AI Radicals

Alation
  • 4.7 (24)
  • Technology
  • Updated Biweekly

Some people can see things that nobody else can. They seem to be able to peer around corners and into the future. These seemingly super powers come from being able to synthesize the data all around us. They approach problems with a curious and rational mind. They think differently and encourage others to embrace data culture. We call them “data radicals” because they transform themselves and the world around them In this podcast, we talk to these Data Radicals to understand what makes their approach so unique and how it can be replicated.

  1. 7h ago

    Metadata to Knowledge Graphs: Mapping the Full AI Data Stack, with Sanjeev Mohan, Principal of SanjMo

    Data foundations are the real bottleneck for agentic AI, and most teams are governing the wrong layer. In this episode of AI Radicals, host Satyen Sangani talks with Sanjeev Mohan, industry analyst and author of Designing the AI-Driven Data Foundations, about why AI's biggest promises still rest on unglamorous data fundamentals, and why agents are breaking the old rules of governance. Sanjeev walks through his layered model of metadata, semantics, context, ontology, and knowledge graphs, and the two dig into where data products fit in that stack. They debate whether governance belongs to the agent or the data itself, why deterministic rules must live with the data rather than be re-explained to every model or prompt, and how agentic systems generate entirely new categories of data that nobody has a framework for governing yet.  "There's a concept 100% related to the whole idea of context and data products, and that is governance. Now we are in the realm of AI, which is a very different beast to govern." Listen to this episode to learn: Why semantics, not storage or compute, is becoming the real moat in the AI stackWhy agentic governance has to cover input, output, and runtime, not just clean data in and clean data outWhy data teams are entering a golden era, shifting from backup-and-restore work to business strategy and reusable data products-------- “ One definition is that data product is a philosophy. It's not a thing. And what data product says is that when you build your artifact, you build it with the product management best practices. For example, there's a data product owner, it has a version number, and it's backward compatible. It's packaged with SLAs and contracts. So if you are packaging your semantic layer and you're building it using the product management best practices, then that's a data product, very much so.” – Sanjeev Mohan -------- Time Stamps [01:37] Sanjeev’s book Designing the AI-Driven Data Foundations [03:47] Defining metadata, semantics & context [07:28] Taxonomy, ontology & knowledge graphs [10:01] What is a data product? [20:24] From data governance to agentic governance [27:30] The context layer debate [31:32] The future of data people [38:15] Predictions for the next 90-180 days [42:50] Closing & key takeaways -------- Sponsor This podcast is presented by Alation. Learn more: * Subscribe to the newsletter: https://caspianstudios71626.activehosted.com/f/73 * Alation’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alation/ * Satyen’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssangani/ -------- Links Connect with Sanjeev Mohan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjmo/ Designing the AI-Driven Data Foundations: Architecture, Principles, and Practice: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/shop/general-introductory-computer-science/designing-the-ai-driven-data-foundations-architecture-principles-and-practice-p-9781394396665#aboutauthors-section Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. Sep 30

    Data Products, Not Platforms: A CDO's Playbook for the Agentic Era with Cara Tice, CDO of Early Warning

