In episode 44 of Generationship, Rachel speaks with Felipe Huici, CEO and co-founder of Unikraft, about the powerful world of unikernels. Felipe breaks down how these lightweight, specialized VMs can achieve millisecond cold starts, enabling services to truly "scale to zero" without users noticing a delay. Learn how this efficiency is not just about saving money, but also about providing a secure and scalable foundation for the next wave of AI-generated applications.

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Generationship - Ep. #44, Why Unikernels Are Cool with Felipe Huici of Unikraft

Middle East AI News by Carrington Malin brought to you by Qualcomm – The newly created Qualcomm’s Engineering Center in Abu Dhabi is driving transformative innovation across the UAE and beyond. It advances Industrial IoT, edge AI, and cloud — responding to the growing global demand for intelligent, high-performance solutions. In this podcast: UAE’s K2 Think joins AIREV OnDemand platform; Egypt and UNESCO unveil new AI readiness report; King Saud University adds AI to medical training

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UAE’s K2 Think hits OnDemand agentic AI platform

Welcome back to *AI with Shaily*! 🎙️ Hosted by Shailendra Kumar, this episode dives into the exciting and rapidly changing landscape of artificial intelligence. Shaily, a passionate AI enthusiast and expert, takes us through a fascinating discussion about how the journey to Super AI might not be a slow, gradual climb but rather a sudden, explosive leap in capabilities. 🚀

He starts by contrasting the old view of AI progress—like climbing a hill step by step—with the new reality that feels more like a rocket countdown, ready to launch at any moment. What’s driving this sudden acceleration? Shaily breaks it down into several key factors:

1. **Agentic AI Systems** 🤖✨: These are intelligent digital collaborators that don’t just respond passively but actively plan and execute complex tasks independently. Imagine AI assistants that take initiative without needing constant commands, transforming AI from mere tools into proactive partners.

2. **Hardware-Software Synergy** 💻⚡: Microsoft’s new MAI models showcase a powerful blend of innovative architectures called “mixture-of-experts” and cutting-edge chips that boost inference speed by ten times and reduce training costs by the same factor. This leap in computational power is like upgrading from a bicycle to a jet engine, enabling sudden massive performance jumps instead of slow, incremental gains.

3. **Diversity and Scale in Data** 🌍📚: The open-source community’s creation of Apertus LLM, a colossal multilingual model trained on 15 trillion tokens across over a thousand languages, is a game changer. This vast linguistic and cultural diversity allows AI to generalize knowledge and understand context much like humans do, moving closer to generalized intelligence.

4. **Multimodal Embodied AI** 🤖👁️✋: Robots like TactileAloha combine vision and touch, integrating multiple senses so AI can interact with the physical world more naturally. This sensory fusion is paving the way for embodied AI with real-world agency and adaptability, pushing physical intelligence into new frontiers.

5. **Massive Investment** 💰🚀: Over $100 billion poured into AI startups and research worldwide creates a powerful feedback loop, accelerating innovation at an unprecedented pace. This financial surge fuels breakthroughs that sometimes come unexpectedly, further propelling AI’s rapid advancement.

Shaily emphasizes that these factors together suggest the path to Super AI won’t be a predictable, steady climb but rather a "tsunami" of rapid progress where new capabilities emerge almost overnight. This thrilling and somewhat daunting future could transform how we work, create, and live in profound ways.

As a bonus tip, Shaily advises listeners to watch for the intersection of hardware innovations, new algorithms, and embodied AI systems—this is where the most magical and non-linear leaps in AI will likely happen. Following open-source trends is also crucial since they often signal the next radical advancements.

He closes with a thoughtful quote from Alan Turing: *“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”* This reminds us that while the future is uncertain, the journey toward Super AI is wide open and full of potential. 🌟

If you enjoyed this insightful episode, Shaily encourages you to subscribe on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium for weekly AI insights. He invites you to share your thoughts on how you envision this non-linear AI future unfolding. Until next time, keep dreaming big and thinking sharp! 💡🤓

