#72 - Vikram Modgil, Founder of TheGoodAI.org - On how trust and bias shape the impact of AI

This podcast interview focuses on the responsibility for all of us to ensure the AIs we invest in are ethical and deliver explainable, transparent output. My guest is Vikram Modgil, founder of TheGoodAI.org

Throughout his career, Vikram has helped his clients succeed in achieving their goals by truly leveraging the power of data that they already own using Machine Learning. To do so, he’s built an ecosystem company - Pi Square – that consists of employees, associates & partners located in the US, Europe & India.

Prior to founding Pi Square, Vikram was part of multiple successful startups and wore many hats, including business portfolio management, consulting and delivery of AI services.

Recently, he founded “TheGoodAI.org” in Seattle, which brings together groups of professionals & leaders from business, non-profit, education, legal, and technology backgrounds with the mission to empower every human to contribute by spreading awareness, facilitating engagement and inspiring actions towards ethical aspects of AI.

And this triggered me, hence I invited Vikram to my podcast. We explore the reasons why ethical AI is so important to sustain a world we like to live and work in. We also discuss the various aspects of ethical AI and what we can do as individuals, groups or organizations to ensure we get what we want and hope for.

Here are some of his quotes:

“There are some unnecessary, or unconscious biases that come into our businesses. They creep in. And if you're not conscious, if you're not alert, they can impact lives.

That is something that should not happen.

So, with that thought, knowledge and understanding, I wanted to contribute back and I started looking for forums where I could get involved. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything, which was exactly what I wanted this to become.

Normally, everybody is hesitant on starting something like this on their own, because it takes a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of people.

I wanted to challenge that thinking and start something which is focused on helping one person at a time. And even if two people showed up, that would be a success.

The three big things that we want to empower people to do are: create awareness, engagement and actions around the ethics and biases of AI and trustworthiness of AI.

Being in Seattle is a is a very huge advantage for us. If we could influence Seattle, we can influence the whole world”

During this interview, you will learn three things:

1. That in order to encourage innovative ideas from within your organization on areas where AI could deliver impact, simply stick to 4 basic rules: It has to deliver a shift in value, be feasible, scalable, and responsible.
2. Why the quality of your ideas for innovation will increase significantly once you ensure diversity in the room to look at the problem through different lenses
3. That it’s every software vendor's responsibility to raise some very tough questions whether their AI technology is ethical, explainable and transparent – It all starts by doing the right thing – and that can be very profitable.