AI's Cultural Impact: How Joyann Boyce is Pioneering Inclusivity in Tech
Meet Joyann Boyce, the dynamic founder and CEO of Inclued AI, who takes us on an insightful journey through the world of artificial intelligence and inclusive marketing.
From her beginnings as a self-taught marketer to becoming a champion for diverse representation, Joanne's story is fuelled by a pivotal moment involving a controversial H&M campaign that ignited her passion to challenge biases in marketing content.
Partnering with tech luminaries like Charlene Hunter MBE, she developed a cutting-edge tool that fights against racial and gender biases, setting her on a path to establish Include AI.
Joyann's tale is not just about career milestones but also the profound impact of understanding societal perceptions to create powerful, inclusive messages.
Find Joyann on the links below:
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joyannboyce/
Joyann Boyce's TedX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuy6sOENAqg&t=1s
Company website https://www.inclued.ai/
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/inclued-ai/
Further resources mentioned
Charlene Hunter MBE - CEO & Founder of Coding Black Females https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlenephunter/
"Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines" by Joy Buolamwin: https://www.unmasking.ai/
"Algorithms of Oppression" by Safiya Umoja Noble: https://safiyaunoble.com/research-writing/
"Coded Bias" by Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81328723
"Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men" by Caroline Criado-Perez : https://carolinecriadoperez.com/book/invisible-women/
"The age of surveillance and capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff : https://shoshanazuboff.com/book/about/
Transcript
Hi everyone and welcome to Relationships with AI.
Iabo Oba:I'm your host, Iabo Oba.
Iabo Oba:This podcast explores the real world impact of AI on human relationships, work, romance, family, politics and more.
Iabo Oba:We'll hear from thought leaders and disruptors in AI as they share their insights on how AI is shaping society through the lens of human connection.
Iabo Oba:Let's get into this week's episode.
Joanne Boyd:You're listening to with AI fm.
Joanne Boyd:Hello, Joanne, thank you so much for coming on to be a guest for Relationships with AI.
Joanne Boyd:Really pleased to have you here.
Speaker C:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker C:I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah, no, it's going to be a great one.
Joanne Boyd:I thought it would be a really wonderful opportunity to come and talk to you because of having met you through Charlene Hunter, the founder of Coding Black Females.
Joanne Boyd:And she raved about you saying that you're the go to person to speak to regarding all things AI.
Joanne Boyd:So I was super excited to have you on the show and I'm so pleased that you said yes and you're here today.
Joanne Boyd:So.
Joanne Boyd:Joanne Boyd, founder and CEO of Include AI.
Joanne Boyd:I'd like to hand over a little bit to you just to ask you please could you share a bit about your background, who you are and yeah, we can take things from there.
Speaker C:Sure.
Speaker C:Such high compliments from Charlene.
Speaker C:They're doing amazing work.
Speaker C:Really is.
Speaker C:So my background is marketing.
Speaker C:I always like to say that I'm a self taught marketer, stumbled into the field after deciding not to continue with my undergrad degree in psychology and not being a clinical psychologist while running a social media marketing agency.
Speaker C:I kind of started to talk to people a lot about inclusive marketing and how they can represent diversity in their marketing content, but also started to train people around that as well.
Speaker C:Because my whole kind of premise is inclusive marketing is marketing if you're doing your job right.
Speaker C: But this was back in: Speaker C:A campaign where a little black boy was wearing coolest monkey in the jungle sweater, right?
Speaker C:So at the time I was like, okay, H and M.
Speaker C:At the time I believe they had a marketing team of over 200 people.
Speaker C:And I'm like, okay, I couldn't train all the 200 people.
Speaker C:And even if I did, would they have spotted it?
Speaker C:Could it have been changed?
Speaker C:Maybe someone did spot it and they didn't have the data.
Speaker C:So I kind of turned to my techie friends, Charlene being one of them, and I was like, could I, could I build something that can tell People when something is racist, sexist, ableist.
Speaker C:Got a lot of no's, got a lot of maybes, got a lot of yeah, but it'd be hard.
Speaker C:And I fell into a rabbit hole learning all about AI bias, algorithmic bias, data bias and how it interacts with inclusion and came out of that rabbit hole with a master's in data science and would include my startup.
