AI with Alec. Get smarter on AI. The easy way.

Alec Coughlin

Conversations with leading technical minds in Artificial Intelligence - from CTOs of pioneering AI startups to AI architects at Fortune 500 companies. We explore their strategies, implementations, and innovations to help you better understand and deploy AI in the real world. Hear enterprise AI insights and practical perspectives you won't find anywhere else. If you're a technical leader, business executive, AI practitioner, or innovation strategist, this is for you.

  1. FEB 4

    Greg Boone: AI Isn't an Intern, It's an Everything Machine | AI with Alec E26

    AI with Alec E26 with Greg Boone. 5 reasons to watch? 1: Greg says the quiet part out loud 2: The era of the lone “idea guy or gal” is over, now everyone can build 3: You can’t mandate your way through AI transformation, never underestimate psychological safety 4: AI isn’t an intern, it’s an everything machine, an “IDE for business people” 5: AI native interns crush month long projects in days, are you enabling them aka “feeding the beast?”   BIG s/o to Tracey Franklin at Moderna, leading the integration of technology + human + digital labor.

    43 min

  2. 12/19/2025

    2 Weeks to 2 Days: How Calm's UX Team Tests 10X More Concepts with AI Prototyping | Chase Clark

    The way Chase Clark, Lead UX Researcher at Calm, demonstrates how AI is augmenting his workflows with real, tangible examples is outstanding. Personification of “hands in the dirt” use of AI that produces real, measurable results. The kind that all leaders want to generate. 1: Time Compression at Scale: 2 hours → 5 minutes, 2 weeks → 2 days Not just time saved, it’s all about accelerated learning. 2: AI Prototyping: Previously impossible research is now possible What happens when teams test 5-10 concepts in the time it took to test one? Innovation cycles compress. Risks get de-risked before production. 3: AI Augmentation: Calibrating collaboration between Humans + Machines Never underestimate the importance of human taste. AI processes data. Humans are the strategic and creative layer. While a lot of people are debating AI strategy, Chase and his team are shipping real results. s / o Lovable, Supabase

    45 min

  3. 12/09/2025

    Good Pirates Ship Fast: L'Oreal's AI-First in 90 Days (May '24), Accelerating Since | Thomas Menard

    Want to see AI-first at scale? Check out Thomas Menard and the rockstar team at L’Oreal showing us how it’s done.Embracing AI to drive “idea to impact” in less than 90 days for a 100,000 person enterprise is impressive.To do it in May 2024 is outrageous. My man Thomas Menard is a “good pirate” who personifies the “ship fast, learn, iterate” approach. No analysis paralysis. No tech for tech’s sake. No science projects. Just a ruthless commitment to augmenting people to create business value.Intelligent systems that abstract complexity so everybody, engineers and non-engineers, can create value without becoming AI experts.What’s next?From Gen-AI-as-a-Service to a proper Agentic AI platform. Realizing the dual benefits of AI infrastructure while balancing the buy vs build equation accordingly.Think context engineering, AI-first architecture, platform design and continuous improvement.1% better every day. This is the way.s/o Harrison Chase, LangChain + GCP

    47 min

  4. 11/26/2025

    Banks Have 2-3 Years Before AI Leaders Pull Away, Forever. AIWA E23 w/Co-CEO of Evident.

    If you know who Evident is, you understand why I was so stoked to interview co-founder / co-CEO Alexandra Mousavizadeh. If you don’t know Evident, let’s fix that.Evident is all about data and benchmarking the embrace of AI across Financial Services. And you know what they say about data driven conversations? They’re super objective aka the best.1: AI doesn’t remove thinking, AI allows you to “think about dimensions you’ve never been able to draw in before”, it raises the floor and ceiling of your work2: Banks leaning hardest into AI are the ones hiring while those avoiding it are doing the opposite3: Moving away from point solutions and “getting to platform” is the race you want to run4: Banks all in on operationalizing AI are “moving at triple, quadruple speed” and we’re “two to three years out” from a tipping point where “growth is exponential”5: CEO and leadership conviction that this is “absolutely existential” and acting on it is consistent across companies leading the packWatch this interview and I guarantee my enthusiasm for Evident will be transferred to you. Not the most “objective” statement but you know, I love data…Want to know which banks are winning with AI, backed by data, not hype? Link to the “Evident 2025 AI Banking Index”: https://evidentinsights.com/ai-index/A must read.

