Shift AI Podcast

Boaz Ashkenazy

The Shift AI podcast explores how AI and ML is changing the way that we work in the digital age. The show's creator Boaz Ashkenazy interviews thought leaders who are redefining how businesses and employees will be impacted by emerging technology today and in the future | Visit shiftaipodcast.com

  1. 1日前

    Building the AI-First City with San Jose Chief Innovation Officer Stephen Caines

    In this episode of the Shift AI Podcast, Stephen Caines, Chief Innovation Officer and Budget Director at the City of San Jose, joins host Boaz Ashkenazy for a wide-ranging conversation on how AI is reshaping city government, public services, and the workforce at one of America's most technologically ambitious cities. Stephen shares his unconventional path from pre-med at Case Western to digital privacy law at the University of Miami, a Stanford fellowship researching surveillance AI ethics, and ultimately landing at San Jose's Mayor's Office where he now leads both innovation strategy and the city's budget. From there, the conversation dives into how San Jose is positioning itself as the AI-first city in the nation, leveraging proximity to Adobe, Cisco, Zoom, Nvidia, Apple, and Google to advance meaningful community-level change. The discussion explores the city's AI for All initiative, a public-private partnership with Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI to provide free AI education to residents and city employees alike. Stephen walks through the city's dual-track upskilling program, its approach to employee training that is purposely non-mandatory, and how San Jose is balancing top-down innovation mandates with bottom-up experimentation. Boaz and Stephen also dig into real-world deployments: object detection cameras on fleet vehicles that proactively identify potholes and road hazards before residents report them, AI translation tools expanding Spanish and Vietnamese participation in city council meetings, and the 311 customer service redesign aimed at reducing resident burden while improving satisfaction. Stephen is candid about the ROI question, how to distinguish pilots worth operationalizing from ones that generate noise without value and the long-term financial risks of AI infrastructure built on VC-subsidized pricing. The episode closes with a discussion of the GovAI Coalition, a San Jose-founded network now spanning over 900 public agencies, and Stephen's two-word vision for the future of work: chronic adaptability. Chapters [00:00] From Pre-Med to Chief Innovation Officer: Stephen's Career Journey [04:12] San Jose as the AI-First City: Population, Geography, and the Lean City Challenge [07:49] Proximity as Advantage: Partnering with Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Nvidia [08:23] AI for All: Free Community Education and In-Person Training Sessions [11:10] Upskilling City Employees: Voluntary Training, Two Tracks, and Retention Strategy [14:38] Balancing Top-Down and Bottom-Up Innovation [16:14] The 311 Network and Customer Service Vision: A 360-Degree View of the Resident [17:13] Object Detection on Fleet Vehicles: Proactive Pothole and Road Hazard Detection [19:34] Surprising Community Feedback and the Case for Keeping Humans at the Front Door [22:04] ROI in Government: How to Evaluate Pilots and Decide What Gets Operationalized [24:24] The Hidden Costs of AI: Staffing Realignment, Drone Programs, and VC Subsidies [26:14] Building Infrastructure You Own: The Road Safety Images Database [27:24] The GovAI Coalition: 900 Public Agencies, Shared Contracts, and Peer Learning [32:04] The Future of Work in Cities: Chronic Adaptability and the Individual Journey Connect with Stephen Caines LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-caines/ City of San Jose Innovation Hub: https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments-offices/information-technology/city-innovation/it-innovation-hub Connect with the GovAI Coalition Website: https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments-offices/information-technology/ai-reviews-algorithm-register/govai-coalition Connect with Boaz Ashkenazy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boazashkenazy/ Email: info@shiftai.fm

