May 13, 2021
AI is often thought of as the tech that is going to replace human workers. Less often do we see opportunities for AI to improve and protect human life. Active shooter threats have begun to become a more common media headline. This issue also plays itself out in the commercial sector as disgruntled employees create unsafe environments in the workforce. Security cameras are common and spread throughout our cities, but with AI we can now use those cameras to alert authorities to deadly threats, reducing response times exponentially.
In this episode, I sit with Mike Lahiff, CEO and Chairmain of ZeroEyes. We discuss his career as a Navy SEAL, finding the right technical talent to build AI products, navigating the data journey, launching a public safety product, and much much more.
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Timestamps:
1:38 Mike Lahiff – Navy SEAL, private equity investor, AI founder
5:03 The origins of ZeroEyes – Solving the active shooter problem in the US
6:32 Finding talent to build the initial AI product
8:25 The data journey – inaccurate predictions that inspired better data collection processes
10:09 Acquiring early partners to demo and improve product
11:03 Building an AI product as a non-technical Founder “selling the mission”
14:43 When did it make sense to bring on technical AI talent as permanent team members
16:51 Building in-house vs outsourcing software development and data collection/prep
21:00 Building and selecting tools to speed data annotation process
23:10 Testing the product with the local police force | 50% reduction in response time
26:49 Expanding to commercial organizations
28:56 Self-funding the first $500K, then raising formal VC
30:33 Greatest challenge to building AI-driven software
32:12 Favorite tech tool: Slack, Label Box
33:17 Who inspires Mike