Podcast appearances and mentions of Vivienne Ming

What makes the smartest teams? How will we use AI in the future? And why is being human good? We met up with theoretical neuroscientist Vivienne Ming to get all the details.

As AI becomes more present in our everyday lives, fears around how it is used & exploited continue to grow. Dr. Vivienne Ming, a theoretical neuroscientist & entrepreneur, spoke at an Irish Management Institute masterclass today on building smarter, more innovative teams and believes AI-driven solutions can have a positive social impact.

In this episode of Now that's Significant, a market research podcast, host Michael Howard delves into the complex relationship between artificial intelligence and human creativity with guest Vivienne Ming, a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author. Vivienne, known for her work designing AI systems to address human challenges, challenges the prevailing narrative that AI will free us up to be more creative, arguing that using generative AI to do all the monotonous tasks can actually lead to more routine, mediocre work, which can lead to inferior outcomes. Instead, Vivienne advocates for AI to be used in such a way that makes your job harder. If AI can present what you were about to present, then what value are you bringing to the table? Therefore, we need to use AI in such a way that it challenges our position, helps us think far more deeply about our challenge, and go well beyond what's served up to us with LLMS. Otherwise, we risk producing things that look and sound very similar to everyone else, and no-one is any wiser. Here are five key takeaways from the episode: AI can inadvertently stifle creativity: By automating routine tasks, AI can lead to an increase in those tasks, rather than freeing up time for more creative endeavors. Human uniqueness is crucial for innovation: The true value of human intelligence lies in exploring the unknown and asking ill-posed questions, a domain where AI currently falls short. Embrace uncertainty and diverse perspectives: To foster creativity, individuals and teams must be comfortable with uncertainty and seek out diverse perspectives that challenge conventional wisdom. Reward productive friction: Organizations should incentivize exploration and reward individuals for being productively wrong, as this leads to greater collective intelligence and innovation. Collaborate with AI, don't be replaced by it: Rather than blindly following AI's suggestions, individuals should engage in a dynamic collaboration with AI, challenging its outputs and using it to enhance their own creative thinking. Tune in to this thought-provoking episode to learn more about the evolving relationship between AI and human creativity, and how we can harness AI's power while preserving our unique human capabilities. Don't forget to check out other episodes of Now that's Significant on YouTube or on most major podcast platforms. *** Infotools Harmoni is a fit-for-purpose market research analysis, visualization, and reporting platform that gives the world's leading brands the tools they need to better understand their consumers, customers, organization, and market. www.infotools.com Established in 1990, we work with some of the world's top brands around the world, including Coca-Cola, Orange, Samsung, and Mondelēz. Our powerful cloud-based platform, Harmoni, is purpose-built for market research. From data processing to investigation, dashboards to collaboration, Harmoni is a true "data-to-decision-making" solution for in-house corporate insights teams and agencies. While we don't facilitate market research surveys, provide sample, or collect data, we make it easy for market researchers to find and share compelling insights that go over-and-above what stakeholders want, inspiring them to act decisively. One of the most powerful features of Harmoni is Discover, a time-tested, time-saving, and investigative approach to data analysis. Using automated analyses to reveal patterns and trends, Discover minimizes potential research bias by removing the need for requesting and manually analyzing scores of cumbersome crosstabs – often seeing what you can't. Discover helps you easily find what differentiates groups that matter to you, uncover what makes them unique, and deliver data points that are interesting, relevant, and statistically significant, plus see things others can't. Add to all this an impending GenAI feature, and you have an extremely powerful, future-proofed tool.

AI is at the forefront of work, tech, and global development – and it's here to stay. While there are ongoing dilemmas and fears surrounding the future of AI, renowned neuroscientist Vivienne Ming sees it differently. For over a decade, she has harnessed AI to enhance human potential, designing systems to treat her son's diabetes, predict manic episodes in those with bipolar disorder, and reunite orphaned refugees with extended family members, among many other initiatives. Vivienne has emerged not only as a leading scientist in the field but also as a passionate advocate for using AI as a powerful tool to unlock human ability.Vivienne Ming is a renowned theoretical neuroscientist and AI expert. She is the co-founder and CEO of the think tank Socos Labs, as well as chief scientist at Dionysus Digital Health and The Human Trust. Her research has been showcased on TEDx, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, the New York Times, BBC Radio 4, and NPR. In this episode, Dart and Vivienne discuss:- Vivienne's diverse background in AI and research - AI's qualitative advantages over humans today- How AI can predict and influence individual success- Metalearning and perspective taking- Building stronger teams and social networks with AI- The moral limits of markets- How minority opinions can reshape collective market intelligence - And other topics…Vivienne Ming is a renowned theoretical neuroscientist and artificial intelligence expert. As the co-founder and CEO of the think tank Socos Labs, she consults on AI, neuroscience, and education reform, exploring the future of human potential. She also serves as chief scientist at Dionysus Digital Health and The Human Trust. Her AI inventions have launched multiple companies and nonprofits, all centered on unlocking human potential. Vivienne's research has been showcased on TEDx, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, the New York Times, BBC Radio 4, and NPR. Vivienne received her B.S. in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California at San Diego and her M.S. and PhD in Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. She then held a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford and UC Berkeley, where she later joined as a research scientist and visiting scholar. Vivienne sits on boards of numerous companies and nonprofits including StartOut, The Palm Center, Cornerstone Capital, Platypus Institute, Shiftgig, Zoic Capital, and HUMM.Resources mentioned:How to Robot-Proof Your Kids, by Vivienne Ming: https://academy.socos.org/ Geek Heresy, by Kentaro Toyama: https://www.amazon.com/Geek-Heresy-Rescuing-Social-Technology/dp/161039528X Connect with Vivienne:www.socos.org www.dionysushealth.comwww.optoceutics.comwww.thehumantrust.org “The Tax on Being Different” video: https://glginsights.com/videos/decisions-in-hiring/ Work with Dart:Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what's most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

