Modern CTO

Tony Davis, agentic strategist who builds and governs agent workforces. Dr. Mark Burgess, theorist behind Promise Theory and CFEngine. They explore how promise-based coordination replaces command control. They discuss agent autonomy, peer rejection and swarm-inspired cooperation. They also examine biological metaphors like immune systems and bee behaviour for stable, scalable agent fleets.

Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier and host of Agents of Scale, led Zapier’s remote-first, profitable growth and now drives AI adoption. He recounts the GPT-4 code-red that sparked a company-wide hackathon. Conversation covers making every hire AI fluent, hybrid deterministic-plus-AI workflows, and how teams use hackathons and model mixes to transform operations.

Stephen Witt, author and journalist who wrote The Thinking Machine about Jensen Huang and NVIDIA. He recounts bluffing his way into interviews and explores Jensen's hands-on, urgent leadership. The conversation covers CUDA’s role in enabling AI research, Jensen’s zero-dollar market strategy, and why NVIDIA operates like it’s 30 days from bankruptcy.

Kevin Adams, CIO at Edward Jones with 30+ years in financial services tech, explains how AI will reshape teams and work. He discusses humans moving up the stack while AI handles execution. He covers outcome-focused teams, platforms and guardrails for safe AI, pacing adoption in regulated industries, and legacy modernization accelerated by AI.

Vipul Hingne, interim CTO at Booking.com and seasoned tech leader from Microsoft and PlayStation, discusses how AI is reshaping travel beyond planning. He describes Booking.com's 14-week AI trip planner built with OpenAI. Topics include connected trips, handling disruptions with AI, property Q&A and review summaries, and scaling GenAI across teams.

Ariful Huq, co-founder of Exaforce and builder of AI-augmented SOC automation, explains defending against AI-powered cyber attack waves. He covers why alert overload and 98% false positives cripple teams. Hear how AI agents speed triage, automate remediation with human safeguards, and scale small security teams into much larger-capacity operations.

Marwan Mattar, VP of AI at Sigma — ex-gaming and academia, now focused on enterprise AI reliability. Rob Woollen, Co-founder of Sigma — builds cloud analytics and AI apps on data warehouses. They debate whether AI will upend SaaS, the demo-to-production reliability gap, building prompt-to-app tools, agentic workflows, and how companies can create bespoke AI-driven applications on their own data.

Jim Harris, AI strategist and keynote speaker who advises enterprises and speaks at CES and the World Economic Forum, shares whirlwind takeaways from global tech gatherings. He covers AI-first efficiency breakthroughs, humanoid robots and domestic automation, advances in health monitoring and diagnostics, and why company-wide AI fluency and hands-on training are crucial for adoption.

Jacob Ward, journalist, AI ethics advisor, and author of The Loop, explores how AI could erode skills the way GPS hollowed out navigation. He discusses unconscious decision-making, emotional contagion in media, and whether offloaded cognition frees or diminishes mental capacity. Jacob also examines policy, cognitive liberty, and ways to curb anthropomorphic AI design.

In this engaging discussion, John McGinnis, a Northwestern University professor and author of 'Why Democracy Needs the Rich,' explores the vital role wealthy individuals play in driving technological progress and supporting democracy. He critiques the growing negative sentiments towards billionaires and examines how professional influencers shape perceptions against the rich. McGinnis emphasizes the importance of venture capital in AI advancement and discusses the need for a diverse ideological landscape fostered by wealthy donors.