    Why "America's data steward" is more than a job title, and what it takes to keep fraud intelligence trustworthy in the age of AI agents. In this episode of AI Radicals, guest host Susan Wilson, Sales Leader at Alation, talks with Cara Tice, Chief Data Officer at Early Warning (the company behind Zelle), about what data stewardship really means when trillions of dollars in real-time payments, and the fraud intelligence protecting them, run on your data. Cara and Susan dig into why data products have replaced the "one data platform to rule them all" mentality, why integration and change management matter more than any single tool, and why AI doesn't create data problems, it just exposes the ones that were already there.  "Your AI governance is reliant on your data management program. Make sure you've got data governance up and running, because AI is going to rely on your data management controls and the context you create." Listen to this episode to learn: Why "data products" — not centralized platforms — are the fastest path to trustworthy, reusable dataWhy AI governance is really just an extension of data governance, and why the two leaders need to be joined at the hipWhat a new CDO should fix (and what to leave alone) in their first 90 days on the job-------- “As a CDO or as a data steward, you need to be obsessed with the customer outcome. Don't lose sight of that. It's easy to lose sight of it when you are focused on plumbing and fixing this issue and that issue. You always have to remind yourself of what's the bigger picture, what's the north star?  With data products, you become relentless about the customer outcome because you're delivering to a specific business need, you're creating more capability that is business centric around data. When I think about the features that you would need for data science models, it's the same. Whether your consumer is a data scientist or is a commercial consumer, that data is used to make a decision. So you need to make sure that it's accurate.” – Cara Tice -------- Time Stamps [03:04] Stewardship vs. governance — and what "America's data steward" actually means [06:49] What governed data means when the cost of being wrong is fraud [09:41] Speed and precision in fraud modeling, and why data is fragmented everywhere [10:55] Data products: tables, joins, and eating the vegetables without knowing it [13:54] Progress vs. perfection — and where perfection is non-negotiable [16:30] The monolith is gone. Now it's Lego blocks (but not too many) [17:56] The thing that gets you every time: change management [20:50] Vertical slices, quick value, and the CFO's "where's my return?" [22:35] What Cara rebuilds in every CDO role — and what she leaves alone [29:17] The grocery store analogy: connecting the catalog to business outcomes [31:29] Agentic AI, data risk, and the RPA lesson nobody wants to revisit [36:13] AI governance as an extension of data governance [38:34] Rapid fire: the first-six-months mistake and the year-one investment [41:39] Data leaders and AI leaders: joined at the hip -------- Sponsor This podcast is presented by Alation. Learn more: * Subscribe to the newsletter: https://caspianstudios71626.activehosted.com/f/73 * Alation’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alation/ * Satyen’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssangani/ -------- Links Connect with Cara Tice on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cara-dailey/ Learn more about Early Warning: https://www.earlywarning.com/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. Sep 23

    Semantic Coupling & the Interconnected AI Stack with Eugene Wu, Professor at Columbia University

    Why AI agents fail at scale, and the systems-thinking fix nobody's building yet. In this episode of AI Radicals, host Satyen Sangani talks with Eugene Wu, Columbia professor and co-founder of the Data Agents and Processes (DAPLab), about why building reliable AI agents is fundamentally a systems problem, not a model problem. Eugene explains "semantic coupling," the idea that every layer of an agent's stack, from data retrieval to tool calls to reasoning, is interdependent, so a small failure anywhere can quietly corrupt the final output. He and Satyen draw a parallel to early relational databases absorbing the complexity that applications used to handle themselves, arguing that today's computing infrastructure needs to do the same for agents: managing data flows, enforcing rules deterministically instead of hoping a prompt is followed, and giving agents safe room to explore and fail without real-world consequences. Eugene shares research from his lab on search at massive scale, why even top models struggle to find the right evidence in huge datasets, and a "branchable" computing environment that lets agents try, fail, and roll back cheaply. "You need somewhere to ground reliability and quality. If it's not probabilistic, and you can rely on it and it's guaranteed, then the system doesn't need to think about it at all." Listen to this episode to learn: Why "semantic coupling" makes traditional layered software thinking break down for AI agentsWhy pushing rules into the system (not the prompt) turns probabilistic behavior into guaranteed safetyWhy compute-level innovations like branchable environments could redefine what we expect agents to do on our behalf-------- “ So many people in the data community and companies are working on data search, but how do you evaluate the end-to-end quality? And how much search is even the critical bottleneck in this kind of end-to-end question? Because what does the agent need to do? It needs to take your question, it needs to figure out how to decompose it into a series of sub-questions. Such as, “Schools near Clinton Hill.” Then it needs to figure out, “Okay, I need to find information about Clinton Hill, and I need to find locations of schools.” And it needs to then search over 40 million documents and datasets that we've collected, and find the right ones. At any given step, if it didn't find the right data, then the whole thing falls apart and you can't answer the question.” – Eugene Wu -------- Time Stamps *(01:10): What the Data Agents and Processes Lab is and why it spans multiple research areas *(04:29): Semantic coupling explained *(19:31): How agents find the right data in a massive data lake *(29:18): What trust means when AI can persuade as well as answer *(42:59): The biggest unlocks for agents over the next 12 months  *(56:12): What we'll be talking about in 12 to 18 months -------- Sponsor This podcast is presented by Alation. Learn more: * Subscribe to the newsletter: https://caspianstudios71626.activehosted.com/f/73 * Alation’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alation/ * Satyen’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssangani/ -------- Links Connect with Eugene Wu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugene-wu-b23417290/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. Sep 16

