Jeff Cooper parlayed his interest in neuroscience and human behavior into a career in data science and today works as a senior data science director for online retail subscription service Stitch Fix. Jeff joins Me, Myself, and AI to share how the company pairs human employees with intelligent technologies to keep up with customer preferences while realizing operational efficiencies. He also talks about how the company sustains extremely high feedback rates from consumers and how humans are training models, as well as vice versa, leading to interesting feedback loops. Read the episode transcript here.

Guest bio:

Jeff Cooper is a senior data science director at Stitch Fix, the global leader in personalized styling, where he oversees the Client Algorithms team, which develops models for product recommendations, style, and growth. He previously held data science leadership roles at Tradesy, FabFitFun, and Disney, as well as research roles in decision neuroscience at Caltech and Trinity College Dublin. Jeff has a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper.

Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.

We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

Like many product leaders in the technology space, Jackie Rocca took a somewhat circuitous path to that role. After beginning her career in management consulting with Bain, she earned her MBA at Stanford and then worked at Google, where she helped launch YouTube TV. Now, she serves as vice president of product at Slack, where she focuses on the collaboration platform’s Slack AI product.

As a product leader, Jackie had continually heard from users that they were experiencing a common challenge: It was a struggle to keep up with the pace of information and prioritize where to focus their attention and energy. So she looked to AI as a potential source of solutions and is now leading a team that’s focused on launching AI-driven features to address user pain points. The Slack AI team’s work is already helping customers take advantage of the wealth of knowledge within Slack exchanges by providing features such as channel recaps, thread summaries, and the ability to ask questions to surface information that’s embedded within conversations.

On this episode, Jackie describes how her team approaches new product design in the generative AI space and offers up some predictions for what lies ahead. Read the episode transcript here.

Guest bio

Jackie Rocca is vice president of product at Slack. In that role, she oversees the vision and execution of Slack AI, which brings generative AI natively and securely into the collaboration platform’s user experience. Rocca has delivered on a number of AI initiatives in her five years with the company and is now on a mission to help customers further accelerate their productivity and get even more value out of their conversations, data, and collective knowledge.

Before joining Slack, Rocca spent more than six years as a product manager at Google, where she helped launch and grow YouTube TV.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper.

Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.

We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

Daniele Petecchi didn’t realize how complex the process of producing tires was until he joined Pirelli, a company that’s been in the business of manufacturing tires for more than 150 years. But now, as head of data management and AI, he’s focused on leveraging the company’s wealth of data to meet the stringent technical, quality, and performance requirements of the Formula One racers and luxury vehicle makers — like Ferrari, Lamborghini, and BMW — that rely on Pirelli’s premium tires.

In this episode, Daniele explains why virtualization and data are key to managing the complexity of an R&D and production cycle that includes using digital twins to predict how a tire will sound on the road and maximizing efficiency at plants that manufacture millions of tires each year. Read the episode transcript here.

Guest bio

Daniele Petecchi is head of AI and data managementat Pirelli, where he leads critical initiatives that harness artificial intelligence technology to drive innovation and efficiency for the premium tire manufacturer. Petecchi earned his degree in telecommunications engineering, specializing in digital signal processing, which laid the foundation for his career in technology. He subsequently earned a Master of Science degree in information management, which equipped him with a strong strategic perspective. In 2018, he further reinforced his skill set by completing the General Management Program at ESCP Business School, enabling him to navigate the intricate intersection of technology and business.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper.

Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.

We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

On this bonus episode, we head to the World Bank offices in Washington, D.C., where hosts Sam and Shervin joined organizers Jonathan Timmis and Timothy DeStefano from the World Bank and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business for the day-long conference, “How is Artificial Intelligence Transforming Firms?” in December 2023.

In our final of three bonus episodes derived from this event, we explore how AI has shifted policy discussions, and what new types of management are needed.

This episode offers an abridged listen to the panel discussion; for the full session video, please visit the conference’s website.

Guest Bios

Carol Corrado is a distinguished principal research fellow, conference board & senior policy scholar at Georgetown University.

