Who Gets Rewarded in the AI Economy? With Isvari Maranwe from YuVoice [094]

Speaker A: The Business of AI Podcast. Exploring how businesses are using AI to build services and tools, transforming organizations and delighting consumers. Produced by UKAI and hosted by Zara Shah. Women in AI AI is our business.

Speaker B: Hi, Aswari, thank you so much for joining the Women in AI, uh, UK AI Podcast. Uh, I'm Zahra Shah. Um, I would love for you to introduce yourself to all the people watching and listening. Of course.

Speaker C: So, hi, it's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Um, I'm currently the CEO of you Voice, which is a new social media platform that rewards users for impact. And what brought me here is I have an extensive experience in the law, in science, with nonprofits, with journalism, and this was kind of a perfect marriage of all of my previous experiences. I'm also a consultant in the AI space and I work with a lot of women in AI, which I think is incredible because in my background as a coder, uh, in machine learning, coding and science and in tech, I have worked in such male dominated fields and sectors. So it's really lovely to talk to more women in AI and in tech. And I think there are a lot of coders, engineers and stuff who are women in this field. So it's, it's a very exciting time. Um, I mentioned my coding background. I have a background in particle physics and supernova cosmology. I then became an attorney, worked with a bunch of very large companies, including some of the AI frontier, you know, frontier companies today, um, as an attorney in cybersecurity and data privacy. Also worked with the Department of Defense, fcc, and all the United States as an attorney. Um, and yeah, I started a couple nonprofits, including today the Sentinel, which is a large citizen journalism nonprofit covering media on the ground around the world. And I'm very, very excited to talk about how we use AI across all of the different fields and careers I've been a part of. And social media.

Speaker B: That's great. Uh, so, uh, Ishari, it'll be very helpful for people to know how you, um, entered this profession. What inspired you to, um, start this journey?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's such a good question. So for me, it's always come from something really emotional and visceral. I have always felt throughout my entire life, my m entire journey, that I've gotten very lucky because I feel like I just kind of fell into the next step and the next step and the next step, and trying to look back on it. Even those huge career changes, from physics to the law, from law to nonprofits, and starting a startup, it was all based on some really emotional or visceral experience that I've had in my life. And so for example, the startup I'm at right now, um, I've always been so attached to the idea of a strong community, a strong town square, strong village. And in the modern world we often don't have that because we've built a soc for convenience and in some ways for isolation. And on top of that, as uh, an influencer myself, I experienced such terrible things online and with current social platforms, I experienced terrible things from a data privacy perspective. As an attorney, I experienced things that made me very upset about how really, really good people didn't have resources, you know, in the nonprofit space. They didn't have resources or money or credit for the incredible impact they were creating. But then you have terrible people who are rich and famous and they get all the kudos and all the adulations. And you see this on LinkedIn where they are the people who worship. And this all created kind of had a boiling point for me where it's like, oh my God, how do we create a better society than this? How do we reward people who are doing good? How do we create better town squares? How do we create better online experiences for teenagers, for adults, for communities, for activists? And so every, I think every decision that I've, I've made in my life has felt obvious to me at the time. And that's because I've really felt a strong emotional pull to whatever it is I'm doing, I'm doing now.

Speaker B: Mhm. Would you like to share your key challenges and how did you overcome those challenges?

Speaker C: Yeah, so I mean, I think everybody faces, I think at some point a certain amount of pushback or doubt or struggles in any, any career journey, let alone a startup journey where I think all of those things are tenfold or twenty fold because all of it is kind of on your shoulders. It's a very high risk career and for me, leading the lot wasn't even higher risk decision because you know, I had a very good salary and position of prestige and all that. And I was like, you know, and do something else. But for me all of those decisions were very obvious. So I would say that, that ironically for me one of the biggest challenges has not been overcoming like what other people thought or about, you know, whether or not we would be successful.

Speaker B: But um,

Speaker C: I m think other other people's viewpoints of what a founder journey should look like and what a company should look like. I can't tell you how many times because you voice has been successful and gotten a bit of attention. How many times I've been told I should hire a white man to front the company because that would help us raise more funds, it would help us fit more traditionally in the Silicon Valley model. And this brings back so many experiences I've had in the past of uh, always being, you know, perhaps only woman, only brown woman, only brown person in many, many situations, whether that's in research in the law and science. And I think the situation has always been one of um, powerlessness and, or victimhood, which I really hate because I want to be in charge of my own future and stuff. And I also want to be in a position where bad things don't have to happen to me. I don't have to let it happen to me. So for example, when I was working on Capitol Hill, there was a lot of sexual harassment, sexual assault, same thing in Silicon Valley. Uh, there's a lot of power. And I don't think it's inherently just about those horrible crimes which happen, which is terrible and which happens way too frequently. It's also about this massive power dynamic where these people in power feel entitled to other people's time, bodies, attention. And I think it is very much that same sort of attitude that has made people feel that success looks a certain way and that men or white people are more successful in certain ways. And so I would say one of the biggest challenges that I face is just that consistent expectation that I am not what a CEO looks like, I'm not what a lawyer looks like, I am not what a physicist looks like, I'm not whatever it is like, I'm not what people expect, should be doing the things I'm doing. And rather than that be a story in itself, I would rather focus on the work that I do. And so I think for me, balancing my identity with the work I want to do has always been a challenge. Mhm.

