High Signal: Data Science | Career | AI

Episode 19: Defaults, Decisions, and Dynamic Systems: Behavioral Science Meets AI

July 3rd, 2025  |  54 mins 8 secs

ai, data science, genai, ml, nudge

Lis Costa, Chief of Innovation and Partnerships at the Behavioural Insights Team, joins High Signal to explore how behavioral science is reshaping public policy, digital platforms, and machine learning.

She explains how defaults influence behavior at scale, why personalization and chatbots are unlocking new kinds of interventions, and what happens when AI systems meet real-world complexity. We also discuss the limits of nudging, the promise of boosting, and why building for human decision-making requires more than just good models.

Episode 18: High-Stakes AI Systems and the Cost of Getting It Wrong

June 19th, 2025  |  58 mins 45 secs

ai, data science, llms, machine learning

Sudarshan Seshadri—VP of AI, Data Science, and Foundations Engineering at Alto Pharmacy—joins us to explore what it takes to build high-stakes AI systems that people can actually trust. He shares lessons from deploying machine learning and LLMs in healthcare, where speed, safety, and uncertainty must be carefully balanced. We talk about designing AI to support pharmacist judgment, the shift from bottlenecks to decision backbones, and why great data leaders are really architects of how irreversible decisions get made.

Episode 17: The Incentive Problem in Shipping AI Products — and How to Change It

May 29th, 2025  |  53 mins 52 secs

ai, data science, machine learning

Roberto Medri, VP of Data Science at Instagram, explains why most experiments fail, how misaligned incentives warp product development, and what it takes to drive real impact with data science. He shares what teams get wrong about launches, why ego gets in the way of learning, and how Instagram turned Reels from a struggling product into a global success. A candid look at product, data, and decision-making inside one of the world’s most influential platforms.

Episode 13: The End of Programming As We Know It

March 27th, 2025  |  1 hr 23 mins

ai, data science, genai, llms, machine learning

Tim O’Reilly—founder of O’Reilly Media and one of the most influential voices in tech—argues we’re not witnessing the end of programming, but the beginning of something far bigger. He draws on past computing revolutions to explore how AI is reshaping what it means to build software, why real breakthroughs come from the edge—not incumbents—and what it takes to learn, teach, and build responsibly in the age of AI.

Episode 10: AI Won't Save You But Data Intelligence Will

February 12th, 2025  |  59 mins 42 secs

ai, data science, machine learning

Ari Kaplan—Global Head of Evangelism at Databricks and a pioneer in sports analytics—explains why businesses fixated on AI often overlook the real advantage: making better decisions with their own data. He shares lessons from his work building analytics teams for Major League Baseball, advising McLaren’s F1 strategy, and helping companies apply AI where it actually works—without falling into hype-driven traps.

Episode 9: Why 90% of Data Science Fails—And How to Fix It -- With Eric Colson

January 30th, 2025  |  1 hr 9 mins

ai, data science, machine learning

Eric Colson—former Chief Algorithms Officer at Stitch Fix and VP of Data Science and Machine Learning at Netflix—explains why most companies fail to fully leverage their data science teams. Drawing on his experience leading data functions at top tech companies, he shares how organizations can move beyond treating data science as a support function and instead empower data scientists to drive strategic impact through experimentation, iteration, and algorithmic decision-making.

Episode 8: From Zero to Scale: Lessons from Airbnb and Beyond

January 9th, 2025  |  1 hr 6 mins

ai, data science, machine learning

Elena Grewal—former Head of Data Science at Airbnb, political consultant, professor at Yale, and ice cream shop owner—shares her journey of building data teams that scale across vastly different contexts. Drawing on her experiences in tech, consulting, and brick-and-mortar, Elena offers practical lessons on leadership, trust, and experimentation.

Episode 7: What Lies Beyond Machine Learning and AI: Decision Systems and the Future of Data Teams

December 18th, 2024  |  1 hr 18 mins

ai, data science, genai, llms, machine learning

In this episode of High Signal, Chris Wiggins—Chief Data Scientist at The New York Times, Professor at Columbia University, and co-author of How Data Happened—shares how organizations can move beyond prediction to actionable decision systems. Drawing on his work at The New York Times and in academia, Chris explains how to scale data teams, optimize systems, and align data science with organizational impact.

Episode 5: The Hard Truth About Building AI Systems and What Most Leaders Miss About AI

November 20th, 2024  |  1 hr 2 mins

ai, data science, machine learning

In this episode of High Signal, Gabriel Weintraub (the Amman Professor of Operations, Information, and Technology at Stanford Graduate School of Business), brings his expertise in market design, data science, and operations, enriched by his experience with global platforms like Uber and Mercado Libre, to a conversation that spans practical strategies, cultural insights, and global perspectives on data and AI.