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23 November, 2021
Category
Society Women in AI

Toju Duke is committed to driving ethical AI frameworks that benefit people and society

We are thrilled and proud to introduce our next WAIROE Toju Duke, a Program Manager “Responsible AI” at Google. With our WAIROES campaign, we want to spotlight Toju’s phenomenal contributions to the field of AI and especially product development using ethical AI frameworks.

Source
Women in AI & Toju Duke, Program Manager “Responsible AI”, Google.

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Profile Toju Duke  Wairoes Campaign

Toju has over 15 years of experience spanning Advertising, Retail, Not-For-Profits and Tech. Focussing on the benefit of everyone and access to all, Toju designs “Responsible AI” programs focused on the development and implementation of “Responsible AI” frameworks amongst Google’s product teams.

With a proven track record on business success and project management, she is a manager for Women in AI Ireland, a tech start-ups mentor, and a business advisor. Toju is a public speaker and advocates for transparent and bias-free AI aimed at reducing systemic injustices and furthering equality.

She is committed to driving social justice through AI while acknowledging the diverse backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities of society, and ensuring “Responsible AI” frameworks are applied to developing AI technologies. Toju is also the founder of VIBE, a women's community aimed at personal and professional development using the underlying principles of emotional intelligence.

According to a study by Capgemini, the size of the connected products market will range between $519 billion to $685 billion this year with AI and ML-enabled service revenue models becoming commonplace. Thus, understanding the relationship between ethical frameworks and revenues is of extreme importance to build products using AI.

We, therefore, asked Toju how responsible AI frameworks can help the industry. In her view, a strong ethical framework can serve as a guideline that can change the product and bring standardisation that benefits not only the product but also its users. Toju added that AI provides groundbreaking technology that could be used to solve the world's toughest problems. Yet, it also has the propensity to drive further discrimination and harm in society. That's why it's important that every organisation deploying AI systems adheres to ethical and responsible frameworks. This will not only drive trust amongst users and consumers, but it will avoid reputational damage and potentially increase business revenues while protecting the various members of society.

To avoid discrimination, it is imperative that there is representation and diversity while building and managing products using AI. Toju pointed out that AI is a technology designed to be deployed and served across the world, so it's important it reflects the world it's designed for. But the world we live in is multifaceted, multicultural and socially evolving every day. This means the teams that designed these AI / ML models need to be multidisciplinary and diverse to ensure every race, culture, ethnicity, ability, age, and sexual orientation are reflected and represented appropriately in these systems. This will avoid further discrimination and harm inflicted by AI and on the contrary enable safe, fair and trustworthy AI systems.

“Artificial Intelligence at its core is a game-changer and quite crucial to today’s world. It’s important everyone has a seat at the table including women and minority groups. This will lead to the development of AI systems that are meaningful, helpful and safe for all,” added Toju.

Taking into consideration ethical frameworks and continuous audits from the early stage of product development can be one of the ways with which Toju and her colleagues hope to contribute today to the creation of products that will bring common good tomorrow.

We hope for a better future, thanks to Toju’s determination and relentless contribution to AI! You can connect with Toju Duke on LinkedIn.

The Wairoes campaign is a collaboration between AI4EU - Europe’s AI-On-Demand Platform and Women in AI to celebrate and increase the visibility of women working in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Source: 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/google/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tojuduke/

https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Digital-Engineerin…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2020/07/09/10-ways-ai-is-imp…

Edited by
Inga Daase
Published on
23.11.2021
Source
Women in AI & Toju Duke, Program Manager “Responsible AI”, Google.