We are excited to be talking with Future of Work thought leaders about remote work and on-demand talent in our Uprisor podcast series. Clinton Bonner, VP at Topcoder, recently spoke with Davar Ardalan, the founder and storyteller in chief at IVOW AI (IVOW stands for Intelligent Voices of Wisdom). In this episode, Clinton and Davar discuss the evolution of artificial intelligence and Ardalan's work of shaping AI with cultural intelligence. Enjoy the conversation and check out highlights below. As a tech entrepreneur and storyteller, Davar is dedicated to improving the future of automation by shaping it with the important element of cultural intelligence.

One clever way to pierce the PR swamp of my inbox is with an optimistic twist. If that optimism is backed by data? Topcoder PR recently won my inbox with this email subject header: "Coders aren't scared of losing work to AI – Topcoder community explains why." It helps that I've known about Topcoder for years. With 1,200,000 developers, all signed up to collaborate on crowdsourced projects and compete in online challenges, Topcoder know a thing or two about what makes developers tick – and how coders upskill against requirements.

How do companies measure the ROI on artificial intelligence technology? AI technology typically replaces manual labor, said Mike Morris, CEO at Topcoder in Glastonbury, Conn., so one simple measurement of AI ROI is time. Whether the application of AI actually improves the employee or customer experience is tougher to ascertain. SearchCIO caught up with Morris at the recent MIT Sloan CIO Symposium and talked about how Topcoder -- a crowdsourcing platform that hosts application design, software development and data science competitions -- is investing in AI, how the cloud enabled the company's business model, and why speed is a vital component for any innovation strategy. Below are excerpts from the interview; click on the player to hear the interview in its entirety. Are you investing in AI at your company?

The two most necessary pieces of the AI puzzle are those hardest to find: massive amounts of data and qualified AI talent. With crowdsourcing, you can tap into thousands of data scientists and developers trained in today's must-have cognitive skills. Yesterday you had to write everything yourself; today we have open source. Better yet, we have platforms. Salesforce has AI, Microsoft has one… IBM has Watson.