Me, Myself, and AI

Vineet Khosla, CTO at The Washington Post and veteran AI engineer who helped build Siri’s language engine and Uber’s routing, talks about AI reshaping news formats and consumption. He describes personalized AI podcasts, AI research tools that help reporters find sources fast, conversational news experiences, and the paper’s "AI everywhere" approach to product design and trust.

Peter Koerte, Siemens chief strategy and technology officer focused on industrial AI and sustainable tech. He describes how AI quietly upgrades factories, grids, trains, and buildings. He contrasts industrial needs for near-perfect accuracy and proprietary domain data. He discusses data-sharing, predictive maintenance like train-door forecasts, simulation acceleration with partners, and workflow and workforce transformation.

Jacqui Canney, ServiceNow’s chief people and AI enablement officer who leads talent and AI training, discusses embedding AI agents into workflows. She describes AI-driven onboarding, governance and conversational design. She outlines companywide AI skill assessments, personalized learning paths, and how AI reshapes roles and org structure.

Taylor Stockton, Chief Innovation Officer at the U.S. Department of Labor who builds workforce solutions, talks about AI reshaping tasks across the economy. He explores how AI changes workflows, the need for AI literacy alongside relationship skills, the role of apprenticeships and work-based learning, and why the public narrative should shift from fear to optimism about opportunity and mobility.

Alice Xiang, Sony’s global head of AI governance and lead AI ethics researcher, discusses making responsible AI work at scale. She explains why Sony built the Phoebe fairness benchmark, how ethically sourced datasets and consent matter, and the real harms of unmeasured bias. The conversation covers granular bias diagnosis, mitigation strategies beyond more data, and scaling ethical data practices across modalities.

Daron Acemoglu, MIT institute professor and Nobel Prize–winning economist, argues technology’s path is shaped by choices, not fate. He explores automation versus complementary new tasks. He examines centralization in large language models and why incentives and regulation matter for steering AI toward pro-worker, domain-specific designs.

In this engaging discussion, Tom Griffiths, a Princeton professor specializing in AI and cognitive science, dives into his book, The Laws of Thought. He explores how mathematics has historically shaped our understanding of both human and machine intelligence. Tom elaborates on three frameworks—rules, neural networks, and probability—that drive modern AI and connects these concepts to language. He emphasizes the unique human skills of judgment and metacognition while discussing the limits of large language models and the future of human-AI collaboration.

Will Croushorn, a product leader at Wendy's and co-creator of the FreshAi drive-through voice agent, transforms fast food ordering with AI. He dives into how FreshAi processes over 150,000 orders daily while offering multilingual support and improving accessibility for all customers. Will discusses the importance of empathy in AI, shares surprises like hidden Easter eggs in orders, and reveals new metrics for enhancing customer experience. His journey reflects a blend of curiosity and innovation, aiming to redefine convenience in the fast-food industry.

In this engaging discussion, Ronnie Chatterji, Chief Economist at OpenAI and Duke University professor, delves into how AI is transforming the economy and scientific innovation. He highlights AI's immediate economic boosts from infrastructure investments and its potential long-term productivity gains within organizations. Ronnie also illustrates AI's role in accelerating research, enabling faster idea testing, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. Furthermore, he stresses the importance of deep expertise in the evolving AI landscape.

Todd Bishop is co-founder of GeekWire and a seasoned tech journalist who explores the evolving landscape of AI. In this discussion, he stresses that AI isn’t replacing jobs but reshaping tasks to enhance human capabilities. They delve into AI's role in education, with students using it in exams, and its impact on journalism, where traditional storytelling is being transformed. Bishop highlights the paradigm shift in hiring, emphasizing that AI is enabling companies to do more with less, all while fostering a new generation of workers learning alongside AI tools.