Some of my recent talks & panels:

2025

Fake Hires, Real Risk: What Candidate Fraud Means for Marketplaces

Candidate fraud is scaling faster than most companies can keep up. Gartner predicts that by 2028, 25% of job applicants will be fake, with even higher rates expected in online marketplaces and staffing agencies. Fraud experts explore the latest trends in AI-driven job scams, real-world examples of fraud, the tools bad actors are using, and what's at stake for employers.

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Karen Islas, John Wheeler

Smarter Onboarding

Strategies for rethinking onboarding in today's fraud-heavy landscape. How leading marketplaces are using real-time signals, dynamic ID verification, and adaptive background checks to start with cheaper, faster checks and reserve more resource-intensive steps for users who pass initial screens.

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Sidra Khan, Laura Milanez

Today's Disruptors in High-Volume Onboarding

People-related risk is changing as bad actors have found new ways to defraud companies both pre- and post-hire. Companies must recognize and respond to fraud risks at every stage of the workforce lifecycle.

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Dennis Dahlmann, Amy Leff
2024

Competition

Sep 18, 2024
SIA Collaboration in the Gig Economy: Shark Tank

Yardstik was the winner of the 5 startups that were there to pitch.

Today's Disruptors in High Volume Hiring

Hiring the right people at your company is critical. The problem is that hiring is getting more and more complex. Fraud attempts are increasing, people are getting crafty with efforts like deepfakes, all while businesses are trying to scale. From virtual hiring to AI to policy changes, there's tons to keep up with. Join this informative conversation between three leaders in business, technology, and policy to hear about the latest innovations marketplaces need to be aware of and what to do about it.

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Amy Leff, Nicholas Prijic
2022

AI & Healthcare: How to Lead Through the Hype

In this talk we will discuss the challenges and opportunities that AI practiioners face in healthcare. We will talk about what it takes to successfully lead AI teams, how to garner support for smart investments in the space and how to manage executives who may not have a deep understanding of what AI is.

AI & Healthcare: How to Cut Through the Hype

Feb 24, 2022
Healthcare Technology Advisory Council

This talk is for executives at healthcare companies that want to better understand what the real opportunites to us AI to transform their businesses are. It will answer questions such as: What is AI? What is it not? What steps can I as a leader take right now? What is coming next? It will conclude with an open discussion.

2021

Chatbots: From POC to Production

Jun 17, 2021
L3-AI

In this talk we will discuss three key considerations for progressing your chatbots from POC to running in production: scalability, managing the unhappy path, and making sure that you can get better over time. We will consider scalability ossues ranging from the chatbot machinery itself to backend fulfillment services to increased engagement from your users. The environment in which you develop your chatbot, by necessity, will represent only a small fraction of the interactions that real world users will present and we will discuss how to think about bridging that gap. Finally, we will talk about how to ensure that you are capturing and utilizing the interactions that your production environment will capture toensure that your chatbot is both successful during this transition and getting better over time.

Chatbots and Voice Assistants in Healthcare

Chatbots and voice assistants are prevalent throughout the healthcare space. Hospitals, insurance agencies, and healthcare providers are using chatbots for patient onboarding, symptom checking, appointment scheduling, telemedicine, and more. Covid-19 has further increased the demand for conversational AI solutions. Join us as we explore how the healthcare industry is leveraging chatbots and voice assistants.

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Alexia Sibony, Stefan Behrens

Delivering with Machine Learning

In this upcoming session, Josh Cutler, VP & Sr. Distinguished Engineer for AI Platforms & Transformation Team at Optum, will talk through the “how” of implementing machine learning. While effectively training machine learning models can be a difficult undertaking in its own right, deploying them and realizing their value is equally important. This talk will discuss how to develop and deliver machine learning technologies into production in a scalable and repeatable manner. Using real examples throughout, we will step through the considerations for training, managing and ultimately deploying machine learning models into working software systems.

2020

Bias in AI

Does AI bake in bias or reduce its impact? Join Josh Cutler and Tina Nguyen during your lunch break for a discussion on AI integrity and the issue of bias in data, algorithms, and humans.

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Tina Nguyen

Voice & NLP for Healthcare: Technical Deep dive

Nov 12, 2020
UHG DevDays 2020

A large portion of health care data is unstructured. Voice and natural language processing (NLP) technologies can extract insights from this data. Voice/NLP can improve customer experience, care quality and efficiency. Voice enabled context-aware virtual assistants can enhance member experience, improve NPS and reduce handle time. We will introduce ATC’s voice/NLP services and tools to help

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Ravi Kondadadi, Galina Grunin

Mainstreaming AI/ML at the Enterprise: Software 2.0

Nov 10, 2020
UHG DevDays 2020
Presenters: Josh Cutler, Matthew Shilts

Building Expert Systems Using Artificial Intelligence

In this episode, we are joined by Josh Cutler, VP & Sr. Distinguished Engineer for AI Platforms & Transformation Team at Optum. Josh shared with us his 15+ years of experience in applying data and intelligence to solve hard business problems. I really liked Josh's definition of the application of AI being, "How can we help computers make good decisions". This cuts to the core of why we are building these systems and what the outcome should be. Besides the applications Josh is building with his team today, he shared with us how he got into the field, the startups he founded, and how Microsoft was actually ahead of their time in this space with their Live Labs initiative and so much more. Enjoy!