Joanne Boyd:Well, that's a pretty nifty solution for yourself and for also addressing the issues at hand.
Joanne Boyd:I am intrigued by the fact that you've mentioned that with a team of 200 people that this particular campaign got passed through.
Joanne Boyd:That's extraordinary and astonishing.
Joanne Boyd:What are the things that you felt that it was important to highlight through the fact that through your sort of raising these issues and speaking to all of your contemporaries in the field.
Speaker C:So it was a mixture of things.
Speaker C:I felt a lot of people in the field of marketing were saying, oh, someone should have spotted, someone should have said, or they don't have a black person on their team.
Speaker C:I kind of felt that that wasn't fair.
Speaker C:If there is one and H and M is huge.
Speaker C:So it's not necessarily that all 200 would have seen it, but I think the way the press was angling it, it was like, ooh, this was a mistake.
Speaker C:But historically we're all kind of, I assume a lot of people are aware of the negative connotations to the word monkey and black people.
Speaker C:So for them to not put the two and two together.
Speaker C:The way we imagined include at the time, or I imagine at the time was that it would highlight the word monkey as a high risk word and kind of guide people in terms of okay, if you're using this in a campaign, be mindful how you use it.
Speaker C:Not necessarily stop them, but my hope to remove that element or of the brand or the organization saying oops, we didn't know.
Speaker C:I rather them say yeah, it was intentional, which they probably would never do.
Speaker C:But I rather that I rather it be a choice and it be part of a wider campaign or marketing scheme than it be.
Speaker C:We just didn't know we didn't have the data.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah, indeed.
Joanne Boyd:Well, it's good that also that you're there as an extra pair of eyes sort of highlighting this particular issue and as you said, using the power of AI and analyzing the data from this process.
Joanne Boyd:I was wondering if we could go a little bit, a bit into your history just looking at the things that you studied at university, both at degree level and masters.
Joanne Boyd:You were saying about things.
Joanne Boyd:What things intrigued you understand that it's various patterns and things like that were sort of points of interest.
Joanne Boyd:Could you explain a bit more about that?
Joanne Boyd:And particularly with regard to relationships and how that might have brought.
Joanne Boyd:Well, all those elements brought you to where you are today.
Speaker C:It's funny because looking back, I probably didn't make the active choices while I was doing it, but I can see the connectivity now because so much of psychology is about understanding interactions, relationships, and so much of marketing is about that, and so much of detecting bias in AI is about that, is about understanding how society perceived things and the influence we have on each other.
Speaker C:But back then, when I started in my psychology degree, I was set on being a clinical psychologist.
Speaker C:I was like, that's what I'm going to do.
Speaker C:And I wanted to be a clinical psychologist because I was only diagnosed with dyslexia or discovered, not diagnosed, discovered with dyslexia in university.
Speaker C:And it impacted one, the advice teachers gave to me as a student, but also impacted some of the choices I made.
Speaker C:So I didn't have.
Speaker C:I had good GCSEs, but I didn't have any A levels.
Speaker C:And I did all art subjects because the teacher said to me, once, you're dyslexic, so you should only do art, you shouldn't do psychology and sociology.
Speaker C:That's bad advice, very bad advice.
Speaker C:But what that led to was, in a bittersweet way, I took a year out because I thought, okay, I'm going to try to become an artist.
Speaker C:But being an artist and selling the things you make or making things for people is a lot of relationship building, which I absolutely hated.
Speaker C:I.
Speaker C:I have always preferred to.
Speaker C:Honestly, it's one of those things and I think it's part of the dyslexia.
Speaker C:I describe it to individuals that I see things in cobwebs.
Speaker C:So I can see the relationships, I can see the dynamics, I can see how it should be.
Speaker C:And I then actively choose not to prescribe to it.
Joanne Boyd:Love that.
Speaker C:So, yeah, psychology is kind of the base of everything.
Speaker C:And then once I finished my university degree, I went traveling and was able to do amazing things like run a hostel in Brazil.
Speaker C:And came.
Speaker C:It was.
Speaker C:Brazil was amazing.
Speaker C:Came back to the UK and decided I needed to make money and got a job in recruitment.
