MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
Why do only 10% of companies succeed with AI? In this series by MIT SMR and BCG, we talk to the leaders who've achieved big wins with AI in their companies and ...
Leveling the Playing Field With AI: Special Olympics's Mary Davis
Mary Davis, CEO of Special Olympics, wants the people she represents to “have a seat at the table” as AI evolves. In this episode of the Me, Myself, and AI podcast, Davis talks about her organization’s mission along with the growing role of AI and how it’s crucial to ensure that people with intellectual disabilities — a group often overlooked in tech discussions — are included in AI development.
Special Olympics helps people with intellectual disabilities through sports, education, and leadership programs. Its Unified Champion Schools program is an inclusive education initiative that benefits all students, both those with and without intellectual disabilities, reduces bullying, and improves academic performance.
Mary also shares the results of a study conducted by the Special Olympics and Harvard University citing strong support from parents, teachers, and the athletes themselves to use AI to support people with intellectual disabilities, especially in educational contexts. She sees AI as a powerful tool for “leveling the playing field” and describes specific applications that the Special Olympics is using for employees and athletes. Read the episode transcript here.
Guest bio:
Mary Davis has been the CEO of Special Olympics since 2016. She joined the nonprofit organization soon after college as a volunteer and coach in her native Ireland. She progressed through various leadership roles before becoming its global CEO: She was CEO of the Special Olympics World Summer Games Dublin 2003, the first such event held outside the United States; CEO of Special Olympics Ireland; and president and managing director of Special Olympics Europe/Eurasia. Davis was awarded a Person of the Year Award for her work on the 2003 World Summer Games and her years of service with Special Olympics Ireland.
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.
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38:13
Bonus Episode: Lessons From Jobs in the Age of AI
On Sept. 4, 2024, Me, Myself, and AI host Sam Ransbotham moderated a panel discussion at a Georgetown University/World Bank event, Jobs in the Age of AI. Afterward, he interviewed keynote speaker Carl Benedikt Frey, Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute, and panelist Karin Kimbrough, LinkedIn’s chief economist. In this bonus episode recorded during this discussion, hear from Frey and Kimbrough about how artificial intelligence is impacting workers, labor trends, and the economy. Read the episode transcript here.
For further information:
Watch sessions from the AI in Action event on demand.
Access on-demand recordings from all prior AI in Action events.
Read event organizers Timothy DeStefano and Jonathan Timmis’s paper, “Do Capital Incentives Distort Technology Diffusion? Evidence on Cloud, Big Data, and AI.”
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.
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26:24
Sharing AI Mistakes: Partnership on AI’s Rebecca Finlay
Rebecca Finlay, CEO of Partnership on AI (PAI), believes that artificial intelligence poses risks — and that organizations should learn from one another and help others avoid the same hazards by disclosing the mistakes they’ve made in implementing the technology.
In this episode, Rebecca discusses the nonprofit’s work supporting the responsible use of AI, including how it’s incorporating global perspectives into its AI governance efforts. She also addresses the complexities of integrating AI into the workforce and the misleading narrative around the inevitability of AI taking over humans’ jobs. She advocates for a proactive approach to adopting the technology instead, where organizations, policy makers, and workers collaborate to that ensure AI enhances jobs rather than eliminating them. 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 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.
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41:26
The Risks of Too Much AI: Fortune’s Jeremy Kahn
Jeremy Kahn’s investigation into the risks and effects of artificial intelligence are reflected in a new book, Mastering AI: A Survival Guide to Our Superpowered Future. But he has also written extensively about the technology in his role as Fortune magazine’s AI editor. On today’s episode, he joins Sam and Shervin to share the insights on AI that he has gained through his work.
heir conversation explores a range of subjects, including people’s growing reliance on AI technology — specifically, generative AI, whose outputs are difficult, if not impossible, to trace back to a reliable source. They also discuss AI’s effect on critical thinking, how best to educate people about the technology’s risks and limitations, the value of cultivating employees’ adaptability, and how GenAI’s ability to simulate human interactions could be affecting people’s real-life interpersonal skills. Read the episode transcript here.
Guest bio:
Jeremy Kahn is an award-winning journalist for Fortune magazine, where he covers artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. In addition to writing cover stories and features, he pens Fortune’s weekly “Eye on AI” newsletter and cochairs its Brainstorm AI technology conferences in his role as AI editor. Previously, he wrote about technology, including AI, for Bloomberg. His writing on a range of subjects has also appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Smithsonian magazine, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, and Slate. He has reported from India and much of South Asia, the Ivory Coast, Iraq, Venezuela, and most countries in Western Europe. He is the author of Mastering AI: A Survival Guide to Our Superpowered Future (Simon & Schuster, 2024).
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.
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35:12
Never Too Much AI: Upwork's Andrew Rabinovich
Andrew Rabinovich began his career in technology working on AI applications for cancer detection. He also spent time at Google, working on early iterations of products like Google Glass. Now at Upwork, as vice president and head of AI and machine learning, Rabinovich and his team are working to enhance the digital labor platform’s capabilities with AI solutions to enable more sophisticated matching of resources to projects.
On today’s episode, Andrew shares his views on the ways AI could take on more complex projects while using fewer resources. In the way of AI’s rapid progress, however, are slow advancements in hardware. While AI has made huge strides in cognition, he says, hardware struggles to match its capabilities, especially in wearable tech and robotics. Still, Andrew envisions a future with hyper-personalized digital assistants for everyone. Read the episode transcript here.
Guest bio
Andrew Rabinovich is vice president and head of AI and machine learning at Upwork. He previously held R&D leadership positions at Google before joining augmented reality company Magic Leap as head of AI in 2015. In 2020, Rabinovich cofounded Headroom, an AI-powered videoconferencing platform that was acquired by Upwork in 2023. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from University of California, San Diego, and has studied machine learning with an emphasis in computer vision and multimodal AI for over 20 years. He has also authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and patents.
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.
Why do only 10% of companies succeed with AI? In this series by MIT SMR and BCG, we talk to the leaders who've achieved big wins with AI in their companies and learn how they did it. Hear what gets experts from companies like NASA, Github, and others excited to do their jobs every day and what they consider the keys to their success.
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