A year in review with the Targeting AI podcast

For the past year, the Targeting AI podcast has explored a broad range of AI topics, none more than the fast-evolving and sometimes startling world of generative AI technology.

From the first guest, Michael Bennett, AI policy adviser at Northeastern University, the podcast has focused intently on the popularization of generative AI, while also touching on traditional AI.

While that first episode centered on the prospects of AI regulation, Bennett also spoke about some of the controversies then emerging in the nascent stages of generative AI.

"Organizations who have licenses to use and to sell photographers' works are pushing back,” Bennett said during the inaugural episode of the Targeting AI podcast.

While Bennett's point of view illuminated the regulatory and ethical dimensions of the explosively growing technology, Michael Stewart, a partner at Microsoft's venture firm M12, discussed the startup landscape.

With the rise of foundation model providers such as Anthropic, Cohere and OpenAI, generative AI startups for the last 12 months chose to partner with and be subsidized by cloud giants -- namely Microsoft, Google and AWS –-- instead of seeking to be acquired.

"This is a very ripe environment for startups that have a partnership mindset to work with the main tech companies,” Stewart said during the popular episode, which was downloaded more 1,000 times.

The early stages of generative AI were marked by accusations of data misuse, particularly from artists, writers and authors.

Our Targeting AI podcast hosts have also spoken to guests about data ownership and how large language models are affecting industries such as the music business.

The podcast also explored new regulatory frameworks like President Joe Biden's executive order on AI.

With some 27 guests from a diverse group of vendors and other organizations, the podcast took shape and laid the groundwork for a second year with plenty of new developments to explore.

Coming up soon are episodes on Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ stances on AI and big tech antitrust actions, election deepfakes and tech giant Oracle's foray into generative AI.

Listen to Targeting AI on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all major podcast platforms, plus on TechTarget Editorial’s enterprise AI site.

Esther Ajao is a TechTarget Editorial news writer and podcast host covering artificial intelligence software and systems. Shaun Sutner is senior news director for TechTarget Editorial's information management team, driving coverage of artificial intelligence, analytics and data management technologies. Together, they host the Targeting AI podcast series.