The Role of AI for Assembly in Manufacturing (Electronics, Medical Devices, etc.) - with Dr. Abhishek Pani of Bright Machines
Release Date: 01/05/2021
The Future of Customer Success and Turnkey AI Agents for SMBs - Matt Kravitz of Salesforce
The AI in Business Podcast
Service leaders are increasingly asked to deploy AI agents without a clear sense of what these systems can safely handle today, or where to start. In this episode, Matt Kravitz, Head of Customer Transformation for Service Cloud at Salesforce, breaks down a three-level maturity model for AI service agents — answering questions, accessing account data, and taking action — and how to sequence adoption. The conversation also covers a channel-strategy framework for deciding which support requests to deflect, route to digital-assisted support, or escalate to a live conversation, and how a...
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What Mature Security Programs Need Before Deploying AI - with Mark Alvarado of Academy Sports + Outdoors
The AI in Business Podcast
The security landscape is shifting as AI accelerates existing vulnerabilities faster than most retail enterprises can adapt. In this episode, Mark Alvarado, CISO at Academy Sports + Outdoors, examines how AI amplifies gaps in identity management, data governance, and human behavior, joining Emerj’s Yolandi de Weerdt to clarify where leaders must focus before deploying AI‑enabled tools. He highlights the operational foundations that determine whether AI strengthens detection and response or simply magnifies unresolved weaknesses. Learn how leading brands and AI startups...
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Closing the Medical Device Knowledge Gap with AI Driven Field Service - with Ryan Makely of Bruker
The AI in Business Podcast
A growing gap between device complexity and organizational knowledge is turning service reliability into an enterprise‑level risk for regulated industries. In this episode, Ryan Makely, Senior Director of CALID Service at Bruker Scientific, breaks down how fragmented documentation, rapid loss of expert judgment, and inconsistent field diagnoses undermine both operational performance and any future AI‑enabled support capability — in conversation with Emerj’s Marilie Fouché. Leaders will hear practical themes around building structured knowledge foundations, reducing...
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How Industrial Leaders Are Redefining AI for the Factory Floor - with Antoine Bisson of Poka
The AI in Business Podcast
Industrial AI is forcing leaders to confront a fundamental gap between digital systems built for offices and the high‑risk, real‑time demands of the factory floor. In this episode, Antoine Bisson, CEO & Co‑founder at Poka, joins host Marilie Fouché and dissects why industrial environments require contextual data, strict governance, and human‑validated autonomy to safely scale AI‑driven operations. The conversation surfaces practical considerations for executives, from structuring governance and standardizing workflows to determining where autonomous agents can...
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Machine‑Speed Security Risk in the Age of AI - with Niro Rajadurai of XBOW
The AI in Business Podcast
AI is generating code and surfacing vulnerabilities faster than security teams can review them, compressing the time between a vulnerability discovery and its exploitation. In this episode, Niro Rajadurai, Chief Revenue Officer at XBOW, examines how autonomous offensive security can match that pace, in conversation with host Marilie Fouché. He discusses why distinguishing exploitable vulnerabilities from false positives is critical at scale, how pairing multiple AI models improves results without costly retraining, and why governance has to be built into automated security systems from...
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Accelerating Evidence to Action in Pharma with Practical AI Adoption - with Nabil Khan of Pfizer
The AI in Business Podcast
Pharma organizations are generating more clinical and scientific evidence than ever, yet the path from that evidence to a confident strategic call hasn't kept up. In this episode, Nabil Khan, Medical Director for Internal Medicine Antivirals at Pfizer, digs into where AI genuinely helps medical affairs and clinical teams move faster from raw data to decisions, in conversation with host Yolandi de Weerdt. He lays out the risk of treating AI output as fact rather than a starting point, why training is the piece organizations most often shortchange, and what it realistically takes to build...
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AI for Industrial Service Leaders Improving Diagnostics and Field Efficiency - with Scot Burdette of ABB
The AI in Business Podcast
Industrial service teams are facing two compounding pressures at once: decades of hands-on expertise walking out the door through retirement, and the equipment itself growing more complex to diagnose and maintain. In this episode, Scot Burdette, Global Division CIO at ABB, unpacks how remote diagnostics and AI-driven insights are reshaping who does the work of keeping industrial equipment running, in conversation with host Yolandi de Weerdt. He outlines how leaders can prioritize the most critical processes first, build the data discipline needed to support predictive maintenance, and...
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Risk and Cost Governance for AI Agents in Regulated Institutions - with Shahir Daya of Zafin
The AI in Business Podcast
As AI agents move from pilots into live financial workflows, most institutions still can't answer a basic question: who authorized this action, and what evidence backs it up? In this episode, Shahir Daya, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Zafin, examines why uniform governance policies fail at scale and what a tiered, control-tower approach to agent oversight looks like in practice. The conversation covers execution-layer governance, cost visibility across models, and the shift required to move agentic work from promising pilot to defensible production. This episode is...
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Turning Manual Manufacturing Variability into Data‑Driven Control – with Sebastian Dykas of Smith+Nephew
The AI in Business Podcast
A persistent gap remains between what modern manufacturing technology makes possible and how day‑to‑day work is still executed, with paper workflows, limited machine visibility, and siloed data preventing real operational control. In this episode, Sebastian Dykas, Director of Manufacturing, Engineering, and Maintenance at Smith+Nephew, examines with host Marilie Fouché how tighter data capture and connected systems can move leaders toward real‑time process control and reduced variability. The discussion highlights practical shifts in measurement, machine connectivity, and...
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Building the Infrastructure Behind AI-Enabled Field Service - with Deniz Mullis of Cytiva
The AI in Business Podcast
Experienced field engineers are retiring or moving on faster than ever, and the troubleshooting knowledge they carry rarely makes it into a manual before they go. In this episode, Deniz Mullis, Senior Director of Global Technical Operations at Cytiva, examines why closing that knowledge gap takes daily feedback loops, cleaner documentation, and technician trust. Deniz joins Emerj’s Yolandi de Weerdt to walk through what breaks first during a rollout, how her team builds confidence in AI-assisted guidance, and what has to be true inside a service organization before an AI investment...
info_outlineToday's guest is the great and brilliant Dr. Abhishek Pani, Sr. Vice President of Product Mgmt at Bright Machines, a Silicon Valley startup founded in 2018. The company has raised $150+ million to bring together flexible factory robots with intelligent software, production data, and machine learning. In today's episode, Dr. Pani shares his valuable perspective on the transforming landscape of AI capabilities in manufacturing and how AI can empower dextrous micro-scale operations.
Dr. Pani received his Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Maryland, co-founded Adobe's Data Science research awards program, and served as an adjunct faculty member at Stanford University. Want to explore Emerj's full library of AI use cases? Get Emerj Plus: emerj.com/p1