AI or Not

Pamela Isom
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Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where digital transformation meets real-world wisdom, hosted by Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of guiding the top echelons of corporate, public and private sectors through the ever-evolving digital landscape, Pamela, CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is your expert navigator in the exploration of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber, data, and ethical decision-making. This show demystifies the complexities of AI, digital disruption, and emerging technologies, focusing on their impact on business strategies, governance, product innovations, and societal well-being. Whether you're a professional seeking to leverage AI for sustainable growth, a leader aiming to navigate the digital terrain ethically, or an innovator looking to make a meaningful impact, "AI or Not" offers a unique blend of insights, experiences, and discussions that illuminate the path forward in the digital age. Join us as we delve into the world where technology meets humanity, with Pamela Isom leading the conversation.

  1. 4D AGO

    E051 - AI or Not - Kim Budil and Pamela Isom

    Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making. Breakthroughs don’t happen by accident—they happen when curiosity meets clarity and purpose. Pamela Isom sits down with Dr. Kim Budil, Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to explore how a physics mindset, public service, and bold partnerships are accelerating discovery in nuclear deterrence, AI, and fusion energy. Kim shares how she moved from tabletop lasers to leading one of the nation’s most consequential labs, and why her job blends infrastructure, people, strategy, and outreach. We get practical about translating complex science into plain language, then dive into the lab’s core mission: ensuring a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile without testing. From there, we connect the dots to broader national security work in hypersonics, cyber, space, and biosecurity—where modeling, extreme materials, and systems engineering carry the load. The conversation zeroes in on Genesis, the Department of Energy’s initiative to double research productivity with AI. Kim explains how curated datasets, El Capitan’s 45,000 GPUs, and tight links to private AI labs can help models “speak science and engineering.” We unpack lighthouse challenges like stabilizing fusion plasmas, optimizing inertial targets, designing radiation-tolerant materials, and using AI for closed-loop additive manufacturing. On fusion, she charts the rise from the historic gain over one to shots exceeding eight megajoules, and outlines what’s needed for commercialization: durable materials, tritium breeding, 24/7 operations, and efficiency leaps—best pursued through multi-party public–private partnerships. Kim is candid about AGI, the limits of scale, and why human creativity still matters. She also makes a compelling case for inclusion and excellence in hiring across every role that powers big science. The takeaway is a call to become science-literate and steward powerful tools responsibly as AI, quantum, and fusion converge to reshape daily life. If this conversation expanded your view of how science advances, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review with your biggest insight or question.

    41 min

  2. JAN 27

    E050 - AI or Not - Tony Carrato and Pamela Isom

    Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making. Overwhelmed by the pace of AI and the constant drumbeat of cyber threats? We break the noise into a clear plan you can follow, starting with basics that actually block attacks and habits that keep you current without draining your week. With returning guest Tony Carrato, a veteran of global security and AI programs, we explore how leaders can protect their brand, make smart use of modern AI tools, and build resilience into systems before the next headline risk arrives. We start with a reality check: attackers use bots that don’t care whether you’re a startup or a giant, making fundamentals non-negotiable. Strong, unique passwords, 2FA, link and QR hygiene, and real backups you’ve tested for restore are the highest-ROI moves. From there, we outline a focused learning routine—just one dedicated hour per week—powered by a curated list of thought leaders, security teams that publish freely, and concise newsletters, including global sources that surface what’s happening beyond the usual feeds. We also examine executive presence in a world shaped by AI and cyber risk. Speak more slowly, be concise, demonstrate your applied fluency with tools like Copilot or ChatGPT, and keep your voice by editing AI outputs for accuracy and redundancy. Ask sharper questions about risk, resilience, and outcomes, and protect your time without going silent. Teaching—whether at a lunch-and-learn, a standards group, or a local security forum—cements your knowledge and strengthens your network. A major takeaway is the blind spot of data integrity. Confidentiality and privacy matter, but integrity failures can cripple decisions and trust. Track provenance and chain of custody, align systems of record, and test your recovery paths so AI-informed decisions sit on solid ground. Leave with one action for the week: identify your top priorities, confirm the controls that matter most, and invest a single focused hour in learning that moves the needle. Subscribe, share this with a colleague who needs clarity, and leave a quick review to help more leaders build resilience in 2026.

