Invisible Machines podcast by UX Magazine
Invisible Machines is a podcast about agentic AI, hosted by Robb Wilson and Josh Tyson, authors of the bestselling book 'Age Of Invisible Machines'. Each episode features conversations with AI insiders, experts, and luminaries exploring the intersections between AI, product design, technology, and business. The podcast aims to cut through the noise and provide insightful discussions on disruptive technology.
Episodes
Selling to Machines with Don Scheibenreif
Three years after his first Invisible Machines visit, Don Scheibenreif returns with a sharper read on the trough: everybody knows generative AI, almost nobody has answered what it does to the business model. He led Gartner’s Autonomous Business research, the successor to digital business, and co-authored When Machines Become Customers. The through-line is that AI is a tool, the harder question is
Structure Before Features with Evan J. Schwartz
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that hits when you’re building with AI. You’ve got the license. You’ve got the pilot. You’ve got a chat window that generates whatever you ask for. But then comes the wall—the workflow that almost works, the dependency that loops back on itself, victories that only come when you quietly move the goalposts. In this episode, we talk about how to get around the
The Pyramid Was Always Wrong: Matthew Barzun on Giving Away Power
Most organizations, and most conversations about AI, default to triangles: who's on top and who's below? Are we the boss of the machines or is it the other way around? Matthew Barzun argues the comfortable shape is a trap and that bottom-up is still a pyramid. The alternative is the constellation: stand out as yourself, connect to other stars, and build something none of you could alone.In this ep
Knowing Before Doing ft. Sudhir Hasbe
Most enterprises are under board pressure to deploy AI agents. Sudhir Hasbe argues the harder shift is upstream: you cannot scale intelligence on missing context—and graph databases are how organizational data becomes knowledge agents can actually reason over.In this episode, Sudhir joins Josh Tyson and Robb Wilson to map the pathway to organizational AGI (bounded expertise, not omniscient AGI), l
The Checklist Your Deck Is Missing ft. Jeff McMillan
Everyone wants to talk about agents and models. Jeff McMillan, starts where almost nobody else does: the foundation.In this episode, Jeff McMillan, founder of McMillanAI, former Head of Firmwide AI at Morgan Stanley, and advisor on enterprise AI, maps AI as a stack: high-quality accessible data → semantic layer (knowledge graphs, RAG) → control and governance → models → orchestration → application
Nuclear Fusion, No Power Lines ft Jonathan Frankle
Most organizations treat a bigger context window like a cheat code: dump every document in, skip the data work, ship. Jonathan Frankle, Chief AI Scientist at Databricks, says that's still wrong.This is Jonathan's return visit to Invisible Machines — a conversation recorded last summer, released ahead of Databricks Data + AI Summit. His first appearance (season 2) was the MosaicML-era craft convers
When Agents Have Wallets, Trust Is Currency
Mastercard's central AI team receives roughly a thousand requests a year from across the organization. A few years ago, most of them were for chatbots. Today, most are for AI agents. Federico Cohen Freue, Executive Vice President of AI & Data Operations at Mastercard, has watched this shift in real time and knows exactly what it reveals about how enterprises are (and aren't) thinking about AI.
