Exploring the future of AI with Khagesh Batra, Head of Data Science, The Adecco Group

Posted by World Summit AI on Sep 27, 2023 4:22:23 PM

Ahead of World Summit AI (11th-12th October 2023, Taets Art & Event Park, Amsterdam), we asked Khagesh Batra, Head of Data Science, The Adecco Group, his thoughts on the future of AI.

As an expert in the field, what critical challenges do you believe the AI community needs to address to ensure responsible & and ethical AI deployment?

- Data Bias: AI systems can inherit the biases present in their training data. This is problematic when these systems are used for decision-making in critical areas like criminal justice, healthcare, and employment.

- Algorithmic Fairness: Even if training data is balanced and unbiased, the algorithms themselves can introduce bias. Methods for auditing and mitigating algorithmic biases are crucial.

- Explainability: Many advanced AI models, including deep neural networks, are often considered "black boxes" because their operations are not easily interpretable by humans. A lack of explainability can be a serious issue when deploying AI in sensitive areas.

- Audit Trails: There needs to be a reliable way to audit decisions made by AI systems. This is particularly important for systems that might be involved in legal , finance and medical decisions.

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Exploring the future of AI with Héctor López Romero, Bigdata & AI Senior Product Manager at Open Telekom Cloud

Posted by World Summit AI on Sep 27, 2023 3:55:27 PM

Ahead of World Summit AI (11th-12th October 2023, Taets Art & Event Park, Amsterdam), we asked Héctor López Romero, Bigdata & AI Senior Product Manager at Open Telekom Cloud, his thoughts on the future of AI.

As an expert in the field, what critical challenges do you believe the AI community needs to address to ensure responsible & ethical AI deployment?

The big challenge is to include all stakeholders to the same ethical level that everyone knows and follows ethics at any level of implementation.

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Exploring the future of AI with Ferenc Kukucska, Bigdata & AI Architect, Open Telekom Cloud

Posted by World Summit AI on Sep 26, 2023 2:45:22 PM

Ahead of World Summit AI (11th-12th October 2023, Taets Art & Event Park, Amsterdam), we asked Ferenc Kukucska, Bigdata & AI Architect, Open Telekom Cloud, his thoughts on the future of AI.

As an expert in the field, what critical challenges do you believe the AI community needs to address to ensure responsible & ethical AI deployment?

We need to explain to the users of the AI what exactly they are using, what data we used for training so 100% transparency and informing the end user are the most important things to do in my opinion

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Exploring the future of AI with Jonathan Salem Baskin, Ethics Evangelist, Spiritual Telegraph

Posted by World Summit AI on Sep 25, 2023 1:28:00 PM

Ahead of World Summit AI (11th-12th October 2023, Taets Art & Event Park, Amsterdam), we asked Jonathan Salem Baskin, Ethics Evangelist at Spiritual Telegraph, his thoughts on the future of AI.

As an expert in the field, what critical challenges do you believe the AI community needs to address to ensure responsible & ethical AI deployment?

I think the biggest challenge is that we need to look beyond corporate oversight and regulation and consider the moral behaviors of engineers themselves and, therefrom, how they construct AI models that have ethics literally "built into" how they function.

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Exploring the future of AI with Ulrika Biesèrt and Parag Parekh

Posted by World Summit AI on Sep 22, 2023 9:19:17 AM

Ahead of World Summit AI (11th-12th October 2023, Taets Art & Event Park, Amsterdam), we had the opportunity to sit down with Parag Parekh, Chief Digital Officer, and Ulrika Biesèrt, Chief Human Resources Officer at IKEA, to gain valuable insights into their perspectives on the future of AI.

Parag, you’re presenting at World Summit AI this year - can you provide a little insight into what you’ll be presenting on?

Today at IKEA we are looking at furthering the integration of the offline and online journey, for deeper and more authentic customer experiences in-store, as well as a seamless online journey, which we have been working on for quite some time.
 
Our motto is: Human centric and tech enabled. We are currently integrating technology into everything we do as key to providing the best possible solutions and products for our customers. This is why we are and have invested in Augmented Reality (with our IKEA Kreativ design experience), using robotic automation solutions in warehouses, and more. Plus, we’ll share more on the journey to reskill and upskill co-workers amidst a rapidly changing labor market. We’ll explore all of this and more at the Summit, so please tune in to hear what we are up to in the wonderful world of digital technology!
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Exploring the future of AI with Dr. Martin Schaffer, Global Head of Emerging Technologies at SGS

Posted by World Summit AI on Sep 21, 2023 12:51:31 PM

Ahead of World Summit AI (11th-12th October 2023, Taets Art & Event Park, Amsterdam), we asked Dr. Martin Schaffer, Global Head of Emerging Technologies at SGS, his thoughts on the future of AI.

If you could solve any global problem in the world with AI, what would it be and why?

Key obvious issues to focus on are the root causes of climate change, along with poverty, hunger, healthcare, and energy challenges. One key element there is to democratize education, ensuring better tailored education across the world’s population.

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Exploring the future of AI with Choy Yong Cong, VP and Head of Europe, Singapore Economic Development Board

Posted by World Summit AI on Sep 5, 2023 12:25:40 PM

Ahead of World Summit AI (11th-12th October 2023, Taets Art & Event Park, Amsterdam), we asked Choy Yong Cong, VP and Head of Europe Singapore Economic Development Board, his thoughts on the future of AI.

As an expert in the field, what critical challenges do you believe the AI community needs to address to ensure responsible & ethical AI deployment?

