Fixing Broken Customer Service Before Agentic AI Arrives With Parloa
Tech Talks Daily
Why are companies preparing for agent-to-agent customer service when many customers still cannot get a chatbot to answer a straightforward question? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Latané Conant, Chief Marketing Officer at Parloa, about the state of customer experience and what businesses must repair before agentic AI becomes another barrier between customers and support. Parloa’s State of Agentic CX report assessed 10,000 enterprise websites, 4,000 chat interactions, and 100 phone trees. According to the company’s findings, fewer than 10% of the tested chat...
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Building an AI Ready Workforce Without Abandoning Entry Level Talent With Year Up United
Tech Talks Daily
What happens to tomorrow’s leadership pipeline when employers automate the entry-level tasks through which beginners learn? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Gary Flowers, Chief Information Officer for Transformation and Technology Services at Year Up United, about AI fluency, human skills, economic mobility, skills-first hiring, and the future of entry-level work. Year Up United prepares young adults without bachelor’s degrees for meaningful careers while helping employers reach skilled, career-ready talent. Gary says the organization has over 35,000 alumni working across...
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When Trusted Mobile Apps Become a Security Risk With Jamf
Tech Talks Daily
Can an app approved by Apple or Google still expose your business to security, privacy, and governance risks? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Michael Covington, Vice President of Strategy at Jamf, for a conversation about the false confidence that can surround mobile security. Apple and Android provide strong protections, including app review processes, sandboxing, and device authenticity controls. However, Michael argues that a device being secure on day one does not mean it will remain secure throughout its working life. One of the most interesting points from our...
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How BlackLine Turns Finance AI Investment Into Measurable ROI
Tech Talks Daily
How should finance leaders measure AI ROI when adoption has slowed and the cost of models, tokens and disconnected tools remains difficult to predict? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome Jeremy Ung, Chief Technology Officer at BlackLine, back to the podcast to discuss how businesses can move from finance AI experimentation to operational deployment. Figures supplied for the interview show AI adoption in finance rising from 37% in 2023 to 58% in 2024, before moving only slightly to 59% in 2025. Jeremy argues that this apparent plateau reflects several pressures, including uncertainty...
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Securing AI Agents at Machine Speed With C1
Tech Talks Daily
What happens when an autonomous AI agent can complete thousands of actions before a traditional access review has even identified that something has gone wrong? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Alex Bovee, CEO and co-founder of C1, about identity security, runtime governance, shadow AI, and the controls companies need as humans and agents begin working together. Alex has spent much of his career in identity and security. He and his co-founder previously worked at Okta on zero trust products before creating C1 as an access control platform capable of operating at machine speed....
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Building Evidence Based Trust for AI Agents With Vijil
Tech Talks Daily
What evidence would convince you that an AI agent is ready to make decisions involving employment, money, healthcare, or legal rights? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Vin Sharma, founder and CEO of Vijil, about the trust gap preventing many enterprise AI agents from progressing beyond proof of concept. Vin has spent approximately 30 years building software across security, operating systems, open source, cloud computing, machine learning, and AI. His previous work includes leading engineering at Amazon SageMaker and helping develop 11 AWS AI services. He argues that AI agents...
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Securing Mobile Work Without Putting Data on the Device With Hypori
Tech Talks Daily
What if employees could access sensitive business applications from personal phones without storing company data on those devices? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Jared Shepard, CEO of Hypori, about virtual mobile infrastructure, BYOD security, employee privacy, zero trust, and the growing mobile threat created by AI. Jared’s personal story deserves attention in its own right. He describes himself as a former homeless high school dropout who joined the Army, discovered an aptitude for IT, and applied what he learned to difficult technology problems in Iraq and Afghanistan....
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Turning Payment Terms Into Strategic Working Capital With Calculum
Tech Talks Daily
Could your company be paying suppliers earlier than its competitors and unintentionally financing their advantage? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Oliver Belin, co-founder and CEO of Calculum. Our previous conversation took place around ten years ago when Oliver was working with the Marco Polo Network and blockchain was attracting attention across trade finance. His latest venture concentrates on working capital, payment terms, and the role of AI in supplier negotiations. Oliver explains why working capital has moved higher on the agenda for procurement, treasury, and...
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Could Disease Chemistry Help Treat the Brain With Enabled Therapeutics
Tech Talks Daily
What if the chemistry created by neurological disease could help activate medicine precisely where it is needed? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Sara Isbell, neuroscientist and co-founder of Enabled Therapeutics, about a proposed approach to one of medicine’s most stubborn problems: delivering effective drugs to diseased brain tissue without exposing healthy areas to the same activity. Sara explains how the blood-brain barrier prevents many promising compounds from reaching the brain. When drugs do enter, they may spread across healthy and diseased regions alike, creating a...
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Preparing Unstructured Data for Enterprise AI With CTERA
Tech Talks Daily
Could the real reason enterprise AI projects remain stuck in pilot mode be hidden inside the company’s unstructured data? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Oded Nagel, CEO of CTERA. We discuss why enterprise AI success depends on the condition, location, permissions, and business value of the data sitting underneath models and agents. Oded defines AI-ready data as information that is searchable, classified, and permission-aware. Many enterprises have petabytes of files distributed across offices, edge locations, legacy network-attached storage, and cloud platforms. Before...
info_outlineWhat if companies could tap into powerful behavioral AI without compromising user privacy or crossing legal lines? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sit down with Frank Portman, CTO of Yobi, to explore how his team is building foundation models grounded in real user behavior, backed by ethically sourced and consented data.
Frank shares how Yobi is taking a distinct approach. They're not building large language models or racing to dominate generative AI headlines. Instead, they're focused on data integrity, transparency, and security from day one. With a strategic partnership with Microsoft Azure, Yobi delivers models that run directly within a customer’s environment. That means privacy is preserved, data stays protected, and companies still benefit from intelligent, adaptive systems.
We unpack how Yobi avoids risky use cases like financial underwriting and healthcare, how their models are trained to avoid demographic bias, and why they actively reward systems for being bad at guessing personal traits. This isn’t just about compliance. It’s about designing products that work better because they’re built responsibly.
Frank also opens up about Yobi’s internal culture, his belief in first-principles thinking, and how empowering engineers to "place bets" drives innovation. He offers insight into what the AI industry must learn quickly from recent missteps, including data misuse and growing public skepticism.
If you're exploring AI solutions and wondering how to build or buy systems that scale without cutting ethical corners, this conversation delivers clarity, honesty, and direction. Are you ready to rethink what responsible AI should look like inside your company?