    The 90-Day AI Roadmap with Charlene Li, Author

    Why AI transformations fail and the 90-day plan that actually works. In this episode of AI Radicals, host Satyen Sangani sits down with Charlene Li, bestselling author and strategist, to unpack her new book on how organizations can create real value with AI, not just deploy it. Charlene explains why the biggest mistake leaders make is treating AI as a separate strategy instead of a tool that serves their existing business strategy, and lays out the 90-day framework she and co-author Katia Welch built to help executives move from confusion to a clear AI roadmap. They dig into why "Goldilocks governance" beats both reckless and overly restrictive AI policies, why ownership of AI shouldn't default to IT, and why the obsession with pilots is really a symptom of leaders abdicating strategic responsibility. Charlene also shares real examples from a call center that grew headcount instead of cutting it, to a bank that reskilled instead of laying off, showing what an abundance mindset toward AI looks like in practice. "Good governance doesn't slow you down. It actually speeds you up, because you know what you are able to do and what you shouldn't be doing." Listen to this episode to learn: Why AI should never be treated as its own strategy and how to anchor every AI decision in existing business goalsWhy "moving from pilot to production" is really a leadership gap, not a technology gapWhy an abundance mindset is what separates organizations that win with AI from those that stall out-------- “ They're green-lighting these pilots because they feel they need to be doing something, but they won't green-light into production because they don't have an overarching AI roadmap that supports their strategy. They haven't put the time and attention to it. They've given it to IT. They have not really thought about what are we trying to do with this? The business leaders have abdicated their responsibility for AI because they themselves don't understand it, and they're not prepared, they don't know, they're not equipped to be able to have a conversation, a strategic conversation with it, because they don't even understand that it is a strategic issue. It's a leadership gap that we have right now.” – Charlene Li -------- Time Stamps *(01:20): Charlene’s motivations for writing Winning with AI *(07:40): The 90-day blueprint explained *(12:11): Goldilocks governance & the AI Trust Pyramid *(18:22): Three ways to create value: engagement, efficiency, reinvention  *(28:04): Why pilots fail to reach production *(40:15): Satyen’s takeaways -------- Sponsor This podcast is presented by Alation. Learn more: * Subscribe to the newsletter: https://caspianstudios71626.activehosted.com/f/73 * Alation’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alation/ * Satyen’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssangani/ -------- Links Connect with Charlene Li on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleneli/ Winning with AI: The 90-Day Blueprint for Success: https://www.amazon.com/Winning-AI-90-Day-Blueprint-Success-ebook/dp/B0GQM9PD3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. Sep 9

    The Case for Federation in the Age of Agents with Anant Jhingran, CTO of IBM Software

    Why the same old data infrastructure playbook won't survive contact with agentic AI, and what actually has to change underneath. In this episode of AI Radicals, host Satyen Sangani talks with IBM Software CTO Anant Jhingran about why enterprise AI's biggest bottleneck isn't the models, it's the decades-old data and integration infrastructure sitting underneath them. Anant and Satyen dig into why data fundamentals (provenance, metadata, systems of record) haven't changed, even as humans and fixed workflows give way to agents reasoning on the fly. They contrast "AI for data" with "data for AI," why AI's tolerance for messiness still doesn't excuse bad data, and why centralization may matter less as agents run quick, discovery-driven queries instead of big fixed reports. Anant also shares a new focus at IBM: rethinking whether one "golden" code path per product still makes sense when AI makes forking and personalizing variants easy. "If you think that agents are just going to do the same thing that you're doing except machines instead of people, it's kind of boring, and I don't think that's going to happen. The real change is they're doing something different that we haven’t done before." Listen to this episode to learn: Why "AI for data" and "data for AI" are two distinct problems enterprises need to solve separatelyWhy agentic, discovery-driven workloads may reduce the need to centralize all your data, but raise the stakes on metadataWhy forking products into many tailored variants, instead of one shared code path, could reshape how software gets built-------- “ Something that I wouldn't have thought of three months back or six months back, which is how do we actually build products. And the reason is very simple, is that if you just say that AI is going to help us build products faster, then it doesn't actually create a competitive differentiation because everybody else is creating products faster with AI. So you have to both do things differently and perhaps do different things.” – Anant Jhingran -------- Time Stamps *(02:43): Is this AI moment different from past tech shifts? *(08:38): Data quality as a forcing function: "data for AI" vs "AI for data" *(14:23): How advanced is the industry in applying LLMs to old data problems? *(21:14): Federation's comeback & metadata vs. centralization *(32:16): IBM's three strategic pillars & building products differently in the AI era *(51:16): Takeaways -------- Sponsor This podcast is presented by Alation. Learn more: * Subscribe to the newsletter: https://caspianstudios71626.activehosted.com/f/73 * Alation’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alation/ * Satyen’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssangani/ -------- Links Connect with Anant Jhingran on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anantjhingran/ Learn more about IBM: https://www.ibm.com/us-en Anant’s Podcast Context Window: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm-EPIkBI3YqXTgboKALGzNmGELWp_oTT Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. Sep 2