Olivia Igbokwe-Curry is head of U.S. congressional and political affairs at Amazon Web Services.

Scott Wallsten is president and senior fellow at The Technology Policy Institute.

Nikolas Zolas is a former senior economist at the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sam Ransbotham is cohost of Me, Myself, and AI and a professor of analytics at Boston College.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper.

Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.

 We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

While Me, Myself, and AI is on winter break, we hope you enjoy this episode. Jennifer Strong, longtime journalist and creator of the SHIFT podcast, joins Sam and Shervin to talk about their favorite Me, Myself, and AI episode

Find the additional podcasts mentioned in the episode below:

SHIFT podcast

In Machines We Trust

WSJ’s The Future of Everything

 Guest Bio:

Jennifer Strong is an audio journalist covering the impact of AI on the way we live and work. She’s the creator of several tech podcasts for newsrooms, including ProPublica, The Wall Street Journal, and MIT Technology Review. Her podcast SHIFT, with the Public Radio Exchange, covers "the far-reaching impact of automation on our daily lives," according to Apple Podcasts.

Her reporting has been widely recognized, including six Webby and three Podcast Academy Award nominations. Her narrative podcasts were finalists at the New York Festivals for the last two years, and a finalist for Podcast of the Year by The Drum Awards in London for a taping she did inside an experimental fighter plane.

Strong has also produced a business show for NPR and reported on national security for PRI. She’s been a keynote stage host and moderator at the AI for Good Global Summit, The Future of Everything Festival, Web Summit, among others.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Alanna Hooper.

Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.

 We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. 

On this bonus episode, we head to the World Bank offices in Washington, D.C., where hosts Sam and Shervin joined organizers Jonathan Timmis and Timothy DeStefano from the World Bank and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business for the day-long conference, “How is Artificial Intelligence Transforming Firms?” in December 2023.

In our second of three bonus episodes derived from this event, we explore how AI is used in manufacturing. Sam hosts this panel featuring Shervin alongside Ness Shroff, director of the AI Edge Institute at Ohio State University, and Matthew Wilding, colead of U.S. Steel’s Digital & Artificial Intelligence Program. This episode offers an abridged listen to the panel discussion; for the full session video, please visit the conference’s website.

Guest Bios

Ness Shroff is director of the AI Edge Institute at Ohio State University.

Matthew Wilding is colead of U.S. Steel’s Digital & Artificial Intelligence Program.

Shervin Khodabandeh is cohost of Me, Myself, and AI and a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group.

Sam Ransbotham is cohost of Me, Myself, and AI and a professor of analytics at Boston College.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.

Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.

 We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. 

While Me, Myself, and AI is on winter break, we hope you enjoy this episode. Tom Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, joins Sam and Shervin to talk about their predictions for AI trends in 2024.

 Find the additional studies and resources mentioned in the episode below:

Tom Davenport’s articles with MIT SMR

2024 CDO Insights: Data & Generative AI(form required for download via AWS)

Why Companies That Wait to Adopt AI May Never Catch Up

What the data says about Americans’ Use of Artificial Intelligence (Pew Research)

What do AI chatbots really mean for students and cheating? (Stanford Graduate School of Education)

Randy Bean’s 2024 Executive Survey

 Guest Bio

Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, a visiting professor at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, and a fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. He is coauthor of Working With AI: Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration (MIT Press, 2022).

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.

Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. 

We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. 

*New! for a limited time, please take our short listener survey. We value your feedback!*

On this bonus episode, we head to the World Bank offices in Washington, D.C., where hosts Sam and Shervin joined organizers Jonathan Timmis and Timothy DeStefano from the World Bank and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business for the day-long conference, “How is Artificial Intelligence Transforming Firms?” in December 2023.

In our first of three bonus episodes derived from this event, we explore how AI is used in retail in a discussion facilitated by Shervin featuring Walmart’s Prakhar Mehrotra (who you may remember from the very first episode of Me, Myself, and AI!) and Tapestry’s Fabio Luzzi.

