Breaking the AI bubble: Big Tech plus AI equals economy takeover. Featuring Georg Zoeller, Centre for AI Leadership Co-Founder
Whether we like it or not, and despite tales of its powers being greatly exaggerated, the AI genie is out of the box. What does that mean, and what can we do about it?
In another twist of abysmal AI politics, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman just admitted that we are in an AI bubble, and AGI is losing relevance. You may find this baffling or hilarious, or you may be wondering where does that leave the AI influencer types.
But despite the absurdity, AI and the associated narrative have gotten way too important to dismiss. Connecting the dots to make sense of it all calls for long-standing experience in AI, engineering, business and beyond.
In other words, for people like Georg Zoeller: a seasoned software and business engineer experienced in frontier technology in the gaming industry and Facebook.
Zoeller has been using AI in his work dating back to the 2010’s, to the point where AI is now at the core of what he does. Zoeller is the VP of Technology of NOVI Health, a Singapore-based healthcare startup, as well as the Co-Founder of the Centre for AI Leadership and the AI Literacy & Transformation Institute.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Zoeller, we addressed everything from AI first principles to its fatal flaws and its place in capitalism.
Today, we discuss regulatory capture, copyright, the limits of the attention economy, the new AI religion, the builder's conundrum, how the AI-powered transformation of software engineering is a glimpse into the future of work, AI literacy and how to navigate the brave new world.
First part of the conversation: https://pod.co/orchestrate-all-the-things-podcast-connecting-the-dots-with-george-anadiotis/poking-holes-in-the-ai-narrative-market-signalling-and-outsourcing-featuring-georg-zoeller-centre-for-ai-leadership-co-founder
Article published on Orchestrate all the Things: https://linkeddataorchestration.com/2025/08/19/breaking-the-ai-bubble-big-tech-plus-ai-equals-economy-takeover/
--------
40:41
--------
40:41
Poking holes in the AI narrative: Market Signalling and Outsourcing. Featuring Georg Zoeller, Centre for AI Leadership Co-Founder
Can AI work reliably at scale? Will everything be outsourced to AI? Will AI replace CEOs? Why is everyone riding the AI bandwagon, and where is it headed?
These are the type of questions you would ask someone with long-standing experience in AI, engineering, business and beyond.
Georg Zoeller is that someone: a seasoned software and business engineer experienced in frontier technology in the gaming industry and Facebook.
Zoeller has been using AI in his work dating back to the 2010's, to the point where AI is now at the core of what he does.
Zoeller is the VP of Technology of NOVI Health, a Singapore-based healthcare startup, as well as the Co-Founder of the Centre for AI Leadership and the AI Literacy & Transformation Institute.
Zoeller has lots of insights to share on AI. And yet, the reason we got to meet and have an extensive, deep and fun conversation was a joke gone wild.
Story published on Orchestrate all the Things: https://linkeddataorchestration.com/2025/07/16/poking-holes-in-the-ai-narrative-market-signalling-and-outsourcing-replace-ceos/
--------
48:59
--------
48:59
Building AI for Earth with Clay: The intelligence platform transforming Geospatial data analysis. Featuring Clay Executive Director Bruno Sánchez
How a rocket scientist turned entrepreneur created the "ChatGPT for Earth data" using transformers and satellite imagery.
Bruno Sánchez is a rocket scientist with a somewhat deviant trajectory. An astrophysicist by training, he used the tools of his trade - mathematics and science - at the broadest possible scale: the universe. At some point, however, his focus switched to using those same tools for more down to earth goals.
Sánchez had a stint at the World Bank, where as a member of interdisciplinary teams he helped make sense of geospatial data. Then he realized the core of what he was doing was mapping, which prompted him to launch a company called Mapbox, providing online maps on the web.
This experience brought another realization for Sánchez - that we have so much data about Earth that we don't really know how to use it: "We know what are the trees in the world. We know what are the forests in the world. It's just a matter of processing [data] properly", as he put it.
So when he got the opportunity to attempt to put all of that together in the same data center and in one workbench, he went for it. That was the Planetary Computer project at Microsoft, and Sánchez loved it. Then, ChatGPT happened.