AI as a productivity tool is old news. The reality is that we're just barely scratching the surface of what's possible with generative AI. Today, we gain a different perspective on how AI can be leveraged as productive friction for enhancing human capacity.  This isn't about making repetitive tasks easier; it's about making us better. In this episode, we explore the untapped potential of AI with Dr. Vivienne Ming, a renowned AI expert, neuroscientist, and visionary in leveraging AI to unlock the full spectrum of human capacity. As a self-proclaimed professional mad scientist, she's the co-founder of Socos Labs and sits on the board and leadership teams at several other tech companies and organizations, including OptoCeutics and Dionysus Health. Dr. Ming has been at the forefront of using AI to unlock human potential and improve lives, challenging the conventional narratives surrounding artificial intelligence. We discuss how AI can serve as a powerful partner in augmenting human intelligence, pushing us toward deeper insights and solutions that we wouldn't have reached on our own. From the workforce to education, Dr. Ming sheds light on how AI can boost our creativity, making us better learners, thinkers, and innovators. But it's not just about what AI can do for us individually; it's about how we can leverage it to create better teams and communities. By recognizing its limitations, we can get the most out of AI through productive friction, using it as a sparring partner of sorts to challenge our ideas, find areas of improvement, and see problems through a new lens. Curious about how AI can enhance your life and work, not just simplify it? Tune in now. — Key Takeaways: Introduction of Dr. Vivienne Ming (00:00) Using AI To Improve Humanity (00:54) The Concept of Augmented Intelligence (04:47) Critical Thinking and Using AI as a Source of Productive Friction (12:22) Dr. Ming's POV on AI's Impact on Jobs (30:30) Unexpected Ways We Can Use AI to Harness Our Unique Gifts (45:07) Speed Round Questions (01:07:06) — ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Explore Dr. Vivienne Ming's ventures: Socos Labs: https://www.socos.org Dionysus Digital Health: https://dionysushealth.com/ The Human Trust: https://www.thehumantrust.org/#mission OptoCeutics: https://optoceutics.com/ Connect with Dr. Vivienne Ming on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivienneming — Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/44ieyPB Follow our podcast: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/44kONi6 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3NtVK9W   Join the TDW tribe and learn more: https://disruptedwork.com

In this episode, Chanda speaks with Dr. Vivienne Ming, a self-proclaimed mad scientist and expert in AI. Born into a family with high expectations, Dr. Ming shares her personal journey of overcoming homelessness and rediscovering her purpose. She explains her groundbreaking work in AI, focusing on its potential to help humans thrive rather than simply replacing them in the workforce. Dr. Ming discusses the importance of nurturing qualities like resilience, working memory, and meaningfulness in life, which are powerful predictors of positive long-term outcomes. www.smithbaker.co www.conversationswithchanda.com IG @chandasbaker & @conversationswithchanda Twitter: @chandasbaker https://www.socos.org/

In a special edition of the ReD podcast, we're bringing you the best bits of a conversation that took place last week in our offices in NYC, where Ian Dull sat down with neuroscientist and entrepreneur Vivienne Ming and VP of Research Science at Meta's Reality Labs, Richard Newcombe, to discuss the role of bodies in the age of AI In front of a packed room on a cold New York evening, they discussed how computers “see” and interpret the world compared to how we as humans do, when and how to integrate these technologies for different industries from healthcare to education, tech to finance, and finally, what's next for more embodied forms of AI.

Dr. Vivienne Ming (Professional Mad Scientist), joined us on The Modern People Leader.   We talked about letting AI replace the routine work, the qualities of the smartest teams, and how to foster collective intelligence.  ---- (2:00) Good news stories (6:00) Digging under the surface to get to the root of problems (20:45) Her career journey as an entrepreneur and scientist (33:00) History of AI over the last 25 years (41:56) Three definitions of AI (48:39) The non routine is what's left of our jobs after AI (56:30) Building AI to augment people (58:12) Teaching future generations how to learn (1:01:06) What separates the most elite performers from everyone else (1:09:54) The 3 qualities of the “smartest teams” (1:17:10) Psychological safety isn't just a squishy idea about not hurting people's feelings (1:23:20) How to foster collective intelligence at your company (1:34:45) Identifying pockets of low psychological safety (1:43:30) Rapid fire questions ----

In this episode: THE IDEALISTS. host and entrepreneur, Melissa Kiguwa, speakS with Dr. Vivienne Ming, theoretical neuroscientist, artificial intelligence expert, and one of BBC's 100 women. Frequently featured for her research and inventions in The Financial Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Quartz and the New York Times, Vivienne is the co-founder of Socos Labs-- her fifth company-- an independent institute exploring the future of human potential. In this episode, Vivienne discusses her exciting work around working memory, brain hacking, and increasing human potential alongside the phenomenal life path that set her on this journey.What we learned: Vivienne begins the conversation by explaining working memory-- the small amount of information that can be held in mind and used in the execution of cognitive tasks-- and how everyday people can improve their working memory. She also shares her research on how to increase human potential to improve the flourishing of our lives. Join the conversation about THE IDEALISTS. and break*through. At our website: https://www.theidealistspodcast.co/On Instagram: @theidealistspodcast_On Twitter: @theidealistspodHelp us to grow! Leave a review of the show on Apple or SpotifyOrder a copy of the*journalWe're sponsored by the London School of Economics @lsegenerate

Dr. Vivienne Ming is a neuroscientist, inventor and author. She is featured frequently for her research and inventions in The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Quartz Magazine and the New York Times.