    Infinite: Why AI Business Reinvention Beats Automation with ServiceNow’s Brian Solis & Dave Wright

    Why mode one thinking keeps most companies stuck—and what it takes to build a company that can keep reinventing itself with AI. In this episode of AI Radicals, host Satyen Sangani talks with ServiceNow’s Brian Solis and Dave Wright and authors of Infinite, about why so many enterprises get stuck chasing ROI on isolated AI use cases instead of using AI to become something genuinely new. Brian and Dave unpack their "mode one, mode two" framework: deciding what existing work deserves to scale with AI (mode one) versus using AI to unlock entirely new value the business couldn't create before (mode two). Using stories like Ford's costly rehiring of quality engineers after over-automating, and IKEA's Billie bot freeing thousands of agents to launch a billion-euro design business, they explain how the real ROI conversation starts with strategy, not use cases. They also dig into why most companies are still stuck optimizing yesterday's workflows, why trust and psychological safety are prerequisites for innovation, and why AI governance has to evolve from a checkbox exercise into managing AI as a true enterprise asset. "AI is not the strategy. If it does become the strategy, it very much limits the impact it's going to have on the organization." Listen to this episode to learn: Why leading with use cases limits AI's impact, and how IKEA turned 8,200 agents into a billion-euro business Why most companies stay stuck optimizing yesterday's workflows instead of reinventing them Why governing AI as an asset is key as agentic AI scales -------- “ You'll see a common set of challenges, like, for example, what's the ROI of AI? That seems to be a popular conversation that has all kinds of different schools of thought around it.  AI is not the strategy. If it does become the strategy, it very much limits the impact it's going to have on the organization and how you can measure its success. Where we have the more successful ROI conversations is if we take a step back and look at, well, what are some of the things that we couldn't do without it? Does this workflow deserve to exist? Does this question help you compete more effectively for 2030? We want to bring the strategy back to the beginning of the conversation.” – Brian Solis -------- Time Stamps *(01:16): Why Brian and Dave wrote a book on AI reinvention  *(05:05): Why "What's the ROI of AI?" is the wrong question *(18:20): Mode one vs. mode two: optimizing yesterday vs. building tomorrow *(27:19): AI maturity: where enterprises really stand today *(31:33): Governing AI as an asset, not an employee *(49:50): Satyen’s takeaways -------- Sponsor This podcast is presented by Alation. Learn more: * Subscribe to the newsletter: https://caspianstudios71626.activehosted.com/f/73 * Alation’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alation/ * Satyen’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssangani/ -------- Links Connect with Brian Solis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansolis/ Connect with Dave Wright on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davewright2/ Infinite: How Visionary Leaders Transform Today's Businesses into AI-Forward Companies: https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Blueprint-Leading-Age-AI/dp/1394439024 Read ServiceNow’s AI Enterprise Maturity Index 2026: https://www.servicenow.com/content/dam/servicenow-assets/public/en-us/doc-type/resource-center/white-paper/wp-enterprise-ai-maturity-index-2026.pdf Learn more about ServiceNow: https://www.servicenow.com/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. Aug 26

    AI Governance in Public Media with Nathalie Berdat, Data Director of Product at the BBC