AI’s Rocket Launch: The Sudden Leap to Super Intelligence

Fresh out of the studio, Nick Eayrs, Vice President of Field Engineering for Asia Pacific and Japan at Databricks, and Simon Fassot, General Manager and Head of Global Data and Analytics at Hafnia, join us to explore how data intelligence is transforming enterprise AI across diverse industries in Asia. Nick explained the fundamental distinction between general intelligence and data intelligence - emphasizing how enterprises gain competitive advantage by training AI on their proprietary data rather than public knowledge. Nick showcased customer success stories including Standard Chartered Bank and TechComBank and shared his perspectives on how senior executives can take advantage of AI by moving fast rather than wait and see. Last but not least, Nick offered what great would look like for Databricks in Asia Pacific and Japan in serving their customers. Adding the lens of the customer, Simon shared Hafnia's transformation from legacy SQL Server systems to a unified Databricks architecture serving their global shipping operations and elaborated on how the company is breaking down silos with their data supermarket and "Marvis" AI copilot for maritime operations based on retrieval augmented generation. 

"I think the biggest trap to potentially fall into is, "Hey, it's moving so fast, so much is changing. Let's just wait it out." Completely the wrong approach. You just gotta get started." Nick Eayrs from Databricks

"As tech people within the shipping industry, how do we explain, how do we make it accessible to all our users? So that's where we came up with the idea of a data supermarket, with in mind really the target of enabling self-service for our business. So by giving the analogy of a supermarket, it was much easier at the beginning to explain our business." - Simon Fassot from Hafnia

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] QOTD by Nick Eayrs and Simon Fassot
[00:49] Introduction: Nick Eayrs from Databricks
[03:32] Customer obsession means deeply understanding their business context
[05:22] Data intelligence versus artificial general intelligence explanation begins
[06:42] AI trained on your data creates competitive advantage
[08:17] Only 15% of companies have correct AI infrastructure ready
[11:17] Don't wait for AI perfection, just get started now
[12:30] Agent Bricks simplify AI development using natural language
[18:32] Shared responsibility model for ethical AI deployment
[25:24] Asia Pacific psychology focuses on future, not past
[26:28] Most important question: How do you get started?
[30:18] What does great look like for Databricks?
[33:16] Introduction: Simon Fassot from Hafnia
[35:18] How Hafnia transformed to full cloud architecture centralizes data through Databricks
[36:28] Self-service access needed for 300 onshore, 4000 vessel employees
[41:32] Unity catalog controls data quality for AI cases
[42:21] Two-phase Gen AI: ingest unstructured, then consume data
[44:25] How to implement Generative AI: One bad AI answer loses all user trust
[45:31] How reports in Hafnia use RAG embedded in workflows
[46:47] Data supermarket analogy simplifies self-service for business
[48:39] Marvis AI personalizes Gen AI within company context 
[49:46] Neo4j partnership adds graph capabilities to ecosystem
[53:33] DNA Port platform unifies scattered dashboards and applications
[54:22] Databricks enables focus on business value over operations

Profiles:
Nick Eayrs, Vice President of Field Engineering, Asia Pacific & Japan at Databricks
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-eayrs/

Simon Fassot, General Manager and Head of Global Data and Analytics at Hafnia
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-fassot-68b95135/

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format. 

#dataaiworldtour #databricks #enterpriseai #retrievalaugmentedgeneration #dataintelligence

The Truth About Enterprise AI & Why Data Matters with Nick Eayrs and Simon Fassot

Fresh out of the studio, Craig Wiley, Senior Director of Product Management at Databricks who leads Mosaic AI, joins us to discuss the forefront of enterprise AI from model development to deployment at scale. Beginning with his career journey in ML operations, Craig explained how he recognized the critical connection between data and AI layers that could deliver order-of-magnitude acceleration in development cycles. Emphasizing the transition from classical ML operations to LLM operations, he showcased how Databricks' unified platform eliminates training-serving skew through data lineage capabilities and supports both fine-tuning and RAG approaches depending on industrial use case requirements. Highlighting compelling customer success stories including Suncorp's employee productivity platform and AstraZeneca's transformation of 400,000 clinical trial documents into queryable insights, Craig revealed a striking reality about enterprise AI evaluation - that 85% of AI use cases are being evaluated only by the engineers who built them, reinforcing that proper evaluation frameworks remain foundational for trustworthy AI implementation. He concluded by introducing Agent Bricks as Databricks' evaluation-centric approach to building production agents, emphasizing that model flexibility and rigorous testing are essential for enterprises moving from experimentation to production, while sharing his vision that the industry must evolve from the "year of agents" to the "year of evaluation and quality."

