Good Morning AI With Noelle and Friends 1/12/26

Hello, can you hear me now? Okay, good. Mimi, you're amazing. Thank you for telling me. Wait for it, wait for it. Can you hear me now?

Can you hear me?

Oh my gosh, I hope so. Hold on, hold on, wait for it. Oh yeah, it should work now. It should work now. I'm gonna wait for the chat to catch up so they could tell me that y'all hear me. Um, But welcome, it's so good to see you. I love it when I do stuff like this, just shows you how real it is. We'll just cut that part off, we'll fix it in post. Um, can you hear me? Hopefully you can hear me now. All right, yay! Mimi, so nice to have you here. Thank you so much for being here, welcome in. Um, so this is Good Morning AI. We come here live every Monday just to give you an update on what crazy things we've been up to in the AI Leadership Institute over the last week, but also more importantly, maybe to give you an update on some of the latest AI stories from the craziness that's happening in our hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, xAI even, all the way to what's happening in, you know, AI for good and some of the really cool things that we're seeing in the world. So if you can hear the sound of my voice, I hope you'll chime in, let me know you can hear me. That would be amazing in the chat because I could see you. All right, hopefully that's it. Because right now, most people said they could hear me. So I'm hoping, I'm hoping it's good.

It looks like it's on.

All right, so let's go ahead and get started. Let me see here. Oh, goodness. Hi, Sky, I see you. So hold on. So first things first, we're gonna just give you a run of what we're going to do this morning. We have a couple of really cool topics. That are top of mind for me. I spent the last week in, in a really cool place called CES. This was my 12th year at CES, if you can believe it. And my first year, I got an opportunity to have to actually go to CES in a very interesting way, right? Like I got to go to CES. And again, this was the first year, but Alexa, wasn't at CES this year, or that year. Like they weren't at CES, they were in CES. And I think it's a really interesting go-to-market strategy because we didn't have a booth. We weren't like doing talks or we had no sessions. We just showed up inside booths like Intel, Ford, like Alexa was just like permeating through a bunch of booths. But fun fact, that year we had a lot of trouble getting Alexa to consistently work on these very new devices. The device, I mean, they had just launched, so they were temperamental at best. And so we had to go around flashing the BIOS on the hardware that was running these Alexa systems. And anyway, so I spent most of the time not enjoying myself, not walking around the show floor, but actually running booth to booth, just checking to make sure that Alexa was working so that when people came to the booth, they'd get a good fun experience. That was my beginning in CES. But then we got an opportunity to, you know, over the years I've partnered with some incredible, incredible event organizations like MoDev. Pete Erickson puts together the AI House, has continued to evolve what the AI House does. I've spoken as a keynote at the AI House. I've hosted panels. One of my favorite panels, which you can actually go listen to or take a look at, we were highlighted last year, as I think it was last year, maybe it was the year before last, as one of the top, one of the top sessions to listen to. But it was with May Habib, the CEO of Ryder, and with the Undersecretary of the Homeland, of Department of Homeland Security. It was just such a fascinating conversation. Maybe I'll post it. I'll repost it as a throwback CES throwback for you all so you can see. It was such a fun, fun session. So I've been doing that with Pete for a few years. This year though, I got a chance to do something that I have not done before at CES, and that is to host a workshop. And actually I got to host two, two back-to-back workshops. So if you happen to have been there, certainly let us know, chime into the chat. It was a great time. We had about 45 people sign up for the workshops. Workshop 1, Workshop 2, it was all about AI strategy.. But y'all know me, I don't like just talking about strategy. I like talking about how do you actually get a strategy to production? How do you get a strategy to be much more, you know, sustainable within your organization? And so I got to do 2 strategy workshops that got everyone primed and then gave the opportunity for 2 members of the AI Leadership Institute, but also, you know, company owners in their own right to deliver a workshop that really complemented what I did in the form of a checklist. And so they created this really cool checklist workshop. So I'm going to bring Padmini onto the stage. Um, hello Padmini, nice to see you. What's up? Uh, there you are at the pool, very nice. It looks very nice, very nice. Good weather, good weather, great weather here. Yeah, it's wonderful. Well, thank you for being here. Um, please give us like a quick recap of your experience at CES, like the event, the workshop that you did. Give us a little update.

