AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
A podcast that explores the good, the bad, and the creepy of artificial intelligence. Weekly longform conversations with key players in the space, ranging from CEOs to artists to philosophers. Exploring the role of AI in film, health care, business, law, therapy, politics, and everything from religion to war.
Featured by Inc. Magazine as one of "4 Ways to Get AI Savvy in 2024," as "Host Jeff Wilser [gives] you a more holistic understanding of AI--such as the moral implications of using it--and his conversations might even spark novel ideas for how you can best use AI in your business."
AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
Introducing "AUI": Artificial Useful Intelligence, w/ IBM's Chief Scientist Dr. Ruchir Puri
What if we’re all chasing the wrong kind of AI? Dr. Ruchir Puri, Chief Scientist of IBM, argues that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is overrated—and that we should be focusing instead on AUI: Artificial Useful Intelligence. This is a pragmatic, business-focused approach to AI that emphasizes real-world value, measurable outcomes, and implementable solutions.
In this episode of AI-Curious, we explore what AUI actually looks like in practice. We discuss how to bring AI into your organization (even if you’re just getting started), why IBM is betting big on small language models (SLMs), and how companies can move beyond hype toward real, trustworthy AI agents that do actual work.
You’ll also hear:
- Why AI usefulness is a function of both quality and cost [00:11:00]
- The “crawl, walk, run” strategy IBM recommends for business adoption [00:14:00]
- Internal IBM examples: HR systems and coding assistants [00:16:00]
- Why SLMs may be a smarter bet than LLMs for many enterprises [00:37:00]
- A breakdown of how agentic systems are evolving to reflect, act, and self-correct [00:41:00]
Whether you’re leading a startup or an enterprise, this conversation will help you reframe how you think about deploying AI—starting not with hype, but with value.
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