Varun Ganapathi: AKASA, AI and Healthcare

Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here!In episode 43 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Varun Ganapathi.Varun is co-founder and CTO at AKASA, a company developing AI systems for healthcare operations. Varun’s previous entrepreneurial experience includes co-founding Numovis, a company focused on motion tracking and computer vision for user interaction that was acquired by Google, and Terminal.com, a browser-based IDE acquired by Udacity. Varun received his PhD from Stanford in 2014.Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast:  Apple Podcasts  | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on TwitterOutline:* (00:00) Intro* (1:50) Varun’s intro to AI* (3:25) Working with Andrew Ng* (7:37) Varun’s road to a PhD* (13:20) Numovis, Google acquisition* (15:00) Vacillating between research and entrepreneurship, Terminal.com* (17:10) Roots of Varun’s interest in AI + healthcare* (22:30) Research at AKASA, Deep Claim* (25:45) Causality in claim denial, expert knowledge* (25:52) we need to trademark the word “gradient”* (28:20) AKASA’s Unified Automation, expert-in-the-loop* (34:15) Varun’s near-term and long-term visions for AKASA* (39:50) Towards “deploying a new version of healthcare”* (42:25) Varun’s perspective on the role of AI in healthcare, the need for humans in the loop* (47:02) Varun’s advice for aspiring AI researchers and practitioners* (51:00) OutroLinks:* AKASA’s Homepage* Varun’s research* AKASA is hiring! Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe