AI and People: A Recap of What I Learned at the SXSW and Wharton People Analytics Conference

In March, I traveled to Austin, Texas and Philadelphia, PA to dive back into the world of in person conferences to learn more about Artificial Intelligence, but I ended up learning a lot about the driving factors of human experience and how to supercharge collaboration. In this article, I am sharing what I learned from the amazing creators, researchers, and experts that I learned from along the way. Ben Clymer and I chatted after the panel discussion at Porsche. He told me that when creating collaboration, you have to make sure there is value for your audience. I'm hoping that this long post provides some great insights for the opportunities and challenges we are all meeting in 2023.

I had the privilege of meeting Phil Collen and the Zombies, who encouraged me to keep creating music because it makes me happy. The core theme of my experiences at both conferences is that it's more important than ever to know what success means to you, identify what you care about, and get out into the world to make a difference. So, let's do this.

The AI programming at SXSW covered a wide range of topics, from the latest advances in machine learning and deep learning, to the ethical implications of AI and its impact on society. I participated in programming like panels and keynotes early in the day, spread across the city of Austin, then continued into the evening with networking events and private concerts like the TikTok Official Party featuring BBNO$. This went on for a week. I met hundreds of interesting people and got to experience things like the Dolby.io sound lounge.

I attended the Business Analytics Meet Up.

That's where I met Nick Chatrath , who is the author of The Threshold. I attended his book signing and reading later in the week. In the book he asks these 6 questions and both conferences echoed these same risks and considerations:

1. Responsibility - If something goes wrong who do you hold accountable?
2. Privacy - How much are we willing to sacrifice to retain our privacy?
3. Bias and Fairness - How do you know that your AI Systems are equitable?
4. Traceability and Explicability - Do you know how your AI systems came up with the answers that they did?
5. Safety and Reliability - How safe and reliable are your AI systems, especially with new data that it hasn't seen before?
6. Security and Control - How much control should you retain over your AI, compared with other organizations or governments?

His reverence for our human-AI future stayed with me as I explored the expo and attended keynotes, panel discussions, and networking events.

SXSW Keynote Highlights

I shared a post on Chat GPT 4 and Greg Brockman's Keynote during the conference in real time because I was super excited and honestly amazed that I got in to see him speaking live. Since the conference, it has been amazing to see the addition of co-pilot in the Microsoft tools while also testing my own use cases since this keynote.

Of the keynotes, some of my favorites were Chelsea Handler, who spoke on standing up for women and establishing support systems to help people feel seen, heard, and included.

William Shatner inspired me as he encouraged people to ask themselves, "What can we do?" a question he asked himself as he looked into the vastness of space and thought about life as a beautiful and sacred thing. "Go be a scientist! Save the world!" He cried on stage and it was such a very real moment amidst all of the cool technological advances.

Inclusion matters in every industry and continued to be a core theme during the conference. Some GDC state of industry data was presented by Joost van Dreunen. I was pleasantly surprised that he touched on the issue of gender representation in gaming, sharing there is a slow increase from 18 to 23% female identifying contributors in gaming, which was an interesting metric to me in my work to increase the number of women in tech. He also called out the socialization of young people in Roblox and the game model's focus on the incentivization and the experiences being offered with things to do. For example, did you know that Fortnite's digital apparel (one type of digital item) sells more than most major fashion brands? It's actually close to 6 billion dollars, more than Prada. This is a strong trend where people are using real money to express themselves in a digital way. One quote that Joost shared that is worth mentioning, "We forget, in our generation, that things don't have to be physical. They can be digital, and they have meaning to people." - Bob Iger, un-retired CEO of Disney.

He continued to share perspectives on AI in gaming, reflecting that AI will allow people to manifest their own environment and the experience. He cautioned the audience about being overly optimistic about narratives built by tech firms quoting Julian Togelius, "It's not that generative AI can't or shouldn't be used in game development. It's that people aren't being realistic about what it could do."

The merger and convergence of Quantum AI was covered by William Hurley , the Founder and CEO of Strangeworks. He said this is the greatest time to be alive in the history of humankind. Computing will change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 100. Check out his session for the full breakdown. My key takeaway is that everyone needs to be preparing. He talked about bias and wondering if AI will be smart enough to question someone's bias. For the future, he predicts that there will be a lot of disruption that we can prepare for now. Since this keynote, Strangeworks announced the successful completion of their $24M Series A funding and launched Whurley's blog.

AI That Amazed Me

I was dazzled by the most interactive AI demo a SXSW. Lotic.ai, Inc. 's Wisdom pod was a place for you to tell your story through short recordings. It’s a safe, secure space for you to learn about yourself and identify patterns in your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. They generated artwork for each person's story without storing the data. There was easily a line of 10+ people at all times. Going into the pod was fun and reflective.

Mercedes-Benz AG hosted a featured session called Autonomous Driving: More Time To Do What You Love. I loved participating with the street team when being interviewed on what I would do with the time I'd get back if I didn't have to drive. It was mind blowing to see how the sensors and algorithms play into the driving capabilities for levels 4 and 5. The panel featured Sara Dietschy, Rana June, Austin Russel, and Markus Schafer. You can listen to their expert insights here.

Another automotive call to action came from Elaine Borseth , President of the Electric Vehicle Association, who dispelled misinformation about driving electric vehicles. During her Fast Company Grill keynote, she shared her journey of driving cross country in her EV, never once being stranded on the side of the road. She described the strides that Tesla has made in the last 10 years and encouraged automakers to do more to help the environment by creating more availability of EVs across the USA. If you are interested in connecting with resources on obtaining an EV, check out their resources.

Final thoughts about SXSW, it is worth noting that almost everything on the SXSW website and app was created by Chat GPT. This article was generated by me.

