Peggy Smedley and Lily Elefteriadou, distinguished professor of civil engineering, University of Florida, talk about the major innovations shaping transportation. She says AI (artificial intelligence) is impacting transportation including the autonomous vehicle and infrastructure—but the creativity will still need to come from humans. They also discuss:  How AI and autonomous vehicles will come together. The importance of partnership and collaboration in transportation, which is interdisciplinary. What the university is doing to advance workforce development in transportation.  &nbsp; (4/8/25 - 915) IoT, Internet of Things, Peggy Smedley, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, digital transformation, cybersecurity, blockchain, 5G, cloud, sustainability, future of work, podcast, Lily Elefteriadou, University of Florida This episode is available on all major streaming platforms. If you enjoyed this segment, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

Innovation in Transportation in 2025

In this podcast, Wenjie Zi discusses why many ML projects don’t succeed and what technology and organizational aspects affect the success of those projects. She also talked about what potential communication and understanding gaps can exist between business team and ML practitioners and how to address these gaps.

Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4lwbGsk

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Transcript

Wenjie Zi on Technology and Organizational Aspects for ML Project Success

"Is this Armageddon or just another Monday morning?" That's the question on everyone's mind as the tech world grapples with a whirlwind of AI hype, market volatility, and geopolitical maneuvering. Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman deliver their unfiltered perspectives on what's really happening. This week, they explore a handpicked selection of topics that go straight to the heart of the matter, including: &nbsp;   : A look at Google Cloud's announcements from Next 2025, and the company's efforts to differentiate itself through solutions like the Ironwood platform and its approach to enabling enterprise AI adoption.   &nbsp;   : Analysis of Apple's vulnerability to US-China trade tensions and manufacturing relocation difficulties.   &nbsp;   : The conversation delves into the recent market downturn, exploring the complex interplay of trade wars, economic uncertainty, and investor sentiment.   &nbsp;   : Is Trump's tariff strategy a 4D chess masterclass or a dangerous game of roulette? The hosts debate the potential consequences for the US economy and its global trading relationships.   &nbsp;   : Amidst the chaos, the long-term outlook for tech giants like the MAG7 is examined, considering their resilience, growth potential, and ability to capitalize on AI-driven efficiencies.     For a deeper dive into each topic, please click on the links above. Be sure to  so you never miss an episode. &nbsp;

EP 257: Google Cloud Next, Tariff Tango, and the Market Whipsaw

Peggy Smedley and Elad Inbar, founder and CEO, RobotLAB and author, Our Robotics Future, talk about robotics and a book that can serve as a guide for business owners looking to embed robotics into their business. He says robots are very mission specific. He also shares the reason business owners are automating tasks. They also discuss:  The topic of robots potentially replacing humans. The impact of the widening labor gap and the industries impacted. The opportunities robots provide—and the transition timeline we can expect.  &nbsp; (4/15/25 - 916) What You Might Have Missed:    IoT, Internet of Things, Peggy Smedley, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, digital transformation, cybersecurity, blockchain, 5G, cloud, sustainability, future of work, podcast, Elad Inbar, RobotLAB, author This episode is available on all major streaming platforms. If you enjoyed this segment, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

An Era of Robots in Business

Peggy Smedley and Despina Stavrinos, director, Institute for Social Science Research, chief human factors research and development officer, Alabama Transportation Institute and professor of psychology, The University of Alabama, unpack the science behind distracted driving. She says when we look at the number 1 contributing factor to distracted driving, it is driver behavior. They also discuss:  The research done in the TRIP (translational research injury prevention) lab. How simulators can understand what drivers are doing and thinking. Why texting is one of the most dangerous things you can do while driving.   &nbsp; (4/15/25 - 916) What You Might Have Missed:    IoT, Internet of Things, Peggy Smedley, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, digital transformation, cybersecurity, blockchain, 5G, cloud, sustainability, future of work, podcast, Despina Stavrinos, The University of Alabama This episode is available on all major streaming platforms. If you enjoyed this segment, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

The Science behind Distracted Driving

The market is changing! Peggy talks about everything we need to know for supply chains. She says we must make, build, and grow together, while also innovating and considering how the next generation will lead the way. She also discusses:  A historical perspective. Present-day data. How supply chains can prepare for a stronger tomorrow.  &nbsp; (4/15/25 - 916) What You Might Have Missed:    IoT, Internet of Things, Peggy Smedley, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, digital transformation, cybersecurity, blockchain, 5G, cloud, sustainability, future of work, podcast This episode is available on all major streaming platforms. If you enjoyed this segment, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

Stronger Supply Chains in 2025

Ever wonder if AI is truly democratizing or just redefining control? In this episode, we delve into the intriguing partnership between Hence Global and Palantir, where affordable AI-powered insights come with surprising strings attached. As we unpack who really benefits from this “democratization,” we spotlight the potential for data colonialism and the silent consolidation of power. Listeners will gain a critical perspective on the ethical implications and true beneficiaries of AI-driven geopolitical risk analysis. Don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review to support our podcast! 