No Strategy Without Vision ft Brian Evergreen | Invisible Machines
Most AI strategies are just a buying plan: literacy workshop → vendor shortlist → adoption scoreboard. Brian Evergreen (Founder of The Future Solving Company, author of Autonomous Transformation) argues that this sequence explains a lot of failure, and it isn’t strategy at all.In this episode, Brian reframes the job: set the technology aside long enough to name the new value you want to exist, in
The Confabulation Machine ft. Evan Ratliff of Shell Game | Invisible Machines Podcast
In season one of Shell Game, Evan Ratliff sent a voice AI version of himself out into the world. In season two, he launched a startup staffed entirely by AI agents. What he ended up with was a live experiment in what these systems actually do and what they do to us.Each of the agents working for Hurumo has a name, a role, a personality, and an expanding, though usually unreliable, memory. Kyle the
Crisis Is Your Opening | Marina Nitze | Invisible Machines
Most organizations treat crisis as a failure state. Marina Nitze sees it as a window.Nitze served as Chief Technology Officer of the Department of Veterans Affairs (the largest civilian agency in the country) during the healthcare.gov collapse. She helped rescue it, helped stand up the US Digital Service, and came out the other side with a question she and her colleagues have been pursuing ever si
Inside The Infinity Machine ft Sebastian Mallaby
There's a book about artificial intelligence that doesn't start with Sam Altman. It doesn't start with Elon Musk. It starts in 1994, at Cambridge, where a teenager named Demis Hassabis is reading Gödel, Escher, Bach and concluding, before most of his professors would have agreed, that first-order logic can't be the full answer to building intelligence.Sebastian Mallaby spent years inside that stor
Friction Is the Feature with Jennifer Pahlka | Invisible Machines S7E5
The IRS has roughly 60,000 fax machines, and nobody can get rid of them. Not because there’s a law that says you have to use them (there almost certainly isn’t), but because likely decades ago a memo got written, somebody interpreted fax machines as the most secure transmission method, and that memo calcified into what Jennifer Pahlka calls "folk law," a perceived rule that nobody can locate, nobo
AI Brings Cheap Prediction & Expensive Change ft Avi Goldfarb | Invisible Machines Podcast
Most organizations are still implementing AI as point solutions, dropping new technology into existing workflows to do the same work, just slightly better. The real value lies in system solutions that completely transform how organizations operate. Avi Goldfarb, economist and co-author of Prediction Machines, joins Robb and Josh to explain why AI adoption follows predictable economic principles an
What AI as Cheap Prediction Means for Enterprise ft Joshua Gans | Invisible Machines Podcast
Joshua Gans, economist and co-author of Prediction Machines (and holder of the Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto) joins Robb and Josh to reframe how enterprise leaders should think about AI. Rather than chasing the hype around artificial intelligence, Gans argues we should understand AI as an advance in computational
Why Canonical Knowledge Is the Foundation for Enterprise AI ft Joe DosSantos, VP at Workday
Before enterprises can deploy AI agents that actually work, they need something most organizations don't have: a single, authoritative source of truth. Joe DosSantos, Workday’s VP of Enterprise Data and Analytics, joins Robb and Josh for a wide-ranging conversation about canonical knowledge, the semantic layer, and why data governance, a concept from the 1990s, has suddenly become essential for AI
Ben Goertzel on the Decentralization of AI | Invisible Machines S7E1
Ben Goertzel, the researcher who helped popularize the terms "AGI" and “singularity”, as one of the most influential modern champions and systematizers of AGI, returns to Invisible Machines to discuss the decentralization of AI and what's actually missing from today's most advanced systems with Robb Wilson and Josh Tyson.As enterprises rush to deploy AI agents and LLMs reshape workflows, a critica
Why AI Scaffolding Matters More than Use Cases ft Erika Flowers | Invisible Machines S6E12
We’re in a moment when organizations are approaching agentic AI backwards, chasing flashy use cases instead of building the scaffolding that makes AI agents actually work at scale. Erika Flowers, who led NASA’s AI Readiness Initiative and has advised Meta, Google, Netflix, and Intuit, joins Robb and Josh for a frank and funny conversation about what's broken in enterprise AI adoption. She dismantl
5 Predictions for Agentic AI in 2026 | Invisible Machines Podcast S6E11
As 2025 draws to a close, Robb and Josh look back on some of the conversations they had this year both on the podcast and advising major enterprises and government leaders to offer their predictions for agentic AI in 2026. With major disruptive forces like outbound AI in the hands of consumers and agent runtime environments allowing organizations to create scalable infrastructure for AI agents, ne