"85% of AI use cases are being evaluated by the engineer who built it saying, 'yep, seemed to work pretty well.' If you're gonna build a system that's going to be critical to the business, that's going to be important that it gets it right, then you can't do that without evaluations." - Craig Wiley

Episode Highlights: 
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Craig Wiley
[01:21] How Craig Wiley started his work in ML Ops that led him to Databricks
[02:43] Data and AI layer connection creates order-of-magnitude acceleration
[03:47] Mosaic AI acquisition expanded Gen AI solution capabilities
[04:38] Classical ML statistics versus Gen AI evaluation challenges
[05:48] Mosaic AI covers end-to-end from data ingestion
[07:12] Training-serving skew eliminated through unified platform lineage
[08:51] Fine tuning versus RAG depends on use case
[10:49] Industrial agents benefit from fine-tuned smaller models
[13:52] Agent Bricks prioritizes accuracy over simplicity alone
[15:44] Model flexibility crucial for speed and accuracy optimization
[17:59] Suncorp and AstraZeneca demonstrate diverse AI applications
[19:37] Asia Pacific shows aggressive AI adoption strategies
[22:00] 85% of AI cases evaluated only by building engineer
[24:12] Industry terminology evolves rapidly from RAG to agents
[25:39] Customer creativity with governance capabilities inspires product development

Profile: Craig Wiley, Senior Director of Product Management at Databricks and Mosaic AI
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigwiley/

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format. 

Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.
Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia
Analyse Asia Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl 
Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245 
Analyse Asia LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia/


#dataaiworldtour #databricks #enterpriseai #retrievalaugmentedgeneration #agentbricks #evalsAI #evaluationAI #MLOps

Agent Bricks and How Data-AI Integration Changes Everything with Craig Wiley

Middle East AI News by Carrington Malin brought to you by Qualcomm – 40 years of global innovation! Qualcomm continues to push boundaries, bringing intelligent computing to the Middle East’s fast-evolving digital landscape. In this podcast: Saudi HUMAIN launches world-first Agentic AI PC; MBZUAI awards Sam Altman inaugural doctorate; TIER IV partners with Elm on Saudi mobility

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Saudi HUMAIN launches world-first Agentic AI PC

Medium Article: https://medium.com/@jsmith0475/ai-that-thinks-backward-the-rise-of-defensive-intelligence-c0260765a2ed
The academic paper, by Dr. Jerry A. Smith, introduces "Defensive Intelligence" as a new architectural principle for agentic AI, arguing that inversion reasoning—explicitly modeling and avoiding failure modes—significantly improves system robustness over traditional goal-oriented methods. It proposes four technical patterns, such as Adversarial Attention Heads and Failure Mode Memory, that embed this defensive mindset directly into transformer architectures, claiming up to a forty percent reduction in task failures. Beyond implementation, the source explores the profound implications of this failure-aware AI, addressing the cognitive asymmetry between defensive AI and optimism-biased humans, the sociological risks of concentrating "negative knowledge" among elite actors, and the ethical challenges of prioritizing which failures the AI should avoid. Ultimately, the work suggests that this type of defensive reasoning may result in an intelligence that is fundamentally more cautious and alien than human cognition.

AI That Thinks Backward: The Rise of Defensive Intelligence

Intellyx analysts Jason Bloomberg and Jason English join BMC's Anthony DiStauro and Mark Schettenhelm to delve into the evolving landscape of intelligent autonomy, focusing on the role of AI agents and agentic workflows in automating tasks within mainframe environments. The panel discusses the current trends driving the adoption of intelligent autonomy, the challenges faced in achieving true autonomy, and the evolution from traditional chatbots to more sophisticated AI agents. 

Links:

Blog: When AI Lets the Mainframe Talk Back - https://www.bmc.com/blogs/mainframe-artificial-intelligence-ai-agents/

Blog: The Rise of AI Agents: A New Era for Mainframe Transformation -https://www.bmc.com/blogs/ai-agents-mainframe-transformation/

Mainframe Intelligent Autonomy: Agentic AI and Agentic Workflows

In episode 45 of Generationship, Rachel Chalmers speaks with Allegra Guinan of Lumiera about the trust dynamics and design ethics of voice-based AI. Together they explore how human tendencies to anthropomorphize voice systems can both build and erode trust, underscoring the need for responsible design and diverse perspectives.