When it comes to scaling and advancing our DEI commitments, technology holds many promises, and even more pitfalls. Many DEI-focused technologies make bold claims about their ability to root out biases, particularly in HR functions. Yet, experienced DEI professionals recognize that while technology does have the power to advance and scale our goals, without important oversight, the very biases this technologies aim to upend can become exacerbated by them. During this episode, Vivienne Ming offers oversight strategies to keep these technologies in check. Vivienne is a theoretical neuroscientist, technologist, and the co-founder of Socos, a company that combines machine learning and cognitive neuroscience to maximize life outcomes. Rhodes and Vivienne engage in an honest discussion that introduces you to a few of the technologies being used by DEI professionals to help advance their goals, and they will also highlight their specific limitations as an important reminder that technology alone is not a panacea to overcome biases at work. After you listen, please be sure to explore these additional resources: Read this Workforce Solutions Review, The Power & Pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence by Rhodes Perry & Bernadette Smith: shorturl.at/ktUX4.Subscribe to the Imagine Belonging at Work Newsletter: https://www.rhodesperry.com/subscribe.Leave an honest rating and review of the show: http://www.imaginebelongingatwork.com/.

Cindy Moehring chats with Vivienne Ming, a self-described mad scientist, theoretical neuroscientist, AI expert, entrepreneur, author, and is well-known for her research and inventions. The pair discuss the responsible and ethical use of AI as a tool. AI is not able to solve problems that humans don't know the answers to first. Therefore, the best practice for solving impossible business problems is combining creative people with sophisticated artificial intelligence. Learn more about the Business Integrity Leadership Initiative by visiting our website at https://walton.uark.edu/business-integrity/ (https://walton.uark.edu/business-integrity/) Links from episode: Ming's Financial Times Article: “Human insight remains essential to beat the bias of algorithms”: https://www.ft.com/content/59520726-d0c5-11e9-b018-ca4456540ea6 (https://www.ft.com/content/59520726-d0c5-11e9-b018-ca4456540ea6 ) Ming's article on Diversity-Innovation Paradox: https://blog.techinclusion.co/trust-ad9b4dde4446 (https://blog.techinclusion.co/trust-ad9b4dde4446) Socos Newsletter: https://www.socos.org (https://www.socos.org) Remote Work: https://www.socos.org/remote-part-1/ (https://www.socos.org/remote-part-1/ ) This Is Not the Industrial Revolution: https://www.socos.org/not-the-ir-part-1/ (https://www.socos.org/not-the-ir-part-1/) Explore economic working papers of the National Bureau of Economic Research here: https://www.nber.org/papers?page=1&perPage=50&sortBy=public_date (https://www.nber.org/papers?page=1&perPage=50&sortBy=public_date)

