Panel: Solutions

Yiannis Kanellopoulos has spent the better part of two decades analyzing and evaluating software systems in order to help organizations address any potential risks and flaws related to them. (In his experience, these risks or flaws are always due to human involvement.) With Code4Thought, Yiannis is turning his expertise into democratizing technology by rendering algorithms transparent and helping organizations become accountable. Targeted outcomes of his work include building trust between the organization utilizing the algorithms and those affected by its output and rendering the algorithms more persuasive, since their reasoning will be easier to explain. He’s also a founding member of Orange Grove Patras, a business incubator sponsored by the Dutch Embassy in Greece to promote entrepreneurship and counter youth unemployment. Yiannis holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Manchester.

• Website

Rumman Chowdhury is a senior manager and AI lead at Accenture, where she works on cutting-edge applications of artificial intelligence and leads the company’s responsible and ethical AI initiatives. She also serves on the board of directors for three AI startups. Rumman’s passion lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and humanity. She comes to data science from a quantitative social science background. She has been interviewed by Software Engineering Daily, the PHDivas podcast, German Public Television, and fashion line MM LaFleur. In 2017, she gave talks at the Global Artificial Intelligence Conference, IIA Symposium, ODSC Masterclass, and the Digital Humanities and Digital Journalism conference, among others. Rumman holds two undergraduate degrees from MIT and a master’s degree in quantitative methods of the social sciences from Columbia University. She is near completion of her PhD from the University of California, San Diego.

• Website

Kathy Baxter is architect for ethical AI practice at Salesforce, where she develops research-informed best practices to educate employees, customers, and the industry on the development of ethical AI. She partners and collaborates with external AI and ethics experts to continuously evolve policies, practices, and products—working to create a more fair, justice, and equitable society. You can read about her research on the Salesforce UX Medium channel. Kathy has 20 years of experience in the tech industry, at companies including Google, eBay, and Oracle. She holds an MS in engineering psychology and a BS in applied psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology. The second edition of her book, Understanding Your Users, was published in May 2015.

Carole Piovesan is a partner and cofounder at INQ Data Law, where she focuses on data governance, privacy law, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. Previously, Carole was a lawyer at a large Canadian law firm, where she served as colead of the firm’s National Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Data Management Group and a lead on artificial intelligence. Carole advises the Canadian government on legal and policy issues related to data and AI and regularly advises companies on issues related to their collection, storage, and use of data. Carole is a recognized expert on legal and policy issues relating to data and AI and is a frequent speaker and author on these topics.

• Website

Stuart Buck is the vice president of research at Arnold Ventures, one of the leading funders of research to inform public policy. He has given advice to DARPA, IARPA (the CIA’s research arm), and the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team on rigorous research processes. He has sponsored major efforts showing that even the best scientific research is often irreproducible; this work has been featured in Wired, the Economist, the New York Times, and the Atlantic. He has also published in top journals (such as Science and BMJ) on how to make research more accurate. He holds a PhD in education policy from the University of Arkansas, where he studied econometrics, statistics, and program evaluation; a JD with honors from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review; and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music performance from the University of Georgia.

• Website