FULL TRANSCRIPT: You start a business to navigate the fractured world of trade regulations. Tariffs, sanctions, export bans—it’s a minefield out there. You need real-time intel, predictive analysis—previously, you’d call McKinsey or Eurasia Group. Elite consultancies. Big money.

Not anymore. Now, you subscribe to an AI-powered advisor. Just $1,500 a year. Sounds great, doesn’t it? AI finally delivering democracy to the boardroom—right?

Here’s the catch: your affordable, democratizing AI assistant is quietly running over Palantir Foundry. You know, Palantir: the spook-tech company Peter Thiel founded to hunt terrorists. The one ICE used to deport families. The firm almost entirely reliant on government surveillance contracts.

So, you just democratized your geopolitical intelligence with software engineered by the Pentagon’s favorite data-miner.

Congratulations.

Hence Global launched this today, a slick, shiny tool promising smaller firms and NGOs the power once reserved for corporate giants. It scrapes news feeds, digests sanctions lists, SEC filings—delivers the geopolitical risk assessment once produced by rooms of junior consultants in suits.

Democratization is the narrative. But narratives always hide something.

Palantir’s move from hunting terrorists to parsing global trade isn’t accidental. Their entire business model depends on absorbing vast data flows—tracking, modeling, predicting behavior. Feeding the insatiable hunger of governments and law enforcement.

Today’s announcement offers Palantir something subtler yet crucial: corporate risk data.

Picture this. Suppose thousands of smaller companies—from emerging fintechs to struggling NGOs—pipe detailed financial and transactional data through Foundry to better predict trade conflicts or sanctions blowback. Over years, this treasure trove feeds Palantir’s models, growing sharper, deeper, more predictive.

Who benefits?

Not the scrappy nonprofits and startups, who pay for the privilege of letting Palantir quietly refine its all-seeing algorithms. Perhaps not even Hence itself, framed as a disruptor but tethered to a platform whose real business pays vastly better elsewhere—in surveillance, intelligence, and military contracts.

Beneficiaries are deeper and far more strategic. Consider the Pentagon, CIA, or Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Imagine the sophistication their tools gain with direct backend access to private-sector risk calculations.

This isn’t hypothetical. Palantir’s SEC filings openly mention “public-private data partnerships.” Their business, hiding in plain sight, blurs lines between corporate intelligence and state surveillance. Every startup plugged into Foundry becomes another tributary feeding the surveillance-industrial complex.

Of course, Hence’s CEO Sean West knows this. West, formerly deputy CEO of Eurasia Group—the premier geopolitical consultancy—released a book warning corporations against “unruly” AI disrupting traditional power structures. That’s his entire brand: the ethical AI defender.

Yet here he is, setting up geopolitical-risk-as-a-service atop Palantir’s black-box platform. A pretty sharp pivot—from raising flags about unchecked AI power, to monetizing it.

Funny how quickly principles become negotiable once AI hits market scale.

But here’s where the stakes sharpen further. Because behind the well-intentioned sales pitch—bringing risk analysis to those who couldn’t previously afford it—lies genuine danger.

Global South businesses and NGOs adopting Hence will inevitably rely on analysis built almost entirely from English-language Western sources. Analysts trained at McKinsey or Eurasia could at least compensate for source-bias through their own networks and regional expertise. A purely algorithmic approach, locked inside Palantir’s system, surrenders this last human check.

What we’re unraveling here isn’t just corporate data privacy—it’s data colonialism. By exporting American-centric analytics methodologies—quietly standardizing how global risks are framed and interpreted—Hence’s product shapes decision-making far beyond U.S. shores.

We move from democratization to dependence. From cheap, accessible intelligence—to AI-embedded ideological export.

