Why do today's most powerful AI systems still struggle to explain their decisions, repeat the same mistakes, and undermine trust at the very moment we are asking them to take on more responsibility?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm joined by Artur d'Avila Garcez, Professor of Computer Science at City, St George's University of London, and one of the early pioneers of neurosymbolic AI.

Our conversation cuts through the noise around ever-larger language models and focuses on a deeper question many leaders are now grappling with. If scale alone cannot deliver reliability, accountability, or genuine reasoning, what is missing from today's AI systems?

Artur explains neurosymbolic AI in clear, practical terms as the integration of neural learning with symbolic reasoning. Deep learning excels at pattern recognition across language, images, and sensor data, but it struggles with planning, causality, and guarantees. Symbolic AI, by contrast, offers logic, rules, and explanations, yet falters when faced with messy, unstructured data. Neurosymbolic AI aims to bring these two worlds together, allowing systems to learn from data while reasoning with knowledge, producing AI that can justify decisions and avoid repeating known errors.

We explore why simply adding more parameters and data has failed to solve hallucinations, brittleness, and trust issues. Artur shares how neurosymbolic approaches introduce what he describes as software assurances, ways to reduce the chance of critical errors by design rather than trial and error. From self-driving cars to finance and healthcare, he explains why combining learned behavior with explicit rules mirrors how high-stakes systems already operate in the real world.

A major part of our discussion centers on explainability and accountability. Artur introduces the neurosymbolic cycle, sometimes called the NeSy cycle, which translates knowledge into neural networks and extracts knowledge back out again. This two-way process opens the door to inspection, validation, and responsibility, shifting AI away from opaque black boxes toward systems that can be questioned, audited, and trusted. We also discuss why scaling neurosymbolic AI looks very different from scaling deep learning, with an emphasis on knowledge reuse, efficiency, and model compression rather than ever-growing compute demands.

We also look ahead. From domain-specific deployments already happening today to longer-term questions around energy use, sustainability, and regulation, Artur offers a grounded view on where this field is heading and what signals leaders should watch for as neurosymbolic AI moves from research into real systems.

If you care about building AI that is reliable, explainable, and trustworthy, this conversation offers a refreshing and necessary perspective. As the race toward more capable AI continues, are we finally ready to admit that reasoning, not just scale, may decide what comes next, and what kind of AI do we actually want to live with?

Useful Links

• Neurosymbolic AI (NeSy) Association website
• Artur's personal webpage on the City, St George's University of London page
• Co-authored book titled "Neural-Symbolic Learning Systems"
• The article about neurosymbolic AI and the road to AGI
• The Accountability in AI article
• Reasoning in Neurosymbolic AI
• Neurosymbolic Deep Learning Semantics

Why does healthcare keep investing in new technology while so many clinicians feel buried under paperwork and admin work that has nothing to do with patient care?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm joined by Dr. Rihan Javid, psychiatrist, former attorney, and co-founder and president of Edge. Our conversation cuts straight into an issue that rarely gets the attention it deserves, the quiet toll that administrative overload takes on doctors, care teams, and ultimately patients. Nearly half of physicians now link burnout to paperwork rather than clinical work, and Rihan explains why this problem keeps slipping past leadership discussions, even as budgets for digital tools continue to rise.

Drawing on his experience inside hospitals and clinics, Rihan shares how operational design shapes outcomes in ways many healthcare leaders underestimate. We talk about why short-term staffing fixes often create new problems down the line, and how practices that invest in stable, well-trained remote administrative teams see real improvements. That includes faster billing cycles, fewer errors, and more time back for clinicians who want to focus on care rather than forms. What stood out for me was his framing of workforce infrastructure as a performance driver rather than a compliance box to tick.

We also dig into how hybrid operations are becoming the default model. Local clinicians working alongside remote admin teams, supported by AI-assisted workflows, are now common across healthcare. Rihan is clear that while automation and AI can remove friction and cost, human oversight still matters deeply in high-compliance environments. Trust, accuracy, and patient confidence depend on knowing where automation fits and where human judgment must stay firmly in place.

Another part of the discussion that stuck with me was Rihan's idea that stability is emerging as a better success signal than raw cost savings. High turnover may look efficient on paper, but it quietly limits a clinic's ability to grow, retain knowledge, and improve patient outcomes. We unpack why consistent administrative support can influence revenue cycles, satisfaction, and long-term resilience in ways traditional metrics often miss.

If you're a healthcare leader, operator, or technologist trying to understand how AI, remote teams, and smarter operations can work together without losing trust or care quality, this conversation offers plenty to reflect on. As healthcare systems rethink how work gets done behind the scenes, what would it look like if stability and clinician well-being were treated as core performance measures rather than afterthoughts, and how might that change the future of care?

Useful Links

• Connect with Dr. Rihan Javid
• Edge Health
• Rinova AI

Thanks to our sponsors, Alcor, for supporting the show.