Marc Hijink, author of Focus: The ASML Way | Invisible Machines Podcast
How did a Dutch company most people haven’t heard of come to hold the fate of AI? Marc Hijink, author of Focus — The ASML Way joins Josh and Robb to explore the insatiably precise process of producing the chips that power GPUs, and with them the AI taking shape all around us. Marc is a financial reporter and technology columnist for the Dutch daily newspaper NRC, and Focus is the result of decades
Siloed Security? Forget AI Adoption
Omar Santos is a Distinguished Engineer directing AI Security at Cisco. He’s here for a frank conversation about the realities of security in the agentic era. As more software is created on-the-fly by AI agents at the request of humans, security has to become an ever-present layer. Security will be built into complete agent runtime environments and will require constant human oversight and interve
Confronting Complexity with GraphQL ft Matt DeBergalis CEO/Co-founder, Apollo GraphQL | S6E8
As the CEO and Co-founder of Apollo GraphQL, Matt DeBergalis has a lot to say about the ways that organizations can confront their inherent complexity and build reliable systems for AI to flourish. He joins Robb and Josh to talk about how GraphQL has made it easier for developers to build meaningful, AI-powered solutions.As an open-source language for APIs, GraphQL makes data fetching more precise
Controlling AI Chaos with Agent Runtimes
Josh and Robb get together to share a short but deep dive into agent runtime environments. Agent runtimes are the missing piece in the many AI projects out in the world that never reach production. Robb explains how runtimes allow businesses to orchestrate AI agents so they can collaborate around business objectives and drive real ROI. Runtimes also give agents access to canonical “source-of-truth
AI Adoption is an Act of Self-Disruption ft Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow
Brian Solis, is a digital anthropologist and futurist who serves as the Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow and is the former Head of Global Innovation at Salesforce. Brian is a bestselling author of Lifescale, The End of Business as We Know It, and Mindshift, which helps leaders learn how to see emerging trends, harness disruptive forces, and use them to fuel growth. Brian joins Robb and
How Google & PayPal Could Rewrite Agentic Commerce | Invisible Machines S6E5
As Global Head of AI at PayPal, Prakhar Mehrotra is looking deeply at the ways agentic AI is affecting commerce — particularly timely given PayPal and Google’s recent announcement of a multiyear strategic partnership to advance various commerce solutions. He joins Josh and Robb for a layered conversation that speculates on the shape of future marketplaces, where machines are bidding and setting pr
You Can’t Fake “AI-First"
Cassie Kozyrkov returns for a deep dive into the decision science behind a truly AI-first approach to technology adoption. Cassie was Google’s first Chief Decision Scientist and currently advises world leaders and executives on how to optimize their most critical decisions. In this episode she explains why AI is now our memory prosthesis and offers sage guidance on how individuals and organization
Why Success Feels Like Failure at NVIDIA
Bryan Catanzaro was instrumental in the adoption of GPUs for powering machine learning, which has effectively turned NVIDIA from a graphics processing hardware company into a $4T AI powerhouse. Bryan joins Robb and Josh to talk about his journey in AI and how the unique psychology and power structures at NVIDIA enables the company to continually meet the moment in surprising ways. They also discus
Why is OpenAI So Obsessed with AGI? Karen Hao (NYT bestselling author of "Empire of AI")
In her instant New York Times bestseller, Empire of AI, journalist Karen Hao distills more than a decade of in-depth research into a detailed account of OpenAI’s rise to power and why leadership at the company abandoned their promise to keep their research open. Karen joins Robb and Josh for a deep dive into murkiness surrounding what artificial general intelligence (AGI) actually represents
NVIDIA: What's next for the $4T AI powerhouse?
Award-winning journalist Stephen Witt sits down with Josh and Robb to share insights from his latest book, The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip. There’s a deep connection between Nvidia’s GPU chips and the neural networks powering the LLMs at the center of agentic AI. Witt’s book provides a captivating biography of Huang that details his radical approa
What the #%!@ is Vibe Coding?
Product design sage Tim Wood returns to the podcast for a conversation about the deepening integrations between experience design and AI, including a dissection of the trending term “vibe coding.” Currently a design lead at Meta, Tim has hands-on experience leading AI-first design and this episode explores what that means on a tactical level. Having been the Principal Product Designer for AI Platf
Ask Us Anything: Can UX Keep Up with AI?