Speaker C:Again, relationship building, where I knew what I should have been doing, but I didn't necessarily enjoy it, right.
Speaker C:I enjoyed helping people and the recruitment agency was at the time, punished me in a way for helping people, so I would help them improve their CVs and help them improve their LinkedIn which is part of the job.
Speaker C:But I remember getting in trouble for helping candidates that weren't placeable straight away.
Joanne Boyd:Right.
Speaker C:So that wasn't enjoyable for me.
Speaker C:But through that job I discovered LinkedIn and I discovered helping people with marketing themselves and that kind of led the path of the marketing agency.
Speaker C:Okay.
Joanne Boyd:And so that whole journey of using quite a powerful data tool such as LinkedIn about and, and helping somebody brand themselves in order to put them out to a specific market or job market that they're looking for is sort of part of the origin story of you achieving your include AI status.
Joanne Boyd:I wonder some of the things that you've mentioned then you're talking about sort of learning about relationships in your helping people to achieve roles.
Joanne Boyd:How has that sort of then branch that into your wider, your company's ethos in sort of helping companies to look at specific data points to help enhance the campaigns that they develop.
Joanne Boyd:Could you talk a bit about that, please?
Speaker C:So a lot about society and even presenting yourself for a job or marketing your product or your service is understanding how people perceive things and having to understand how they will interpret things.
Speaker C:So having that knowledge allowed me to help people shape their messaging, shape the way that they present their product, their service, their website.
Speaker C:And in turn that led me to understanding how the algorithms and AI models are built because they're taking essentially, I don't have the exact number, but I would assume large language models are probably 40 or 60% of marketing content and then the rest is like Reddit comments.
Speaker C:Again, that is not statistical in any way.
Speaker C:But a lot of the content online was produced by marketers and they're very intentional in selling their things.
Speaker C:So when you reverse engineer that, you can start seeing how the relationships we have in society, the biases we have in society are replicated in those models.
Speaker C:And when you understand the natural or unnatural biases and fears we have, you can start to see how you can manipulate the models to detect those things.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah, that's really fascinating.
Joanne Boyd:And could you talk about a bit more about sort of how you've used AI as part of include AI today and just sort of what it.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah.
Joanne Boyd:How it helps you power your business and also seek out new projects and clients to work with.
Speaker C:So we use it in three forms.
Speaker C:We use it in terms of our day to day admin and things that we do.
Speaker C:We engage it that way, we use it in terms of our research.
Speaker C:So we're constantly, the whole team are constantly trying to, I call it arguing with the large language models and the gen AI, we're constantly trying to make them show their biases, show their stereotypes.
Speaker C:And one of the easiest ways to do this is if you were to ask a large language model, pick your favorite or generative AI model, create me an image of a CEO, and it's likely to create a white male unless they've adapted it and so forth.
Speaker C:So we test and we do a lot of research that element.
Speaker C:And then finally it's kind of the underlying element of our software.
Speaker C:I like to say that we still use old AI, so natural language processing, a lot of the things that before the generative AI hype happened, we use a lot of those, we use a lot of small language models rather than the large ones because it's a little easier to control the parameters of biases.
Speaker C:But those three layers help us to build a tool that we have.
Speaker C:We have our beta live at the moment where people can input text and have it checked on whether general wariness of like problematic language, outdated language readability, or specifically to job ads and recruitment, whether there's any legal language in that they shouldn't have, what is the gender coded weighting of the words and help them to improve their ad or their job description so it better targets wider audience.
Joanne Boyd:Ah.
Joanne Boyd:And then is there a way that people, those who are listening to this show episode, are able to participate in feeding into your your research?
Speaker C:There's two ways essentially you could sign up and use we're still in beta, so any kind of use and testing you do.
Speaker C:But also as you experience generative AI in the wild and you see some things, the simplest way I'd say is if you expect it to represent you and it doesn't send us that data.
Joanne Boyd:Okay.
Speaker C:And this is in the broadest terms.
Speaker C:If you ask a large language model to write an email and it uses he pronouns when you think it should use she pronouns, send us that data and tell us what model it was.
Speaker C:Great.