2 Weeks Later

A core theme that continued to arise in March was "culture eats strategy for breakfast". If SXSW was an all you can eat buffet, then the 美国宾夕法尼亚大学 - 沃顿商学院 's People Analytics Conference was the dose of Pepto, offering more insight and research into these challenges. The conference featured executives and researchers who are working alongside the emergence of AI within business, government, and overall development of AI for the goals of humanity.

Wharton PAC Highlights

Amanda Cox, head of Special Data Projects at USAFacts, presented an interactive data visualization that was so enthralling that I put my phone down. I've personally seen a million flat graphics and Power BI reports, but Amanda had created such stunning visual models that moved to tell the story of what happens with the people behind the numbers.

Heather Whiteman, Ph.D. and Alex Furman shared their journey in People Analytics to talk through Alex's realization of valuing collaboration while incentivizing the opposite within HR. He shared that his data showed there was a whole class of quiet people doing awesome things, which he called Stealth Top Performers. He created a system to fix systematically under recognizing, under promoting, under paying the people who were not actively self-promoting. The Peer Rank Score "PRS" used an iterative algorithm to identify influencers, find employee issues, bottlenecks, work on team dynamics, and identify biases then change HR Processes to address the issues found. After 3 years in place, more women were in leadership roles than ever before. Learn more here.

Cathy O'Neil, Risk Consulting and Algorithmic Auditor, shared her insights that mathematics is being weaponized so that you don't ask questions about AI or big data. AI is replacing bureaucracy in areas like who is worthy of a mortgage, a credit card, and Cathy encouraged us to ask more questions instead defaulting to being impressed. "AI is just opinions in math." Her takeaway was to scrutinize, monitor, and mitigate problems with AI to ensure that it is safe instead of flying blind with algorithms. She advocates for a "FDA for algorithms" for high impact algorithms where someone's life, liberty, or freedom are in the balance. She gave the example of medical diagnostic algorithms eventually being classified as medical tools, which may result in those algorithms being audited. She shared, "When people are defining success through algorithms you need to consider if this definition of success aligns with your own."

Nzinga “Zing” Shaw talked about "changing our lens toward what we value" and prioritizing Allyship. She started her keynote with an exercise. As I sat in the front row of the audience, I wondered if each time she gave a prompt and I stood up, how many people behind me joined or if at times, I would be standing up alone? Her journey of DEI through large sports organizations was filled with opportunities that created meaningful communities where they did not exist previously. I loved that she now dedicates her time to combining the two things I love most - music and tech - in her work as the Chief DEI Officer at The Recording Academy . She challenged the audience to "Start doing inclusive activities in their "real" lives if they want to be inclusive leaders at work."

Lize Vesterlund's spoke on her book "The No Club" which walks you through how to make small, yet significant, changes and empowers women to make savvy decisions about the work they take on. At the same time, the authors illuminate how lasting change calls for organizations to reassess how they assign and reward work.?As one of the founding members, Lize challenged the audience with hard data, personal anecdotes, and innovative advice, to change the conversation about how we advance women’s careers and achieve equity in the 21st century.?

Liz Fosslien is an expert of emotions at work. She shared the top issues she sees in the workplace and strategies to overcome them.

• Anxiety in the workplace is due to leadership changes, layoffs, and the number one cause of concern - unclear goals at work.
• When there is uncertainty, she encouraged leaders to invest in empathy to drive top performing employees.

The employee engagement data she shared showed that top performing managers were described as "genuinely cares about others" and "takes time to get to know me", which points to human engagement as a tool to combat anxiety at work. You can read her books and more about her here.

Professor Ned Wellman and Professor Samir Nurmohamed shared a discussion about leadership development from the "Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World" by Ginni Rometty. Adam Grant and Ginni provided insights in a recorded video to talk through the ideas of cracking the narratives to give life more meaning as a hero's journey vs only focusing on the outcome.

In summary, technology changes the distribution of power and has the potential to change how power is distributed through an organization. Some of the questions that continue to come up are will AI be used for good or ill? How do people build trust? How do you overcome aversion to algorithms? Professor Wellman talked through maximizing diverse skills and talents. He pointed to the 美国哈佛商学院 's approach of the "Learning and Inclusion Paradigm" which is that people from diverse backgrounds will bring skills to reimagine the work and will be a force for creativity. Read more here.

As AI continues to rapidly transform the way we live and work, it is fascinating to learn how many companies, universities, and advocates are approaching the questions that Nick outlined above (way at the top). The key theme across industries, generations, and other divides is that we need to collaborate more and need to have an open mind.

• We need more diverse collaboration to breathe life into our future success and more of a sense of adventure as we prepare ourselves for the changes in technology. Every company is now a technology company.
• We all need to ensure diverse groups of people are in leadership positions and it is not just the senior executives in the room when important decisions are made around these new innovations.
• We need to find ways to amplify the employee voice and utilize real time feedback models then take action on what we hear.

I feel grateful to have learned from so many wonderful people from around the world at both conferences. My call to action is to get out there to meet people then actively listen to what they are sharing. There is so much happening all at once. You don't have to master it all, but instead keep learning. I saw about 15+ generative AI launches at SXSW. As many said during the conference, the future is already here.

I am grateful to Professor Jeff Polzer for encouraging me to attend the Wharton PAC conference and to the entire teaching team at the Digital Data Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard , who have helped to prepare me for today's big opportunities in AI through the Harvard Business Analytics Program.

This summary is here to help anyone who is interested in learning about what's new in AI and how DEI will continue to be an important pillar as it advances. Whether you are traditionally technical or new to technology, if you have questions, you can send me a message.

As a final call to action, take your time to understand how AI tools can help you (personally and professionally) and work with people who bring different perspectives to the table.