Imagine hundreds of small Indonesian businesses aligning their investment strategies, quietly, unquestioningly with American sanction lists, American geopolitical risk indices, American views of who deserves trade and who deserves sanction.

AI democratizes risk analysis…but whose democracy are we talking about?

And beneath even that lies labor, quietly sacrificed. Those rooms of junior analysts? They’re expensive—but they train tomorrow’s industry leaders. Replace them with an AI subscription, and your future executives never arrive. Instead of fostering global knowledge, we surrender to automation-designed ignorance, where data flows upward to enrich Palantir’s Pentagon clients, and downward to feed small firms ever-more standardized recipes for navigating conflict.

Here’s what’s inevitable: Within five years, Palantir—protected by language like “democratization,” “efficiency,” “AI empowerment”—will quietly integrate Hence’s data into a larger fusion of government surveillance contracts. DHS, Treasury, Defense—they’ll eventually license systems built from a thousand small private businesses’ data, modeling ever-more precise sanctions, targeting ever-more accurately states the U.S. labels unruly.

Beneath every glowing headline about democratized AI—the persistent thread of power tightens. A few companies collect vast private datasets, quietly funneling them into state intelligence. Firms like Hence become mere data feeders, seduced into complicity under promises of cheap, democratized insight.

Palantir hasn’t democratized geopolitical intelligence. It privatized surveillance—and today, through a glossy partnership with Hence Global, placed it directly into the bloodstream of small and unsuspecting companies worldwide.

This is not democratization—it’s a bait-and-switch underlying the shiny promise of algorithmic equality.

But if we pull that thread just enough—look straight at who wins and who loses—it's clear:

Under AI's glow, today’s “level playing fields” quietly freeze into tomorrow’s predefined pipelines of control.

The "Democratization" Deception: How AI Is Fueling a New Age of Data Colonialism

Google Chrome is increasingly employing on-device machine learning models to enhance user experience, particularly in areas related to search functionality. These models, managed by Chrome's Optimization Guide, operate locally to improve speed, protect user privacy, and enable offline capabilities. Many of these models directly influence the Omnibox, providing intelligent query suggestions and ranking URL results from browsing history and bookmarks. Indirectly, numerous models analyse webpage content, process browsing history, and support features like "Journeys" by clustering related browsing activities and enabling semantic history search. This sophisticated system aims to create a more personalised and context-aware browsing experience by intelligently handling user data within the browser itself.

Chrome Models - Functionality and Relevance to Search

In this eye-opening episode, we delve into the unsettling reliance of national security on private tech giants, highlighted by the recent Chinese cyberattack on major U.S. telecom networks. We explore how outdated infrastructure led to this crisis and the Pentagon's swift pivot to Musk's StarShield satellites. As we unpack the consequences of privatizing essential defense infrastructure, we reveal the implications of granting single corporations immense power over national security. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of the delicate balance between government authority and corporate control. Don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review! 

FULL TRANSCRIPT: There's no clearer path from crisis to privatized power than what's unfolding right now.

Yesterday’s headline was stark enough to stop scrolling thumbs in their tracks. "Chinese cyberattack hits major U.S. telecom networks—Pentagon urgently pivots to Musk’s StarShield satellites."

But step back, tune out the breathless reporters, and just let this sink in—the American Pentagon now depends, fundamentally, on satellite internet controlled by the same guy managing X. The same chief executive trolling politicians while quietly locking down billion-dollar defense contracts.

Governments relying on private firms isn't new—but there's something uniquely unsettling here. SpaceX’s StarShield isn't just corporate infrastructure being utilized. It's corporate infrastructure becoming irreplaceable.

Let’s rewind slightly.  

How did we get here?

Turns out, the compromised telecom networks—Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile—got caught using decades-old legacy gear: Cisco routers with known security holes, exploited beautifully by China’s state-backed Salt Typhoon hackers. This wasn't sophisticated espionage; it was textbook negligence weaponized. These networks’ cost-cutting finally came home to roost—every leaked call record, every stolen political message, every compromised location ping—a direct consequence of corporations gambling on outdated tech, and governments quietly allowing it.

And here’s the kicker: these vulnerabilities weren't accidental. Remember CALEA, the U.S. policy mandating telecom backdoors for law enforcement? Yeah, it started as a national security tool and ended as a welcome mat—one China gladly wiped its boots on yesterday.

