AI Ethics Diaries: Keeping it Real

Do you have the entrepreneurial spirit? This inspiring session is full of insights on the start up journey from founders building the future of responsible AI and VCs funding an ethical AI future. Get tips on fundraising for your vision and get a close look at the challenges specific to underrepresented founders. Also, learn what it’s like to work for a startup and the opportunities in this space. Speakers: Hessie Jones, Jennifer Jordan, Patricia Thaine

Ready for a career in Responsible AI/ML? Join this session to learn about the diverse jobs available in corporate and academia, get tips from experienced recruiters on how to land your dream job, pivot from your current non-AI role, transition from academia to corporate sector, and how to assess your potential work environment. --- Ebitie Amughan is the Senior Recruiting Operations Program Manager for Inclusive Hiring at Pinterest. She brings her unique talent solutions to business partners and hiring teams through her creative and strategic workflows. With her recruiting expertise, she has managed and launched programs and processes that optimize and simplify the hiring process to ensure the organizations meet their goals and plan. Prior to her promotion to a Senior Program Manager role, she was a Technical Recruiter for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at Pinterest in charge of recruiting senior engineers in building a discovery engine. Ebitie’s deep knowledge of recruiting has led her to work with distinguished companies like Microsoft and the National Board of Advisors for the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona as a newly inducted board member. Jessica Yrani is a lead technical recruiter focusing on Analytics and ML hiring at Roblox. Before joining Roblox, she was a lead recruiter at Pinterest, partnering with engineering leadership to build Machine Learning teams within the Core and Monetization organization. Throughout Jessica’s decade of experience, she has partnered with technical teams to create inclusive hiring strategies. Tulsi Parida is the Global Director of Government Data Solutions at Visa. Her work is at the intersection of payments data and government and she develops innovative data solutions for governments looking to use spend insights to inform their policy-making and decisions. She brings a decade of experience at the intersection of tech, society, and business, with a commitment to reducing digital inequality and promoting responsible and inclusive technology. Prior to Visa, she led teams at various startups working to bridge digital divides in literacy education both in the US and in India. Tulsi holds a BSc in Education & Social Policy, Economics from Northwestern University and a dual degree MSc /MBA in Tech & Society from the University of Oxford. Recently, Tulsi has won the global 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics and Tech Women 100 awards in the UK.

Join Jodi Masters-Gonzales in this session to listen, consider, and thoughtfully discuss the global economic opportunity for practitioners of Independent Audit of AI Systems (#IAAIS), the wide range of opportunities — from the highly technical to non-technical — the public good organizations blazing the path of gold-standard certification, how to get involved — now, why regulators are adopting a systems-thinking approach to digital policy for AI risk and algorithmic bias mitigation, and the many opportunities for first-movers to contribute to an ecosystem that ends AI harms.

Join us for an interesting conversation with the Senior Designer on IBM’s Design for AI team, Milena Pribic as she shares details about her career journey so far, her views on ethical and AI and how it applies to her work, the tools and frameworks she uses to address bias and ensure fairness, the benefits of coming from a non-traditional background in this space, and so much more.

There is a disturbing trend in the AI space as critical societal issues are being overshadowed by hype projects favored by the techno-elites. Meet the philanthropic leaders supporting much-needed racial justice and diversity work by organizations like Algorithmic Justice League, DAIR, Women in AI Ethics among many others. We’ll hear their thoughts on the power imbalance in the tech industry, role of philanthropy in building the tech we want, and their ongoing efforts to ensure a more ethical and equitable AI/tech future for all.

In this week's episode, WAIE Board Member, University of Helsinki Professor, and creator of Elements of AI, Teemu Roos, and AI Researcher, Ioanna Bouri share the vision for the collaboration between the Women in AI Ethics and the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI) to make AI more diverse,  inclusive, and accessible to all. 

Artist, educator, and AI researcher, Lia Coleman takes us through the highlights of their eye-opening career journey including the experiences which inspired them to get involved in the space, the challenges they’ve encountered as they navigate the world of technology as a creative along with the importance of diversity in the space and having allies advocating for you, helping you to push forward.

AIethicist.org Founder, Merve Hickok joins us in this series to share her inspiring career journey and how she’s continuing to do meaningful work in this space despite coming from a non-technical background. She also opens up about overcoming different hurdles as well as her thoughts on diversity along with some encouraging words for individuals who are coming from non-technical backgrounds and are thinking of joining this space.

AI Ethics and Policy Researcher, Favour Borokini takes us through her career journey as she shares what inspired her to join the AI space and how she landed her current role at Pollicy. She also shares some of the most common barriers and challenges she tackles on a daily basis as someone who comes from a non-technical background. Listen in as she shares her thoughts on diversity and the most practical tips to get started in this space especially if you're someone who comes from a non-technical background.

In this episode, we have Ethically Aligned AI CEO and Founder, Katrina Ingram as she shares what inspired her to join this space, how she landed in her current role, the different kinds of barriers she encountered in the space and how she's overcome them along with the hurdles she deals with on a daily basis. She also has some practical advice for anyone who comes from a non-technical background but wants to make an impact in this space.

Arathi Sethumadhavan, Principal Research Manager, Ethics & Society at Microsoft shares her journey before she joined Microsoft, how she landed in her current role, the challenges she faces, the wide range of technologies she’s worked on, and why we need more diversity in this space. She also shares inspiring tips for individuals who want to do work in this space despite coming from non-technical backgrounds.