Thank you. Yeah, this was my first time at CES, so I didn't know what to expect, but I was just blown away. I was there all week. So I started with the AI House. I was just supporting there. I didn't speak at the AI House, but it was amazing. It was just fabulous. We had such amazing speakers. Speakers there, and it was an all-day event. Um, and then the next two days I did what everybody does, you know, I walked around. I, you know, frankly, I was a bit overwhelmed with everything that was going on at CES, but I did get to, you know, take pictures with the robot, have coffee and ice cream made by a robot, and the robo-dog, you know, doing the flip. So did all of that. That was a lot of fun. And then of course the AI training, that was amazing. So yeah, no, your— the two workshops, it was fabulous. I learned something new every single time. And then, um, Yuvika and I had our AI adoption checklist, so that was great. So we've, um, we have broken the whole AI adoption process into like 0 to 30, 31 to 60, and 61 to 90 days. And what do you do at each phase? And sort of a checklist of sorts, what you look at. You know, you start with your goal, then you look at, yeah, you know, the risk tiering and all of that. So that was amazing. And if anyone's interested, please reach out and we can share the—

yeah, actually, if you all want to see some of the secret checklist work that they did, it was really good. I took a ton of notes. During their session. If you want the checklist, just write checklist into the chat so that Padmini can find you and send you over the checklist. So just, it's really cool. Like, I think the most important thing you could do is one, of course, everyone needs to be educated on what a good AI strategy looks like. But the, like, the next step is actually implementing. So having this, like, step-by-step guide from, you know, governance to, you know, risk management to identifying use cases, triaging use cases, like having a step-by-step checklist, even if you already have one of your own. And it's really cool to be able to look at how others are thinking about this. And certainly it was extremely well received at CES. So that was really awesome. Now, one thing you didn't mention, Padmini, was your exoskeleton experience. So I would like you to talk a little bit about the exoskeleton and then we'll get to the day's news. I did it.

I did a post. Noelle, I used CapCut like you suggested. And I use the template and I create— I posted this morning. So the Exoskeleton by Hypershell is the one that I use. So it's a thing that you put around your waist and then it sort of goes around each leg and around the thigh. And then it actually helps you walk. I mean, I thought I was doing like this funky, you know, weird walk, but no one recorded.

Yes, I recorded, Padmini. Had me— she kept saying, do I look funny? And I'm like, no, you don't. But I guess because you have this robotic assistance lifting your legs, and it was, uh, it wasn't ours, uh, actually other attendees had purchased it on the sales floor. Um, but it was so cool because I could tell like in your brain you're like, what is happening?

It was like picking up and putting my leg. I had no plans of walking forward, but it just did it for me.

So this is like potentially AI gone wrong, right? Where you have an exoskeleton that's now moving you in places you don't want to go.

I think it was really, really neat. And the lady who bought it, she said that she had some hip issues and it helped her so much that she didn't feel the pain. So I can see it really being helpful for sort of this mobility, you know, people with mobility issues or just enhancing your physical abilities if you want to run, if you want to climb stairs.

Or think about those people who need like hip replacements and You know, like it gives an alternative to invasive surgery. Like what, you know, I don't know. I just think, or if you know that you might be on the trajectory to a hip replacement, maybe this allows you to reduce the need to do that as quickly as you might have to otherwise.

And you know, Noelle, I came across one new phrase and probably, I don't know, it was new to me. The sim-to-real gap is what I came up with. So sim-to-real gap is in the space of humanoids. So where you have something in simulation and then you put it in the real world and you see that it doesn't work the way you thought it. Yes, because, you know, we talk about this gap all the time. Yeah, right. And, and, but just the phrase of sim2real, so at the CES Foundry, that is where I, I heard people from NVIDIA talk about it, and it was, it was really neat. You know, you can see it like robots doing it and then they fall, but now they're able to come back up. But then, yes, you know.

