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The AI Upgrade
Welcome to The AI Upgrade, your weekly guide to understanding and unpacking the AI revolution. Made for professionals upskilling in the age of AI, this podcast is a must-listen for knowledge workers.
Each week, hosts Peter Bittner & Kris Krug chat with experts, founders, journalists, and technologists to understand the trends and impacts of AI on media. Interested in understanding the impacts of AI and other next-gen technologies on how we create, distribute, and access stories? The AI Upgrade is for you!
Episodes
26 episodes
Ep. 26 – The Future of Tech Transfer
D'vorah Graeser started programming when she was 16 before earning a PhD in pharmacology. She went on to become a U.S. patent agent and, while immersed in the patent world, she noticed that ma...
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Episode 26
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41:06
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Ep. 25 – The Professor and the Philosopher
This week, host Peter Bittner welcomes back artist, innovator and friend of The Upgrade Kris Krug. Over the last year, Peter and Kris have run cou...
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40:16
Ep. 24 – Is the Google Antitrust Ruling the End of Big Tech?
Ricky Sutton began his journalism career as a war correspondent in the Balkans before taking on roles as a news editor and founder of Oovvuu, a company that formerly he...
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Episode 24
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34:32
Ep. 23 – Navigating the AI Revolution in Journalism
Nick Petrie has spent his career in journalism working to help news organizations like The Times and Sunday Times and Reuters figure out the relationship between newsrooms and produc...
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Episode 23
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29:00
Ep. 22 – Human in the Loop: A Conversation with Noah Kravitz
Noah Kravitz started out as a stringer for a local newspaper in high school before moving out to the Bay Area to pursue a career covering tech. After years of writing product reviews he fell into...
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Episode 22
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41:19
Ep. 21 – The Scorpion and the Frog
Tamara McCleary started her career as a trauma nurse in the 1980s rescuing patients in helicopters and performing end of life care through hospice – an experience that gave her a keen in...
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Episode 21
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40:07
Ep. 20 – Tech Goes Hollywood
Jagger Waters is a storyteller, writer and producer with a background in theater and comedy who spent her childhood behind the scenes at various local broadcast news stations, tagging along with parents who worked in newsrooms all around the Un...
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Episode 20
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30:13
Ep. 19 – How AI is Shaking Up Marketing
Eldad Sotnick-Yogev was working in fine dining back in the late ‘90s when some friends told him about a new, and at the time little-known, search engine called Go...
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Episode 19
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32:33
Ep. 18 – Unleashing AI in Video with Stacie Chan
Stacie Chan has worked as a television and voiceover a...
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Episode 18
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32:46
Ep. 17 – Is My Boss Using AI to Spy on Me?
Hilke Schellmann never saw herself as a tech reporter. As a journalism professor at NYU who has covered subjects like sexual violence in Pakistan, Hilke first got interested in AI during a chance encounter with a Lyft driver who told her he had...
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Episode 17
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32:10
Ep. 16 – Gucci in the Forest: A Psychedelic Journey with Generative AI
Kevin Broome is a graphic designer and brand strategist in British Columbia who started playing around with AI image-generating technology as a way to process the experiences he had during a three-day ayahuasca journey. The images he started ma...
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Episode 16
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25:57
Ep. 15 – A Small Newsroom's Guide to AI
The unofficial slogan of the Center for Cooperative Media at Monclair State University is collaborate or die. The Center, which works to help small newsrooms both in New Jersey and arou...
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Episode 15
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32:43
Ep. 14 – How To Use AI in Your Media Company
David Arkin has more than two decades of experience in audience and content which he now uses as a consultant helping publications better hone their strategies for SEO, content and social media. Among his diverse skill set, David has immersed h...
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28:09
Ep. 13 – Confessions of an AI Explorer
Wes Shields started his new venture, Synthminds, almost by accident. A rather obsessive interest with exploring AI inspired him to offer his knowledge as an AI consultant on Upwork. To his surprise, the company eventually promoted him on their ...
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Episode 13
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38:13
Ep. 12 – Will AI Change How We Teach Media Literacy to Our Kids?
When Erin McNeill became a mother she started developing strategies for how to best educate her kids about media literacy. As a reporter who used to cover Congress, Erin eventually realized she could use her knowledge about the legislative proc...
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Episode 12
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25:33
Ep. 11 – Aristotle Meets AI: A Conversation with Filmmaker Peter Frelik
Peter Frelik’s path to becoming a storyteller began seeing a matinee of a James Bond film as a kid and eventually led him to becoming a feature film editor for Hollywood and a director of commercials. AI image generators will soon make it possi...
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30:49
Ep. 10 – Robot Reporters of the Future
John Biggs imagines a time in the near future where a human editor will manage a team of robot journalists using AI to report the news. A programmer turned journalist, Biggs is now co-founder of The Media Copi...
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25:41
Ep. 9 – How to Ethically Build an AI-Powered Video Creation Tool
During the pandemic Jeremy Toeman tried – and, as he puts it, failed dismally – at editing a video preview of his podcast. That experience gave him the idea to create an AI-powered tool to help novices put together a video instantly. The Upgrad...
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Episode 9
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29:16
Ep. 8 – The Business of Content: Journalist and Podcaster Simon Owens
Simon Owens started his career as a newspaper reporter, but today he covers the media himself through this popular Substack and as the host of his podcast
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29:23
Ep. 7 – The Reasons AI Could Cause a Startup to Fail
Salvador Klein came from humble beginnings in a single-parent household in Canada surviving off welfare to become a successful post-exit founder, angel investor and an advisor to the CEOs of early-stage ventures all over the world. His Substack...
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Episode 7
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24:51
Ep. 6 – How a Futurist Views the Age of AI
Silicon Humanism founder, Sylvia Gallusser, worked for television and radio in France and in strategy consulting in California before making a career transition to become a professional futurist. The job title of a futurist might not have been ...
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Episode 6
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26:39
Ep. 5 – The Ways AI Can Solve the Communication Breakdown Between Publishers and Advertisers
Since the internet took off, the relationship between publishers and advertisers has been fraught. Co-founders Christopher Brennan and Reagan Nunnally of Overtone are using AI tools to analyze articles and help both sides maximize their success...
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Episode 5
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36:38
Ep. 4 – Rollin’ with Rolli: Nick Toso and Catalina Villegas on How AI Can Improve Equity in Media
Nick Toso and Catalina Villegas are journalists who previously worked at CNN Español and understand the pressures that the daily grind puts on reporters. Connecting with reliable sources is one of the most time-consuming tasks a journalist face...
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Episode 4
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34:54
Ep. 3 – From Taylor Swift to Willy Wonka: The Challenges and Opportunities Created by AI
Tony Elkins is a journalist and citizen of the Comanche Nation who worries he’s becoming the doom and gloom person among those focusing on how AI will affect the journalism industry. As a faculty member at the Poynter Institute, Elkins has clos...
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Episode 3
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31:48
Ep. 2 – Kris Krüg on How to Build Community and Wrap Your Head Around AI
Kris Krüg’s career began in a Vancouver dorm room back in 1995 learning how to build basic web pages with a group of foreign exchange students. In the years since he’s worn many hats, working in corporate marketing, photojournalism and as an ed...
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Episode 2
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33:53