Joanne Boyd:So that's a really helpful way to threat the general population to help you do your work more effectively.
Joanne Boyd:And that spreads the word about the actual value that your company adds to all campaigns.
Joanne Boyd:That's great to hear.
Joanne Boyd:And then also, what with regards to sort of showcasing your technology and how you've been using it day to day, what's been a really big campaign that you're able to talk about that you felt that.
Joanne Boyd:Yes, our involvement helped to change the narrative in this particular piece of this particular asset or this particular campaign.
Joanne Boyd:What are you able to speak to us?
Speaker C:So I can speak to a project that we did where we analyzed a client's website, they were trying to attract more women into their organization and they couldn't understand what was happening.
Speaker C:They had a pretty good gender split in terms of the team and they used the team in their marketing.
Speaker C:So they were very kind of were doing all the steps.
Speaker C:They were like B Corp registered, they were putting their ads out to various places.
Speaker C:So they felt that they had fulfilled everything but still weren't attracting women to apply to their roles.
Speaker C:We ran analysis on their websites.
Speaker C:It's really good to do analysis on like websites because they're very context specific.
Speaker C:So for that organization, we knew who their target audience is.
Speaker C:We knew exactly what their goal was.
Speaker C:It was very not when we kind of could figure out, okay, these are the parameters of biases that may prop up.
Speaker C:But even though they had 50, 50 gender split internally on representation of their website, it was 80, 20.
Speaker C:So they were overrepresenting the men.
Speaker C:But what I really enjoyed from that is obviously we provided the data and the insight.
Speaker C:It allowed them to understand that even though they were attracting the women, their content was deterring them, was deterring them from applying.
Speaker C:But it also allowed them to give opportunities to the women team members because they had podcasts, they had other marketing things that they were using to promote their organization and they were able to bring the women team members onto those podcasts, bring them into their marketing and highlight more of them in a kind of organic way.
Speaker C:It wasn't that they weren't in the team, they just didn't think that they should be highlighting them as much and they didn't realize the disparity between their representation of team members.
Joanne Boyd:That's really.
Joanne Boyd:And that's.
Joanne Boyd:That must have been.
Joanne Boyd:So what did they do to change that at the end of your sort of analysis and what you presented them?
Speaker C:So yeah, they promoted more women in their content, they promoted more women in their sales and front facing roles.
Speaker C:So they just kind of restructured people's approach to the marketing because as an organization they were doing a lot of inbound marketing and not like directly chasing clients and so forth.
Speaker C:So they just restructured and it allowed a lot more women in the organization to be highlighted and featured.
Joanne Boyd:All right, good.
Joanne Boyd:And then have you been able to revisit that particular project and see what the impact has been sort of six months on and how has that changed sort of going forward?
Speaker C:It was really good, actually.
Speaker C:I think within three or four months they were at, I think they overrepresented out of the way.
Speaker C:So they were at 60, 40.
Speaker C:But I think that's good.
Speaker C:They were 60% women represented and 40% male.
Speaker C:But I think that's what tends to happen a lot of things that when you've alert to something, you kind of overcorrect and then you find your level.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah, indeed.
Joanne Boyd:There's always the over indexing or sort of like you're trying to address, as you quite rightly said.
Joanne Boyd:But that's must feel that's an incredible win and that's a real sort of influence on how you've proactively used AI to change attitudinal relationships on a particular area, such as recruitment, which is so important.
Joanne Boyd:And as we know there aren't enough women in this space.
Joanne Boyd:And if you want to sort of increase that, how can you sort of set the environment up so the entire, you know, your particular sort of target area can win and be successful?
Joanne Boyd:So that's, that's really exciting to hear and incredible.
Joanne Boyd:Very, very impressive as well.
Joanne Boyd:So thinking about sort of how AI can be used or sort of be used in the future, what sorts of things have you observed, particularly with regard to how it works in the space of relationships, be it in the work context or and in the business, what do you envisage see it happening?
Joanne Boyd:It's like in five to 10 years time, what have you seen?
Speaker C:So I like to go back to in a lot of my trainings I kind of, I connect AI with analogy of it being a puppy.
Speaker C:I know generative AI specifically, it will always be a puppy in my eyes.