    46 min

  5. 10/10/2025

    Bret Greenstein: 'If You Can't Imagine It, You Can't Make It'-Science Projects to AI Transformation

    Is the failure rate for enterprise AI POCs super high because they’re “science projects” solving a problem that’s already been solved?Guest Bret Greenstein, Chief AI Officer of West Monroe, dropping all sorts of knowledge in AI with Alec podcast E22:“We already know that AI can do this work. Proving value is actually sort of a cop-out.”“It's much more phases than POCs.”“A lot of POCs were done by technical people who proved it could be done with no line of sight to the implementation and adoption.”“And the people who actually know how work is done are not sitting in an IT center.” “They're near where the work is.”“So the best projects, and I've seen hundreds of them, are when the business is involved with technology and the leadership understands what they're trying to accomplish.” “Otherwise it's just a science project.”“And there's a lot of science projects or people pushing for a license for a thing that's going to magically change your life. It's like people selling a pill to make you live longer.”If that didn't convince you to watch the episode, here are 5 more:1️⃣ Humans in the loop or on top of the loop. They’re your decision maker. Always have been and always will be.2️⃣ Operationalizing AI-first ambitions? “You can't have leaders who don't understand it. Now that being said, I don't think they have to be data scientists, but they do have to understand the nature of it.”3️⃣ “If you can’t imagine it, you can’t make it.”4️⃣ Evolution from Prompt engineering to Context engineering because “knowing which data matters is really useful” and “providing more data that’s relevant” is critical.5️⃣ In the enterprise AI era, buy vs build vs partner? “Look for no regret moves” as the “world is literally forming around us” aka make investments that become more valuable not less valuable as things change.Chapters + Timestamps:00:00 - Introduction00:26 - 100K Employees Doing 300K Work: The AI-Native Vision02:58 - Internal Audit Case Study: 50% Workload Reduction06:02 - From Fear to AI Whisperer: Building Soft AI Skills08:24 - Why Your Data Doesn't Need to Be Clean (Yet)13:04 - The Death of Application-Centric Architecture16:27 - Chat Interface vs Beautiful UI: What Users Actually Want19:01 - The No Regrets Move Strategy for AI Investment23:30 - Forward Deployed Engineers vs Business Transformation25:56 - The POC Trap: Why "Science Projects" Fail27:35 - Leaders Don't Need to Be Data Scientists (But...)30:02 - Electricity Metaphor: Reimagining Your Business30:50 - "If You Can't Imagine It, You Can't Make It"33:05 - Closing

    33 min

  6. 09/16/2025

    $1M+ Sports Decisions on Ancient Tech vs. AI That Speaks the ‘Language of Movement’ | VueMotion CEO

    One of the most beautiful ways to describe the essence of the collaboration between athletes + coaches?“We see movement as a language that actually needs to be taught.”Ryan Talbot, co-founder and CEO of VueMotion dropped that phenomenal quote on me during our AI with Alec interview.VueMotion is “a computer vision AI machine learning technology” company that works with professional and collegiate sports teams to introduce objective data into critical decision making processes. Enabling teams to capture and analyze data from the natural environment aka practice, games etc vs requiring athletes to go into labs / academic environments.Imagine how much better teams could perform by learning the language of movement, introducing objective data and feeding both into the genius machine to augment human intelligence, judgement and ultimately performance?Especially given that they are using data / tech infrastructure that’s 20+ years old to make critical sports decisions today.In the AI era of business, this is the equivalent of using tools comparable to a rock to hammer nails vs a nail gun…I’m +10000 here for this 👇“And we're really focused on our goal to be able to analyze a million plus people a day using computer vision, machine learning, to be able to change lives.”Chapters / Timestamps:0:00 - Introduction1:29 - What is VueMotion3:32 - Sports Performance 2.05:50 - The Founding Story9:22 - Industry Problems + Solutions 13:00 - LLMs + the Future 15:40 - Growth Strategy + Scale 18:02 - Real-World Impact21:29 - Closing Thoughts

    22 min

  7. 09/09/2025

    Refined Graffiti Artist Loves AI and Paints Where Sports, Culture + Fashion Collide | Kyle Wallack