    40分

  2. 6月9日

    Unprompted Intelligence in High-Stakes AI with Hebbia CTO Aabhas Sharma

    In this episode of the Shift AI Podcast, Aabhas Sharma, CTO at Hebbia, joins host Boaz Ashkenazy for a deep conversation on what it actually takes to deploy AI in high-stakes institutional environments — and why the bar is far higher than most tools can meet. Aabhas shares his path from running engineering at Postmates through its Uber acquisition, to a five-year stint as CTO at fintech startup Found, to his current role at Hebbia which began as a year-long advisory engagement before he joined formally. From there, the conversation dives into the core problem Hebbia solves: knowledge workers at the world's top investment banks, asset managers, and private equity firms buried in thousands of documents, needing multi-step analysis that existing tools simply can't handle. The discussion covers how Hebbia thinks about the interplay between deterministic software and large language models using LLMs only where generative reasoning is truly needed and keeping everything else rules-based, auditable, and fast. Aabhas explains the company's "forward deployed banker" model, where former investment bankers and transaction lawyers embed with customers to encode each firm's unique institutional methodology into Hebbia's platform. Boaz and Aabhas also explore what trust actually means in practice in regulated industries: explainability at the clause level, consistency across runs, and deliberate human checkpoints built into every workflow. They dig into the adoption dynamics at junior versus senior levels, the governance challenges that come with agentic systems, and why earning autonomy must be incremental in high-stakes environments. The episode closes with a striking observation: firms layering AI on top of existing processes are just moving bottlenecks. The firms that will pull ahead are the ones willing to redesign the factory floor, asking what it would look like to build the organization from scratch with AI today. This episode is essential listening for enterprise technology leaders, founders building in regulated verticals, and anyone thinking seriously about the gap between individual AI productivity and firm-level outcomes.--- Chapters ---Connect with Aabhas Sharma LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aabhassharma/ Connect with Boaz Ashkenazy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boazashkenazy/ Email: info@shiftai.fm

    33分

  3. 6月3日

    Systems Thinking is the Agentic Unlock with Google's LaSean Smith

    In this episode of the Shift AI Podcast, LaSean Smith, Product and Growth Lead at Google Cloud, joins host Boaz Ashkenazy for a wide-ranging conversation on how systems thinking and agentic AI are reshaping the way individuals, small businesses, and enterprises operate. LaSean shares a career journey that spans Microsoft HoloLens, Amazon, a successful startup exit, and now Google — plus a portfolio of small businesses that have served as his real-world AI lab. From a salad shop in Renton to a pre-construction development business in Seattle, he's applied workflow design and agent automation to solve practical problems long before it was fashionable. The conversation digs deep into how to actually build effective AI agents — not by prompting a chatbot, but by thinking in workflows first, identifying where reasoning actually needs to happen, and writing skills that make agents fast, reliable, and token-efficient. LaSean explains the "parcel grader" agent he built for his construction business, why he starts every agent build in a chat interface before moving to CLI, and how the McDonald's SOP model is the right mental framework for getting great output from AI. Boaz and LaSean also discuss the barbell economy that AI is creating — where small players and large enterprises both gain leverage while the middle gets squeezed — why Microsoft's Copilot strategy missed the point, how to think about agent security and identity, and why healthy organizational culture is the actual prerequisite for successful AI adoption. The episode closes with a reflection on what "always changing" really means as a mindset, and why building resilience and systems thinking skills now is the most important career investment anyone can make. This episode is essential listening for entrepreneurs, operators, and anyone using or thinking about deploying AI agents in their work. --- Chapters [00:00] Episode 100 and LaSean's First Jobs [03:30] From Microsoft HoloLens to Amazon to Google: LaSean's Career Path [08:00] What LaSean Does at Google Cloud Today [11:00] The Entrepreneurial Side: Small Businesses as an AI Lab [16:00] The Barbell Economy: Why the Middle Is Being Squeezed [20:00] Building the Parcel Grader Agent for Pre-Construction [25:00] How to Write Better Skills: Start in Chat, Not CLI [30:00] Workflow Thinking vs. Department Thinking [35:00] Why Google Is Generating 75% of Its Code with AI [38:00] The McDonald's SOP Model for Agent Design [42:00] Agent Security for Individuals and Small Businesses [47:00] Enterprise AI: Governance, Trust, and Organizational Design [52:00] The Two-Word Future of Work: Always Changing --- Connect with LaSean Smith LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laseansmith/ Connect with Boaz Ashkenazy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boazashkenazy/ Email: info@shiftai.fm

