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Kathleen Martin

Guest
Women in the AI field are making research breakthroughs, launching exciting companies, spearheading vital ethical discussions, and inspiring the next generation of AI professionals. And that’s why we created the VentureBeat Women in AI Awards — to emphasize the importance of their voices, work, and experiences, and to shine a light on some of these leaders.
We first announced the six winners at Transform 2021 in July, and ever since, we’ve been catching up with each of them for deeper discussions around their work and emerging challenges in the field. Our conversations have touched on everything from regulation and dealing with messy real world data to how to approach AI more responsibly. The winners — who span the globe — also talked us through successful efforts and initiatives they’ve launched, from groups focused on increasing diversity in the field to a machine learning bootcamp upskilling workers.
Now, we’re bringing all these discussions to one place. Enjoy the summaries below, and click through to read the full conversations.
Think of an AI technology, and Dr. Nuria Oliver was likely working on it decades ago when it still felt like science fiction.
Her research and inventions have ignited advancements across the industry and now drive many of the products and services we use every day. But while Oliver, the winner of our AI Research Award, has published more than 150 scientific papers and earned 41 patents, she doesn’t believe in technological advancement for the sake of it. Above all, she is today focused on responsible AI and “developing technology that’s on our side, that really has our interests and our well-being as the main objective function.”
Read the full interview with Oliver, a true AI research pioneer, where she details her impact on the technologies we use today, the need for responsible AI, and how she thinks we should redefine “progress.”
Briana Brownell didn’t enter this field to earn accolades. She set out to create an AI that would do her job for her — or at least that’s the joke she likes to tell.
Really, Brownell, winner of VentureBeat’s Women in AI entrepreneur award, set out to build a company that would combine her data analytics background with AI. In 2015, she launched Pure Strategy, which uses an Automated Neural Intelligence Engine (ANIE) to help companies understand unstructured data. She and her team invented algorithms from scratch to make it happen, and the system has been used by doctors to communicate with patients and with each other across cultural knowledge, for example. She also moonlights as a science communicator, inspiring not just young children — especially girls — but everyone around her.
Read the full interview with Brownell, where we discuss how to work with messy real-world data, the importance of science communication, and how AI research and entrepreneurship can best come together.
Continue reading: https://venturebeat.com/2021/09/03/women-in-ai-ethics-research-and-entrepreneurship/