In episode 2, Andrew talks to Dr Vivienne Ming, theoretical neuroscientist and AI visionary, about the power of sacrifice, and using science to make a positive difference in the world.Vivienne calls herself a “professional mad scientist” who is dedicated to solving some of the world's most pressing problems. In 2017 she created Socos Labs, which she calls a “philanthropic laboratory”. Socos is an independent think tank and incubator that uses machine learning, neuroscience and economics to explore the future of human potential.Says Vivienne: “People bring me problems and if my team and I think we can make a meaningful difference we try to come up with a solution. And then if we succeed we just give it away. Turns out it's the worst start-up idea ever!” Her path to being on the vanguard of new thinking has not been straightforward, or always easy. But it has made her a leader who puts the wellbeing of others at the heart of everything she does.“I know what it's like to not to know where your next meal is coming from or to have given up entirely, so that gives me a different perspective on what it means to be a CEO or someone in a position to make a difference.” Featuring:Dr Andrew White, Senior Fellow of Management Practice, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.Dr Vivienne Ming (@neuraltheory), CEO, Socos Labs. • Subscribe to Andrew's Leadership2050 Newsletter on LinkedIn• Discover more articles, podcasts and videos from Saïd Business School on the challenges business leaders of the future need to consider on Oxford Answers • Follow us on Twitter @Oxford_AnswersSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In Series 2 Andrew White meets six more vanguard leaders – F1 Mercedes boss Toto Wolff; AI visionary Vivienne Ming; former Unilever CEO Paul Polman; entrepreneur and philanthropist Audette Excel; circular economy pioneer Jessica Long; and spiritual leader Thomas Hubl. How are they rethinking business for the 21st century? Leadership2050 is a podcast bringing you leadership lessons from the frontlines of positive change. 2050 is a critical date. By then we will know if we have solved the existential risks humanity faces. We will know if current and future company leaders can transcend these risks and turn them into opportunities. Dr Andrew White is a Senior Fellow of Management Practice at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. His research and teaching focuses on how leaders transcend 21st century challenges such as disruptive technology and the climate crisis. Also, how they create cultures that are diverse, inclusive, resilient and high performing, alongside the ongoing challenge of delivering profitable growth. At Oxford he directs the Oxford Advanced Management and Leadership Programme, and works with leaders from industry and governments across the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Trigger warning: This podcast episode contains discussion of suicidal ideation.In Episode 76 (recorded live), Dr. Vivienne Ming, Founder, and CEO of Socos Labs, joins Melinda to discuss her new research on the neuroscience of trust in the workplace. They explore why we tend to feel an innate sense of trust in certain people over others, how we can overcome these biases to strengthen the trust on our teams, and how working remotely can shift how we build trust and psychological safety.About Dr. Vivienne Ming (she/her)Dr. Vivienne Ming explores maximizing human capacity as a theoretical neuroscientist, delusional inventor, and demented author.Over her career, she's founded 6 startups, been chief scientist at 2 others, and launched the “mad science incubator”, Socos Labs, where she explores seemingly intractable problems—from a lone child's disability to global economic inclusion—for free.Vivienne's other companies apply machine learning to lessen the corrosive health effects of chronic stress in communities, fight bias in hiring and promotion, develop neurotechnologies to treat dementia and TBI, and promote learning at home and in school. As a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, she pursued her research in cognitive neuroprosthetics.In her free time, Vivienne designs AI systems to treat her son's diabetes, predict manic episodes in bipolar sufferers, and reunite orphan refugees with extended family members. For relaxation, she writes science fiction and spends time with her wife and children.Vivienne was named one of “10 Women to Watch in Tech” by Inc. Magazine and one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2017. Find Leading With Empathy & Allyship useful? Subscribe to our podcast and like this episode!For more about Change Catalyst, and to join us for our monthly live event, visit https://ally.cc. There, you'll also find educational resources and highlights from this episode.Connect With Dr. Vivienne Ming On SocialLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivienneming/Twitter https://twitter.com/neuraltheoryConnect With Us On SocialYouTube: youtube.com/c/changecatalystTwitter: twitter.com/changecatalystsFacebook: facebook.com/changecatalystsInstagram: instagram.com/techinclusionLinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/changecatalystsProduction TeamCreator & Host: Melinda Briana EplerCo-Producers: Renzo Santos & Christina Swindlehurst ChanCreative Director @ Podcast Rocket: Rob ScheerbarthThis episode is sponsored by First Tech Federal Credit Union, a member-owned financial institution that is powered by a people-before-profit philosophy. Learn more at https://www.firsttechfed.com[Image description: Leading With Empathy & Allyship promo with the Change Catalyst logo and photos of Dr. Vivienne Ming, a White trans female with shoulder-length blonde hair, who is wearing a black sleeveless blouse and smiling at the camera, and host Melinda Briana Epler, a White woman with red hair, glasses, and an orange shirt holding a white mug behind a laptop.]Support the show (http://patreon.com/changecatalysts)

Episode 19, Segment 1 of 3 – Dr. Vivienne Ming – A Shared Purpose Trident Room Host Mike Wish sits down and has a conversation with philanthropica mad scientist Dr. Vivienne Ming. This episode was recorded on August 24, 2021. Dr. Vivienne Ming explores maximizing human capacity as a theoretical neuroscientist, delusional inventor, and demented author. Over her career she's founded 6 startups, been chief scientist at 2 others, and launched the “mad science incubator", Soco's Labs, where she explores seemingly intractable problems—from a lone child's disability to global economic inclusion—for free. Vivienne's other companies apply machine learning to lessen the corrosive health effects of chronic stress in communities, fight bias in hiring and promotion, develop Neurotechnologies to treat dementia and TBI, and promote learning at home and in school. As a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, she pursued her research in researching neuroprosthetics. In her free time, Vivienne designs AI systems to treat her son's diabetes, predict manic episodes in bipolar sufferers, and reunite orphan refugees with extended family members. For relaxation, she writes science fiction and spends time with her wife and children. Vivienne was named “10 Women to Watch in Tech” by Inc. Magazine and one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2017. She is featured frequently for her research and inventions in The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Quartz Magazine and the New York Times. Twitter: @neuraltheory LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/vivienneming/ The Trident Room Podcast is brought to you by the Naval Postgraduate School Alumni Association and the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation. npsfoundation.org/ For comments, suggestions, and critiques, please email us at TridentRoomPodcastHost@nps.edu, and find us online at nps.edu/tridentroompodcast. Thank you! The views expressed in this interview are those of the individuals and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense, the US Navy, or the Naval Postgraduate School.