What happens when power, rather than compute, becomes the limiting factor for AI, robotics, and industrial automation?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm joined by Ramesh Narasimhan from Nyobolt to unpack a challenge that is quietly reshaping modern infrastructure. As AI training and inference workloads grow more dynamic, power demand is no longer predictable or steady. It can spike and drop in milliseconds, creating stress on systems that were never designed for this level of volatility. We talk about why data center operators, automation leaders, and industrial firms are being forced to rethink how energy is delivered, managed, and scaled.

Our conversation moves beyond AI headlines and into the less visible constraints holding progress back. Ramesh explains how automation growth, particularly in robotics and autonomous mobile robot fleets, has exposed hidden inefficiencies. Charging downtime, thermal limits, and oversized systems are eroding productivity in warehouses and factories that aim to run around the clock. Instead of expanding physical footprints or adding redundant capacity, many operators are questioning whether the energy layer itself has become outdated.

One of the themes that stood out for me is how energy has shifted from a background utility to a board-level concern. Power density, resilience, and cycle life are now discussed with the same urgency as compute performance or sensor accuracy. Ramesh shares why executives across logistics, automotive, advanced manufacturing, and AI infrastructure are starting to see energy strategy as a direct driver of uptime, cost control, and competitive advantage.

We also explore the industry-wide push toward high-power, high-uptime operations. As businesses demand systems that can stay online continuously, the pressure is on energy technologies to respond faster, charge quicker, and occupy less space. This raises difficult questions about oversizing infrastructure for rare peak loads versus designing smarter systems that can flex in real time without waste.

If you are building or operating AI clusters, robotics platforms, or industrial automation at scale, this episode offers a clear-eyed look at why energy systems may be the next major bottleneck and opportunity. As power becomes inseparable from performance, how ready is your organization to treat energy as a strategic asset rather than an afterthought?

What happens when artificial intelligence starts accelerating cyberattacks faster than most organizations can test, fix, and respond?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sat down with Sonali Shah, CEO of Cobalt, to unpack what real-world penetration testing data is revealing about the current state of enterprise security. With more than two decades in cybersecurity and a background that spans finance, engineering, product, and strategy, Sonali brings a grounded, operator-level view of where security teams are keeping up and where they are quietly falling behind.

Our conversation centers on what happens when AI moves from an experiment to an attack surface. Sonali explains how threat actors are already using the same AI-enabled tools as defenders to automate reconnaissance, identify vulnerabilities, and speed up exploitation. We discuss why this is no longer theoretical, referencing findings from companies like Anthropic, including examples where models such as Claude have demonstrated both power and unpredictability. The takeaway is sobering but balanced. AI can automate a large share of the work, but human expertise still plays a defining role, both for attackers and defenders.

We also dig into Cobalt's latest State of Pentesting data, including why median remediation times for serious vulnerabilities have improved while overall closure rates remain stubbornly low. Sonali breaks down why large enterprises struggle more than smaller organizations, how legacy systems slow progress, and why generative AI applications currently show some of the highest risk with some of the lowest fix rates. As more companies rush to deploy AI agents into production, this gap becomes harder to ignore.

One of the strongest themes in this episode is the shift from point-in-time testing to continuous, programmatic risk reduction. Sonali explains what effective continuous pentesting looks like in practice, why automation alone creates noise and friction, and how human-led testing helps teams move from assumptions to evidence. We also address a persistent confidence gap, where leaders believe their security posture is strong, even when testing shows otherwise.

We close by tackling one of the biggest myths in cybersecurity. Security is never finished. It is a constant process of preparation, testing, learning, and improvement. The organizations that perform best accept this reality and build security into daily operations rather than treating it as a one-off task.

So as AI continues to accelerate both innovation and attacks, how confident are you that your security program is keeping pace, and what would continuous testing change inside your organization? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Useful Links

• Connect with Sonali Shah
• Learn more about Cobalt
• Check out the Cobalt Learning Center
• State of Pentesting Report

Thanks to our sponsors, Alcor, for supporting the show.

What happens when AI stops talking and starts working, and who really owns the value it creates?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm joined by Sina Yamani, founder and CEO of Action Model, for a conversation that cuts straight to one of the biggest questions hanging over the future of artificial intelligence.

As AI systems learn to see screens, click buttons, and complete tasks the way humans do, power and wealth are concentrating fast. Sina argues that this shift is happening far quicker than most people realize, and that the current ownership model leaves everyday users with little say and even less upside.

Sina shares the thinking behind Action Model, a community-owned approach to autonomous AI that challenges the idea that automation must sit in the hands of a few giant firms. We unpack the concept of

Large Action Models, AI systems trained to perform real online workflows rather than generate text, and why this next phase of AI demands a very different kind of training data. Instead of scraping the internet in the background, Action Model invites users to contribute actively, rewarding them for helping train systems that can navigate software, dashboards, and tools just as a human worker would.