Speaker B: Um, are, ah, there some current future projects that you'd like to share?

Speaker C: I'm always, uh, talking up you voice. Of course. We're going to be launching next year, uh, publicly as a new social, social media platform. I encourage everyone to check it. But for right now I would really like to champion our nonprofit, the Sentinel, by you voice. We're@sentinel.yu b o I c e.org and we are challenging current media because we are so, so passionate about uplifting diverse voices from around the world, um, about the history we're all living through. So you know, it's very much about championing the stories of the real people Living through history. And I'm very passionate about that because we don't need people flying in from the west to cover the stories of real people living through things. And it's always frustrated me that when one person dies or gets kidnapped in the US it's headlines. But then you can have 300, 400 people, thousands of people die in a country that's seen as a developing country or a global majority country, and people don't care. So we're challenging the world, have better journalism. We're growing the world's largest citizen journalism community, completely nonprofit. So would definitely encourage everyone to check. Check that out and support it.

Speaker B: What advice would you offer to women who want to follow a similar path to you, particularly women from the ethnic minority community? As you described, you faced a lot of challenges because of your heritage.

Speaker C: Absolutely. It's such a good question. And I've thought about this a lot over the years, and there's so many, like, I think, little tips and tricks I have. But above all, I would say one of the biggest challenges and one of the biggest unfair things is that sometimes the best advice I can give is you just have to ignore it. You have to just repeatedly ignore it. Go into every conversation pretending that this time it's going to be fair. They're going to judge me on the merits. I'm going to be confident. I'm just going to act like everyone else. I'm going to act as if I were a white man. Going into this in terms of confidence, in terms of the amount of money you're asking for, if you're a consultant or a startup founder or whatever, the way that you address conversations, the rooms you ask to be in, the confidence that you have, like, I want to be on this podcast. I want to be paid $10,000. Whatever it is. You just. You go into it assuming they are going treat you for the quality of work you bring to the table and not your identity. And that's a challenge because you know, subconsciously it's not true. They're going to have biases. You know, subconsciously, you might be facing racism or sexism and worse, once you start facing it, you start thinking that everything that happens follows that pattern because you're more tuned to noticing it. Sometimes you may even notice it when that's not what. What's going on, simply because it could be what's going on, and you're so used to it. Um, and it's. It's really psychological damage in a way. It's trauma that you're then carrying carrying with you as well. And, and it's so, so unfair to put it on like, the victim, basically. It's so unfair to be like, you should just get over it. And I don't think that anybody should just get over it or not take the time to address it and to heal from it, because it is horrible. That being said, one of the best techniques I've found is to just pretend it's not happening over and over and over again. Just pretend it's not happening. Go into meetings, go into conversations, go into talks, anything. And just be like, I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I'm clearly here because I'm qualified. Like, just kind of ignore it. When people will make these, these comments, just, you know, pretend you don't understand what they're saying. Make them have to explain themselves. Pretend that you have no idea why you would be paid less, why you would be asked to get a cup of coffee, why you would be treated a certain way. Just be like, I don't, I don't get it. I'm a CEO. I'm here. Ah, you're, You're a CEO. You're here. Like, it's what it is.

Speaker B: Um, what sort of legacy do you wish to leave behind, especially with the work that you're doing, trying to, you know, raise, um, uh, a voice for those who are perhaps not strong enough to speak up for themselves, to almost become the voice for the voiceless?