Episode 19, Segment 2 of 3 – Dr. Vivienne Ming – MAD SCIENCE Trident Room Host Mike Wish sits down and has a conversation with philanthropic mad scientist Dr. Vivienne Ming. This episode was recorded on August 24, 2021. Dr. Vivienne Ming explores maximizing human capacity as a theoretical neuroscientist, delusional inventor, and demented author. Over her career she's founded 6 startups, been chief scientist at 2 others, and launched the “mad science incubator", Soco's Labs, where she explores seemingly intractable problems—from a lone child's disability to global economic inclusion—for free. Vivienne's other companies apply machine learning to lessen the corrosive health effects of chronic stress in communities, fight bias in hiring and promotion, develop Neurotechnologies to treat dementia and TBI, and promote learning at home and in school. As a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, she pursued her research in researching neuroprosthetics. In her free time, Vivienne designs AI systems to treat her son's diabetes, predict manic episodes in bipolar sufferers, and reunite orphan refugees with extended family members. For relaxation, she writes science fiction and spends time with her wife and children. Vivienne was named “10 Women to Watch in Tech” by Inc. Magazine and one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2017. She is featured frequently for her research and inventions in The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Quartz Magazine and the New York Times. Twitter: @neuraltheory LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/vivienneming/ The Trident Room Podcast is brought to you by the Naval Postgraduate School Alumni Association and the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation. npsfoundation.org/ For comments, suggestions, and critiques, please email us at TridentRoomPodcastHost@nps.edu, and find us online at nps.edu/tridentroompodcast. Thank you! The views expressed in this interview are those of the individuals and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense, the US Navy, or the Naval Postgraduate School.

Episode 19, Segment 3 of 3 – Dr. Vivienne Ming – Inventing Superpowers Trident Room Host Mike Wish sits down and has a conversation with philanthropic mad scientist Dr. Vivienne Ming. This episode was recorded on August 24, 2021. Dr. Vivienne Ming explores maximizing human capacity as a theoretical neuroscientist, delusional inventor, and demented author. Over her career she's founded 6 startups, been chief scientist at 2 others, and launched the “mad science incubator", Soco's Labs, where she explores seemingly intractable problems—from a lone child's disability to global economic inclusion—for free. Vivienne's other companies apply machine learning to lessen the corrosive health effects of chronic stress in communities, fight bias in hiring and promotion, develop Neurotechnologies to treat dementia and TBI, and promote learning at home and in school. As a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, she pursued her research in researching neuroprosthetics. In her free time, Vivienne designs AI systems to treat her son's diabetes, predict manic episodes in bipolar sufferers, and reunite orphan refugees with extended family members. For relaxation, she writes science fiction and spends time with her wife and children. Vivienne was named “10 Women to Watch in Tech” by Inc. Magazine and one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2017. She is featured frequently for her research and inventions in The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Quartz Magazine and the New York Times. Twitter: @neuraltheory LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/vivienneming/ The Trident Room Podcast is brought to you by the Naval Postgraduate School Alumni Association and the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation. npsfoundation.org/ For comments, suggestions, and critiques, please email us at TridentRoomPodcastHost@nps.edu, and find us online at nps.edu/tridentroompodcast. Thank you! The views expressed in this interview are those of the individuals and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense, the US Navy, or the Naval Postgraduate School.

"Ai is just a powerful set of tools, what we really need is to understand human problems better.." A thought provoking and insightful discussion with Vivienne Ming on seeking to solve the world's messiest human problems using technology, in companies and in communities, by creating a more inclusive world. We discuss the power of AI and technological tools coupled with an understanding of just how ward it is to tackle human problems such as economic inequality, sexism or discrimination. How can we measure this untapped human potential and use it for philanthropic ends ? Messy problems have messy solutions - the answer is always more than a simple yes or no - as technology advances, nothing is that binary, and neither are humans. How to manage this increasing complexity and bring our best selves to our everyday lives ? How can we harness the potential of collective intelligence differently ? We discuss and explore these questions and more as Vivienne shares her stories, insights and research on this fascinating and complex subject. The main insights from this episode are : The world depicted by science fiction is not always so wonderful, but is some of it achievable? Whilst society has limitations, there is always the idea that something could be better.  Also seeking to channel energy and expertise into philanthropic, profoundly human projects for the greater good (e.g. in the fields of education, public health) – why not build it so people can use it? But this could easily become dystopian… AI is a powerful set of tools, but we can't do everything with it. There is a lack of understanding about just how hard it is to tackle human problems, such as economic inequality or sexism, for example. People do not always act rationally. There is no such thing as ‘AI dust' – the current challenge is technology utopianists claiming problems will be solved vs. those advocating the wholesale banning of technology. We are both scared and excited by technology, so what do we do with it?  We must make good choices and take responsibility; we must limit the negative impact and ensure that no one group suffers. Messy problems have messy solutions, and we must decide what is right and what is wrong. The answer is always more than a simple yes or no - as technology advances, nothing is that binary, and neither are humans. We must bring our best selves to our lives every day and create an environment that allows us to do so. We must realise that our best self is not perfect, but we still have to try. We should not aim too high nor feel like a failure - life is not perfect and that is not the purpose. Scientists conducting research hope to be ‘less wrong' than their predecessors. Nothing is a shock - science is never right, and its dirty secret is that (simple) truisms are hardly ever 100% accurate but they generalise, look for patterns/clues and are based on heterogeneity. When it comes to collective intelligence, what makes a group smart? The biggest predictor is how diverse the group is. In developmental psychology, enriched, i.e. diverse, environments produced bigger brains - more thoughts, more emotional resilience, more cultural enrichment; (how) can these positive interactions be economically productive? Looking at peoples' potential, what is their uniqueness that will make a difference? Most people will not have the opportunity in life to make a difference, but why is it so scary for those who do to share the good fortune they have and allow others to try? ‘All of our lives would be better if all of our lives were better.' There is an enormous amount of untapped human potential in the world, and this must change: it is not us vs. them, but us vs. nothing or us vs. ourselves: everyone can give back if they are given the chance to do so.  We must deliberately find our world's problems (in areas such as education, ethics, AI) and take an ‘intelligently messy' approach to solving them. It is about solving...