We also explore ActionFi, the platform's outcome-based reward layer, and why Sina believes attention-based incentives have quietly broken trust across Web3. Rather than paying for likes or impressions, ActionFi focuses on verifying real actions across the open web, even when no APIs or integrations exist. That raises obvious questions around security and privacy.

This conversation does not shy away from the uncomfortable parts. We talk openly about job displacement, the economic reality facing businesses, and why automation is unlikely to slow down. Sina argues that resisting change is futile, but shaping who benefits from it remains possible. He also reflects on lessons from his earlier fintech exit and how movements grow when people feel they are pushing back against an unfair system.

By the end of the episode, we look ahead to a future where much of today's computer-based work disappears and ask what success and failure might look like for a community-owned AI model operating at scale.

If AI is going to run more of the internet on our behalf, should the people training it have a stake in what it becomes, and would you trust an AI ecosystem owned by its users rather than a handful of billionaires?

Useful Links

• Connect with Sina Yamani on LinkedIn or X
• Learn more about the Action Model
• Follow on X
• Learn more about the Action Model browser extension
• Check out the whitelabel integration docs
• Join their Waitlist
• Join their Discord community

Thanks to our sponsors, Alcor, for supporting the show.

What does it really take to remove decades of technical debt without breaking the systems that still keep the business running?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sit down with Pegasystems leaders Dan Kasun, Head of Global Partner Ecosystem, and John Higgins, Chief of Client and Partner Success, to unpack why legacy modernization has reached a breaking point, and why AI is forcing enterprises to rethink how software is designed, sold, and delivered.

Our conversation goes beyond surface-level AI promises and gets into the practical reality of transformation, partner economics, and what actually delivers measurable outcomes.

We explore how Pega's AI-powered Blueprint is changing the entry point to enterprise-grade workflows, turning what used to be long, expensive discovery phases into fast, collaborative design moments that business and technology teams can engage with together.

Dan and John explain why the old "wrap and renew" approach to legacy systems is quietly compounding technical debt, and why reimagining workflows from the ground up is becoming essential for organizations that want to move toward agentic automation with confidence.

The discussion also dives into Pega's deep collaboration with Amazon Web Services, including how tools like AWS Transform and Blueprint work together to accelerate modernization at scale.

We talk candidly about the evolving role of partners, why the idea of partners as an extension of a sales force is outdated, and how marketplaces are reshaping buying, building, and operating enterprise software. Along the way, we tackle some uncomfortable truths about AI hype, technical debt, and why adding another layer of technology rarely fixes the real problem.

This is an episode for anyone grappling with legacy systems, skeptical of quick-fix AI strategies, or rethinking how partner ecosystems need to operate in a world where speed, clarity, and accountability matter more than ever.

As enterprises move toward multi-vendor, agent-driven environments, are we finally ready to retire legacy thinking along with legacy systems, or are we still finding new ways to delay the inevitable?

Useful Links

• Connect with Dan Kasun
• Connect with John Higgins
• Learn more about Pega Blueprint

Thanks to our sponsors, Alcor, for supporting the show.

What does it really take to move AI from proof-of-concept to something that delivers value at scale?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm joined by Simon Pettit, Area Vice President for the UK and Ireland at UiPath, for a grounded conversation about what is actually happening inside enterprises as AI and automation move beyond experimentation.

Simon brings a refreshingly practical perspective shaped by an unconventional career path that spans the Royal Navy, nearly two decades at NetApp, and more than seven years at UiPath. We talk about why the UK and Ireland remain a strategic region for global technology adoption, how London continues to play a central role for companies expanding into Europe, and why AI momentum in the region is very real despite the broader economic noise.

A big part of our discussion focuses on why so many organizations are stuck in pilot mode. Simon explains how hype, fragmented experimentation, and poor qualification of use cases often slow progress, while successful teams take a very different approach. He shares real examples of automation already delivering measurable outcomes, from long-running public sector programs to newer agent-driven workflows that are now moving into production after clear ROI validation.

We also explore where the next wave of challenges is emerging. As agentic AI becomes easier for anyone to create, Simon draws a direct parallel to the early days of cloud computing and VM sprawl. Visibility, orchestration, and cost control are becoming just as important as innovation itself. Without them, organizations risk losing control of workflows, spend, and accountability as agents multiply across the business.

Looking ahead, Simon outlines why AI success will depend on ecosystems rather than single platforms. Partnerships, vertical solutions, and the ability to swap technologies as the market evolves will shape how enterprises scale responsibly. From automation in software testing to cross-functional demand coming from HR, finance, and operations, this conversation captures where AI is delivering today and where the real work still lies.

If you're trying to separate AI momentum from AI noise, this episode offers a clear, experience-led view of what it takes to turn potential into progress. What would need to change inside your organization to move from pilots to production with confidence?

Useful Links

• Learn more about Simon Pettit
• Connect with UiPath
• Follow on LinkedIn

Thanks to our sponsors, Alcor, for supporting the show.