Oh my gosh, did you see there was a— what was that guy's name?

I don't—

something was it. I can't remember his name. Some— if you know in the chat, there was a sports guy. My husband would know. Um, he's very popular sports person. He plays basketball, I think. Uh, anyway, and he was playing basketball with the robot, and the robot was like juking him, like, you know. And then he goes and pushes the robot down, and the robot literally falls on its back, and you could hear Kyrie Irving. Um, okay, and you could hear Kyrie be like, uh, I didn't know he wouldn't be able to get back up, I'm sorry. Like, he was apologizing to them. I'm sorry, man, I didn't mean to like hurt you. Uh, it was really funny. So it's on— it's— I think it went viral a couple weeks ago, maybe.

Oh yeah, okay.

But we're taking a look. But yeah, really funny. All right, so for the last few minutes, we have about 7 minutes or so, uh, left to our podcast. I am going to bring up Sky. Uh, Sky, uh, is our operations expert. She helps give us a little bit of perspective on all the Um, we had a lot going on with CES this week, but— and Sky didn't join us, but next year, next year we're gonna all go. Who knows, we might even do, you know, like get a little podcast session going on at CES where we're all sitting there talking about this. But there are a few things I wanted to talk about first. One of the biggest, in my opinion— granted, I like retail and AI— um, Google just announced, uh, this huge retail offering, uh, Agentic Retail. As a matter of fact, they're calling it Agentic commerce. And I think it's really interesting. They're talking about like they're building the infrastructure. And I think this is a good signal to anyone in this space that this is the— this is how you build like the groundwork for large-scale implementation is that you create an infrastructure that people can't live without. Most of us, most organizations that I talk to anyway, are building one little thing, one little piece, one part of a big puzzle. Of course it takes a lot of resources to do this, but Agenta Commerce is all about like building a collection of agents that will serve as like inventory management, order, right, order validation, order status. And then they also launched a business agent, but I think what's most interesting is the strategic partnerships they've set up. Walmart, Target, you know, obviously not Amazon because they're, they're not friends. But, but like a lot of other retailers. And so I think there's, there's something to this. So I just wanted your, both of your opinions on kind of agentic retail and using like ChatGPT to like buy something over the holidays. I certainly use it to like, uh, monitor prices. But like, what if I could use it to monitor a price and then if it gets to a price— I mean, we could do that today, have it actually purchase for us. What do you think from a I don't know, from a responsibility perspective, but also just personal perspective, would you be into that? Maybe, uh, Sky, start first since we heard from Patty.

Can you hear me okay?

I can. That's a good question to ask. I didn't ask that when I started today. That's all right.

So I, I actually saw that the other day, and when Google added the Agenda Commerce, it made me think about the ChatGPT where you can shop and buy things. On chat. I personally have not gotten to that level yet. It's just I think I have to do some work on the, the home front first, on making sure like I have the right card set up, I have the right setup where it's like, you know, making sure I have security access and stuff like that in place. But I feel like Google wants to stay relevant within the market, and the fact that they have built these, um, these partnerships with really strong retail companies, I think is really going to put them in the forefront now because I actually shop with Walmart and I have the Walmart Plus. So now I'm like, hmm, well, I do have that account set up, so I might be interested in doing those things. And I always use AI to like create my shopping list and say, here's the things I need to order. So now I think for me to use it, to take it to the next step, is to use that, that functionality. But I also want to make sure it's tested out and it really works. So I'm one of those kind of— I'm not the early adopters, but I'm kind of like I wait a few months to make sure all of the, the bugs are out of the system before there's hiccups, and then I feel like, okay, now I'm gonna go try that.