Episode 2 collides two rockstars of the world of artificial intelligence to reimagine the field for the next generation. Is consciousness quantum or just me talking to myself? Could quantum computing unlock a step change in artificial intelligence? Our guests also get down to earth on the need for AI to tackle real-world data-poor problems from hiring bias to diagnosing manic episodes in bipolar sufferers. There is a recurring flaw in applied artificial intelligence, argues Ming. Machine learning is not a Deus ex machina for your company's problems: expertise is queen, and innovation by gender and ethnic minorities is problematically undervalued. To find out more, join hosts Mark Rayner and Abha Eli Phoboo as they speak with Maria and Vivienne on the subject of Quantum AI.  Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist and serial AI entrepreneur. Maria Spiropulu is an influential experimental particle physicist who is leading the way on the use of quantum technologies in AI.

Vivienne Ming is an internationally recognized neuroscientist and AI expert who has pushed the boundaries of AI in diverse areas including education, human resources, disability, and physical and mental health. In this episode, we ask Vivienne how we can ensure that society captures the benefits of AI technologies while mitigating their risks and avoiding harms to vulnerable populations. ----- To learn more about EqualAI, visit our website: https://www.equalai.org/ You can also follow us on Twitter: @ai_equal

In the twenty-seventh episode of The Idealists. (formerly Grit & Grace), entrepreneur and host Melissa Kiguwa talks to the amazing Dr. Vivienne Ming. Frequently featured for her research and inventions in The Financial Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Quartz and the New York Times, Vivienne is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author. She co-founded Socos Labs, her fifth company, an independent institute exploring the future of human potential. In this episode we discuss her exciting work around working memory and human potential alongside the phenomenal life path that set her on this journey. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theidealists/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theidealists/support

In the twenty-seventh episode of The Idealists. (formerly Grit & Grace), entrepreneur and host Melissa Kiguwa talks to the amazing Dr. Vivienne Ming. Frequently featured for her research and inventions in The Financial Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Quartz and the New York Times, Vivienne is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author. She co-founded Socos Labs, her fifth company, an independent institute exploring the future of human potential. In this episode we discuss her exciting work around working memory and human potential alongside the phenomenal life path that set her on this journey. 

Cuando su hijo fue diagnosticado con Diabetes tipo 1, la neurocientífica Vivienne Ming creó un algoritmo y una aplicación para calcular la dosis de insulina que necesitaba. Según Ming, esa es la esencia de tecnologías como la Inteligencia Artificial: no va a resolver nuestros problemas por nosotros, pero sí es una herramienta capaz de ayudar a encontrar soluciones a problemas humanos.

Imagine if you had a workforce of people who could tackle the most challenging problems of the world because they recognized the power of humans with AI. Tune into our AI Ignition episode featuring Dr. Vivienne Ming to hear more about how AI helps us invest in humans and how that can bring the best out of your workforce.

To learn more about Vivienne, visit https://futureofstorytelling.org/story/vivienne-ming-ep-19--© 2020 Future of StoryTelling, Corp.Produced by Future of StoryTelling, Corp.124 West 13th StreetNew York, NY 10011Founder and CEO, Charles MelcherExecutive Producer, Carolyn MerrimanAssociate Producer, Luke Gernertin collaboration with Charts & LeisureFounder, Jason OberholtzerExecutive Producer, Mike RugnettaEditor, Garrett Crowe Mix and Music, Michael SimonelliWith special thanks to Vivienne Ming, Sasha Newton, Bonnie Eldon, Shannon Fanuko, Meghal Janardan, Zoe Margolis, Vanina Morrison, and Megan Worman.

Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author. She co-founded Socos Labs, her fifth company, a “mad science incubator.” The think tank is far from “mad” however, as she and her wife provide guidance to clients on how to use AI and neuroscience to enhance hiring practices, the treatment of employees, and better ways to support students. In her free time, Vivienne has invented AI systems to help treat her diabetic son, predict manic episodes in bipolar sufferers weeks in advance, and reunited orphan refugees with extended family members. She sits on the boards of numerous companies and nonprofits, including an Out Entrepreneur favorite, StartOut.

Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author. She co-founded Socos Labs, her fifth company, a “mad science incubator.” The think tank is far from “mad” however, as she and her wife provide guidance to clients on how to use AI and neuroscience to enhance hiring practices, the treatment of employees, and better ways to support students. In her free time, Vivienne has invented AI systems to help treat her diabetic son, predict manic episodes in bipolar sufferers weeks in advance, and reunited orphan refugees with extended family members. She sits on the boards of numerous companies and nonprofits, including an Out Entrepreneur favorite, StartOut.