This episode offers an abridged listen to the panel discussion; for the full session video, please visit the conference’s website.

 Guest Bios

Prakhar Mehrotra is corporate vice president, applied AI at Walmart.

Fabio Luzzi is head of data and analytics at Tapesty.

Shervin Khodabandeh is cohost of Me, Myself, and AI and a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.

Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.

We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. 

*New! For a limited time, please take our short listener survey. We value your feedback!*

When Mark Surman produced a pro-peace public service announcement for his local TV station as a self-proclaimed “punk rock kid” in the 1980s, he wasn’t thinking about a future career evangelizing fair, equitable, and trustworthy technology access for everyone. But today, as president of the Mozilla Foundation, he is focused on exactly that.

 Mark went on to study filmmaking and has parlayed his communications expertise into technology leadership roles, where he has continued to work to “change hearts and minds by telling the truth.” On this episode, Mark shares his take on the roles of both big tech and startups in the responsible AI conversation and also describes a recent report on trustworthy AI from the Mozilla Foundation. Read the episode transcript here.

Guest bio:

Mark Surman is president of the Mozilla Foundation, a global nonprofit that does everything from developing the Firefox web browser to advocating for a more open, equitable internet. His current focus is fueling Mozilla’s efforts to invest in responsible tech startups (via Mozilla Ventures) and to create foundational technology for more trustworthy AI (via Mozilla.ai). Before joining Mozilla, Surman spent 15 years leading organizations and projects that promoted the use of the internet and open-source technology for social empowerment.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.

Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.

We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

Growing up in a multilingual community, Prem Natarajan became interested in language at a young age. Eventually that interest, aptitude, and curiosity translated into an interest in machine learning and technical development, and today Prem works as the chief scientist and head of enterprise AI at financial services company Capital One.

Prem joins this episode to share how Capital One’s technology teams are delivering value to customers by applying artificial intelligence in areas like fraud detection, how generative AI’s strengths stand to transform the developer experience, and why the right combination of product, science, and engineering expertise is key to successful AI and machine learning initiatives. Read the episode transcript here.

Guest bio:

As chief scientist and head of enterprise AI at Capital One, Prem Natarajan leads technology strategy, architecture, and development for the company’s enterprise data, analytics, and AI and machine learning initiatives, including advancing its AI capabilities, tools, and research efforts. Natarajan has more than two decades of experience leading science, technology, and commercialization efforts in natural language processing, speech recognition, computer vision, forecasting, and other applications of machine learning. 

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.

Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.

We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

When Vandi Verma saw the Spirit and Opportunity rovers land on Mars while she was working toward a Ph.D. in robotics, it set her on a path toward working at NASA in space exploration., Perhaps unsurprisingly, today, as chief engineer for robotic operations at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Vandi sees the biggest opportunities for artificial intelligence in robotics and automation.

She describes the ways in which the Mars rovers rely on AI, including the technology’s use in digital twin simulations that enable JPL scientists at to practice their driving skills before actually controlling the rovers on Mars. She also discusses how NASA’s use of AI — and its approach to risk — offer lessons for organizations that are looking to simulate real-world scenarios here on Earth. Read the episode transcript here.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.

Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.

Guest bio:

Vandi Verma is a principal engineer and the deputy section manager for the Mobility & Robotics section at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She also serves as chief engineer of robotic operations for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. She was previously the assistant section manager of the Mobility & Robotics section, the supervisor of the section staff group, and the supervisor of the Operable Robotics Group.

Verma works on new robotics capabilities, including R&D; mission design; prototyping; flight development, testing, and launch; and landing and surface operations. She has been engaged in robotic operations on Mars since 2008 with the Mars Exploration Rover mission's Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity rover, Perseverance rover, and Ingenuity helicopter.

Before joining JPL, she led the NASA Ames Research Center team that developed PLEXIL (Plan Execution Interchange Language) for operating autonomous systems, as well as the development of technology that has been deployed on rovers and human spaceflight projects.

Verma earned a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005.

We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.