VentureBeat launches Beyond the Pilot enterprise AI podcast series.

1 hour ago7 min read

VentureBeat's announcement of its new flagship podcast, Beyond the Pilot: Enterprise AI in Action, premiering November 19 and sponsored by Outshift by Cisco, marks a significant evolution in the discourse surrounding artificial intelligence. We have moved decisively beyond the theoretical wonder of large language models and are now entering the complex, unglamorous phase of production-grade deployment, a transition that mirrors the historical shift from academic research to industrial-scale computing.The core challenge, as articulated by VentureBeat's Founder Matt Marshall, is no longer about understanding AI's potential but about navigating the intricate maze of making it run reliably at scale—a problem space rife with technical debt, model governance puzzles, and the harsh realities of real-world data. This podcast promises to dissect these challenges through candid conversations with executives from organizations like Notion, LinkedIn, and JPMorgan, who have progressed past experimental prototypes and are now scaling agentic systems that deliver measurable business value.The selection of these particular companies is telling; they represent a cross-section of industries where the stakes for AI performance are exceptionally high, from financial services with its stringent regulatory requirements to consumer platforms where user experience is paramount. The involvement of Outshift by Cisco as an anchor sponsor lends considerable credibility, given Cisco's legacy in building the reliable, secure infrastructure that now forms the backbone upon which these AI workloads must run.This focus on the 'executor'—the senior managers, VPs, and lead engineers—is a refreshing and necessary pivot from the hype-filled narratives that often dominate the conversation. It acknowledges that the most profound innovations are not always in the model architecture itself, but in the surrounding orchestration layer: the MLOps pipelines, the inference optimization, the careful balancing of cost against latency, and the organizational changes required to foster a culture of responsible AI development.The debut episode featuring Notion's VP AI Ryan Nystrom, discussing the creation of an 'AI-native' product, will likely delve into the architectural decisions that differentiate a product with AI features from one that is fundamentally reimagined through an AI-first lens, a distinction as critical as that between a horse-drawn carriage and an automobile. As we anticipate these conversations, it's worth considering the broader context: we are witnessing the professionalization of AI, moving from a discipline of researchers and data scientists to one involving platform engineers, security specialists, and product managers, all of whom must collaborate to turn ambition into action. This podcast series, therefore, is not merely a source of information but a potential blueprint for the next era of enterprise technology, offering a rare, technically rigorous look into the messy, complex, and ultimately rewarding work of building AI systems that truly work.

#enterprise ai

#podcast

#production deployment

#ai scaling

#featured

#venturebeat

#outshift

#business value

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