Stephanie Wong and Priyanka Vergadia host the podcast this week as we talk responsible AI with guests Craig Wiley and Tracy Frey.

Vertex AI, the newly released AI platform from Google, is where Craig starts, telling us that it helps seamlessly integrate AI best practices into AI projects. When designing and building machine learning projects, it’s important to plan and integrate functions that support a responsible model as well. Tracy and Craig help us understand the process of designing and building these responsible, efficient projects, from problem identification and data set collection and refinement to ethical model considerations and finally project construction.

Part of Responsible AI is considering all the stakeholders of a project and how they will be impacted. Through examples, Tracy demonstrates how businesses can decide if the software solution affects stakeholders in a way the business would be proud of. Starting in the planning stages and continuing through data collection and model training, companies employing responsible AI techniques will consider input from groups that may use or be affected by the model, from social scientist who specialize in human behavior, and others. Craig elaborates on these principles in the context of Vertex AI and how the time savings of Vertex could be used to make thoughtful, responsible AI decisions.

Craig teaches us more about Vertex as we wrap up the interview. Its ability to analyze data and perform ongoing model monitoring make for richer, more accurate projects. Tracy talks about the future of Responsible AI and how the marriage of tech and humanity will continue to produce ethical, effective AI projects.

Craig Wiley

Craig is the Director of Product for Google Cloud’s AI Platform. Previous to Google, Craig spent nine years at Amazon as the General Manager of Amazon SageMaker, AWS’ machine learning platform as well as in Amazon’s 3rd Party Seller Business. Craig has a deep belief in democratizing the power of data, and he pushes to improve the tooling for experienced users while seeking to simplify it for the growing set of less experienced users. Outside of work he enjoys spending time with his family, eating delicious meals, and enthusiastically struggling through small home improvement projects.

Tracy Frey

Tracy Frey is Google Cloud AI & Industry Solution’s Managing Director of Outbound Product Management, Incubation and Responsible AI and is dedicated to ensuring Google Cloud AI & Industry Solutions is responsible, thoughtful, and collaborative as it continues to advance artificial intelligence and machine learning. She has been at Google for more than 10 years where she has worked on many different products and areas. Before joining Google she worked at multiple early-stage tech startups where she held multiple functions including product management, developer relations, product marketing, business development and strategy. Prior to her life in tech she taught children traditional wilderness survival skills, taught in a traditional classroom, studied private reserves in Costa Rica and has been a professional hip hop dancer.

Cool things of the week

• Cloud CISO Perspectives: May 2021 blog
• The cloud developer’s guide to Google I/O 2021 blog

Interview

• Vertex AI site
• Responsible AI site
• Staying ahead of the curve – The business case for responsible AI article
• Building responsible AI for everyone site
• Cloud Storage site
• BigQuery site
• Data Cloud Summit site
• Applied ML Summit site
• GCP Podcast Episode 249: ML Lifecycle with Dale Markowitz and Craig Wiley podcast
• AI Edition Google’s Tracy Frey: Creating Responsible AI podcast
• TensorFlow Responsible AI Toolkit site

What’s something cool you’re working on?

Priyanka has been working on the Vertex AI video series. Episode 1 and episode 2 are available now!