It takes a village, or more accurately a diverse group of brilliant advocates and experts to develop a strong approach to governed and safe AI. At Dataiku, we’re lucky enough to have such people in our company, and Triveni Gandhi, Data Scientist and Responsible AI Lead, is one of them. Triveni has recently won the 2022 VentureBeat Women in AI Award in the Responsibility and Ethics of AI category. Keep reading to understand how her work contributes and reflects Dataiku’s commitment to building a sustainable data future.
As the Responsible AI Lead at Dataiku, Triveni helps our customers take a proactive approach in raising awareness for the need of Responsible AI by educating those who haven’t considered the concept and talking them through the best ways and practices for implementations. Through the efforts of our team, including Triveni, we are able to build and implement custom solutions for our customers, including training on how Responsible AI is implemented in the data, model, and reporting stages of the AI pipeline.
Building the Foundation for Diverse AI-Powered Organizations
Diversity in teams is one of the key elements that helps organizations avoid bias, and education ensures that all organizations are able to hire diverse data and AI talent. Recognizing this, Dataiku sponsors various scholarships with hopes to encourage more women to explore the field of data science and inspire them to engage further with the technologies of today's data-driven world.
Realizing the importance of diverse perspectives, at Dataiku, we celebrate unique backgrounds which drive innovation in the field. Triveni is just one example at Dataiku of how a non-traditional path can produce distinct and valuable perspective. With a PhD in political science from Cornell University, her background in social science inspires her outlook on data science through a lens of social equity and encourages her to raise questions that may not be as obvious to others that only have a technical background.
Leading by Example With Internal Initiatives
Triveni not only helps Dataiku lead the charge for Responsible AI externally but also advocates internally for diversity, equity, and inclusion. As an operations lead for Dataiku’s Employee Resource Group (ERG) for women called EmpoWer, Triveni helps foster an inclusive, safe space for women and allies to feel confident paving their career paths in tech no matter what background they come from. As more and more women take interest in gaining AI-based skills and transition to more technical roles, she encourages people to showcase their special and unique strengths (that might not be traditional for these roles) which will bring something new to the table and add fresh insights to the conversation.
Looking at the Larger Picture to Support the Safe Scaling of AI
Mitigating the negative impacts of AI systems and generating more positive outcomes through Responsible AI is just one facet of an AI Governance framework which enforces organizational priorities through rules, processes, and requirements in order to craft the ways AI is designed, developed, and deployed. The goal is to make sure that as many practitioners as possible are aware of the historical and social context in which they build pipelines and use that knowledge to inform more equitable data science applications and safely scale AI. For this reason, AI Governance is a core pillar of Dataiku.