Speaker C:But what I see in the future is the same way we were able to historically train dogs to become guide dogs and guard dogs.
Speaker C:And also we are very aware, like when we see someone publicly, we are aware that that is a guide dog based on the signage, based on the way that they interacted with.
Speaker C:And as a person who doesn't know the dog or doesn't know the person, I still know how to behave.
Speaker C:I see a future where we are all interacting with very niche generative AI models with the awareness of what they were built for.
Speaker C:So the specificity that we're in at the moment where everyone's using say ChatGPT or Gemini or what's the Other and Claude to do everything.
Speaker C:I think as a society we're going to get a lot more accustomed to going to the legal generative AI model and a lot more accustomed to understanding that we need to also have a human attached to it.
Speaker C:So the future I see is really good.
Speaker C:I think we're going to go backwards, to go forwards where everyone's going to start niching down and really focusing their AI tools.
Speaker C:But in terms of us as a society, we're all going to become hopefully very generative, AI literate and very technology literate as well.
Speaker C:But that requires a lot of other societal structures in terms of Internet access and so forth.
Speaker C:But I think this is a way to increase the access to knowledge.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah.
Joanne Boyd:And I mean, you've made some very solid points there.
Joanne Boyd:I just think as we become, as you say, sort of as each generation comes through, there'll be new sort of developments that will take place.
Joanne Boyd:And so just as we, yeah, as we become more skilled, there'll be more and more sort of new sort of ways that this sort of more niche, niche versions of generative AI tools can be sort of used and help bring out even more things that are useful for society and particularly with enhancing relationships.
Speaker C:What.
Joanne Boyd:I'm intrigued about, sort of like some of the innovations that you've seen going forward.
Joanne Boyd:Could you speak to those?
Joanne Boyd:And particularly as you see, sort of how you see your, particularly in your field, how AI as a whole can be used to develop things in the future.
Speaker C:The way I see it, and I'm really excited for this space to develop, it hasn't really has.
Speaker C:It doesn't even really have a term at the moment.
Speaker C:Like you have insurance tech and you have health tech and so forth.
Speaker C:There's a kind of inclusion and justice tech that I want to see emerge and where I would love to see, say, for example, maybe this is not the best example, but say you get a parking ticket and you are 100% sure you paid the meter before this time, and so forth and so forth.
Speaker C:And the government is saying, or whoever's issued the park ticket is saying elsewhere, your AI will be able to go out there and find evidence to support your claim.
Speaker C:And the things that are only kind of allowed to people who have the money to pay people to do it will become more.
Speaker C:Everyone will be able to do that, everyone be able to defend themselves, Everyone be able to use technology to gather evidence, to just to get justice for themselves.
Speaker C:That's where I would love to see.
Speaker C:The other thing I would love to see is a lot more transparency in this space when.
Speaker C:So we're in the UK and we have the nhs and there's been a couple of things going around about the NHS using AI.
Speaker C:They are using it in some spaces and they're generating some stuff in others.
Speaker C:But if a doctor was making the decision and AI was used or evolved in that decision, you as a person who's impacted by that, have access to that information, have access to that knowledge and are able to question both the doctor and the artificial intelligence and have a say in it and not have it like make a decision about your life without you having an input.
Speaker C:So I see a future where it hopefully levels a playing field for inclusion and justice by allowing us to be able to question and then giving us the access to question things.
Speaker C:Things.
Joanne Boyd:And then how do you intrigued by that?
Joanne Boyd:Because obviously there's a whole new sort of area of ethics and AI that has built up around it because the infrastructure we need to have that discussion as well as obviously all of the advances in the different spaces.
Joanne Boyd:How do you envisage that being sort of put into practice?
Joanne Boyd:Because our legal systems globally are not, are falling behind and are not keeping up pace.
Joanne Boyd:So, and particularly with regards to, like you say, how that affects the individual sort of, what are the things that you might, you would suggest if you were king for a day, what was your queen for the day, what would you suggest?
Speaker C:So there are several like ideas.
Speaker C:I've put them out to the world because I want someone to pick it up.
Speaker C:I would love for one, every country, I would love for every country to have its own large language model or its own kind of huge data resource.
