Julien Cornebise, Director of Research, AI for Good at Element AI: the ethics, scarcity and drive for purpose of AI and the humans that build it

Julien Cornebise is a Director of Research, AI for Good at Element AI and head of the London Office. He is also an honorary researcher at University College London. Prior to Element AI, Julien was at DeepMind (later acquired by Google) as an early employee, where he led several fundamental research projects used in early demos and fundraising. After leaving DeepMind in 2016, he worked with Amnesty International. Julien holds an MSc in Computer Engineering, an MSc in Mathematical Statistics, and a PhD in Mathematics, specialized in Computational Statistics, from University Paris VI Pierre and Marie Curie and Telecom ParisTech. He received the 2010 Savage Award in Theory and Methods from the International Society for Bayesian Analysis for his PhD work.

In today’s episode Julien shares some considerations on what makes AI good or bad; reflections on the ethics and drive for purpose of the humans that build technology; his experience working alongside anthropologists and sociologists as part of Element AI’s team of AI for Good; the value of diversity in teams and how to prevent replicating bias with AI; advice to anthropologists considering to transition to industry ; some key points of the keynote he will give at the Anthropology + Technology Conference 2019 happening on Oct 3rd in Bristol, UK under the theme of Championing socially responsible AI.

Mentioned in Podcast:

DeepMind Technologies
ElementAI
AI for Good
Kentaro Toyama
Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology, Kentaro Toyama

UN Sustainable Development Goals

2019 AI Talent report - issued by element AI

Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?, Kate Conger, Cade Metz, NY Times, Oct 7 2018
Thomas Piketty

Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty

Davos 2019: Historian Rutger Bregman berates billionaires at World Economic Forum over tax avoidance

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, Rutger Bregman

Anthropology + Technology Conference 2019

Julien’s work:

Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=6fkVVz4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Social media and other links:

Email: julien AT elementai.com

LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliencornebise

Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/JCornebise