Bistrocast

Orange Silicon Valley Bistrocast: Sarah Luger on artificial intelligence and language

In the newest episode of Orange Silicon Valley’s Bistrocast podcast, the conversation turns toward a new type of dialogue — the one between humans and machines. The talk features Sarah Luger, a research scientist in natural language processing (NLP) at OSV, who spoke about how artificial intelligence (AI) and NLP technologies are evolving, how they feed into each other, and what to expect from them in the future. Additionally, she offers insights on machine data, software innovation, and how AI stands to reshape human livelihoods and behavior.

Sarah holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in computer informatics. Her career spans work with AI, machine learning, and NLP at startups and other tech companies in the Bay Area. She is an expert in multilingual annotation strategies for machine learning algorithms in classification tasks and question-answering. Listen to our wide-ranging discussion with her in the embedded audio recording below.

Orange Silicon Valley Bistrocast: Will Barkis on the state of Smart Cities

Orange Silicon Valley Bistrocast: Mike Vladimer on the future of IoT

The first episode of the Bistrocast features a one-on-one talk with Mike Vladimer, the co-founder of Orange Silicon Valley’s IoT Studio. In this debut episode, Mike explains how he went from his previous role working on technology for missiles to his role at OSV, where he works with technology that enables connectivity for dog collars, bikes, and enterprise offices. In this episode, he discusses what people commonly misunderstand about IoT and what he sees successful IoT products doing correctly.

What companies using blockchain solutions need to understand about trust

Cities face these crucial technology-related questions in 2021

What UN World Food Programme projects want to learn from Silicon Valley

How to improve tech for women (and everyone else)

Orange Silicon Valley launched its San Francisco-based Women in Tech event series in 2018, and over the past year it has grown significantly. Guests have included founders, VCs, and other tech experts who are working to drive better outcomes for women working in the industry. With registration now open for the next Women in Tech event on Sept. 26, the Bistrocast invited OSV’s Julie Leclerq and Alice Brisset to discuss how they created this series, what they have learned so far, and what issues they want to explore at future events.

The case for growth in FemTech

As part of Orange Silicon Valley’s ongoing conversation about women working in tech, we invited FemTech Collective founder Nicole Dahlstrom and Bloomi CEO Rebecca Story to talk to the Bistrocast about the growth story they see happening right now in FemTech. We asked both of them about how they define the category, which is often applied to products and services in health that are designed with female users in mind. They shared their thoughts and discussed the reactions they’ve seen from investors, as well as how they have seen attitudes in the tech ecosystem change over time.

Envisioning safe, human-centered AI with OpenAI’s Mira Murati

One of the most important conversations in tech right now centers around the roles and rules that will govern artificial intelligence. As capabilities improve dramatically for software and the machines that it powers, it is important to remember the humans that these technology breakthroughs are meant to help. The newest episode of the Bistrocast delves into the numerous questions raised by recent AI advancements. In this episode, we sit down with Mira Murati, the strategy lead at San Francisco-based OpenAI. OpenAI is an AI research company focused on safety in artificial general intelligence, and Murati has explored many facets of AI’s potential to empower people, shape user interfaces, and improve robotics.

Orange Silicon Valley CEO Mireille Helou on AI, innovation in Africa, and diversity in tech

Orange Silicon Valley CEO Mireille Helou stepped into her new role from halfway around the globe in 2019, departing from her previous CEO position at Orange Réunion Mayotte. Her career at Orange has taken here across continents, as well as the Orange Group, which she has served in Réunion, as well as Kenya, where she was the chief business market officer. Now, she is looking ahead to a new era for Orange Silicon Valley, where she intends to build on her past successes and bring the next wave of Silicon Valley innovation to Orange and its customers.

Should biometrics replace passwords?

Anyone who has ever forgotten a password at an inconvenient moment knows that memorized strings of characters are an imperfect security tool. But what are the alternatives? Biometrics offers a range of potential substitutes, including voice, behavior, and face recognition. All of these can be tied to identities, but they can also introduce new challenges for privacy and security. ID R&D is a startup that works with these solutions individually and collectively. The company recently joined the Fab Connect program at Orange Silicon Valley, so we welcomed its president, Alexey Khitrov, to the podcast to discuss the state of identity management.

Orange Silicon Valley Bistrocast: How to introduce the right company to the right startup

Guillaume Payan and Julie Leclercq work with a special set of programs at Orange Silicon Valley that introduce startups, corporate partners, and investors. The outcomes of those introductions vary, depending on the companies involved, but Guillaume, Julie, and their team have worked through the Orange Fab program to optimize every introduction with successful results in mind. This week, they both sat down with the Bistrocast to discuss how they achieve those outcomes and what they have learned about corporate and startup interests over the course of their time in the Bay Area.

Orange Silicon Valley Bistrocast: Justin Young on shifts in supply chains

Orange Silicon Valley’s Bistrocast is back with our first episode of 2019. This week, we welcomed Justin Young, who leads OSV’s program in supply chain and logistics. Supply chains are an invisible giant behind the scenes for many businesses and consumers. In this conversation, Justin addressed the technologies and needs that are changing as incumbent players adapt and new startups find ways to disrupt how shipments are tracked and delivered. It’s a topic that touches many other areas of interest at OSV, including retail, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and more.