So I remember the early days of shopping on Alexa similarly, like we were testing out little, little things like toilet paper and paper towels and like, um, but now I mean I buy all the things. So I do think that it's like an evolution of, you know, experience that they're building. But they're not even going after consumers right, right now. They're just going after developers. Like, if you build this, don't build a bunch of little Agentic Commerce agents, use Google. And we all know Google's kind of been a little, I don't know, lackluster when it comes to like this whole Agentic. So I feel like they've maybe found a spot that they could do really well. Plus, you know, uh, Agentic Commerce plus Google Search plus, you know, like, I just— and We know that ChatGPT scrapes a lot of content from Google, plus their interaction with YouTube and AI Seller. I don't know, I just think like this could be a thing. So it's worth us talking about right now. For the next topic though, another really cool thing that happened, and Padme, I wanna hear your opinion on this, is a company called Motional. Motional is an autonomous driving company. And as most of these companies, they start really strong. Zoox is another one. They start really strong. And then things kind of get a little away from them, uh, emotional, kind of didn't do what they said they would do. So many automotive companies said they were going to do a bunch of stuff when it comes to autonomous and just didn't have the engineering power to get it done, right? I think that's the difference with Tesla. No matter what you think about that company or its leadership, like Tesla was able to recruit the best talent in the world and they were able to deliver on time the things they said. Everyone else is kind of struggling with that talent. However, Motional has recommitted and said, no, we're good. We got everybody together. We actually are on track to launch in 2026 in Las Vegas. But again, what I like about this is strategic partnerships. They have now created a strategic partnership with Lyft and Uber, which means that they're going to start integrating, right, these autonomous vehicles. So what do you think about that, Padmini?

So I, I had an experience with an autonomous vehicle in San Francisco when I was there in September. So I rode the Waymo there. That was such a cool experience. I mean, most people were like, were you scared? I was not. I was not scared because it did all, did all the right things. And I also got to select the music that I wanted, so I played some Bollywood music, you know, while we drove. So, um, Yeah, so I did. So just before we get to emotional, there was one thing that I heard about Waymo was that when at the end of the day when they all go to park themselves in their lot, I think if one Waymo comes in the way of the other because of some issues, starts sort of not honking, playing a sound, and then soon another one does that, and then you have this huge wave of sound from that parking area. That is an issue that they need to fix. I didn't hear it, but that's what I heard about it. Sure. I think what you said about whether it was Zoox or most of them, you know, the partnerships, I think that's the way to go. Like, you can't start doing all this on your own. You have to make those strategic partnerships so that it puts you ahead of the game. So I think they are doing the right thing, but, and I think that is the future where you get into a car or maybe even, you know, be, you know, sitting at the back of our own car and Yeah, I agree.

I agree. And so the last thing I wanted to talk about was startup funding. And I say startup, but it doesn't seem fair because it's xAI, which is not a startup, but they are a small company. It's kind of like all these little startups that start from executives at big tech companies and they come out and they're like, Series A is like $100 billion, right? So, so xAI just sealed $230 billion in investment And what I like to look at this is one, that means, and I mentioned this last week too, like we're seeing consistent investment in infrastructure, which means for everyone else that, that, that infrastructure as it's being laid is creating space for us to build solutions. So this is why the work we did at CES, right? Like setting people up to understand the right strategy. How do you get going? How do you start building? Because we are going to leverage this. This infrastructure. We're investing massively in infrastructure. So there's a huge opportunity right now for people to actually build solutions that will consume this infrastructure. So I think it's good news, but I don't know. I mean, XAI, $230 billion, like, geez, I don't know. I just— I'm like, good for you all, I guess, but share the wealth for goodness sakes. One of the, um, things— is it soon? Almost in 8 days, uh, we do have a really cool competition. I don't know, I guess it's a grant competition. From the Gates Foundation called WIN, I think, W-I-N. Anyway, and it's for nonprofits that are seeking to actually level— and this is how we'll maybe end today— level the playing field for women in this space. I put out a post a couple of days ago about just the dismal numbers that we represent. Less than a quarter of all AI leadership roles are held by women. I mean, I I still see entire panels where no women are included whatsoever. And I just think that there's a, you know, a misperception, like a missed perspective, right? When you don't include an audience that at least represents gender, let alone ethnicity and, you know, lived experience. So I'm just curious what each of you kind of think about when it comes to 2026 and empowering women in AI, you're both women in AI. What would you tell a woman who's looking around being like, there's no way, I'm all by myself here? What kind of advice would you give to them? What would you encourage them to do? Because I think, I don't know, I'm a little bit worried. I'm a little bit worried that this number really hasn't grown in the last 10 years that I've been around. Padmīni, we'll start with you. What do you think?

