Building Connections Through Open Research: Meta’s Joelle Pineau

Joelle Pineau’s curiosity led her to pursue a doctorate in engineering with a focus on robotics, which she describes as her “gateway into AI.” As vice president of AI research at Meta, Joelle leads a team committed to openness in the service of high-quality research, responsible AI development, and community contribution. In this episode, Joelle, who is also a professor at McGill University, weighs the advantages industry and academia each have for conducting artificial intelligence research. She also describes specific AI research projects Meta is working on, including scientific discovery initiatives focused on addressing societal problems like carbon capture. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Joelle Pineau is vice president of AI research at Meta and a professor at McGill University. Her research focuses primarily on developing new models and algorithms for planning and learning in complex, partially observable domains. She also applies these algorithms to robotics, health care, games, and conversational agents. Pineau serves on the board of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and the Journal of Machine Learning Research. She has a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Waterloo and master’s degree and doctorate in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.  Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Andy Goffin. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

If you’ve played with Photoshop’s Generative Fill feature or worked in Nvidia’s Omniverse platform, you’ve touched tools that Patrick Hebron’s work has made possible. A dual major in philosophy and film production, Patrick approaches creative pursuits with a deep curiosity and the belief that if a “tool gets used in exactly the way that we anticipated, then we have really failed catastrophically.” He believes that emerging digital design tools will elevate human creativity, and he aims to develop technology solutions that will empower creative end users to continue to push boundaries. On this episode, Patrick describes some of the technical challenges in building generative AI solutions for creative pursuits, as well as their vast potential. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Patrick Hebron is a designer, software developer, teacher, and author. His work explores the intersection of machine learning, design tools, programming languages, and operating systems. In particular, he has focused on the development of AI-driven digital design tools. He founded the Machine Intelligence Design groups at Nvidia and Adobe and was vice president of R&D at Stability AI. He is the author of Machine Learning for Designers, published by O’Reilly Media, as well as numerous articles, including Rethinking Design Tools in the Age of Machine Learning and A Unified Tool for the Education of Humans and Machines. He has also worked as an adjunct graduate professor and scientist in residence at New York University. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Andy Goffin. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

When Mario Rodriguez emigrated from Cuba to the United States at age 14 with his parents — a university professor, and a teacher turned electrical engineer — they had already instilled in him the value of education and a love of learning. That passion has guided him throughout his career — as a program manager with Microsoft; then as part of GitHub, following Microsoft’s 2018 acquisition of the developer platform; and as a cofounder of a charter school in North Carolina. Now, as senior vice president of product at GitHub, Mario oversees the team developing the GitHub Copilot AI-assisted software development tool. Mario joins this episode to share his views on product development, GitHub Copilot’s effect on productivity and job satisfaction, and a future in which more people can easily develop their own software. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Mario Rodriguez leads the GitHub Product team as senior vice president of product. His core identity is that of a learner, and his passion is creating developer tools — so much so that he has spent the past 20 years in leadership roles across Microsoft and GitHub. His most recent work involves overseeing GitHub’s AI strategy and launching and growing the GitHub Copilot product line across thousands of organizations and millions of users. Rodriguez also cochairs a charter school that he cofounded in an effort to help progress STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) education in rural regions of the United States. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Andy Goffin. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

Paul Romer once considered himself the most optimistic economist. He rightfully predicted that technology would blow up as an economic driver coming out of the inflation of the 1970s but acknowledges he did not foresee the inequality that technology advances would lead to. On this episode, Paul shares his views on AI advances and their implications for society. Rather than pave the way for full automation, he is a proponent of keeping humans in the loop and believes that, rather than slowing down technology, it can be pointed in a direction for more meaningful and beneficial use, citing education as an area ripe to benefit from AI. Listen to the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Andy Goffin. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

Actor Tye Sheridan may not consider himself a technology expert, but his knowledge of visual effects (VFX) processes led him to cofound AI-driven startup Wonder Dynamics. With the company’s new product, Wonder Studio, creators can upload 2D video and transform it into 3D animations at a fraction of the cost of the motion-capture animation process typically used by Hollywood studios.  Tye joins this episode to talk about the genesis of his company, plus he shares his views on artificial intelligence’s impact on creativity in the film industry and the opportunities it can offer creators. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Tye Sheridan is an actor and producer who has appeared in a number of films, including Ready Player One and X-Men: Apocalypse. In 2017, with Nikola Todorovic, he cofounded Wonder Dynamics, a technology company that’s creating AI-powered film production tools. Its proprietary AI software, Wonder Studio, uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically animate, light, and compose computer-generated characters in live-action scenes. The company is on a mission to build AI tools that enable creators to produce studio-level visual effects and CGI-heavy content for a significantly lower cost than the traditional motion-capture process. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Andy Goffin. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

