Inspire AI: Transforming RVA Through Technology and Automation
Our mission is to cultivate AI literacy in the Greater Richmond Region through awareness, community engagement, education, and advocacy. In this podcast, we spotlight companies and individuals in the region who are pioneering the development and use of AI.
Episodes
67 episodes
Ep 64 - Intelligence, Accountability, And You: From AI Slop to Sound Judgement
The pace of AI can feel exhilarating until a polished report collapses under scrutiny and your team spends hours repairing “work slop.” We’re seeing a quiet shift across organizations: as intelligence becomes ambient, leadership’s edge moves fr...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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13:40
Ep 63 - Human In The Loop: Designing The Boundary Between Machines And Humans
The moment an AI agent can issue refunds or change accounts, the conversation shifts from capability to responsibility. We dig into how to design trust between people and machines by choosing the right oversight model for the job: human in the ...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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10:43
Ep 62 - Reconfiguring Work: A Playbook For Agentic AI Adoption
When AI stops acting like a tool and starts acting like a teammate, the rules of work change. We explore what agentic AI really means for teams, decisions, and culture—and why the biggest blockers aren’t algorithms but fear, fatigue, and unclea...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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16:01
Ep 61 - From Automation To Augmentation: How Humans And AI Become Better Teammates
Fear says AI will replace us; experience shows the real upside arrives when we work with it. We explore how augmentation—keeping humans in the loop—turns AI from a black box into a trusted teammate that speeds analysis, amplifies creativity, an...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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14:49
Ep 60 - Reinforcement Learning: Reward The Process And The Future Changes
New year energy is loud; smarter growth is quiet. We’re kicking off 2026 by trading fragile resolutions for a durable learning loop inspired by reinforcement learning. Instead of chasing perfect plans, we break down how real change happens: pra...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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8:08
Ep 59 - Year End Reflections With AI: And It Has Notes
What if reflection wasn’t a year-end memory dump but a working system that sharpens judgment? We sat down to examine how AI quietly changed the way we think, plan, and lead—shifting focus from task speed to decision quality, from outcomes to as...
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Season 1
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Episode 59
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8:55
Ep 58 - Claude & MCP: And The Rise Of Enterprise Agents
Midnight outages that never become crises. Forms that fill themselves. Support queues that sort and draft responses before a human even looks. We explore how agentic AI moves from talk to action by pairing Claude with the Model Context Protocol...
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Season 1
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Episode 58
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12:26
Ep 57 - When Machines Decide: How Agentic AI Orchestration Delivers Real Resolution
What if your support chat didn’t just explain the fix but executed it end to end in under a minute? We explore the move from conversational help to true autonomy, where multiple specialized agents collaborate under an orchestrator to verify ide...
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Season 1
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Episode 57
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12:38
Ep 56 - For Those Who Served: How AI Is Empowering Veterans
A quiet story changes everything: a few missed appointments, a medication shift, and an AI alert that prompts a human call just in time. We open with Alex’s experience to show how technology, used with care, can help us reach veterans sooner, r...
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Season 1
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Episode 56
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11:16
Ep 55 - Gradient Descent: How A Simple (?) Step-By-Step Algorithm Teaches Machines To Think
Imagine learning as a careful night hike: you can’t see the whole path, but you can feel the slope and step where it goes down. That’s the core intuition behind gradient descent, the quiet algorithm that turns errors into progress and powers ev...
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Season 1
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Episode 55
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26:10
Ep 54 - Access is Destiny: Opening Doors To AI With Mark Cuban Foundation And AI Ready RVA
Curiosity beats credentials. We head to Richmond, Virginia, to share how a free, hands-on AI bootcamp turns nervous high schoolers into confident creators and how a local nonprofit, AI Ready RVA, keeps the doors open long after the weekend ends...
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Season 1
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Episode 54
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9:45
Ep 53: The Data Center Capital of the World — At What Cost?
The internet doesn’t live in the sky—it lives in a quiet corner of Northern Virginia, inside miles of windowless buildings that hum day and night. We pull back the curtain on how Loudoun County became the world’s data center capital, tracing th...
