Suman Giri: The AI Playbook No One Talks About – Power, Politics, and Building AI Inside Fortune 50 Companies

Suman’s work sits at the collision point of AI ambition and enterprise reality. From Aetna and Highmark to Merck and Pfizer, he has repeatedly been asked to build new data science and AI capabilities inside complex healthcare organizations, where fragmented data, regulatory pressure, and internal politics shape what can actually scale. In this conversation, he traces how the field evolved from early machine learning and open-source analytics into today’s generative AI wave, and why the hardest part has remained surprisingly consistent: getting people, incentives, leadership, and adoption aligned. His lessons move beyond the usual AI hype, offering a grounded playbook for building durable teams, earning executive cover, designing products people want to use, and turning AI from a spotlight initiative into real organizational muscle.