Jeff Cooper parlayed his interest in neuroscience and human behavior into a career in data science and today works as a senior data science director for online retail subscription service Stitch Fix. Jeff joins Me, Myself, and AI to share how the company pairs human employees with intelligent technologies to keep up with customer preferences while realizing operational efficiencies. He also talks about how the company sustains extremely high feedback rates from consumers and how humans are training models, as well as vice versa, leading to interesting feedback loops. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Jeff Cooper is a senior data science director at Stitch Fix, the global leader in personalized styling, where he oversees the Client Algorithms team, which develops models for product recommendations, style, and growth. He previously held data science leadership roles at Tradesy, FabFitFun, and Disney, as well as research roles in decision neuroscience at Caltech and Trinity College Dublin. Jeff has a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

Like many product leaders in the technology space, Jackie Rocca took a somewhat circuitous path to that role. After beginning her career in management consulting with Bain, she earned her MBA at Stanford and then worked at Google, where she helped launch YouTube TV. Now, she serves as vice president of product at Slack, where she focuses on the collaboration platform’s Slack AI product. As a product leader, Jackie had continually heard from users that they were experiencing a common challenge: It was a struggle to keep up with the pace of information and prioritize where to focus their attention and energy. So she looked to AI as a potential source of solutions and is now leading a team that’s focused on launching AI-driven features to address user pain points. The Slack AI team’s work is already helping customers take advantage of the wealth of knowledge within Slack exchanges by providing features such as channel recaps, thread summaries, and the ability to ask questions to surface information that’s embedded within conversations. On this episode, Jackie describes how her team approaches new product design in the generative AI space and offers up some predictions for what lies ahead. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio Jackie Rocca is vice president of product at Slack. In that role, she oversees the vision and execution of Slack AI, which brings generative AI natively and securely into the collaboration platform’s user experience. Rocca has delivered on a number of AI initiatives in her five years with the company and is now on a mission to help customers further accelerate their productivity and get even more value out of their conversations, data, and collective knowledge. Before joining Slack, Rocca spent more than six years as a product manager at Google, where she helped launch and grow YouTube TV. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

Daniele Petecchi didn’t realize how complex the process of producing tires was until he joined Pirelli, a company that’s been in the business of manufacturing tires for more than 150 years. But now, as head of data management and AI, he’s focused on leveraging the company’s wealth of data to meet the stringent technical, quality, and performance requirements of the Formula One racers and luxury vehicle makers — like Ferrari, Lamborghini, and BMW — that rely on Pirelli’s premium tires. In this episode, Daniele explains why virtualization and data are key to managing the complexity of an R&D and production cycle that includes using digital twins to predict how a tire will sound on the road and maximizing efficiency at plants that manufacture millions of tires each year. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio Daniele Petecchi is head of AI and data managementat Pirelli, where he leads critical initiatives that harness artificial intelligence technology to drive innovation and efficiency for the premium tire manufacturer. Petecchi earned his degree in telecommunications engineering, specializing in digital signal processing, which laid the foundation for his career in technology. He subsequently earned a Master of Science degree in information management, which equipped him with a strong strategic perspective. In 2018, he further reinforced his skill set by completing the General Management Program at ESCP Business School, enabling him to navigate the intricate intersection of technology and business. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

On this bonus episode, we head to the World Bank offices in Washington, D.C., where hosts Sam and Shervin joined organizers Jonathan Timmis and Timothy DeStefano from the World Bank and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business for the day-long conference, “How is Artificial Intelligence Transforming Firms?” in December 2023. In our final of three bonus episodes derived from this event, we explore how AI has shifted policy discussions, and what new types of management are needed. This episode offers an abridged listen to the panel discussion; for the full session video, please visit the conference’s website. Guest Bios Carol Corrado is a distinguished principal research fellow, conference board & senior policy scholar at Georgetown University. Olivia Igbokwe-Curry is head of U.S. congressional and political affairs at Amazon Web Services. Scott Wallsten is president and senior fellow at The Technology Policy Institute. Nikolas Zolas is a former senior economist at the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau. Sam Ransbotham is cohost of Me, Myself, and AI and a professor of analytics at Boston College. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.  We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

While Me, Myself, and AI is on winter break, we hope you enjoy this episode. Jennifer Strong, longtime journalist and creator of the SHIFT podcast, joins Sam and Shervin to talk about their favorite Me, Myself, and AI episode Find the additional podcasts mentioned in the episode below: SHIFT podcast In Machines We Trust WSJ’s The Future of Everything  Guest Bio: Jennifer Strong is an audio journalist covering the impact of AI on the way we live and work. She’s the creator of several tech podcasts for newsrooms, including ProPublica, The Wall Street Journal, and MIT Technology Review. Her podcast SHIFT, with the Public Radio Exchange, covers "the far-reaching impact of automation on our daily lives," according to Apple Podcasts. Her reporting has been widely recognized, including six Webby and three Podcast Academy Award nominations. Her narrative podcasts were finalists at the New York Festivals for the last two years, and a finalist for Podcast of the Year by The Drum Awards in London for a taping she did inside an experimental fighter plane. Strong has also produced a business show for NPR and reported on national security for PRI. She’s been a keynote stage host and moderator at the AI for Good Global Summit, The Future of Everything Festival, Web Summit, among others. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Alanna Hooper. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.  We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.