Note: This episode is in English. For more episodes and information please click here: https://linktr.ee/teamvonmorgen Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neurscientist, AI expert, Author & co-founder of Socos-Lab - an independent institute exploring the future of human potential. She is quite the person: having struggled through failing out of university and ending up being homeless, Vivienne tried to figure out her path in life. Why was it she not the person everyone wanted her to be? Why did everything seem easy, but it still didn't make her happy? She discovered that making the crazy, irrational decisions felt right, rather than the happy ones and her life started getting better. In our conversation Vivienne opens up to coming out as transgender to her wife and how it has effected her entire personal and work life. She shines light on the differences of men and women, with a focus on entrepreneurship, in the workplace, dealing with funding and venture capitalists, as well as gender bias and inclusion and how she goes about these issues. To her this process is not about being right, rather than finding consensuses and making a changer based on these. With her company Socos she and her team have developed techniques to track economic impact of unusual and different backgrounds, building a system to treat diabetes, building new technology to understand suicide risk and now they are even working with UNICEF to track adolescent mental health around the world. In every way, Vivienne tries to do what's right for others and not for herself. Therefore she developed a tool called the "Inclusion Impact Index" to track the real time economic high growth entrepreneurs impact all over the world, especially during times of COVID-19. This tool will help reinvent your city. We hope you enjoy this really honest and uplifting episode. Vivienne is a great guest to have, setting an example for going for what you love and owning being different. About our podcast: How can a sustainable society look like in the future? What kind of world do we want to create? What technologies and innovations should we know about and how do they operate in our lives? "vonMorgen" wants to help you learn more about the future that is coming and how we take an active part in it. Jonathan Sierck, founder of "vonMorgen" and expert for digital learning, takes on interesting, challenging and intriguing conversations with inspiring experts from all over the world. In this podcast we look for answers and controversial points of views when it comes to the big questions of our society, discovering future technology trends and explain, which future skills will be relevant in time. We're exited to have you with us! Wie kann eine zukunftsfähige, nachhaltige Gesellschaft aussehen? Was für eine Welt wollen wir gestalten? Welche Technologien und Innovationen sollten wir dabei auf dem Schirm haben und wie wirken sich diese auf unser Leben aus? Jonathan Sierck, Gründer von vonMorgen und Experte für digitales Lernen, begibt sich mit Pionieren, Koryphäen und inspirierenden Persönlichkeiten aus aller Welt auf eine Reise in die Zukunft. In Gespräche von Morgen suchen wir klare Antworten und (auch) kontroverse Blickwinkel auf die großen Fragen der Menschheit, erkunden Zukunftstrends und -technologien und erklären, worauf es bei den Future Skills wirklich ankommt. Wir eröffnen spannende Perspektiven und Einblicke, die zum Nachdenken und Handeln anregen. Die Zukunft beginnt jetzt – mit dir – in den Gesprächen von Morgen. Unterstütze uns auf: https://www.patreon.com/vonmorgen Instagram: @teamvonmorgen Twitter: @vonMorgenLearn Facebook: fb.me/teamvonmorgen LinkedIn: @vonMorgen Webpage: www.vonmorgen.io

In today’s episode, we are exploring the future of work with the brilliant and mad scientist Vivienne Ming, founder of Socos Labs. In this conversation, she unpacks the implications that automation will have in our global work landscape, the profound effects that machine learning and AI will have once they start replacing not just cheap labor, but a well educated middle class, in the very near future. In this fascinating conversation, Vivienne talks about the power of purpose and creativity, and the important role that soft skills will have, as we navigate a possibly turbulent transition between the old and new paradigm of work.

In this episode, Change Catalyst CEO Melinda Briana Epler speaks with Jennifer Brown, Founder & CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting, about Strengthening LGBTQIA+ Leadership in the Workplace.Learn more about Jennifer's work at https://jenniferbrownspeaks.com/⭑⭑If this is helpful, don't forget to subscribe to our channel and like this video!⭑⭑Resources:➡ Jennifer's latest book "How to Be an Inclusive Leader" https://jenniferbrownspeaks.com/inclusive-leader-book/ ➡ JBC's Inclusive Leader Self-Assessment https://dei1.jbconlinelearning.com/self-assessment/➡ Jennifer's podcast with Vivienne Ming on "The Tax on Being Different" https://jenniferbrownspeaks.com/2017/02/23/the-tax-on-being-different-with-vivienne-ming/ ➡ "A Workplace Divided: Understanding the Climate for LGBTQ Workers Nationwide" by Human Rights Campaign https://www.hrc.org/blog/hrc-report-startling-data-reveals-half-of-lgbtq-employees-in-us-remain-clos➡ "The Economic Impact of COVID-19 on the LGBTQ Community" by Human Rights Campaign https://www.hrc.org/resources/the-economic-impact-of-covid-19-on-the-lgbtq-communityFor more about Change Catalyst, and to join us for a live recording, visit changecatalyst.co/allyshipseriesYoutube: youtube.com/c/changecatalystTwitter: twitter.com/changecatalystsFacebook: facebook.com/changecatalystsLinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/changecatalystsSupport the show (http://patreon.com/changecatalysts)