Speaker C: Yeah, no, it's such a good question. I really, really believe we could have a very different world than the one we have right now. I think one of the big roles that AI has to play in that is AI has been able to 10x the amount of time, resources delivery that we have as a society and at you voice, for example, we are very passionate about using AI to enhance the experience that humans have as a tool for humans, not a replacement for humans. We say this all the time, and I think we have a world. We could have a world in the future where everybody has enough money, enough food, like, m. Forget. Money is a tool like enough food, housing, shelter, resources to live a really good life. Everybody in the world, 8 billion people could have that and could live safely and, you know, not be at, uh, any health threats or war threats or any of the horrible things going on. And we could create that future. I really do think we could create that future. Especially with AI supporting that kind of future, uh, and not detracting from it. We could create it, and we need to empower people who care about creating it. We need to empower people who care about impact. So I'm all about championing the champions because we need more resources to help, you know, to help things end up there. And so I would love my legacy to just be. I think legacy is also a very long term question. I'm 29, I'm like, I don't think about short term legacy, but we really want our legacy at U Voice to be changing society so that everybody, when you meet them, you're, they're asking, what's your mission? What impact do you care about? People are asking, you know, what your purpose is, what projects you're working on, what issues you care about when you meet someone, not like, you know, where do you work or how much money do you make, where people are bragging about how many lives they've changed or how much impact they've made instead of like a new handbag or how big their house is or how many followers they have. So I believe that back uh, around 2000, I would say people really cared about money above all else. Like the richer you were, the more powerful you were. Today there are rooms that I can get into simply because I have a lot of followers that I would never have been able to get into, um, otherwise. Right. Because everybody else in the room might be wealthier, might be whatever it is, but fame has been an equalizer and I think social media, the first iteration of social media, brought that about. And so we want our legacy to be that second iteration where now we bring about entry into those rooms and creation of that power and creation of that credit allocation, those resources. Shifting society to care more about impact, um, instead of fame and money. Mhm.

Speaker B: Uh, how can people get in touch with you?

Speaker C: Sorry, uh, great question. Not easy. Uh, I. We have a contact, there's a contact form that I've linked on like the bottom of my LinkedIn page. LinkedIn in general is a place where I do try to accept contacts and I try to respond to as many DMs as I can, but these days it's, it's getting hard. Um, but there is, there's like a contact at the bottom of my LinkedIn page that I do, I do get to. And um, yeah, I definitely need to figure out what we're going to do about, about emails. I used to be very reachable and it's, it's at the point where I just, I just can't keep up. But I um, am on LinkedIn at uh, you know, slash my first name and on TikTok and Instagram. @ah.eshri M. And I do try to respond to people.

Speaker B: Um, and finally, Swarie, is there anything else that you'd like to share?

Speaker C: Gosh. Um, you know, I. I think we are at a crux with AI, especially because I know a lot of people who listen to this podcast are probably really passionate about AI, and I would encourage everyone to look into a bit of AI ethics and a bit of the ways in which we can use AI for good and, um, AI for ill. Because AI is a lot more powerful and scary in both good and bad ways than I think people really understand, both in terms of how to deploy it and how fast we develop it. I think the conversation has been hijacked by a lot of people who are missing some of the very, very key elements of how AI works and the impact AI can have. And maybe this is something I need to do a series about or talk about, but I would encourage everybody to, uh. There's a CGP grey video that talks about how AI works. I encourage people to watch that. I encourage people to read. If anyone builds it, everyone dies. Don't have to agree with the premise to, like, understand that that's an important conversation to have. Think a lot about how we train AI, where we deploy it. Think a lot about how much power we give it. This. Just this morning, there was news that it has, like, they had a system where they were running AI on a closed system, and it figured out how to get out of that closed system and figure out how to hack the, like, training results that it could, like, it could solve the problem it was given. These things are terrifying if not deployed correctly. And I do think that there are not enough people talking about how to deploy it correctly. There are not a lot of people in AI ethics, and it's considered a fringe thing. There's the windfall trust, of course. It's a future of life initiative. They're nonprofits who are working on. I encourage people to check it. Check them out. Um, and to talk about. Yeah, and to talk about it, because better AI is better AI, you know, Claude is slightly better than chat. Like, anthropic is slightly better than open AI. That difference does matter. You know, China was putting brakes on AI until the US Was like, never mind. Full steam ahead. Things like Department of Defense in the United States controlling what AI gets deployed or asking for backdoors into things, or, um, you know, doing terrible things with AI. That stuff is dangerous. That's planetarily dangerous. So I would say check that stuff out. I say this as a consultant. I say this as somebody in AI who has worked with Fortune 500s to deploy AI. And so hopefully people will take it seriously from me because I know there's a lot of people where people ignore what they're saying because they feel like, well, they're just AI naysayers. That's we use AI, consultant AI. I'm still saying it's dangerous and people should look into, into what they can do to put brakes on it until we know how we can use it. So that, that's probably my, my last takeaway.

Speaker B: Thank you so much, Aswari, for joining.

Speaker A: Don't miss the next episode. Subscribe now. UKAI is the trade association for businesses across the uk, tech and non tech, large and small. M AI is our business. Find out more at. Uh, UKAI Co.