It was a masterclass with a difference. In an era of artificial intelligence where entrepreneurs seek lessons in future readiness than on retrospective wisdom, Kirthiga Reddy, seemed to many, best placed to guide. A seasoned practitioner in tech-led transformation and the former managing director of Facebook India (Meta) was in Hyderabad to conduct a masterclass for startups at the invitation of T-Hub, a public- private partnership to incubate startups with over 2000 of them actively engaged. The focus of the masterclass was ‘ethical AI for an inclusive future.’
For many startups thus far the early growth years have largely been about revenue growth and scale albeit with increasing understanding that it cannot be at the cost of core values that need to have these institutionalised early on. But then, in an era of artificial intelligence there is an inescapable need to abide by ethical AI.
Urging entrepreneurs to remember that ‘innovation is not what we build. It is what the world becomes because of what we build." There was an opportunity in the democratised access that AI provided and the inclusive design that came with it to help build better products. However, the founders had to stay deeply conscious of the risks involved with some inherent algorithmic bias and exclusionary data while remaining watchful of the dangers of emerging ethical dilemmas in the form of deepfakes and misinformation.
In the journey from vision to actual practice, she urged them to seek clarity on the ‘intent’ which needed to address the elements of ‘why’ while staying true to upholding transparency and fairness. All of these, with an unrelenting pursuit to ask each time as to “who might be left out.”
Articulating her thoughts on the different lenses for ethical AI, she spoke of ethical AI entrepreneur or investor focussed on reducing the consumption of energy in AI or engaged with the question of governance keen to know if he or she were using the right data and if it was emanating from the right source. There are also the inescapable elements around creating standards to rule out any inherent bias. The second lens or role could be around being a ‘vanguard’ where the focus is about ethical AI as a core philosophy and this cut across all sets of people and was more about how you design your product, get the training data, measure and share at each stage of a company’s growth.
To be an ethical adopter, it was crucial to stay aware of the issues involved – environment, deepfakes or the content that is being consumed. “What you buy becomes a big source of influencing where companies are successful or not,” she cautioned.
Therefore, the journey to ingrain ethical AI, to Reddy, begins with an introspection on three key questions: 1, If this scales, what is the best outcome? 2, what is the worst unintended consequence? 3, If the future generations asked why I built this, what would I say?
The interactive session had budding entrepreneurs listening in rapt attention to the first female investing partner at the AI- focussed SoftBank Vision Fund to now an entrepreneur herself as the co-founder and CEO of venture-backed web3 startup, Verix and OptimizeGEO (GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation) and leverage AI’s intelligence to help in brand discovery. From
an Indian context, she has been the brain behind the ‘AI Kiran’ that aims to put women in AI from India on a global stage and enable connectivity, funding and mentoring. It was launched last April in collaboration with the office of the principal scientific adviser to the government of India.