Sánchez noted that the T in ChatGPT - the transformer - was an architecture that seemed to work great for modalities such as text, images, and audio, but no one seemed to be using it for earth data. So he decided to give it a try. He built a team, raised funds, created a non-profit, and built an open source model using open data. And this is how Clay was born.
Read the article published on Orchestrate all the Things here: https://linkeddataorchestration.com/2025/06/11/building-ai-for-earth-with-clay-the-intelligence-platform-transforming-geospatial-data-analysis/
--------
1:01:00
--------
1:01:00
From Raw Performance to Price Performance: A Decade of Evolution at ScyllaDB. Featuring Felipe Mendes and Guilherme Nogueira
In business, they say it takes ten years to become an overnight success. In technology, they say it takes ten years to build a file system. ScyllaDB is in the technology business, offering a distributed NoSQL database that is monstrously fast and scalable. It turns out that it also takes ten years or more to build a successful database.
This is something that Felipe Mendes and Guilherme Nogueira know well. Mendes and Nogueira are Technical Directors at ScyllaDB, working directly on the product as well as consulting clients. Recently, they presented some of the things they've been working on at ScyllaDB's Monster Scale Summit, and they shared their insights in an exclusive fireside chat.
This episode is sponsored by ScyllaDB. Read the article published on ScyllaDB's blog here: https://www.scylladb.com/2025/05/05/from-raw-performance-to-price-performance/
#NoSQL #Database #DatabaseEvolution #RaftProtocol #Cloud #DataConsistency #DatabaseScaling #TechInnovation #Opensource
--------
50:31
--------
50:31
The Quality Imperative: Why Leading Organizations Proactively Evaluate Software and AI Systems. Featuring Yiannis Kanellopoulos, code4thought CEO / Founder
As enterprise systems shift from deterministic software to probabilistic AI, forward-thinking organizations leverage proactive quality assessment to maximize value, minimize risk and ensure regulatory compliance
In today's rapidly evolving technological landscape, ensuring the quality of both traditional software and AI systems has become more critical than ever. Organizations are increasingly relying on complex digital systems to drive innovation and maintain competitive advantage, yet many struggle to effectively evaluate these systems before, during, and after deployment.
Yiannis Kanellopoulos is on the forefront of software and AI system quality assessment. He is the founder and CEO of code4thought, a startup specializing in assessing large-scale software systems and AI applications.
We connected to explore the challenges and opportunities of quality assessment and share insights both for developers and for people responsible for technology decisions within their organizations.
Read the article published on Orchestrate all the Things here: https://linkeddataorchestration.com/2025/04/09/the-quality-imperative-why-leading-organizations-proactively-evaluate-software-and-ai-systems-and-how-you-can-too/
Connecting the dots with George Anadiotis: Analyst, Consultant, Engineer, Founder, Host, Researcher, and Writer.
Stories about Tech, Data, AI and Media, and how they flow into each other shaping our lives.
I’ve engaged from the likes of Gary Marcus and Andrew Ng to emerging thinkers and innovators across multiple domains.
My stories have been featured on ZDNet and VentureBeat, and are syndicated across DZone, Hackernoon, Medium and Substack.
Some might call this futurism; let’s just say it’s connecting the dots
Many conversations have a technical focus. Most also examine business perspectives and use cases, while others are socio-technical.
Some are analyses on emerging themes – picking them up early, featuring expert comment, or offering alternative takes.
Others cover breaking news, typically also featuring the people behind them plus some analysis. There are some book reviews as well.
I focus on the connection between data, analytics, data science, graphs, machine learning and AI and their impact on society and business.
I have been covering topics related to:
AI and Machine LearningData, Analytics and Data ScienceKnowledge Graphs, Graph Databases, Graph AI & Data ScienceInnovation, and a wide array of technologies such as Blockchain, Cloud, Observability, IoT, Open Data and Open Source, Social Media and Software Engineering.
For inquiries, please use https://linkeddataorchestration.com/contact/
Netherlands