What is the explosion of AI solutions in the marketplace doing to pillars of experience design? On this Ask Us Anything episode of Invisible Machines, Robb and Josh respond to a question from Dr. Irina Wagner, listener who works as a generative AI UX researcher at a massive US healthcare company. The answer to her question has connections to Robb’s time working in the sound department at War
The 50/50 Rule with ex NASA Chief, Dan Goldin
As NASA’s longest-running Chief Administrator, Dan Goldin ushered in an era of “faster, better, cheaper” that prioritized safety while pushing the organization forward. He joins Robb and Josh to discuss his approach to innovation and kick some holes in fallacies like the iron triangle, which he calls “horsepuckey.” Goldin was at the helm of major projects, including a redesign of the International
Copyrightability and Generative AI - Ed Klaris, Round 2
Did the US Copyright office just declare that AI is the artist, not the tool?Does their new report raise more questions than it answers? Robb and Josh welcome back Ed Klaris, Managing Partner at Klaris Law and Columbia Law professor, for part two of their discussion on the office’s ongoing Copyright and Artificial Intelligence report, focusing on copyrightability.Klaris returns with critical insig
What Is Life? Round 2 with Blaise Agüera y Arcas
Blaise Agüera y Arcas, author and CTO of Technology & Society at Google, returns to the podcast to talk about his new work, What is Life?. This limited-edition, pocket-sized book is the first part of a larger print project with MIT Press and Antikythera titled What Is Intelligence?. What is Life? draws fascinating parallels between the life-building chemical reactions taking place in natural c
Radically Honest AI with Dr. Anna Lembke
Anna Lembke, MD, author of the New York Times bestseller Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, joins Robb and Josh for a discussion about the perils and promise of AI. As a psychiatrist and Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University, Dr. Lembke shares critical insights into the power and nature of behavioral addiction, and how technol
S4E16 How do human brains inform “thinking” machines, with Dr. Thomas Parr
Active inference is a “first principles” approach to understanding behavior and the brain, framed in terms of a single imperative to minimize free energy. The free energy principle describes systems that pursue paths of least surprise, minimizing the difference between predictions based on their model of the world and their sense and associated perception. Dr. Thomas Parr is a practicing clin
S4E15 Computer Vision In Action
Despite being a massive piece of the bigger AI puzzle, computer vision doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves. Robb and Josh welcome Dr. Jason Corso, Professor of Robotics at University of Michigan for an In Action episode that explores the complexity and power of machines that can see. Jason is the Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Voxel51, which is backed by Bessemer Venture P
S4E14 AI Agent Building in Action
What’s it like to build an AI agent? Daniel Lametti, Associate Professor of Psycholinguistics at Acadia University, Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford, and Senior Academic Advisor to OneReach.ai, returns to Invisible Machines to demonstrate how easy it can be to create and iterate on AI agents.Like other In Action episodes, you’ll watch as we walk through the practical realities of buildi
S4E13 Are generative AI tools unlawful to use?
Robb and Josh are joined by Ed Klaris, Managing Partner at Klaris Law, Columbia Law professor, and CEO of KlarisIP, for a conversation about the fate of generative tools like LLMs and AI models that produce audio and video. From Ed’s viewpoint, giant tech companies used stolen content to train the powerful AI models that have quickly changed the world around us.
The trio discuss the question of
S4E12 Designing a Future for AI Natives
Jieun Kiaer is the Professor of Korean Linguistics at Oxford and her new book, The Future of Syntax: Asian Perspectives in an AI Age, explores the complexity within Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages, arriving at insights that veer away from traditional approaches to formal syntax. The book also revisits Marc Prensky’s “digital native” concept, laying the groundwork for a new generation of te
S4E11 Digital Natives Are Now AI Immigrants
Marc Prensky is widely known for coining the terms “digital native” and “digital immigrant”—both now in the Oxford English Dictionary. In this episode, Marc joins Josh for a conversation about the shortcomings of our current education system and how AI might help inspire and enable a new generation of "AI natives" to design their own future.