Speaker C:And then as same way we know what's in our passports because we take our passports everywhere with us.
Speaker C:It's the same way I can see us owning our data and owning our large language models and owning our AIs and having it learn with us to benefit us.
Speaker C:So that's how I don't see it necessarily being.
Speaker C:It can't just be government, it has to be all three.
Speaker C:It has to be society, it has to be government policies and it has to be big tech as well.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah.
Speaker C:And there needs to be a level of trust and interchanging between all of those.
Speaker C:Which is why I think about the passport system.
Speaker C:It's not the greatest system, there's still some flaws with it.
Speaker C:But other countries trust that if I have a passport, my country has given it to me.
Speaker C:Therefore, once you've checked the right things, I can enter your country.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah.
Speaker C:Big organizations trust that.
Speaker C:That's a way to prove your identification when you start a job and so forth.
Speaker C:So that level of trust from this essentially book of paper is the next thing I can see happening in order for that to be a really equitable future for everyone.
Speaker C:I do have some friends that hate passports and think they shouldn't exist.
Speaker C:So that's a whole other.
Joanne Boyd:That's a whole other discussion and maybe you could have a discussion with our legal.
Joanne Boyd:With AI team member, and that's Will Charlesworth.
Joanne Boyd:But I just.
Joanne Boyd:On that point about your sort of.
Joanne Boyd:With regard to political sort of observations, some of.
Joanne Boyd:Some of the things that we've been observed are sort of different in the UK versus in the US Are there sort of a use of political terms that can be used that can cross both countries, or what things have you observed in that space?
Speaker C:So politics greatly influences media, which therefore influences AI because it's scraping the Internet and the content that's been developed.
Speaker C:And one of the interesting things we saw in our field was the word woke.
Speaker C:We saw a rise of it and initially we predicted that it will because it was always being used in American culture by a majority black Americans.
Speaker C:And then when a said person came into power, they used it, they weaponized it.
Speaker C:But what was interesting is that when we were doing our research, we saw how the word migrated and kind of embedded itself into the UK government and UK culture and UK language, which doesn't always happen A lot of the times with language as it's adopted by one or the other because of accents, because of culture, it.
Speaker C:It changes a little bit.
Speaker C:But woke was one of those words that literally the same way it was used weaponized in America was the same way it became weaponized in the uk except we have a little bit more humor with it and a little bit more satire.
Speaker C:I think it was one of the.
Speaker C:One of the newspapers published a list called like the Woke List.
Speaker C:And then everyone else was like, thank you for putting me on this list.
Speaker C:Which is.
Speaker C:Wasn't their intended outcome.
Joanne Boyd:Brilliant.
Joanne Boyd:Love it.
Joanne Boyd:That's a good breakdown of sort of how those that particular word can translate or not in both cultures.
Joanne Boyd:And I know that you were at a really incredible event in the last couple of weeks in Lisbon.
Joanne Boyd:Would you like to sort of share a bit more about that and some of the innovations that you learned there and particularly again, sort of how that might impact us on society and some of the things that you learned there.
Speaker C:Yes, yes.
Speaker C:I had an amazing opportunity to be a speaker at Web Summit, which is, I think when I mentioned it is so huge.
Speaker C:It was about, I think on regular.
Speaker C:They had 70,000 people turn up.
Speaker C:That's enormous.
Speaker C:And it happens in.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:In Lisbon, Portugal.
Speaker C:And it was such an energetic space.
Speaker C:Like There were over 15 stages.
Speaker C:Each stage specialized in a different theme of tech.
Speaker C:I was spoke on a panel on the people stage talking about DEI cuts and AI and how they can impact each Other.
Speaker C:But what was really, really fascinating was what I spoke to earlier about seeing the niches and the way people are segregating and really fine tuning how they're using AI.
Speaker C:You can see across all the products, like a lot of startups were exhibiting and you can see each area and how each stage and each theme was approaching AI.
Speaker C:It was like the topic across the board, what was fascinating.
Speaker C:So there was a government stage, I think stage 12 or something, and there was a lot of talk about how will the AIU act be adopted by other countries and that was fascinating to be a part of.
Speaker C:One of the things that really sat with me while at this conference was how widespread the implementation and the awareness of generative AI is in the startup world, no matter the country.