    54分

  4. 5月19日

    The Agentic Platform Hiding in Plain Sight with Slack Senior Director of DevRel Kurtis Kemple

    In this episode of the Shift AI Podcast, Kurtis Kemple, Senior Director of Developer Relations at Slack (Salesforce), joins host Boaz Ashkenazy for a wide-ranging conversation on how Slackbot is evolving into a full agentic platform for human-AI collaboration in the flow of work. Kurtis shares his extraordinary personal journey, from growing up in poverty in Northern New Jersey, dropping out of school, struggling with addiction, and spending over six years incarcerated, to teaching himself to code in prison with nothing but a textbook and a computer with no internet. From there, he built a career in tech that has taken him to one of the most prominent roles in developer relations at Salesforce. The conversation dives deep into how Slackbot is becoming far more than a simple assistant. Kurtis demonstrates how skills, canvases, and MCP connectors transform Slackbot into a powerful orchestration layer where multiple agents and humans collaborate in threads, channels, and workflows. He explains how Slack is positioning itself as the interface for agentic AI, whether that means connecting to Agentforce, GitHub, PagerDuty, or custom-built tools. Boaz and Kurtis explore the concept of bounded autonomy, the idea that agents should earn expanded capabilities through demonstrated consistency, much like onboarding a new employee. They discuss how ambient agents, gamified learning experiences, and personal productivity skills are already transforming day-to-day work for teams using Slack internally at Salesforce. This episode is essential listening for developers, team leads, and anyone building or deploying AI agents who wants to understand why the orchestration layer matters more than any single model, and how the future of work is being shaped inside the tools we already use every day. Chapters [00:00] From Poverty to Prison to Tech: Kurtis's Journey [04:28] Learning to Code Behind Bars with No Internet [06:39] Landing at Salesforce and Second Chances in Hiring [07:11] First Job: The Kemple Kids Shoveling Snow [08:48] The Role: Slackbot, DevRel, and the Agentic Platform Vision [11:35] Multi-Party Collaboration: Agents and Humans in Threads [12:43] Why Slack Is the Orchestration Layer for AI [15:25] Skills Deep Dive: Building and Using Custom Skills [18:32] Context from Conversations: Slack as a Living Repository [20:29] Canvases, Writing Styles, and Seamless Workflows [22:08] Customer Success Stories: Linear, Engine, and Design Partners [25:22] Human-Agent Orchestration vs. Agent-to-Agent Orchestration [28:45] Ambient Agents: The Tidy Skill and Chief of Staff [33:06] Building Trust Through Bounded Autonomy [34:22] Design Partners: Linear, GitHub, and Graceful Degradation [39:11] Slack Platform Power Up: Gamified Learning with Skills [42:37] The Future of Work: Boundedness and Agency [45:04] AI for Everyone: Small Models, Big Access, Edge Intelligence [47:08] What's Next: Slack Developer Day (May 20) and Beyond Connect with Kurtis Kemple LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtiskemple/ Email: curtiskemple@gmail.com GitHub: https://github.com/kurtiskemple Connect with Boaz Ashkenazy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boazashkenazy/ Email: info@shiftai.fm