The two discuss the challenges that companies face in
S4E10 Is AI the End of Companies?
With consumer use of AI technology outpacing enterprise adoption, the fear of companies using AI to get rid of employees has been flipped on its head into legitimate threat to the existence of companies as we know them. There’s nothing preventing consumers from using generative tools to disrupt large companies—for example, using a fleet of AI agents to flood and debilitate a call center to take a
S4E9 Digital Twins in an Agentic World
Digital twins are critical to the orchestration of AI agents, providing the context they need to create meaningful experiences quickly and efficiently. Robb and Josh welcome Dr. Michael Grieves for a conversation about the origins of the concept, which he developed while working with NASA in the 2010s.
The architecture required for orchestrating AI agents relies on different types of digital twin
S4E8 Will We Ever Love Using Software?
As AI agents continue to alter the way people interface with technology, Robb and Josh were eager to speak with journalist Matt Alston about his popular Business Insider article “Everyone hates Workday.” In this deep exploration of our multifaceted interactions with machines, Matt reminds us that Workday’s UX is different across a whole spectrum of users, and that generally speaking, people don’t
S4E7 Are AI Agents the End of SaaS?
As AI agents continue to remake the way we communicate with machines, what will become of SaaS companies? In this episode, Robb and Josh are joined by Janelle Teng, Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners’ San Francisco office, who recently noted that “2024 has not been kind to SaaS companies” on her Next Big Teng blog.
A Stanford scientist and former product manager at Salesforce, Janelle e
S4E6 How Human Should AI Agents Really Be?
Sophie Bushwick is a regular contributor to Science Friday on NPR and has previously worked for Scientific American and Popular Science. As the Senior News Editor at New Scientist, she joined Robb and Josh in exploring anthropomorphism and AI.
Sophie’s work reminds us that our introduction to pocket computers came with the heavily anthropomorphized Tamagotchi pets of the late '90s. As we head in
S4E5 Agentic Micro UIs IN ACTION
Micro UIs are powerful interfaces built on-the-fly by. We've talked about micro UIs a lot on this podcast, as they are a critical component of AI agents, adding graphical functionalities to an automated conversational experience. Micro UIs let AI agents show users interactive elements—like maps, secure payment interfaces, dynamic graphs, and explainer videos—rather than just describing them.
In t
S4E4 The Intelligence All Around Us
There are many lenses through which we can view the world, and that's especially true when considering the technologies associated with artificial intelligence. In this episode, James Bridle, author of Ways of Being, joins to explore a multitude of perspectives relating to our ongoing relationship with technology.
James’ book explores the interplay between animals, plants, and machines in the se
S4E3 The AGI in Organizational Agility | McKinsey & Co.'s Aaron De Smet
We're rounding out our deep dive on organizational AGI with Aaron De Smet, a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company who helped identify "The keys to organizational agility" with colleagues back in 2015. As we discussed in our first episode on organizational AGI, agility is a key component to making the journey feasible. Aaron has been exploring organizational AGI for years and connects the dots betw
S4E2 Ephemeral Applications and AGI
We're entering an age when software will be written on-the-fly, by machines, to meet individual needs—an era of ephemeral applications. This will have a massive impact on the emergence of artificial general intelligence (also called AGI or singularity) and Ben Goertzel returns for a lively discussion about the scope of this dawning era. Ben helped to popularize the term singularity and, as the fou
S4E1 Organizational AGI
How do AI agents fit into a strategy for increasing a business' longevity? Imagine having a conversational operating system for your organization that was always learning.
The advanced orchestration of AI agents can create a broader technology ecosystem that sets a trajectory for organizational AGI. Whereas artificial general intelligence, or AGI, refers to a system of artificial intelligence th
BONUS EPISODE: Building an Autonomous Company with AI Agents
In April, our co-host Robb Wilson was asked to join Jess Larsen on the Innovation & Leadership podcast to discuss AI agents and taking an agentic approach to workflow automation at an organizational level. As AI agents take center stage, we're reposting this conversation here to spread the word on the pitfalls orgs can avoid—and the best practices they can follow.
