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By Samantha Walravens
In 2011, entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen wrote his famous ,"Why Software Is Eating the World" in the Wall Street Journal. Today, that story would more likely read, "Why Artificial Intelligence Is Eating the World." The market for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies-- from voice and image recognition to chat bots to self-driving cars-- is hot. A Narrative Science survey found last year that 38% of enterprises are already using AI, and that number will grow to 62% by 2018.
Like the tech industry at large, the field of artificial Intelligence is dominated by white men. Here, Geek Girl Rising talks to Lolita Taub, a venture capitalist at K Fund, a €50 million early-stage tech VC firm in Madrid, and a member of the Cognitive Computing Consortium, about how AI is changing our world and why it's critical that more women and people of diverse backgrounds take part in the AI revolution.
How did you become interested in the world of AI?
Lolita Taub: I didn’t know it at the time, but when I was about 5 years old, Rosie, a AI female robot on a cartoon show called The Jetsons, peaked my interest. (I share my story here). Later in life, in 2011, IBM Watson at Jeopardy reignited my interest in AI. I can still remember watching Watson, a machine, beating Jeopardy’s all time best players. It blew my mind that technology could listen, reason, and respond like a human being. All I could think of was, “What else could technology do?” Of course, the answer is: change the way we live, learn, work, and play. Take for instance, Amazon’s Alexa. Alexa helps you navigate your day, your calendar, answers your questions, orders your Ubers and even plays your favorite music at your dinner parties. Of course, AI is helping change the way we work too. At Glassbreakers, our mission was to address the gender gap at Fortune 500 companies through inclusion software. Glassbreakers uses machine learning to optimize employee development through its mentorship platform. AI has the potential to help with everything and I want to be part of the team that gets AI there! And that’s exactly why I started the Cognitive Business series on Huffington Post, I joined the Cognitive Computing Consortium, and why I am becoming VC in the AI world after I complete my MBA.
There is a lot of hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI). What trends can we expect to see in 2017?
LT: Well, there won’t be a robot takeover, that’s for sure. What we can expect is AI progress in conversation, speech, vision, language and emotion proficiency. That means that tech will get smarter at talking to us, seeing us, and even knowing how we feel. This is important for situations when, for example, a drowsy and upset driver is on the road. Today, AI tech can help identify a driver’s sentiment status and, possibly, save his or her life. I’d look out for companies like Baidu, NVIDIA, Intel, and Uber. But of course there are tons and tons of companies, both in the corporate and startup space, that are now focusing on AI on many fronts. I really like Bloomberg Beta’s Shivon Zilis’ AI ecosystem map.
Why is it important to have women developing and creating the data sets for AI?
LT: AI will pass on the biases of its creators and the data its creators feed it. If we want there to be a woman’s perspective in the new world of AI, we need women to be part of it - and women of diverse backgrounds at that.
What could go wrong if women are not involved in AI?
LT: Examples. Just last year, there was a beauty contest manned by Beauty.AI. Beauty.AI only identified white women as beautiful. Why? Because it was working off the data it was fed and the AI algorithm determined that only white women were beautiful. Bottom line, if we don’t have diversity in the AI world, more of this is going to happen.
Who are some of the women in AI we should be watching?
LT: Absolutely, Fei-Fei, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford. She’s working on recognition, learning and language processing. Then, there is Justyna Zander who is working on autonomous driving at NVIDIA. One of my new favorites is Rana El Kaliouby, CEO at Affectiva. She’s doing some really awesome work in emotion AI with Fortune 500s. On the venture capital front, I am a big fan of Shivon Zilis’ AI work.
What is keeping women from going into Computer Science/AI?
LT: I can go for days on a list of reasons. But three that come to mind are: teasing, lack of encouragement, and bias. I have had numerous friends in the tech field tell me that they almost didn’t go into tech because they grew up hearing, “tech isn’t for girls.” Linked to that is the lack of encouragement. I can’t tell you how many times, I’ve been told, “Lolita, you don’t want to work in a male dominated, prick filled, world.” Then there hiring biases. A good example of it is Silicon Valley. Take a look around: it’s mostly white guys in hoodies hiring other white guys in hoodies.
We recently celebrated International Women's Day. What does this day mean to you? What more needs to be done to achieve gender parity in the workplace, specifically in tech?
LT: International Women’s Day is a day to pay homage to the women who have and are fighting the gender parity fight, such as Gloria Steinem and Sheryl Sandberg. It is also a day that reminds me of the long road ahead. Per the World Economic Forum, the world will not achieve gender parity until 2095. That there is a lot of work to be done is an understatement. We need women and men to take on their roles as sponsors, advisors, and mentors to women . In the tech world in particular, we need more women to proudly own the title of women in tech, business woman, woman tech investor, and woman tech founder. We all need to roll up our sleeves and get to work. I offer more ideas on how to diversify tech and AI here.
About Lolita Taub: Lolita is a TEDx speaker, a cognitive computing & artificial intelligence researcher, and a UN Women’s Empower Women Global Champion for Women’s Economic Empowerment. She has worked for companies including IBM, Cisco Systems, and Glassbreakers and is a member of the Cognitive Computing Consortium. Lolita loves to travel and enjoys good chai lattes.