Generationship - Ep. #45, Perspective Density with Allegra Guinan of Lumiera

Fresh out of the studio, Ling Hai, President of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa at MasterCard, joins us to explore how payment networks are evolving to embrace stable coins, AI agents, and the future of digital commerce across diverse global markets. He shares his career journey from management consulting to retail banking and eventually to MasterCard. Ling Hai shares that MasterCard is a global technology company that creates interoperability and universal acceptance, with technology services like cybersecurity, data insights, and consulting increasingly contributing to revenue beyond traditional payment processing. He highlights compelling innovations from Asia Pacific leading the way, including Singapore's nationwide open loop transit system and MasterCard's approach to stable coins as settlement vehicles alongside traditional currencies, while emphasizing how the company bridges the DeFi universe with the physical merchant world through on-ramp and off-ramp solutions for crypto adoption in markets like Latin America. Closing the conversation, Ling Hai shares what great looks like for MasterCard to become the operating system of commerce and the digital economy.

“MasterCard, in the end, is a global technology company. We run a global network, and we’re very much a data company. So, in all of this, when we handle people’s money and when we handle people’s data, trust is the most important thing. If we lose that, we lose our business. For us, that trust factor is absolutely critical — it’s embedded in everything we do.As the world evolves, we’ve gone from handling payments in the physical world, to e-commerce in the digital world. Tomorrow, with AI, it’s going to be agentic — agents will be doing commerce for us. But the common thread across all of this is still safety, security, trust, and also ease of use.Today’s consumer doesn’t want to trade off between convenience and security — they want both. So when we think about our solutions and services, that’s part of our design thinking. We must ensure they are easy, convenient, safe, secure, and trusted by everyone.” - Ling Hai

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Ling Hai
[01:00] Introduction: Ling Hai
[03:00] Overview of Mastercard and balancing global consistency with localization
[06:00] MasterCard's vision: inclusive digital economy for everyone
[09:13] Open loop transit leading digital payment adoption
[11:14] Asia Pacific: most advanced multi-payment region globally
[14:03] MasterCard is a global technology company focused on trust.
[16:00] Stable coins create more use cases for MasterCard
[20:38] Two universes: DeFi and traditional finance will coexist
[21:07] Payment secret sauce: resolving disputes when things fail
[24:00] Stable coins stronger for B2B, wholesale settlement use
[25:38] Be at the table or you're on table
[29:00] AI enables personalization beyond one-size-fits-all marketing
[31:24] Agent commerce requires new rules and payment standards
[32:23] Tokenization and authentication: no regret moves for future
[34:16] MasterCard network supports real-time payments beyond cards
[35:00] What does great look like:: Operating system of commerce and digital economy
[36:00] Closing

Profile: Ling Hai, President of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Mastercard
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ling-hai-a7952ab8/

#mastercard #stablecoins #agenticai #payments #finance 

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format. 

Mastercard and The Future of Money: Crypto, AI Agents & Digital Payments with Ling Hai

The Middle East AI News Minute gives you a daily one-minute daily briefing on the top AI-related stories coming out of the Middle East. If you are a busy technology, business or government leader who want to get a quick update, then this is the podcast for you.

A weekly podcast dissecting the pulse of business, technology & media in Asia. Hear our host interviewing leading journalists, senior executives, respectable authors & thinkers, entrepreneurs & thought leaders to discuss the most important issues that move and shake the business landscape in the Asia Pacific. The show is originally created and hosted by Bernard Leong.

Heavybit is the leading early-stage investor in enterprise infrastructure. Since 2013, we've helped launch and scale visionary technical startups—from DevSecOps and feature flagging to AI code generation and beyond. We go hands-on from day 0, backing founders as they turn code into companies and build the future of software from the bottom up to the top down.

Unlock the secrets of data mastery with Shailendra, a 27-year veteran in AI, ML, and Data Science, driving AU$ 6 Billion in transformative value. As the author of 'Making Money out of Data,' their strategies redefine digital success. With expertise honed at IBM and Accenture, they drive innovation and data monetization. Explore how loyalty programs like Flybuys and Everyday Rewards revolutionize business—connect with Shaily today.

In-Depth Explorations of Neuroscience-Inspired Architectures Revolutionizing AI.

Tune in for lively, insightful discussion of topics important to the mainframe community, from DevOps to security and staffing. 2020 & 2024 winner of the DevOps Dozen Award for Best DevOps-Related Podcast Series.

New tracks tagged #Agentic AI