Taha Jaffer: The AI Successes You’re Not Hearing About Guest: Taha Jaffer, Head of Wholesale Banking and Global Treasury AI at  Scotiabank   At a moment when most organizations are still in fairly early stages of their AI journey, Taha Jaffer, Scotiabank’s Head of Wholesale Banking and Global Treasury AI, gives us a preview of what to expect: it’s a transformative journey, and one that’s worth taking, even though elements like data, technology and governance all take time to develop. Taha talks about  Going from simple use cases to more sophisticated and value creating solutions ..read more

This is a special, short episode with a summary of lessons complementing our full-length interview with Element AI’s CTO Jeremy Barnes on “The 4 Personas of AI Adoption”.  A lot of Jeremy’s work has him involved in the top level strategy of AI implementation for the Global 2000, and he’s recently synthesized “7 sins of Entreprise AI Strategies” based off of the common mistakes he has observed. From managing risk to accounting reforms to cultural enablement, these “sins” also come with suggestions for how boards and C-suites can best enable their AI strategies.   -------------   ..read more

If you’re tight on time, there is a short complimentary episode with our guest where he summarizes the key takeaways in “The Seven Sins of Enterprise AI Strategies”. While business leaders may know AI needs a mindset shift to get the most out of the technology, communicating what exactly needs to change is challenging. Jeremy Barnes, Element AI’s CTO, has an incredible ability to find and make sense of the connecting thread between AI technology and business.  In this long-form interview, Jeremy talks about his initial role at Element AI as Chief Architect and helping to develop the compa ..read more

S2E7: Global Competition Policy and Japan’s Society 5.0   Guests: Philippe Aghion, Economist and Professor at College de France, The London School of Economics, and Harvard University Yuko Harayama,  Former Executive Member of Japan’s Council for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy This week on The AI Element we zoom out to look at how AI is impacting, and is being impacted by, global economic policies. Policy is hugely important for AI’s development and implementation. Though each application of AI differs from business to business and country to country, there are often simil ..read more

S2E6 - Histories of AI: Ancient Greek Myths and the Last AI Boom In 2020, and for our first episode in the new decade, we thought it would be good to continue to dig deeper into how AI has developed over time. Learning about the roots of AI, we are reminded that the north star of this field has always been what we tend to call artificial general intelligence today, intelligence that reflects the full breadth of human intelligence. This puts in context why the recent breakthroughs have been so significant, and at the same time there is still so far to go. On this week’s episode of The AI Elemen ..read more

In this bonus interview, historian, researcher and former TV star Jonnie Penn is joined by our Head of Public Policy and Government Relations Marc-Etienne Ouimette to talk about the history of AI. In the interview, Jonnie looks to the past to help answer a number of important questions about the future of AI. For instance, what parts of our social system do we not want to optimize? Who does this technological progress actually benefit? And how can more young people get involved in decision making processes surrounding tech?    1:19 - Jonnie Penn 1:25 - The Buried Life  1:54 - Be ..read more

Bonus Episode - An Interview with Yohsua Bengio  Can AI be used to help solve Climate Change? If so, how?  In this bonus interview, world renowned machine learning researcher Yoshua Bengio joins host Alex Shee to talk about AI’s role in solving the climate crisis. Segments of this interview was featured on our episode about sustainability, in which he shared some examples of how AI is being used to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In the full-length interview he shares his personal motivations for getting involved in climate action and goes in depth about his cross-disciplinary ..read more

This week we’re exploring if and how AI can help build a sustainable future. From solving climate change to improving health care, AI is being seen as a technology that can solve some of the world’s biggest problems. But can AI really save us? How can we be sure that AI for Good initiatives are actually helping the people they’re trying to reach? What role can, or should, AI practitioners play in finding solutions? Urvashi Vaneja explains why we should be skeptical of AI for Good initiatives that claim to be a cure-all and she shows how to start thinking constructively about how to do better ..read more

Will AI take our jobs? AI’s main application is in the workplace and is being applied along all levels of the payscale. Critics are worried that this could lead to job loss but like any new technology application, it depends on how we implement it. How then can we create AI products that will enhance our capacity for work, not replace it? MIT Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu sheds light on AI’s impact on the job market and how AI could help both low skilled and high skilled workers alike. He breaks down how, if we implement AI properly, it could help expand the labour market and reorganize t ..read more

What is data feudalism? Should machines adapt to us or should we adapt to machines?  How can we reinstate agency and control when it comes to our personal data?  In this bonus episode, Neil Lawrence, Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge, joins Element AI’s Head of Government and Public Policy Marc Etienne Ouimette to answer these questions and many more. Neil was featured in a previous episode of The AI Element, “In Data We Trust?”, in which he spoke about data trusts and data protection. In this extended interview he shares more of his thoughts on the future ..read more