Robb shares his hard-wrought less
S3E22 AI is a UX Term with Tanmay Bakshi, AI & Application Architect at IBM
Tanmay Bakshi is a technology wunderkind. He started coding when he was only four years old and his first iOS app was released just five years later, when he was nine. An autodidact and deeply curious technologist, Tanmay works as an AI and application architect for IBM, where he's been involved with ongoing automation efforts with McDonald's. Tanmay joins Robb and Josh for an exploration of anthr
S3E21 Forging Humanistic AI with Tom Gruber, Co-Founder of Siri
Journey into the innovative mind of Tom Gruber, co-founder of Siri and Chief AI Strategy Officer of Sherpa.ai. Robb and Josh welcome Tom for an enlightening exploration of humanistic AI—systems that augment and collaborate with humans, rather than replacing or competing with them. Using federated machine learning, Tom is working with Sherpa.ai to train advanced generative models on data in ways th
S3E20 AI Agents at Work with Greg Vert, Deloitte
Greg Vert, Principal and HR Transformation Leader at Deloitte, returns to Invisible Machines to discuss the ways AI agents are changing the way enterprises approach HR. Building on the conversation they had in back in season one—in the wake of OpenAI's release of ChatGPT— Robb and Josh invite Greg to explore how the simple idea of AI as the UI will launch widespread systemic change. They also talk
S3E19 Behind the Curtain with Kara Swisher
Legendary tech journalist Kara Swisher joins Robb and Josh for a discussion about the early days of Silicon Valley and the shape of things to come. Her Boom Town column in The Wall Street Journal covered the early days of the internet, giving her access to key players like Marc Andreessen, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Sheryl Sandberg, and Mark Zuckerberg. Swisher joins Robb and Josh to shar
S3E18 AI Agents in Action
Learn about the inner workings of AI agents by watching conversational experiences in action. Annie Harshberger, Lead Experience Architect at OneReach.ai (https://onereach.ai/) takes Robb and Josh through an interactive demo of AI agents swarming together to automate complex scheduling requests. Annie has designed hundreds of conversational experiences orchestrating generative AI and other tools.
Exploring AI Agents S3E17
As the second wave of AI-led disruption takes shape, we're seeing and hearing a lot more about AI agents. Analogous to the Intelligent Digital Workers (IDWs) described in Age of Invisible Machines, AI Agents are more complex that they appear and many organizations are discovering that they aren't structured to allow these agents to perform meaningful work. Robb Wilson (CEO and co-founder of OneRea
S3E16 Building a Journaling Bot with Academics Daniel Lametti and Joanna Kuc
Daniel Lametti and Joanna Kuc join Robb and Josh to share the advanced chatbot they created for a research project in mental health. Dan Lametti is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. Dan taught and conducted research in experimental psychology at the University of Oxford, and is also the Director of Academic Fellowships at OneReach.ai. Joann
S3E15 Hiring Conversational Designers - Aaron Cooper, Banner Health's Sr. Dir. of Digital Experience
As conversational AI continues to change the nature of UX, we're excited to bring you a practical (and thorough) conversation about hiring design talent with Aaron Cooper, Senior Director of Digital Experience at Banner Health. Aaron has lead the creation of multiple products involving conversational AI at companies like Honeywell and Optum Health, and was generous enough to open up about what he'
S3E14 Lean Knowledge Management with Roger Forsgren, former Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA
As the former Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA, Roger Forsgren has a unique understanding of maintaining the administration's renowned gold standard of data management in extremely high-pressure environments. Having worked his way up from a mechanical engineering position with the space administration, Roger joins Robb and guest host Mike Lee for a conversation about the unique rhythms of data orga
S3E13 Building an Advanced Digital Assistant with Morgan Stanley
Take a deep dive into the creation of an advanced digital assistant with Jeff McMillan and David Wu of Morgan Stanley. As the Head of AD&I, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management and the Head of Knowledge Management & Generative AI respectively, Jeff and David led the creation of an AI assistant for the global investment firm's advisors. Robb and Josh invite them in for a conversation about the technica