    51分

  5. 5月15日

    AI Agent Deployment and Real ROI with MongoDB Field CTO Pete Johnson

    In this episode of the Shift AI Podcast, Pete Johnson, Field CTO of AI at MongoDB, joins host Boaz Ashkenazy for a wide-ranging conversation on where AI agents are actually delivering ROI — and what still needs to happen before enterprises can trust them with customers. Pete shares his origin story as a self-taught programmer who got his start on a TRS-80 in 1981, traces how MongoDB was born into a world of cloud, mobile, and internet that relational databases were never designed for, and explains why vector search sits at the intersection of MongoDB's document model and modern AI use cases. The conversation digs into Pete's "Customer Agent AI World Tour," where he has met with enterprises in over a dozen cities and heard a consistent message: production-grade agents are real, ROI is measurable, but the deployments are employee-facing and human in the loop. Pete explains the three things blocking the jump to customer-facing agents at scale, governance, observability, and evaluations, and why that challenge mirrors the early days of HTTPS standards for e-commerce. Boaz and Pete also explore the growing conversation around sovereign AI and on-prem inference, why Apple's edge device ecosystem may be the quiet wildcard in the infrastructure debate, and how MongoDB's Atlas platform lets organizations deploy data across 125-plus hyperscaler data centers worldwide. The episode closes with a forward-looking discussion on the future of software engineering, Werner Vogels' five skills for tomorrow's engineer, and why Pete's two-word forecast for the future of work is "not doomsday" — backed by a compelling contrast between the bank teller and the tollbooth worker as a framework for thinking about automation and job transformation. This episode is essential listening for enterprise leaders, developers, and anyone thinking seriously about where agentic AI is today versus where it is headed. Chapters [00:00] From Intellivision to TRS-80: Pete's Tech Origin Story [03:13] What MongoDB Is and Why the Document Model Matters [06:23] Joining MongoDB and the Vector Search Opportunity [07:50] What Pete Is Hearing on His AI World Tour [09:06] Why Fortune 500s Start with Employee-Facing Agents [11:11] Security, Governance, and the Three Big Blockers to Customer-Facing AI [14:29] How Software Engineering Is the Canary in the Coal Mine [16:56] Sovereign AI, On-Prem Inference, and the Cost of Tokens [20:14] The Apple Edge Device Wildcard [21:19] How MongoDB's Atlas Platform Fits a Hybrid Cloud World [23:21] Using AI Agents Is Programming in English [25:50] Werner Vogels on the Five Skills Every Engineer Will Need [27:17] The Future in Two Words: Not Doomsday [28:08] Bank Tellers vs. Tollbooth Workers: Why Most Jobs Will Level Up Connect with Pete Johnson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petecj2/ Connect with Boaz Ashkenazy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boazashkenazy/ Email: info@shiftai.fm

    32分

  6. 5月8日

    The Future of Food Is Already Being Farmed filmed live in Wenatchee, WA and hosted by Washington State Academy of Sciences.

    In this episode of the Shift AI Podcast, Steve Mantle, Founder and CEO of Innov8.ag, Raj Khosla, Dean of the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resources at Washington State University, and John Cox, soil scientist and fresh produce industry operator, join host Boaz Ashkenazy for a wide-ranging panel conversation on how AI and emerging technology are transforming agriculture from the ground up. Steve, Raj, and John each bring a distinct lens to the conversation — startup founder, academic dean, and hands-on operator — and together they paint a vivid picture of where precision agriculture has been and where it is going. The discussion opens with the human side of farming: the generational knowledge, seasonal intuition, and field-level pattern recognition that has defined agriculture for centuries. The panel also covers infrastructure realities, edge computing, rural connectivity gaps, ERP systems that still require on-premise servers, and the economic pressures pushing farmers to demand AI that delivers margin today, not in five years. The conversation closes with each guest sharing their two-word vision for the future of AI in agriculture: physical AI, bright and better, and hopeful foresight. This episode is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand how AI is moving beyond the office and into the fields, orchards, and packing houses that feed the world. A huge thanks to Washington State Academy of Sciences for including this event in their Deep Dive into AI in Agriculture and Washington State University’s AgAID Institute for organizing this event held at Wenatchee Valley College. This all wouldn't be possible without the support from the funding sponsors the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the USDA ARS. Chapters [00:00] Event Introduction and Background with Jordan Jobe of the AgAid Institute [03:50] Boaz Introduces Himself and the Shift AI Podcast [08:04] Podcast Recording Begins: Welcoming the Panel [08:48] Steve Mantle: From Irrigation Hand Lines to Innovate Ag [09:40] Raj: From a Radio Science Program in India to Precision Agriculture Dean [11:24] John Cox: From Furniture Assembly to Apple Orchards and Kyrgyzstan [13:22] The Human Side of Farming: Intuition, Resilience, and Generational Knowledge [15:10] How GPS Unlocked Precision Agriculture and Field-Level Heterogeneity [16:48] Multi-Generational Farm Knowledge as a Living Large Language Model [18:09] Notebook LM Meets the Farm: The Harvest Replay Concept [21:16] Batteryless Biodegradable Sensors and the Future of Field Diagnostics [24:30] Precision Irrigation Prescription Maps and Dynamic Field Management [26:18] Computer Vision in the Apple Packing House [27:58] AI as a Global Expert: Diagnosing Crop Disease in Kyrgyzstan [30:15] Constraints in Ag AI: Data Stacks, Fragmented Systems, and Cultural Resistance [33:50] Build vs. Buy and the Change Agent Problem in Agriculture [35:50] Edge Computing, On-Premise Servers, and Hybrid Infrastructure on the Farm [39:09] Rural Connectivity: Broadband Gaps and the Starlink Reality [41:54] Economics of Ag AI: Labor Costs, Tightening Margins, and ROI [44:28] Moving from Spreadsheets to Agents: Why Trust Is the Real Barrier [45:50] Future Skills: What the Next Generation of Farmers Needs to Know [48:05] FFA Ag Tech Innovation Day and Hands-On Learning for Students [50:07] Two Words for the Future: Physical AI, Bright and Better, Hopeful Foresight [54:15] How to Connect with Steve, Raj, and John Connect with the Guests Steve Mantle LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemantle/ Raj (Dean, WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resources) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raj-khosla-2566a819/ John Cox LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-cox-soildr/ Connect with Boaz Ashkenazy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boazashkenazy/ Email: info@shiftai.fm

