The Right People In The Room
By Greg Kahn
Emerging Tech Exchange
Founder & CEO
Published on May 22, 2023
How can society and tech companies guard against algorithmic bias at a time when generative AI is assuming a larger place in our politics, our work, our lives?
I shared my thoughts and my voice in a conversation that put this interim phase of AI in context on the CultureConnect's podcast. I was joined by two Adam Buhler, Head of Creative Technology at Digitas North America, and Kalinda Ukanwa, Assistant Professor of Marketing at USC’s Marshall School of Business.
I’d like to extend an extra thanks to CultureConnect's host Janelle A. James for her penetrating questions and the way she framed the discussion.
Janelle’s question is something we’ll be talking about a great deal more: “Three-quarters of consumer devices leverage AI in some way. By 2024, 8.4 billion digital voice assistants — that’s more than the number of people on the planet — will be powered by AI. How should we think of the current and future impact of this technology?”
As I said during the podcast, “We’re heading to a level of machine learning where it’s going to be generating on itself. So to steer that, to get the right guardrails in place to direct those models its training on, you have to have the right voices and the right individuals at the table designing and overseeing the software. One of the learnings from working with a lot of companies in the very early stages of voice assistants was that these devices didn't understand slang, they didn’t understand foreign languages and accents. They’re still far from conversational. But they're moving more in that direction. So this has to happen now.”
That’s just one piece. Take a listen and let me know what you think we need to do ensure these smarter assistants actually stay smarter by reducing, instead of exacerbating, bias:
Greg Kahn
Emerging Tech Exchange
Founder & CEO