S3E12 Innovation Lives in Cities, with Richard Florida, economist, researcher, professor, and author
Well-known researcher, professor, and author Richard Florida joins Robb and Josh for an expansive conversation about the relationship between cities and innovation. His books include "The Rise of the Creative Class" and "The New Urban Decay," which both explore the multi-layered relationship between people and the cities where creativity becomes innovation. Richard is a sought-after speaker and hi
S3E11 Innovation in the Global South with Payal Arora, Author, professor and co-founder of FemLab
Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University and Co-Founder of FemLab. She's also the author of the award-winning "The Next Billion Users" from Harvard Press, and her new book "From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech" will be released this fall by MIT Press. Payal joins Robb and Josh for a frank and eye-opening exploration o
S3E10 The Future of Collaboration is Human with Gary Sorrentino, Global CIO of Zoom
As the Global CIO of Zoom, Gary Sorrentino spends a lot of time thinking about how technology can amplify human-to-human collaboration. He joins Robb and Josh for a conversation about the challenges of connecting people in hybrid work environments that are always evolving. As Gary points out, humans are in a joint venture with artificial intelligence, and this episode explores many of the inflecti
S3E9 How Can We Iterate Faster? With Greg Nudelman, Author and UX Legend
Author and UX Legend Greg Nudelman was one of the original guests on In Conversation with UX Magazine over eight years ago. He returns for a rich conversation about the frenzied intersection of UX and AI. Greg has honed his craft as a design lead at GE Digital, Cisco, and eBay and has worked with organizations like IBM, Oracle, Associated Press, and Intuit. He's currently a Distinguished Designer
S3E8 LLM? More Like 'Limited' Language Model with Emily M. Bender, University of Washington
As a co-author of the often cited (and debated) Stochastic Parrots paper from 2021, Emily M. Bender is a staunch critic of large language models (LLMs). Having worked in computational linguistics for more than 20 years, Emily's deep understanding of LLM mechanics has her questioning many of the emerging use cases we see in the world. Also, Emily hosts Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, where, alongside
S3E7 Questioning Everything with Jaron Lanier, Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft
Co-founder of VR technology as we know it Jaron Lanier is also an accomplished musician and artist. As the Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft, Jaron rejects the deceptive nature of terms like "AGI" and "decentralization" in favor of a vision of technology that's all about people collaborating with other people. Join Robb and Josh for an episode of Invisible Machines that questions everything.
S3E6 What Economics Teaches Us About Conversational AI. Daron Acemoglu, Professor of Economics, MIT
Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor of Economics at MIT and co-author of Power and Progress joins Robb and Josh for a deep exploration of the intersection of technology and economics. Daron's work has explored our thousand-year struggle with technology and prosperity and this conversation touches on how we might incentivize the changes that will improve our experiences as a species. There are laye
S3E5 Can Conversational AI Revive Our Attention Spans? With Gloria Mark, Author of Attention Span
For decades, Gloria Mark, PhD, has been studying technology use in real-world environments that she describes as "living laboratories." Her book "Attention Span" looks for ways that we can live with and use technology while maintaining a healthy psychological balance. She joins Robb and Josh for a fascinating conversation about the ways AI might heal some of the damage done by technology and give
S3E4 The Promise and Peril of Boundless Predictive Machines with Lisa Feldman Barrett
Lisa Feldman Barrett is a psychologist and neuroscientist whose research puts her among the top 0.1% of most cited scientists in the world. She joins Robb and Josh for a conversation about the true nature of our brains, and how aspects of brain development are already being mirrored by AI models. Lisa holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is Chi
S3E3 One Messaging Channel to Rule Them All? With RJ Owen, Principal Product Designer, Slack