    52分

  7. 4月23日

    Agentic AI and the Future of Revenue Teams with Outreach CEO Abhijit Mitra

    In this episode of the Shift AI Podcast, Abhijit Mitra, CEO of Outreach, joins host Boaz Ashkenazy for a wide-ranging conversation on how agentic AI is fundamentally reshaping the way revenue teams operate. Abhijit shares his journey from tutoring a seventh-grade student advanced math in India to spending 30 years building enterprise systems at Oracle, SAP, and ServiceNow before joining Outreach as head of product and engineering—and eventually stepping into the CEO role. From there, the discussion dives deep into how Outreach has evolved from a sales execution platform into a full agentic AI infrastructure for go-to-market workflows. The conversation explores the critical distinction between true autonomous agents and what Abhijit calls "fancy dashboards"—how Outreach's agents autonomously research accounts, personalize outreach, prep sellers for meetings, provide real-time coaching, and even submit forecasts without human intervention. Abhijit explains why the shift from SaaS seat licenses to hiring agents with skills and capacity represents the next evolution of enterprise software, and why companies that don't adapt will not survive. Boaz and Abhijit also dig into the governance challenge at the heart of enterprise AI adoption—shadow AI, role-based access control, and how to give individual sellers the autonomy to personalize their own agents while keeping everything inside trusted organizational guardrails. The episode closes with Abhijit's vision for self-adapting AI that learns best practices from every rep and distributes them across the entire team, making every rep your best rep. This episode is essential listening for sales leaders, revenue operators, and enterprise technology buyers who want to understand how agentic AI is moving beyond individual productivity tools to unlock fundamentally new go-to-market operating models. Chapters [00:00] Introduction: Abhijit's Career from Oracle and SAP to Outreach [01:26] First Job: Teaching 12th Grade Math to a 7th Grader in India [01:58] Outreach's Evolution from Sales Execution to Revenue Orchestration [03:42] 2025 Was the Launch—2026 Is When Agents Actually Happen [04:12] What Makes a True Autonomous Agent (Not a Chatbot or Dashboard) [07:46] The New Paradigm: Hiring Agents vs. Renting Software Seats [09:43] Personal Agents and the Case for Individual Autonomy [12:06] Enterprise Governance: Why Every Rep Needs Guardrails [12:34] Shadow AI, Sovereign AI, and What CISOs Are Actually Worried About [13:34] Role-Based Access Control for Agents: Match the Person, Not the Platform [14:20] Day in the Life: What Agents Do So Sellers Don't Have To [17:06] Outreach's Own 100-Person Sales Team as a Live Testing Ground [17:34] The Numbers: 39% Productivity Increase Measured Internally [19:17] Is SaaS Dead? The Real Transformation Happening in Enterprise Software [21:50] What's Next: Self-Adapting Agents That Learn and Spread Best Practices [24:30] Two Words on the Future of Work: Unleash Your Best Performance [25:38] Closing Thoughts on Augmentation, Fear, and Human Potential Connect with Abhijit Mitra LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitrasaab/ Connect with Boaz Ashkenazy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boazashkenazy/ Email: info@shiftai.fm