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Season 1
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Episode 53
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8:37
Ep 52 - From Control to Collaboration: Rewriting Leadership for the Age of AI w/ Dr. John Dentico
What if the habits that built last century’s companies are the very things holding yours back today? Dr. John Dentico joins us to challenge the factory-floor model of leadership and swap control for something bolder: a system built on doubt, co...
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Season 1
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Episode 52
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1:00:06
Ep 51 - Listening With Heart: How AI Turns Personal Narratives Into Actionable Insight w/ Andy Sitison
What if your culture metrics could feel as real as a story told around a campfire? We sit down with technologist and humanist Andy Sitison, CTO of Share More Stories, to unpack how long-form narratives—analyzed with AI—can reveal what surveys m...
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Season 1
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Episode 51
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39:35
Ep 50 - The Human Algorithm: Leading with Authenticity in an AI World w/ Judi Fox
What if your loudest growth came from fewer, truer signals? That’s the through-line of our conversation with LinkedIn strategist Judy Fox, who rebuilt after a 2023 house fire and turned AI into a clarity engine rather than a content factory. Sh...
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Season 1
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Episode 50
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1:10:53
Ep 49 - Virginia’s Agentic AI Pilot: Clarity, Risks, and the Future of Lawmaking
A state is letting an algorithm read the rulebook—and then asking people to decide what to change. We head to Virginia to unpack the “agentic AI” pilot that scans statutes, regulations, and guidance to flag contradictions, redundancies, and unc...
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Season 1
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Episode 49
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11:52
Ep 48 - The Next Vital Sign: Kinis.ai’s Bold Vision for AI-Powered Health w/ Vincent Vu
A simple question changed everything: what if balance were measured like blood pressure? We sit down with founder Vincent Vu—who went from a refugee camp to launching minimalist shoes to building a clinical platform—to unpack how AI and movemen...
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Season 1
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Episode 47
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50:00
Ep 47 - Quantum’s Edge: What Quantum AI Really Promises
What if intelligence could see every path at once? We dive into the live wire where quantum computing meets AI—mapping the real breakthroughs, the hard limits, and the choices that will define how this technology reshapes science, industry, and...
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Season 1
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Episode 47
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12:38
Ep 46 - Supercomputers: Reshaping Our World One Quadrillion Calculations at a Time
What happens when machines can think at the speed of light? Today we dive into the fascinating world of supercomputers – not just as technological marvels, but as the silent engines driving humanity's greatest breakthroughs.Have you eve...
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Season 1
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Episode 46
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10:04
Ep 45 - Clarity Over Speed: The AI skills that actually matter
Have you fallen into the AI execution trap? While everyone races to master prompt engineering and ChatGPT tricks, this episode reveals the uncomfortable truth: execution has never been the real bottleneck in innovation. The true differentiator—...
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Season 1
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Episode 45
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11:41
Ep 44 - The AI Reinvention Cycle: Six Steps to Future-Proof Your Organization
The business landscape is undergoing a seismic shift, and AI stands at the epicenter. But as Accenture CEO Julie Sweet pointedly states, "AI won't save you if all you do is adopt it." This fundamental truth launches us into an exploration of wh...
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Season 1
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Episode 44
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7:37
Ep 43 - Websites Finally Talk Back: The Promise of No-Code AI Chatbots
Ever wished your website could answer questions while you sleep? That's exactly what we're exploring today as we dive into the world of no-code AI chatbots that are revolutionizing customer service for businesses of all sizes.What caugh...
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Season 1
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Episode 43
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7:00
Ep 42 - AI Guardrails: How AI Tools Protect Against Themselves
The invisible line between AI innovation and disaster often comes down to one critical factor: guardrails. Just as safety barriers on mountain roads don't slow you down but prevent catastrophic falls, AI guardrails establish crucial boundaries ...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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7:03
Ep 41 - From Coffee to Wine: How AI Is Giving Teachers Their Lives Back w/ Cary Wright
What if teachers could reclaim their evenings and weekends while actually improving student outcomes? That’s the promise of AI in education—not replacing teachers, but amplifying their impact by taking on the administrative burden that pulls th...
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Season 1
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Episode 41
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46:09