Getting Beyond The Hype On AI

In this webinar, ITL's Future of Risk series looks at the excitement around generative AI and sorts out where the real opportunities are--and where they aren't... at least not yet.

Generative AI has drawn more interest, faster than perhaps any technological development at least since the first commercial browser introduced the world to the internet in the mid-1990s. But we've also quickly become aware of its limitations, including the famous "hallucinations" by large language models like ChatGPT. In this webinar, we separate the reality from the fiction, in a conversation that ITL Editor-in-Chief hosted with two of the ranking experts in AI: Nancy Greco, a distinguished engineer with IBM who is heavily involved with its watsonX project, and Anand Rao, professor at Carnegie Mellon who previously spent more than 20 years as a partner at PwC and a predecessor company.

Date: November 29, 2023

Time: 1:00 pm EST

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About the Speakers

Paul Carroll

Paul Carroll is the editor-in-chief of Insurance Thought Leadership.

He is also co-author of A Brief History of a Perfect Future: Inventing the Future We Can Proudly Leave Our Kids by 2050 and Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn From the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years and the author of a best-seller on IBM, published in 1993.

Carroll spent 17 years at the Wall Street Journal as an editor and reporter; he was nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize. He later was a finalist for a National Magazine Award.

Nancy Greco

Nancy Greco has been working in technology for over 40 years at IBM. She started her career making photoresist for IBM semiconductor R&D, and then moved in semiconductor manufacturing, where she absolutely loved the wealth of problems to solve whether on tools or processes, or the intersection of both. Nancy held numerous positions as both an engineer, manager and executive to optimize the development of new technologies and improve the overall productivity of the factory. Moving into IBM Research division 13 years ago, she focused on analytics, which lead to IOT, NLP, edge computing, robotics, and now foundational models. She has been the driving force to get AI running on an edge solution, integrated with Boston Dynamics Robotic quadraped, Spot, to improve and predict the overall health of assets and environments. To support the roll out ofIBM's GenAI platform, watsonx, Nancy has just joined the Technology Sales organization to use her engineering skills to help clients understand what technology solves what problem the most reliably and cost effectively.

Anand Rao

Anand Rao has over 35 years of experience in data, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI), spanning consulting, industry, and academia. He is currently the Distinguished Service Professor for Applied Data Science and AI at the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to this role he served as the Global AI Leader at PwC, a Partner in their Analytics & Insights practice, and led AI innovation in PwC’s Products and Technology segment. Anand managed a team that developed and implemented AI solutions in various sectors including finance, healthcare, and technology. His expertise encompasses business domain knowledge, software engineering, and statistical modeling.

Previously, Anand was the Chief Research Scientist at the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute, focusing on multi-agent systems. His research interests include operationalizing AI, responsible AI, and systems thinking, along with building agent-based models and digital twins.

Anand holds a PhD from the University of Sydney (1988) and an MBA from Melbourne Business School (1997). He co-edited four books on Intelligent Agents and published extensively in both academic and business spheres. Recognized for his significant contributions in consulting and AI research, Anand received awards like the Most Influential Paper Award (2007) and the MBA Award of Distinction (1997).

He has received widespread recognition for his extraordinary contributions in the field of consulting and Artificial Intelligence Research. He has received the Most Influential Paper Award for the Decade in 2007 from the Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems organization; Distinguished Alumnus Award from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India; He was recognized as one of Top50 Data & Analytics professionals in USA and Canada by Corinium; one of Top 50 professionals in InsureTech; one of Top 25 Technology Leaders in Consulting.