Sacha Thompson is a  DEI professional with  over 20 years in the non-profit and tech industries. Over this time, she has seen the challenges faced by executives with good intentions struggling to make decisions around diversity. Where executives are motivated to do the ‘right thing’ when it comes to DEI but may be hindered by their own biases and fears. She has also seen the damage endured by Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) mid-managers when they have felt they are not centered in their company’s DEI efforts or where they have been/are in difficult situations due to discrimination or bias by others. Her work is about removing barriers or providing support in order to get to a place of equality. She helps executives and leaders have that important dialogue, and coach them to the necessary, long-term changes that develop institutional cultures of DEI.  Website: https://www.theequityequationllc.com/about LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachathompson/

Crossing the AI Chasm and Solving the World’s Problems with Lila Tretikov

Lila Tretikov is a Board Director, CEO, Entrepreneur, and CVP at Microsoft. She brings scientists, engineers, designers, and the best creators together to solve the world’s most challenging problems, and empower humanity through technology.

Moving to America from Russia

3:00

“I was always between worlds -- art vs. science or East vs. West. I moved from Russia to New York when I was 15. It's shaped how I think about the world and allowed me to think outside the box.”

Transfer learning: thinking about problems and unique, unusual ways.

Lila switched the focus of her work multiple times. She started her first company while at Berkeley, observing scientists, mapping the human genome, I worked for finance, banking, started another company, then pure software and telecommunications. Nonprofits, Wikipedia, power, energy, green energy companies, now Microsoft, and health.

“I love looking at technologies through the lens of impact on humanity.”

Can you tell us more about your role at Microsoft and what you do there?

5:00

Lila was the deputy for CTO Kevin Scott. She’s the person to jump into a complex project and help teams accelerate. It's hard to take an innovation and make it part of the company's core business. She helps teams cross that chasm. I look at innovation and figure out how to scale.

Artificial intelligence

9:40

The brain helps us design better algorithms. Computational biology will be an enormous and exciting frontier.

The human brain has 100 trillion connections. The leading supercomputer has 172 billion hyper parameters, growing astronomically fast. At some point, supercomputers will match the human capacity.”

Humans are more computationally efficient, extremely low powered, 20 watts to operate. Supercomputers with 30,000 GPUs take 10 times that amount.

10:30

The human brain is also multimodal. We have many senses, including hidden senses. We imagine the world that our brain processes. The human brain trains incrementally and builds upon prior knowledge all the time. We've built up knowledge over and over again. AI is good at specialized tasks. It can translate across human languages.

We can learn from biological constructs and apply them to computer science, then accelerate biological discovery, and create a flywheel in computational biology and AI.

Topics covered in this podcast:

- Why companies of all sizes should adopt Intelligent Automation

- Role of AI in digital transformation

- Technologies used in Intelligent automation: RPA, ML, Computer Vision

- Technology and business frameworks for intelligent automation

Pascal Bornet is a recognized global expert, thought leader, and pioneer in the field of intelligent automation (IA). He is a senior executive with 20+ years of experience leading digital business transformations and creations. He founded and led the "Artificial Intelligence and Automation" practices for Mckinsey & Company and Ernst & Young (EY), where he drove hundreds of IA transformations for corporates, across industries.

Key Quotes:

[10:10] “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

[13:50] “Intelligent automation is a combination of methods that involve people, organization, processes, and technologies.”

“Everything comes with passion. But it is not easy. You have to find your passion and this passion should fit you or your personality.”

[33:33-33:35] “Technology makes our world more human.”

Resources

Topics covered in this episode: 

- Role of CIOs in startups

- How to scale startups to enterprise-readiness

- Post-Covid Trends in venture funding