    38 min

  3. JAN 13

    E049 - AI or Not - Anusha Nerella and Pamela Isom

    Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making. Trust is not a buzzword in AI-driven finance; it’s the product. We sit down with Anusha Nerella, a senior fintech leader to unpack how explainability, compliance, and human-centered design turn models into systems people can rely on. From reason codes in trading recommendations to precision-focused fraud detection, you’ll hear how building for auditability and clarity unlocks adoption with regulators, clients, and frontline teams. We start with career roots in large banks and regulated environments, then tackle real-world use cases: liquidity routing that justifies every decision, fraud models that reduce false alarms by adding behavioral context, and governance workflows that keep shipping honest. You’ll learn why dashboards aren’t enough, why lineage and documentation must be embedded in the pipeline, and how to make “accountability by design” a team habit. The conversation also does no pull punches on bias, outlining how a high-accuracy credit model still drifted toward unfair outcomes until the data pipeline was rebuilt with fairness checks, feature audits, and human review steps. We also look at representation and leadership. Women are shaping core AI work, yet often lack access to high-stakes projects and senior roles. Sponsorship, clear role maps, and culture that rewards bias-aware engineering are not nice-to-haves; they’re risk controls. The guiding question runs through the entire episode: Can we build it? Should we build it? For whom? Purpose informs thresholds, monitoring, and the definition of “good enough” when real money, safety, and trust are on the line. If you care about AI in fintech, fraud prevention, compliant deployment, and building systems that earn confidence, this conversation is your playbook. Subscribe, share with a colleague who owns model risk or data platforms, and leave a review to tell us how you design for trust.

    25 min

  4. 12/30/2025

    E048 – AI or Not – Evan Benjamin and Pamela Isom

    Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making. Think your team is “AI ready”? We take a clear-eyed look at why most organizations overestimate their capabilities and how to move from buzzwords to measurable maturity. With returning guest Evan Benjamin—AI governance practitioner and tireless “AI nuggets” educator—we unpack what readiness really means for enterprises, agencies, startups, and solo builders, and why context matters more than any one-size framework. We connect proven disciplines like CMMI and ITIL to the AI era, showing how capability-based maturity, lightweight governance, and resilient practices can accelerate outcomes without drowning teams in bureaucracy. From POCs inside a single business unit to repeatable processes across the org, we share practical steps for building systems that are safe, auditable, and effective. We also dive into the messy realities of today’s tools: agentic AI browsers, prompt injection, tracking pixels, and data retention defaults that quietly expand your risk surface. Privacy and security get the spotlight. We walk through how to read terms of service and privacy policies, manage consent, and control data sharing with ad networks and brokers. Then we layer on hardening steps: MFA and passkeys, VPNs, mobile EDR, disk encryption, safe travel habits on public Wi‑Fi, and decluttering apps that over-collect. You’ll hear why fairness testing is not the same as bias checks, why evaluations must happen at multiple lifecycle stages, and why it pays to red team not just models, but the evaluations and governance themselves. We close with a call to action: co-create a practical AI maturity model aligned to sector and use case, and stand up a train‑the‑trainer effort so consultants, attorneys, and project leads can deliver consistent, effective education. If you’re ready to swap hype for real capability—and build AI that lasts—hit play, share this with your team, and leave a review with the one control you plan to implement this week.

    45 min

  5. 12/16/2025

    E047 – AI or Not – Joshua Linard and Pamela Isom

    Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making. A dark cloud can teach us how to lead AI. We unpack the link between everyday intuition and model design—when probabilistic signals are “good enough,” when deterministic rules must take over, and how a hybrid approach powers safer, more useful agentic systems. Joshua Linard, a former senior geospatial and data leader at the Department of Energy, joins me to trace a path from environmental physics and national-scale modeling to practical enterprise AI, where community and governance make or break outcomes. We dig into the real work of governance inside flat, federated organizations: building communities of interest that surface experiments, evolving into communities of practice that standardize methods, and guiding executive boards that set policy and unlock funding. You’ll hear why lean rituals—weekly accomplishments, risks, and issues—create more clarity with less burden, and how time-boxed best practices keep pace with fast-moving tech. We also explore enterprise risk beyond cyber, pulling in IP, compliance, operations, finance, and public trust to shape smarter priorities. On the technical side, we break down agentic AI as a modular, hybrid architecture. Deterministic guardrails handle sensitive boundaries like PII and export controls, while probabilistic components accelerate discovery, summarization, and pattern detection. The key is domain-aware metadata and explicit error tolerances so models stay grounded. We compare precision needs across contexts—from programs counting pennies to portfolios rounding to the nearest half-million—and map process templates to tool selection so AI fits the job, not the other way around. The leadership thread across it all is humility, curiosity, and courage: admitting none of us knows it all, asking hard questions about why processes exist, and starting small so we can learn quickly and iterate. If you’re navigating responsible AI, digital transformation, or the leap to agentic systems, this conversation offers a clear, field-tested playbook. If it resonates, subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review telling us the one guardrail you’ll implement next.

