and why companies need both. You can find Brian on Twitter @briansolis.