So the Pentagon scrambles, desperate for secure, ready-made infrastructure. Musk’s StarShield network—not Starlink, mind you, but its fully militarized, proprietary sibling—fits perfectly. Within hours of the hack, there it was, announced as America’s shining beacon of compromise-free communications.

Which sounds good. Until you think for like, two seconds about what happens when critical defense infrastructure—paid for by taxpayers, essential to the Pentagon's entire strategic communication—is held hostage by one private actor. Especially one whose whims are unaccountable, whose encryption can't be audited, and who already has a record of threatening to flip off service if he doesn’t get what he wants. Ukraine, anyone?

Let’s be clear-eyed here: national security privatization isn't just about market "efficiency". It’s about quietly shifting the levers of essential state power into the hands of unelected billionaires. StarShield today, something else tomorrow. This isn’t just rescue-by-tech-giants—it’s disaster capitalism 101.

The telecom giants themselves look destined to lose out. Thousands of middle-class union telecom jobs vanish overnight, replaced by SpaceX’s famously grueling, non-unionized workforce. Sure, Musk profits. Great quarterly earnings ahead. But more fundamentally, this reshapes how and who controls infrastructure crucial to a functioning government.

Let’s project forward—just briefly.

It’s 2026. NATO’s fully dependent on Musk’s satellites. Europe’s satellite providers—OneWeb, Eutelsat—have been sidelined. Every ally suddenly beholden to one network, one encryption method, one corporate CEO.

What happens the next time Elon Musk—a human known for erratic decisions, Twitter meltdowns, and geopolitical naiveté—wakens annoyed with how a military operation’s unfolding?

What happens when China stops merely hacking terrestrial routers and starts blinding orbital satellites? Does that accelerate a dangerous slide toward space weaponization?

What’s unfolding doesn’t just show us privatization in action. It exposes something deeper—the willingness of governments to hand over fundamental power as long as corporations promise a quick fix to crises they themselves helped generate.

Keep your eyes on this: today’s telecom hack is tomorrow’s congressional testimony. “Why did we let one private company monopolize national security assets?” Questions asked ten years too late.

And when the next crisis hits, a cyberattack, or infrastructure collapse, the cycle repeats: private corporations ready, government authority recedes.

This hack wasn't just a breach of communications. It was the latest quiet, seismic shift in the balance of power—away from elected governments, toward corporate titans holding the keys to essential infrastructure.  

And everyone involved knows exactly what they're doing.

Except us, apparently, until it’s well past too late.

The StarShield Dilemma: How Privatized Power is Quietly Seizing National Security

Today’s guest is Jim Palmer, Chief AI Officer at Dialpad. Dialpad is an AI-powered communication platform offering unified calling, messaging, video conferencing, and customer support. It helps businesses improve team collaboration and productivity through scalable, efficient communication solutions. In this episode, Jim Palmer joins Emerj Managing Editor Matthew DeMello on the show today to discuss the evolution of AI in customer experience. With over 10 years of experience in AI solutions, Jim shares valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities businesses face in implementing human-centric AI. From overcoming disparate systems to measuring AI’s ROI, they dive deep into the practical aspects of AI integration and its impact on customer satisfaction. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at .

Transforming Customer Experience with AI-Enhanced Contact Centers - with Jim Palmer of Dialpad

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Leading tech analysts from The Futurum Group share weekly deep dives on the latest tech news, new products and services, mergers, earnings, regulations, and more. The Futurum Tech Webcast will keep you current on what’s happening in the tech space — from startups to industry leaders, emerging tech, and what’s ahead for industries across the globe, along with interviews with tech industry leaders and experts.

Subscribe now and stay connected to this exciting journey into the world of technology and the future of work. For more information, visit https://www.futurumgroup.com.

As a reminder, the Futurum Tech Webcast is intended as an informational webcast/podcast only. While publicly traded companies and equities are frequently discussed, the analysts on this show are not in any way offering financial or investment advice.

Stay ahead of the curve as artificial intelligence disrupts the financial services sector.

Discover the lessons learned from organizations like HSBC, Citigroup, and Visa; learn business strategies from venture capitalists investing in AI for the financial services industry; and see the future with AI banking innovators from Silicon Valley and around the world.

Each week Emerj Founder Daniel Faggella interviews top experts to bring their best insights to our audience.

This show is for financial services leaders, consulting and IT services leaders, and any businessperson with an interest in the evolving world of AI in financial services.

www.emerj.com

New tracks tagged #machine learning