Tulsi Parida is the Global Director — Data Solutions at Visa. In this episode, Tulsi shares what compelled her to join this space, the highlights of her career journey, the types of issues in AI and the different barriers she deals with on a daily basis, and why we need more diversity in this space. Tulsi also has an inspiring message for those of you who come from non-traditional backgrounds but absolutely want to be involved in the change that we want to see in this space.

In this inspiring episode, we are joined by Temi Popo, Chenai Chair, Kathy Pham, and Wiebke Toussaint. We talk a bit about their backgrounds and how they got started in this space, how they handle difficult situations around fairness and equality, the importance of having people who experience inequalities as part of the solution, the different ways Mozilla is building trustworthy AI on a global scale, and so much more.

In this episode, we’re joined by Alex Hanna, Alex Ahmed, Anna Lauren Hoffman, and Kandrea Wade a few days after Timnit Gebru's firing from Google. It's an absolutely engaging and powerful conversation revolving around the realities of inclusion and diversity in the AI space and looking beyond inclusive hiring while touching on missed opportunities, capitalism, and a lot more.

In this episode, we have S.T.O.P Research Director, Eleni Manis and ACLU's Tech and Liberty Project Manager, Jennifer Lee talk about some of the worst instances of government surveillance, the communities which are most affected, and how commercial surveillance is intertwined with government surveillance. They also share the key things they're working on to fight against surveillance tech and critically helpful ideas on how we can join the fight. Eleni Manis is Research Director at S.T.O.P. (Surveillance Technology Oversight Project), where she designs and coordinates the work of the S.T.O.P. research team. She joined S.T.O.P. after working on government agencies’ technology policies at the NYC Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer and the NYC Mayor’s Office of Operations, where she analyzed legislation on emerging technologies, authored the City’s reply to FCC broadband decisions, and did research for the nation’s first automated decision systems task force.  Jennifer Lee is the technology and liberty lead at the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington (ACLU-WA), where she advocates for state and local legislation to regulate powerful surveillance and AI-based technologies. She leads ACLU-WA's work drafting and implementing technology policies that protect everyone's privacy and civil liberties and center community voices.

In this episode, we’re joined by ethicist and independent scholar, Timnit Gebru as she shares her insights on the importance of holding large technology companies accountable and dives into why and how she founded an independent research Institute, who is involved, and what they’re aiming to accomplish. Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). She was formerly co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team and also co-founded Black in AI, a nonprofit that works to increase the presence, inclusion, visibility, and health of Black people in the field of AI.

Join us for the final episode of this amazing series in partnership with IBM where we have invited Saishruthi Swaminathan, Advisory Data Scientist, AI Strategy and Innovation at IBM. In this episode, we learn about her incredible journey from a small town in India to her current role bringing ethical and trustworthy AI to life with the open-source tools and toolkits that she has been actively developing at IBM.  Note: The views on this podcast are those of the person being interviewed and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Join us for another interesting episode of the Women in AI Ethics™ podcast series sponsored by IBM where we interview Beth Rudden, Distinguished Engineer & Principal Data Scientist - Cognitive & AI Services at IBM. We'll dive into her fascinating career journey from anthropology to AI, explore the role of trust in AI, and discuss how we can deploy responsible AI at scale. Note: The views on this podcast are those of the person being interviewed and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

In today's AI age, there is more pressure than ever for organizations to be more data-driven while also ensuring data privacy and security across organizational silos. Join us we explore the different dimensions of data privacy across the entire data and AI lifecycle with Mukta Singh, Product Management Executive - Data & AI at IBM. The views on this podcast are those of the person being interviewed and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Continuing this series in partnership with IBM, come join us as we dive deep into an illuminating discussion on how large organizations can adopt and scale AI safely and ethically with Phaedra Boinodiris, Trust in AI Business Transformation Leader at IBM. In this episode, we talk about Phaedra’s fascinating career journey from gaming to AI, what keeps her up at night, and her plan for increasing the inclusion of women in the male-dominated tech industry. The views in this interview are those of the person being interviewed and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

This week, we launched our new season where we highlight brilliant women working in this critical space and discuss their groundbreaking work. Our first 6 episodes are sponsored by IBM and we kicked off the first one with Francesca Rossi, IBM Fellow and AI Ethics Global Leader. We covered a broad range of topics including her career journey, the importance of multidisciplinary perspectives in AI, and IBM’s stance on ethics of commercially deployed AI systems, including facial recognition technologies. (You will hear some pinging noises in the background as we didn’t get a chance to mute the notifications and our furry research assistant also decided to join in) The views in this interview are those of the person being interviewed and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.  

Join us for a fascinating discussion with Anthropologist and author of “Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass”, Mary L. Gray on the vast invisible human workforce that powers the services delivered by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber. Explore the ethics of this new underclass that makes AI and technology seem “smart” while making less than legal minimum wage and who can be fired at will.

Join us for a candid conversation with senior research scientist at Google and eminent scholar, Dr.Timnit Gebru on her seminal work in uncovering racial bias in automated facial analysis algorithms and datasets, including the “Gender Shades” project, and get her thoughts on racial power dynamics, what meaningful actions for progress look like, and last but not the least, get the inside scoop on Eritrean and Ethiopian food.

AI  Ethics Diaries - Keeping it Real' by the Women in AI Ethics™ Collective podcast is a culmination of many diverse voices and reflects our quest for more inclusive and ethical AI.  Eloquent speeches and statements are not enough. Join us instead for brutally honest conversations with  women in the AI Ethics community who will share their lived experiences, highlight the challenges in this space, and how together we can build a  more ethical and diverse future.