    29分

  8. 4月17日

    How AI is Rewriting Software Engineering with Amperity CTO Derek Slager

    In this episode of the Shift AI Podcast, Derek Slager, CTO and co-founder of Amperity, joins host Boaz Ashkenazy for a conversation that spans 10 years of company building, the evolution of AI-assisted software development, and what it really means to lead a technical organization through genuine disruption. Derek shares the founding story of Amperity, how he and co-founder Kabir Shahani stumbled into the customer data problem while building marketing automation at their previous company, Aperture, and how that experience became the thesis for building an entire platform around getting data right. The conversation moves into the heart of how AI has transformed Derek's work as a CTO and as an engineer. He describes the moment the shift felt real, the team dynamics of moving from individual AI exploration to a true team sport, and how Amperity is compounding the institutional knowledge locked in a decade of after-action reviews into something agents can now actually learn from. Derek addresses the "SaaS is dead" narrative head-on arguing that Amperity's data foundation is precisely the asset that makes agents genuinely useful for their customers. Boaz and Derek close with a forward-looking exchange on agentic workflows in marketing, the importance of redesigning process and what a learning mindset means for individuals and organizations navigating what comes next. This episode is essential listening for CTOs, data leaders, and operators who want to understand how the companies with the best data foundations are positioned to thrive in the agentic era. Chapters [00:00] Introduction: Derek's Path to Building Amperity [02:13] What Amperity Is and Why It Took 10 Years to Build [04:41] First Job: Early IT Work at Dad's Small Business in Monroe, WA [06:14] The Founders Club: How Amperity Went to Market in 2016 [08:20] Why They're Running a New Founders Club 10 Years Later [10:13] Both Sides of Claude Code: What Changed and When [13:30] Living Through Disruption as a CTO and Engineer [15:36] Making AI a Team Sport Instead of an Individual Pursuit [17:04] The Moment It Really Clicked: A Simple Tool That Took 5 Minutes to Build [19:09] Cultural Adoption: Skeptics to Believers Inside Amperity [21:50] Compounding Engineering: After-Action Reviews as AI Training Data [23:45] The Agent Wave Is Real: What It Means for a Customer Data Platform [25:09] Amperity's Data Foundation as the Perfect Agent Substrate [27:00] Redesigning Process, Not Just Adopting Tools [28:57] Systems Thinking and the Future of Work [30:04] Two Words: Learning Mindset [33:01] How to Connect with Derek and Amperity Connect with Derek Slager LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekslager/ Website: amperity.com Connect with Boaz Ashkenazy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boazashkenazy/ Email: info@shiftai.fm

    34分
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予告編

番組について

The Shift AI podcast explores how AI and ML is changing the way that we work in the digital age. The show's creator Boaz Ashkenazy interviews thought leaders who are redefining how businesses and employees will be impacted by emerging technology today and in the future | Visit shiftaipodcast.com

情報

  • クリエイター
    Boaz Ashkenazy
  • 配信期間
    23年 - 26年
  • エピソード
    101
  • 制限指定
    不適切な内容を含まない
  • Copyright
    © Boaz Ashkenazy
  • 番組のWebサイト
    Shift AI Podcast

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