    Kyle Wallack’s art is phenomenal, but the way this “refined graffiti artist” has embraced AI? That’s an inspiration for artists everywhere. This AI with Alec interview is for you if you’re into… Street Art. AI enabling artists to spend more time creating art vs everything else. Intersection of culture, fashion, sports, creativity etc. Humans + Machines not Humans vs. Machines. 6 of my favorite parts of our conversation? 1️⃣ Intersection of high fashion + sports: “Michael Jordan shooting a Louis Vuitton basketball.” 2️⃣ AI enables Kyle to overcome dyslexia: “I always felt like I can’t portray what I’m thinking in my mind because it’s just hard for me to put it together in a way that makes sense.”   3️⃣ Kyle isn’t running away, he’s running towards AI: “I look at AI as just another tool we’ve created to help us.” 4️⃣ Clearly Coinbase recognizes talent: Kyle collaborated with Coinbase on “a robot on the back of a jacket for the NBA All-Star game, and Franco Finn wore that.” 5️⃣ AI is good for artists: “I can speak on 10 different reasons why AI is good for artists…It’s going to make you push yourself, if you use it the right way…I’m trying to become better versed in art, just out of respect for people who did it before me and out of the need to continuously get better.” 6️⃣ Kyle’s response to fears about AI creating art was absolutely lights out: “The biggest fear that I've heard is, my friend who's in medicine said this to me. He's like, ‘What are you going to do? They physically have AI painting oil paintings?’ And I was just like, yeah, but that's not my painting…there's still that human factor that comes with making physical art.” 👇 Most importantly, link to where you can find and buy Kyle’s gorgeous art: https://kylewallack.com/ Chapters and timestamps:0:00 - Introduction & Discovery1:27 - The Cancer Journey & Finding Art3:19 - Robot Art Origins & Evolution5:27 - Sports Influence & Legacy Mindset7:53 - Culture Meets Sports: The Jordan & Ali Pieces12:14 - AI as Accessibility Tool for Dyslexia16:31 - AI as Creative Secretary & Manager19:03 - 10 Reasons Why AI is Good for Artists25:48 - Addressing AI Art Fears27:28 - Upcoming Projects & Contact Info

    31 min

  8. 08/26/2025

    Enterprise AI Agents: Is This The AWS Moment For Digital Labor? | Kurt Muehmel, Dataiku

    Enterprise AI agents help us “focus on making the beer taste better” aka the 20%+ of efforts that drive 80%+ of the results. Kurt Muehmel, Head of AI Strategy at Dataiku, returned to AI with Alec for another AI deep dive.  This time, the focus was enterprise AI agents and why they represent a fundamental shift in how work gets done. The thought provoking conversation moved through a number of critical success drivers for enterprise AI agents including the following:   1: Three-part definition of AI agents that cuts through agent washing hype 2: Why technology capabilities are racing ahead of enterprise adoption 3: The “AWS moment” for AI…are we approaching standardization of the abstraction layer between intelligent systems and human collaboration? 4: Implications of AI agents helping us “traverse the boundaries of traditional software” 5: Building the “hybrid human agent workforce” including the tooling and mindset shifts required Link to "The LLM Mesh: An Architecture for Building Agentic Applications in the Enterprise": https://pages.dataiku.com/oreilly-tech-guide-llm-mesh 00:00 - Introduction & Welcome 00:29 - Enterprise AI Agents Fundamentals 01:28 - Three-Part Definition: LLM, Autonomy, Integration 05:48 - Breaking Software Silos & Application Boundaries 09:28 - Focus on Making the Beer Taste Better 12:22 - Enterprise Use Cases: From Support to Complex Judgment 18:38 - Single Agent vs Multi-Agent Architectures 21:42 - Digital Labor & Cultural Adoption Challenges 28:19 - The Hybrid Human-Agent Workforce 30:18 - Future Model Architectures & The AWS Moment 36:08 - Services-Oriented Architecture for AI 37:00 - Wrap-up & Kurt's O'Reilly Book on LLM Mesh

    38 min
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About

Conversations with leading technical minds in Artificial Intelligence - from CTOs of pioneering AI startups to AI architects at Fortune 500 companies. We explore their strategies, implementations, and innovations to help you better understand and deploy AI in the real world. Hear enterprise AI insights and practical perspectives you won't find anywhere else. If you're a technical leader, business executive, AI practitioner, or innovation strategist, this is for you.

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