Debate Series: Demystifying artificial intelligence with Sergei Savchenko

On today’s show, I had a great conversation with Sergei Savchenko and Martin Gourdeau, my business partner at PNR. We had an amazing conversation on the state of AI today.
Sergei Savchenko was until recently a Technical Director and Executive Producer at Warner Bros. Games Montreal and is now working on a new unannounced AI project. He started in the games industry as a programmer working on PC and NeXT games in the early 90s. Moving then to consoles, Sergei worked at The 3DO Company and at Electronic Arts as a Lead Engineer, Technical Director and subsequently Studio CTO. Sergei also co-founded two start ups (in games and data mining) where he worked as a Technology and Management lead. Sergei is a graduate of Montreal’s McGill University with B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science. His Masters thesis was in the field of automated reasoning and he is also the author of “3D Graphics Programming: Games and Beyond” as well as multiple articles and talks on artificial intelligence, games development, management and production.
 
On the show, we spoke about:
Why are people excited about artificial intelligence today
What is real and what is hype
The distinction between general AI and narrow AI
The use cases for businesses
What are the technical limitations today
Where does creativity come into play and why he’s excited about the future
A bit of background on the stealth project he’s working on
 
I was really excited to have this conversation with both Sergei and Martin. It’s an important area of growth in the industry and one that is only increasing in importance. I felt it was important to understand at a fundamental level what is possible. I hope that you learn as much as I did!
 
Let us know what you think. What types of guests would like to see on the show? What topics interest you the most? Send me your thoughts at nectar@thepnr.com
 
Subscribe to iTunes here | Subscribe to Google Play here