    37 min

  6. 12/02/2025

    E046 – AI or Not – Christopher Richardson and Pamela Isom

    Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making. What if the real edge in AI isn’t bigger models or more GPUs, but leaders who can turn complexity into clear decisions? We sit down with analyst and “tech whisperer” Christopher Richardson to unpack the hard truths behind AI’s economics, why reliability still lags the hype, and how to build systems that actually pay off. From conference rooms where “the cloud” gets mistaken for the sky to board tables demanding ROI, we map the shift from curiosity to concrete roadmaps that stand up under pressure. Christopher explains why large language models remain probabilistic and how that matters for accuracy, governance, and risk. We dig into the promise and pitfalls of agentic AI, where chaining models often compounds hallucinations and cost. The conversation tackles the “AI bubble” risk head-on: when adoption slows because outputs cannot be trusted for mission-critical work, the funding engine sputters. We also examine a fresh take on competitive advantage through the DeepSeek lens—achieving strong results with fewer parameters and lower GPU use—hinting that smart efficiency may outpace brute-force scaling. Sustainability and equity thread through every topic. We talk plainly about the byproduct of electricity being heat, why water use and siting decisions matter, and how to measure trustworthiness beyond slogans. Then we turn to access: open models, practical training, and education pipelines that unlock talent in places like Baltimore, building a broader, more resilient workforce. The playbook is pragmatic and hopeful—smaller, domain-tuned models; clear governance; measurable utility; and real investment in people. If you care about AI strategy, responsible innovation, and turning hype into durable outcomes, this conversation offers a grounded path forward. Subscribe, share with a colleague who’s wrestling with AI decisions, and leave a review with the one change you’d make first to improve trust and ROI.

    53 min

  7. 11/18/2025

    E045 – AI or Not – Phil Hartman and Pamela Isom

    Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making. The shiny demo rarely survives contact with real data. We sit down with Phil Hartman—director, data architect, and seasoned integrator—to unpack what actually makes AI work in production: infrastructure, integration, and testing that respects non-determinism without abandoning reliability. Phil shares how embeddings finally “clicked,” why sending the same prompt to multiple models and merging results can improve quality, and what guardrails and adversarial tests reveal when policies get complex. His insurance parsing example—great up to ten vehicles, then chaos—shows how hidden limits surface only when you move beyond the happy path. We discuss user experience that respects people’s time, including clear escalation to a human and predictable flows for employee training, as well as brand consistency. Then we dig into a big shift: AI search that visits hundreds of sites and never shows your branding. To stay discoverable, content must be structured and anticipatory—think FAQs on the landing page, schema markup, and concise, high-signal answers that retrieval systems can trust. Phil also makes the case that low-code tools struggle with hierarchical, many-to-many enterprise data, and why leaders should expect custom code, deeper testing, and realistic budgets that reflect the complexity of integration. If you want AI to be an innovation accelerator, tie it to real outcomes: shorter cycles, cleaner data, higher throughput. Involve end users, measure beyond ROI buzzwords, and design governance that spans model selection, prompt management, privacy, and audit. On jobs, Phil argues for augmentation over replacement—let AI handle the routine tasks so people can focus on judgment-intensive work. The pace is fast and messy, but progress belongs to teams who experiment, test the edges, and build safety into the fabric. Subscribe, share with a colleague who owns AI delivery, and leave a review with your toughest integration challenge—we might feature it next.

    43 min

  8. 11/04/2025

    E044 – AI or Not – Felix Gonzalez and Pamela Isom

    Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making. A candid journey from chemical engineering to AI leadership sets the stage for a grounded look at where artificial intelligence truly delivers value—and where governance must take the lead. We sit down with Felix Gonzalez, a data science and AI director and educator, to connect past tech waves to today’s GenAI moment, surfacing practical lessons you can use right now. Think of GenAI as a calculator for language: it speeds drafts, code, and analysis, while your expertise sets the guardrails and makes the call. We walk through real use cases that cut through the buzz. Drawing on public AI inventories, we unpack how federal agencies are already piloting and deploying automation, machine learning, and GenAI to streamline classification, triage documents, and modernize internal processes. In safety and health, we explore computer vision for PPE compliance, fire detection, environmental monitoring, and even search-and-rescue support—areas where human-in-the-loop design turns fast pattern recognition into smarter, safer operations. In healthcare, we address privacy, bias, and why recommendation systems augment clinicians instead of replacing them. If you’re wrestling with ROI, you’re not alone. We compare traditional ML and LLMs on cost, quality, and risk, showing how to match the tool to the job. We also push back on doomsday takes about disruption: roles will change, but critical thinking gets sharper when AI removes busywork and surfaces contradictions worth investigating. The durable advantage isn’t magic prompts; it’s governance, oversight, and continuous learning that keep you adaptive as models evolve. Ready to turn AI into better decisions rather than bigger risks? Follow the show, share this episode with a colleague who owns a critical workflow, and leave a review with the one AI use case you want us to break down next.

    48 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where digital transformation meets real-world wisdom, hosted by Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of guiding the top echelons of corporate, public and private sectors through the ever-evolving digital landscape, Pamela, CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is your expert navigator in the exploration of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber, data, and ethical decision-making. This show demystifies the complexities of AI, digital disruption, and emerging technologies, focusing on their impact on business strategies, governance, product innovations, and societal well-being. Whether you're a professional seeking to leverage AI for sustainable growth, a leader aiming to navigate the digital terrain ethically, or an innovator looking to make a meaningful impact, "AI or Not" offers a unique blend of insights, experiences, and discussions that illuminate the path forward in the digital age. Join us as we delve into the world where technology meets humanity, with Pamela Isom leading the conversation.

Information

  • Creator
    Pamela Isom
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    52
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 AI or Not
  • Show Website
    AI or Not