Speaker C:Almost every person I spoke to had an opinion, had a thought on it.
Speaker C:What was also interesting was not everyone was happy about it.
Speaker C:A lot of people felt that either it was being overhyped or it could be used in another way.
Speaker C:So, yeah, if anyone has the opportunity to go to WebSummit, I highly recommend.
Speaker C:I think the next one's going to be in Brazil or Dubai.
Speaker C:I think there's even one in Vancouver.
Speaker C:But wow, it's just so, so, so much so good of an experience and I was super grateful to have been a speaker.
Speaker C:But it was really fascinating to just speak to people, meet people all in the space of tech, just broadly, but also very clear on their niches.
Speaker C:Very clear that their government or marketing or soft SaaS stage.
Speaker C:And just startups doing so many things.
Speaker C:I think I even saw a couple of robots as well, just wandering around the space.
Joanne Boyd:Brilliant, brilliant.
Joanne Boyd:Well, it sounds like an incredible space, like the Glastonbury for techies, basically.
Joanne Boyd:It just is enormous.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah.
Joanne Boyd:And then also this is where my managing editor or executive producer for the with AI FM network.
Joanne Boyd:You mentioned about the fact you got to have an interesting conversation with Daniel Beddingfield to tell us how that came about and what you were talking about.
Joanne Boyd:And again, that's like the two worlds of your specific services, software and him as a musician coming together and connecting.
Joanne Boyd:And also see your background in data analysis.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:Was an unexpected bump in.
Speaker C:There were a lot of people that I kept looking around.
Speaker C:Like, I think I saw Mo Farah at one point, some basketball players.
Joanne Boyd:Wow.
Speaker C:But it was a very interesting space because unless you knew the person, you didn't.
Speaker C:There was also, in terms of the nerd world, there was a CEO of hugging face and there was like also the guy who invented the Internet was there.
Speaker C:My CTO wow.
Speaker C:Ran off to see him.
Joanne Boyd:That would have been all Christmases coming at once, I'm sure.
Speaker C:Very much, very much.
Speaker C:But no, it was lovely to see Daniel Bedingfield there.
Speaker C:It was my first time meeting him and it was always fascinating to see celebrities and people of influence in spaces that evolve in tech because you always wonder what is the connection?
Speaker C:And he was just interested in the power he gives to creatives and he spoke a lot about the technology in the creative field, which is not my forte.
Speaker C:So I was just interested to hear him talk about that and his passion of, you know, how does this impact creatives, how can we use technology?
Speaker C:So it was really good to meet him and also to hear he genuinely had an interest in technology.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah, no, that's great.
Joanne Boyd:And I'm particularly going back to your being at the, at the web summit.
Joanne Boyd:Were there some things that you found surprising or I mean I know you sort of, there was a whole raft of areas that sort of, everyone was, it was great to see everything niche down.
Joanne Boyd:But were there sort of some surprises even for you with regard to the world of AI and how that things won't be progressing?
Speaker C:Probably the surprising element for me was even in that space what I was doing was still new to some people.
Joanne Boyd:Right.
Speaker C:I think I've pretty gotten used to when I talk about AIB and bias generally and then when I'm teaching it and introducing people to it, I'm not surprised that they're like oh my God, I didn't know it could be like that.
Speaker C:But being in a space with a lot of tech focus and tech centric and AI founders who were like oh, I didn't know it could do that.
Speaker C:I think that was, that was the element where I was just like, okay, so you've gotten a bunch of millions and billions of money in funding and investment but haven't considered the impact of what your generative AI model could produce that could impact society.
Speaker C:And I oh, that's something I think might change, I think as cause a lot of organizations are becoming very aware of it, esg, environmental, social and governments and their impact on the wider world.
Speaker C:I think that is going to start impacting these AI startups and them having to declare it because a lot of them are just building without considering the social and government governance impact.
Speaker C:The government stuff is covered a little bit by the EU pac, EU AI act, but not the social.
Speaker C:So I think that's the only thing that surprised me.
Speaker C:I think I went there assuming everybody would be like yeah, AI bias, we know it, but it wasn't the case.
