Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Stuart Nisbet, Chief Data Scientist, Cadient Talent (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like there are a few areas where you’re using AI and machine learning. If you could start isolating them and discuss one by one, we can dialogue on each of them. 

Stuart Nisbet: In the area of hourly hiring, applicants come to a website and they apply for a job or they may walk in. There are several sources for where an applicant may come. There are employee referrals as well.

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Stuart Nisbet, Chief Data Scientist, Cadient Talent (Part 1)

A conversation on AI in the hiring  space.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as Cadient.

Stuart Nisbet: I am the Chief Data Scientist with Cadient Talent. Our mission is to assist in the area of distributed hourly hiring.

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Raj Koneru, CEO of Kore.ai (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is your strategy? Are you, at some point, going to open up the platform to third-party developers to build software solutions for the use cases that you do not cover?

Raj Koneru: It’s already an open platform. All of our documentation is online. You can sign up for our training academy. The platform is accessible right there. You can create an account, start building virtual assistants, and build whatever you like. 

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Raj Koneru, CEO of Kore.ai (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: When you are implementing one of these use cases, could you double-click down on the other systems that you are integrating with? To make your system effective, you have to integrate with other systems. Walk us through one or two of those integration scenarios.

Raj Koneru: The virtual assistant is deployed on a company’s website or in their mobile app. Sometimes, it’s also deployed on email, SMS, or social messaging apps.

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Raj Koneru, CEO of Kore.ai (Part 1)

Raj is building his fifth company, a conversational AI platform and solutions venture. I really like the PaaS strategy.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as the company. 

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Raj Valli, CEO of Thinkster (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: This is an excellent discussion, regardless of whether we agree or disagree. It’s a kind of discussion that is very interesting for the readers to think through and participate in. I’m going to switch gears because we’re running out of time. When you look at the universe of online learning and I imagine that you’re looking at the space in a broader way just as an industry observer, where do you see gaps that you would recommend new entrepreneurs to go and address?

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Raj Valli, CEO of Thinkster (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to fight you again on this one. That’s the spirit in which I like to have these conversations, so I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

The two examples that you picked are both higher-order problems than your domain. Legal case material is far more complex. The range of vocabulary, the range of circumstances, and the range of natural language that it has to process and make sense of is far more complex.

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Raj Valli, CEO of Thinkster (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let me push back on that. AI is much better at handling a very large number of permutations and combinations than human beings. I would question the validity of your logic that AI cannot be trusted to manage variations. I think AI is perfect for managing variations.

Raj Valli: I want to give you an example of why I think that. I’m going to disagree with you on that particular point. If you’re familiar with Norman AI from MIT, they have a website norman-ai.mit.edu. They trained the same AI machine.