As the Principal Product Designer at Slack, RJ Owen has a hand in shaping a communication channel that's come to redefine productivity while setting a trajectory for how team members collaborate in the post-pandemic world. RJ joins Robb and Josh for a deep conversation exploring the many intricacies of decision management and how the future of productivity might reside in swiping right or left. AI
S3E2 With UX and AI, Context is Everything with Sarah Gibbons and Kate Moran of Nielsen Norman Group
Sarah Gibbons and Kate Moran of Nielsen Norman Group join Robb and Josh for a deep dive at the intersection of UX and AI. As the Vice President of NN/g, Sarah shares insights from a recent exploration of anthropomorphism and generative AI. Kate Moran is VP of Research and Content and has done extensive research into interaction design and digital content. As leaders at one of the vanguard experien
S3E1 The Staggering Depth of Thin UI Layers with Paul English, Co-founder of Kayak and GetHuman
As the co-founder of Kayak and GetHuman, Paul English has deep insight into the ways technology can bring people closer to what they're actually looking for. Robb and Josh welcome Paul for an exploration of the ways that conversational AI can become the thin UI layer that obscures all of the messy technology cluttering our lives. Having recently co-founded the Applied Artificial Intelligence Insti
Unfiltered Chat with TED Creator Richard Saul Wurman // Invisible Machines S2E26
Richard Saul Wurman is many things. The creator of the TED conference has also authored scores of books, ranging from revolutionary city guides to a collection of a collection of words by Louis Kahn. Robb and Josh welcomed Richard for a conversation about the LATCH system he devised for organizing information. This early Invisible Machines recording goes to unexpected places as a legendary archite
The Human Nature of Conversational Design with Daniel Stillman // Invisible Machines S2E25
Author of Good Talk and host of The Conversation Factory podcast, Daniel Stillman shares insights from his journey through user experience research and industrial design into designing conversations between people. Robb and Josh welcome Daniel for an exploration of the composition and quality of conversations between humans. The complexity present in our everyday conversational interactions lays b
A Deep Dive on Conversational Design with Cathy Pearl, Google Bard / Invisible Machines S2E24
Cathy Pearl has deep roots in conversational design, as the UX Lead on Google Bard and author of Designing Voice User Interfaces (O'Reilly). She joins Robb and Josh for a conversation that explores the changing nature of voice interfaces and the deepening role of experience design. The trio also discusses the ways that conversational AI transcends productivity, potentially improving the quality of
Identity and Collective Intelligence with Blaise Agüera y Arcas // Invisible Machines S2E23
AI researcher, author, and VP and Fellow at Google Research, Blaise Agüera y Arcas has contributed to research papers cited more than 20,000 times, including a seminal LaMDA paper from 2022. His new book, Who Are We Now?, explores how biology, ecology, sexuality, history, and culture have intertwined to create a dynamic “us” that's neither natural nor artificial. Blaise joins Robb and Josh for a p
Morgan Stanley's Successful Adoption of AI with Jeff McMillan // Invisible Machines S2E22
Despite the complexity and sensitivity innate to financial institutions, Morgan Stanley was able to partner with Open AI to create AI @ Morgan Stanley Assistant. Chief Analytics and Data Officer Jeff McMillan describes it as the most advanced personal assistant in the financial sector and he joins Robb and Josh to talk about the design process, which involved working closely with Sam Altman and th
Designing Systemic Change with Sheryl Cababa // Invisible Machines S2E21
Massive amounts of system change are necessary to put AI to work in ways that elevate humanity, and Robb and Josh welcome author and experience designer Sheryl Cababa for a deep discussion of the road ahead. Author of the Rosenfeld Media book, Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers, Sheryl has worked as an experienced designer at Phillips, Adaptive Path, and Frog and is currently the Chi
How AI is Disrupting the VC World, with Jake Saper // Invisible Machines S2E20
In a moment when unprecedented amounts of money are flowing toward projects involving AI, Robb and Josh welcome Jake Saper for a lively exploration of the VC mindset. Since 2003, Emergence Capital has invested in companies collectively worth $450B+, including Salesforce, Box, Yammer, and Zoom. As a General Partner, Jake has embraced the transformative power of generative AI. This conversation expl
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