There is a need for a practical and informed approach to AI governance. Singapore believes in taking such an approach, and partnering with leading industry players such as Microsoft, Google and Adobe to use AI in a trustworthy manner. For example, Singapore’s AI Verify is a tool launched in partnership with the industry, that helps developers check that their algorithms and datasets for training AI are in line with 11 internationally recognised principles. The AI Verify Foundation has also been launched to foster an open-source community to contribute to AI testing frameworks, code base, standards and best practices and create a neutral, international platform for open collaboration and idea-sharing on testing and governing AI. These initiatives help to ensure an effective approach to more responsible and ethical AI deployment, that safeguards users and protects societal interests.

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AI Music: Taehyun Kim talks composition, copyright and challenges in music modelling

Posted by World Summit AI on Mar 16, 2023 5:09:50 PM

Facing the next great musical frontier, Taehyun Kim, Chief Strategy Officer at POZAlabs tells us all about the possibilities and challenges ahead for AI and music and what it all means for people who aren't traditionally adept at music composition...

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An interview with Izabela Zrazinska, Senior Project Manager at FundingBox

Posted by World Summit AI on Oct 9, 2022 10:08:01 AM

Izabela Zrazinska, Senior Eu Project Manager and AI Cluster Team Leader and colleagues from FundingBox are hosting the Track 6 workshop 'AI Revolution with equity-free funding' on Thursday 13th of October at World Summit AI. 

 

If you could solve any global problem in the world with AI, what would it be?

Revolutionize public funding for AI to foster AI innovation in Europe and reinforce industrial competitiveness across all sectors including SMEs and non-tech industries.
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Topics: Interview, AIbrains

Tech Talent: Where Meerkats Meet Machine Learning

Posted by World Summit AI on Sep 20, 2022 3:44:23 PM

Hajo van Beijma, Founder of Atilax, is joining us as a speaker at World Summit AI on 12-13 October 2022 in Amsterdam. He will be talking about The Great Resignation and Tech's Talent Drought: Reimagining How and Why We Work. Below, you can read about the future of Machine Learning and Hajo's journey towards it.

 


 

Tech companies are all focussed on the same talent pools and while salaries in Europe are getting closer to the silicon valley way of remuneration a lot of the searches for senior talent is outsourced to executive search firms. The recruitment firms that are winning the bids for best tech job searches are mostly firms who are proud of their enormous network but is the size of the network still the most important factor for success in helping grow tech companies and scale-ups and what can we learn from the animal world?

Coined by Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, Metcalfe's Law is often used to describe how tech companies have come to dominate the current business landscape. The law states that the value of a network grows by the square of the size of the network. So, for example, if a network has 1000 machines, its value would be 1,000,000.

It's a neat concept, but does it actually work in practice? Unfortunately, the simple answer is no, not most of the time. And in 2022, it's time to radically rethink how we approach networks.

The crux of the issue here is around the word "value" and how value works in reality across different types of networks. When Metcalfe originally put forward his law, he was focused on phones and fax machines - tangible tech with wires. Tightly designed hardware and software (nodes) fulfil a specific purpose. The value of these nodes lies in the functionality they offer, and this functionality is fixed and unchanging. Each node has inherent value, so scaling these nodes up adds more value1.

Although "value" is a relatively vague concept in itself, it becomes even trickier when considering networks of people. Although Metcalfe later expanded his theory to include people, the connections between users, and how people collaborate and influence each other, this is where the law starts to fall down. Why? Because networks of people work very differently.

When considering social networks, it becomes clear how additional users can negatively affect value - extra noise or "low quality" content can drown out the intended communication23.

So what does this mean for how we approach networks of people going forward? Well, Metcalfe's Law might not provide all the answers, but the animal kingdom might. By studying the mathematics of animal populations like Meerkats, we can gain a unique insight into how the life cycles of networks work.

Population size, density, availability of resources, and overall fitness are critical factors in the health of Meerkat populations. So, for example, Metcalfe's Law would suggest that having more meerkats in a group would increase value (enable the population to thrive) exponentially.

However, this is only true up to a certain point in reality. Small meerkat populations are vulnerable to predators, but too crowded groups deplete the natural environment and eventually cause population decline. In other words, meerkat populations are at their most healthy (or provide the most value) when they exist in the "Goldilocks zone" - the point where population and value are high but population-depleting factors are low.

 

The Future of Headhunting for Scale-Ups

So, how does all this talk of meerkats relate to scale-ups? First, companies entering a rapid growth period need to attract high-quality talent to accelerate their success. And they pull that talent from the available networks of people. The value of these networks lies in high-performing individuals and their participation in the network.

Today, much of recruitment is still done manually, and as a result, it's subject to individual biases and human error. Try to not only focus on the size of your network or the network of your preferred executive search firm but look for smart and powerful links inside networks and between different networks. This work is difficult to leave up to human beings alone and there is a better way - recruitment in combination with machine learning (recurrent neural networks). Successful long-term talent strategies require a more scientific approach to headhunting, act as a meerkat - An intelligent, social animal that looks beyond the obvious (candidates) and is focused on working in teams.

 
 
Join Hajo and the global AI community at World Summit AI 2022.
 
Find out more and book your ticket at https://worldsummit.ai/tickets/
 

The World Summit AI team

 


Endnotes

  1. https://phys.org/news/2006-06-metcalfe-law-wrong.html
  2. https://blog.bimajority.org/2018/02/12/whats-wrong-with-metcalfes-law/
  3. https://www.ft.com/content/89112fe7-4718-433f-82bd-5cab192f425c
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Topics: Interview, AIbrains