I would say start now wherever you are, you know, start right now. It's not too late. And there are, you know, spaces like the AI Leadership Institute where we have so many women and we are here to support you. Yuvika and I have the Asian Women Advancing AI. You can join that. But I think I look at it always in the framework of, you know, education, experience, and exposure, sort of, you know. Get yourself educated, you take courses. There are so many classroom courses in the AI Leadership Institute. Join that, take those courses, you know. Follow people who are in this space, um, and, and then start doing small projects, which is then, you know, your, you know, experience with it and exposure to it. So I think you have to start today. Yeah, no matter where you are.

Absolutely. And I love the work that you're doing in that, in your community, because you bring on experts or even people who are not super experts but that know something specifically, and then you have them teach. And I think that's another big part of it, right? Like teaching what you know. Sky, what about you? What do you think someone who you, maybe you 5 years ago, what would you tell them if they're entering this space and what they can do?

I would say number 1 thing, and I think this is a misconception, and that you don't have to be technical to lead in AI. You really need your lived experiences, your leadership lens, and your community and network. I think those are the biggest things. I think also it's focusing on piggybacking on what Pat Meaney said, the education. You don't have to know all of it as long as you're being willing to try. AI, we've all dealt with AI in some form or fashion. It's in our everyday lives and we just now need to take that next step forward, not be afraid, ask those tough questions. If it doesn't make sense, challenge it. It's okay to do that, but just don't wait for the wave to go pop by you and say, wait, did I just miss this entire wave? But I think right now we're still in the early phases. AI still is a hot topic, but now if people are really trying to get into AI, understanding what is the agentic AI, that is something I know we talked about early last year, but now it's really the hot topic for this year going into the focal point. So understanding how agents work together, I think putting that, that will put them ahead of the curve of a lot of other people that's just now entering into this space.

Well, amazing. I think it's a great time. Like you both said, it's a time to get started right now. It's a time to not let your own misconceptions of your own capability, of your lived experience, of whether or not that matches AI. We saw a lot of people get laid off over the holidays, hundreds of thousands of jobs lost over the last year. It is really important for people to realize now is the time to step in, not step away. And as women, this is again, this month, Gates Foundation is going to be closing their applications for this women educational kind of grant competition. And I think it's really important, like, all of these companies are like, how do we change this? Because women are known, known to go into an organization, and if that organization hurts them, if they are betrayed by that company, if that company lays them off, they don't just hate that, like, leave that company. They don't just say that company, they like dismiss the entire industry, and they leave AI, they leave technology, and they go do something else. And I was this person, like, when I was younger, I, um, ended up leaving technology to go open up a yoga studio. And I loved it, which is the danger. I loved it. But if I did that— that was 20 years ago, before I had any children, um— if I had stayed on that path, like, maybe I wouldn't have had the impact on the women that I've had in my career. Maybe I wouldn't have had the impact on the companies that I've had. And so I just want to encourage you, if you're, you know, still looking for a community, there are so many. We represent several communities just here. It doesn't matter which one, just find people that you can pace with, right? I'm preparing for the Disney Princess Half Marathon that's next month, and finding pacing partners is key to success. And so I encourage you to do that. Thanks for joining us today. It was super fun. We talked about Google. Don't forget, if you want to get access to the coveted, uh, checklist for scaling, um, and adopting AI in your organization, Padmini gave away this checklist to CES members only. But if you're listening right now, even on replay, you can get it. All you have to do is type in checklist in the chat, and we will come and find you, um, and send you that checklist so that you can get access to it. It's pretty cool. So just write checklist in the chat And we'll see you all next week. Thank you all for being here, and that was really fun. Bye, everybody!