Thinking Like a Startup

Jan 21, 2020
Leading in Engineering Culture
2019

Panel: Human vs. Machine

Panel will provide stimulating in-depth discussion into the hype and actual benefits gained from AI/ML. This panel will review the actual available functionality and potential while providing a realistic view to today’s implementation issues and challenges.

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Simon Crosby, Dave Diehl, Eric Lengvenis

Panel: Scaling AI at Optum

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Dan Mulcahy, Jeremy Kingston

IQ Studio Workbench: Experiment to Production

In this talk we will show you how to use Optum IQ Studio tools to create a model and deliver it all the way to production. We will walk through how to create a machine learning environment in the cloud for working with your data via Jupiter Notebooks, train your model using scalable compute resources and finally, deploy the model as an API that is ready for a production workload.

Presenters: Josh Cutler
2018

Panel: Millenials in Data Science Panel

Panel on advice for early career data scientists

Panel: Why AI is a Competitive Advantage in a Startup's Tech Stack

Come join our discussion on why startups can leverage AI and Machine Learning early on in their product development and go to market strategies. We'll have a delicious spread of breakfast options for you to choose from as you listen to a variety of panelists speak on this topic. Hope to see you there!

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Himanshu Misra, Gene Munster, Atif Siddiqi, Julie Zhu

Panel: Marketing in the Machine Age

May 17, 2018
Denamicon 2018

In the marketing world Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a popular “buzz word”. If you haven’t spent much time researching AI, consider this blog your introduction to a topic you’ll be hearing more about in the future. If you are like us, you don’t want to be left behind when it comes to new technology and innovation. Thankfully – for those of you in and near the Twin Cities – you can join us at DenamiCON and explore this topic in more depth!

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Paul Roetzer, Scott Litman, Kristen Findley

Panel: Tech Trends into the 2020s Q&A

At the kickoff, 9 active tech leader founders / product builders will field your questions about commercializing these emerging technologies.

Voice: The Old New Thing

Feb 15, 2018
Product Tank

This talk will discuss how to think about using Voice and AI to build products. It will present some of the pitfalls, opportunities and lessons learned from building a voice product.

2017

Artificial Intelligence Expert Panel, IBM, Optum, and Aftercode

Nov 16, 2017
Improve Humanity

Can Minnesota become an industry leader with emerging technology? Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Virtual Reality and Autonomous Drones all have tremendous implications for the future of healthcare. Join us at Healthcare.mn for a casual chat with the some of the sharpest Minnesota minds working on these problems.

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Ansu Chatterjee, Nikos Papanikolopoulos, Matt Versaggi

Emerging Technology and Healthcare: A Fireside Chat

Can Minnesota become an industry leader with emerging technology? Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Virtual Reality and Autonomous Drones all have tremendous implications for the future of healthcare. Join us at Healthcare.mn for a casual chat with the some of the sharpest Minnesota minds working on these problems.

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Gene Munster, Charles Schaller

Startups and Machine Leaning in the Wild

Many of the problems that you will face when applying AI in the business world are not algorithmic. This talk will draw from a variety applied machine learning scenarios that we have encountered at Deep Machine and talk about the types of problems to expect, the reasons that businesses care and some of the trade offs that we face as a small company in a big data world. It will address the breadth of work being done and discuss some of the tradeoffs between startup and big company data science.

Panel: Analytics Fishbowl

Jan 10, 2017
SportCon 2017

The Analytics Fishbowl will have a diverse group of industry analytics experts that will answer audience questions. When you the audience have heard enough you will vote to move on to the next analytics discussion. Have something to contribute? An empty chair will be available for anyone to join the panel discussion. In the spirit of this event and community, we thought no better way to engage on analytics.

Presenters: Josh Cutler, Seth Greenwood, Bonnie Holub, Brandon Veber
2016

Intelligence in Healthcare

This talk will introduce deep learning concepts and talk about how they are currently being applied in the healthcare space.

A Bayesian Approach to Predictive Pricing

This talk will present how to use Bayesian modeling to predict the market value of collectibles based on recent sales. It does so in an MCMC framework and provides an answer for how to predict the sale price of items that are rarely (or never) sold at auction.

2014

Image Recognition in Ruby

Nov 24, 2014
Ruby.MN

Walks through the basics of doing pattern recognition and OCR in Ruby