    How data trust breaks—and how to rebuild it before AI makes it worse. In this episode of AI Radicals, host Satyen Sangani sits down with Nathalie Berdat, Data Director of Product at the BBC, to explore how one of the world's most trusted media institutions is rebuilding its data foundations for the AI era. Nathalie shares how she diagnosed a quiet trust crisis inside the BBC—teams producing conflicting numbers for the same metrics—and led a multi-year effort to fix it: identifying the handful of metrics that actually mattered, building certified "data products" as single sources of truth, and modernizing a legacy platform to support them at scale. She also unpacks why AI governance at a public institution carries different stakes than at a commercial company, how the BBC decides where genAI is (and isn't) allowed to touch editorial content, and what has to be true before agentic AI can responsibly run across an organization like the BBC. "The governance isn't a compliance checkbox, it's closer to editorial standards. It has to be defensible to a journalist." Listen to this episode to learn: Why low trust in data often shows up as two teams presenting two different numbers for the same metric and how to fix it Why the BBC treats AI governance as an editorial issue, especially when it comes to recommendations and content curation Why agentic AI requires clear data ownership, documented lineage, and machine-readable governance before it can be deployed responsibly -------- “ Building a data product that gives you a very trusted source of truth when it comes to who works and where and what cost center allows you to then expose this product and build on top something like return on investment for our content or program, because then you'll know who has worked, how much it cost us to build and develop a program.  You need to know your return on investment for something you'll be commissioning. You'll be investing a lot of effort and time and people on it.” – Nathalie Berdat -------- Time Stamps *(01:56): How the BBC differs from a commercial enterprise in AI governance *(06:51): Rebuilding trust in data at the BBC *(18:47): Building certified data products and driving adoption *(26:00): AI, context, and the data product as a foundation *(29:53): Editorial complexity: AI, personalization, and audience trust *(44:32): Satyen’s takeaways -------- Sponsor This podcast is presented by Alation. Learn more: * Subscribe to the newsletter: https://caspianstudios71626.activehosted.com/f/73 * Alation’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alation/ * Satyen’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssangani/ -------- Links Connect with Nathalie Berdat on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathalie-berdat-b716b56/ Learn more about BBC: https://www.bbc.com/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. Aug 19

    Is Business Intelligence Truly Dead? Insights from Francois Ajenstat, Founder & CEO of Golden Analytics

    Analytics tools are getting a total rewrite for the AI era. What does it actually take to build a "Cursor for data"? In this episode of AI Radicals, host Satyen Sangani is joined by Francois Ajenstat, founder and CEO of Golden Analytics, to discuss how AI is reshaping data analysis workflows. A three-decade veteran of the analytics space — from Cognos to Microsoft to a decade as Chief Product Officer at Tableau — Francois explores why context and metadata still matter more than ever, and why the next generation of data tools needs to be built with a "slider of autonomy." "What we generate is we know how data is being used for different use cases and how people traversed our tool to get to that answer... every step that somebody does in Golden is essentially recorded in a time machine." Listen to this episode to learn: Why visualization was never the hard part of BI — and what actually is How Golden built a per-user pricing model to align incentives with customers Why context and metadata need to be built through the job itself, not managed as an end unto itself -------- “As you go through the journey, not every model is great at every part of the analytical flow. Do you use Sonnet for everything or Opus or Fable? When is it appropriate to use different things? There's a factor of cost, there's a factor of latency, accuracy. All those things have to be really considered as you come through it, and how do you make this work also when you've never seen the data in the first hand?” – Francois Ajenstat -------- Time Stamps *(03:12): From Cognos to Microsoft to Tableau: building the BI industry *(08:32): Is BI dead? Why visualization was never the hard part *(12:21): Building Golden: two-click dashboards and a constellation of LLMs *(19:19): Why data isn't software: the unique challenges of AI + data *(31:41): The blurring boundaries between metadata, context, and BI *(48:05): Satyen’s takeaways -------- Sponsor This podcast is presented by Alation. Learn more: * Subscribe to the newsletter: https://www.alation.com/podcast/ * Alation’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alation/ * Satyen’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssangani/ -------- Links Connect with Francois Ajenstat on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francoisajenstat/ Learn more about Golden Analytics: https://goldenanalytics.com/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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About

Some people can see things that nobody else can. They seem to be able to peer around corners and into the future. These seemingly super powers come from being able to synthesize the data all around us. They approach problems with a curious and rational mind. They think differently and encourage others to embrace data culture. We call them “data radicals” because they transform themselves and the world around them In this podcast, we talk to these Data Radicals to understand what makes their approach so unique and how it can be replicated.

Information

  • Creator
    Alation
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    86
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Alation
  • Show Website
    AI Radicals

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