Joanne Boyd:Well, yeah, well, that's why you're a pioneer and a forerunner in your particular field.
Joanne Boyd:Because the fact that if it's not for you, if it wasn't for the fact that you existed and you provided such incredible insight through analysis of data that you're gathering together using all of these different tools, then, you know, you're able.
Joanne Boyd:It's great that you are in a position to be at such a powerful spotlight and as I said, quite a powerful pioneer in this space and I think more power to you upon the use of power so many times.
Joanne Boyd:But I generally do want that for you.
Joanne Boyd:I also just wanted to ask, just as sort of as we're coming into land, are there any other sort of things that you would like to sort of comment on or sort of provides wisdom on with regards to the whole world of AI and particularly how that sort of ties in with relationships and the things that you see.
Speaker C:First of all, thank you so much.
Speaker C:I.
Speaker C:But I want to make sure I mention some of the women that inspired me.
Joanne Boyd:Yes.
Speaker C:Dr.
Speaker C:Joy Bulloweeni.
Speaker C:A lot of my work is based on her stuff and there's a lot of people I highly recommend in terms of AI bias, going back to before the gen generative AI hype and looking at the work particularly of women of color who've been doing this for a while, and also looking at how some big organizations have treated them.
Speaker C:But, yeah, Dr.
Speaker C:Joy Bullowini, there's algorithmic justice.
Speaker C:I have all the books behind me here.
Speaker C:I need to.
Joanne Boyd:Yes.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah.
Speaker C:But, yeah, I think going back and looking at how people have been doing this for a while and how they've been trying to make change and impact things, particularly at the data level, not just in the output level, is really important.
Speaker C:I think for anyone working in the field.
Speaker C:My one, like, key message is bias is always present.
Speaker C:You just have to make a decision whether you're manipulating it or not, and you can manipulate it for good.
Speaker C:For anyone who's not in the field, I highly recommend going back to Dr.
Speaker C:Joy Bullowini's work.
Speaker C:There's a documentary on Netflix called the Coded Gaze.
Speaker C:Or the Coded.
Speaker C:The Coded Gaze, I think, or the Coded Bias.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah.
Speaker C:It's a good introductory.
Joanne Boyd:We'll put all these.
Joanne Boyd:The list of books that you have suggested for further reading in the show Notes for sure.
Joanne Boyd:Because it's important to get that information out there.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And I think it's.
Speaker C:It's a key to know how long the work has been doing.
Speaker C:So if anyone wants to Come into the field.
Speaker C:You're not starting from scratch.
Speaker C:There are others.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah, indeed.
Joanne Boyd:And then also so are there any other ways that people can get hold of you and get connected with you?
Joanne Boyd:And then also I know that you've done a TEDx Houston talk, so could you share where we where we might be able to get hold of you and then a bit of details about your company, if you would mind.
Speaker C:You can find me on all social platforms.
Speaker C:I'm going to create my blue sky today at Joy Ann Voice and as mentioned, my TEDx.
Speaker C:If you search TEDx, Joy ANN voice will come up as well where I talk about bias using that puppy analogy and how marketers and people of influence and creating content should approach it.
Speaker C:In terms of include AI, we always like to say we aim to keep you clued in so it's spelled in and include keep you clued in on language and things that are coming up in terms of how to use the best language to be inclusive and help people with their intentions of having a better impact on the world.
Speaker C:So you can find us on our website include AI and I think we're on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Speaker C:I don't know if we're still there to be honest.
Speaker C:Debated platform, but we're definitely on LinkedIn.
Joanne Boyd:Yeah, excellent.
Joanne Boyd:Well, all of those links will be in the show notes for sure, so people can find you on that.
Joanne Boyd:And yeah, no, just wanted to say thank you so much for your time.
Joanne Boyd:It's been great having this conversation and learning a lot more about how AI can be used to enhance and really drill down on data and impact campaigns and companies in a really positive way.
Joanne Boyd:So thank you for sharing your knowledge and your insight and also all of the other resources that you've mentioned as well.
Joanne Boyd:Like I said, we'll be putting those in the show notes.
Joanne Boyd:And yeah, it's been great having this chat with you, so thank you.
Speaker C:Thank you so much for having me.
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