In this episode, Jennifer teaches us how to create cultures of diversity and inclusion at work.Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, diversity and inclusion consultant, and author. Her work in talent management, human capital, and intersectional theory has redefined the boundaries of talent potential and company culture. Her bestselling book, Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace and The Will to Change creates the case for leaders to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents, for their own growth and for the success of their organizations.Jennifer is the host of the popular weekly podcast, The Will to Change, which uncovers true stories of diversity and inclusion. The podcast receives thousands of downloads each month and has featured multiple notable guests including NY-Times bestselling author Sally Hogshead; ex-NFL player, advisor, and consultant Wade Davis; Priya Parker, facilitator and author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet & Why It Matters; and theoretical neuroscientist Dr. Vivienne Ming.As the founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting, Jennifer’s workplace strategies have been employed by some of the world’s biggest companies and nonprofits in order to help employees feel like they belong and can bring their full selves to work. As a successful LGBT entrepreneur, Jennifer has been featured in media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, AdWeek, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Inc., CBS, and many more.Jennifer has spoken at many top conferences and events such as the International Diversity Forum, the Global D&I Summit, the Forum for Workplace Inclusion, the NGLCC International Business & Leadership Conference, the Out & Equal Workplace Summit, Emerging Women, SHE Summit, Responsive, the Better Man Conference, INBOUND, Interbrand’s Best Global Brands event, as well as at organizations such as Allstate, Pepsico, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the NBA, Google, IBM, and many more.In the past several years, Brown has been named Woman of the Year by Pace University, Social Entrepreneur of the year by the NYC National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO),one of the Top 40 Outstanding Women by Stonewall Community Foundation, and NYC Controller Bill Thompson’s LGBT Business Owner of the Year. She has also been a finalist for both the Wells Fargo Business Owner of the Year Award and for the Ernst & Young’s Winning Women Program.Request a Custom Workshop For Your Company Find More With Jennifer https://jenniferbrownconsulting.com/https://jenniferbrownspeaks.com/Book: How to Be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures Where Everyone Can ThriveBook: Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to ChangePodcast: The Will to ChangeDownload Your Negotiation Preparation GuideConnect With Katherine on LinkedIn

Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, author, and self-described mad scientist. She's been named as one of the BBC 100 Women in 2017, and as one of the Financial Times' "LGBT leaders and allies today". Dr. Ming co-founded Socos, her fifth company, an independent institute exploring the future of human potential. In her free time, she has invented AI systems to help treat her diabetic son, predict manic episodes in bipolar sufferers weeks in advance, and reunited orphan refugees with extended family members. Dr. Ming also speaks frequently on issues of LGBT inclusion and gender in technology. In this conversation with host Justin Gignac., Dr. Ming talks about choosing a college major based on a coin toss, how her ultimate goal is to give the key note at Comic-Con, and why Dr. Ming sees creatives and the creative economy as an integral part of the future of work. Coming from someone who creates AI and Robotics, that’s pretty reassuring.In this episode, you will learn that the scientifically proven secret to a more successful and rich life is living with a sense of purpose, and in order to future-proof your career, one of the biggest skills you need is resiliency and a growth mindset. You'll also be armed with a whole lot of knowledge that you can drop in your next Zoom call with friends, family, or coworkers.Follow Overshare (@oversharetalks) and Working Not Working (@wnotw) on Instagram. SHOW NOTES:Socos LabsDr. Ming's 99U Talk "Share Your Vision With the World"NOVA on PBSDr. Ming's home town of Monterey, CA captured in The Pastures of Heaven by John SteinbeckRoy Batty's final monologue in Blade RunnerWestworld on HBOSome of Dr. Ming's favorite cartoons: Bojack Horseman, Venture Brothers, and Rick and MortyDr. Ming's new entrance music: You Haven’t Done Nothin' by Stevie Wonder"I Built a Superpower to Treat My Son's Diabetes" article by Dr. Ming"There is a Tax on Being Different" article by Dr. MingJames J. Heckman - University of ChicagoArticle on the "Lost Einsteins" research by Raj ChettyMeta learningSocos.org - Socos Academy

Chris Haydel and Neal Mody invite guest Vivienne Ming to the show to discuss AI for better living, the economics and the health side of Covid-19 from a data perspective. Chris dives into an analysis of the public market as the rebound continues before Q1 earnings. Furthermore, Neal presents new predictions on the percentage of business start-up failures, the increase in Americans working from home after the crisis, and a weakened Dollar. Guest Vivienne Ming is frequently featured for her research and inventions in The Financial Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Quartz and the New York Times, Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author. She co-founded Socos Labs, her fifth company, an independent institute exploring the future of human potential. Dr. Ming launched Socos Labs to combine her varied work with that of other creative experts and expand their impact on global policy issues, both inside companies and throughout our communities.

This week we talk about the future of work, and the utopic potentials of AI. We're joined by Dr Vivienne Ming, self styled mad scientist who has pioneered applications of AI to solving human problems. Having launched and exited a number of AI startups, she now runs Socos, a not for profit, to help others solve problems with machine learning. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/predictioneers/message

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Vivienne Ming, founder of Socos Labs, to talk about ethics in artificial intelligence (2:25), passing on a job at Amazon (7:55), why its hiring algorithm failed (11:0), the death of professional human judgment (13:30), how work will have to change (23:15), the bifurcation of society (26:00), what Socos Labs is (31:30), why universal basic income is not the answer (39:00), the importance of learning to learn (45:25), creating a tech wise council (50:30), AI as an expert witness (59:45), how transitioning genders has coloured her views (1:03:40). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Vivienne Ming discusses her personal journey of moving from despair and depression to finding peace and self-acceptance. In this episode you'll discover the "tax on being different" and what that means, as well as some of the key actions that organizations can take to attract and retain diverse talent. 

Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author frequently featured for her research and inventions in The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Quartz and the New York Times,. She co-founded Socos Labs, her fifth company, a mad science incubator. Previously, Vivienne was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, pursuing her research in cognitive neuroprosthetics. In her free time, Vivienne has invented AI systems to help treat her diabetic son, predict manic episodes in bipolar sufferers weeks in advance, and reunited orphan refugees with extended family members. She sits on the boards of numerous companies and nonprofits.

Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author frequently featured for her research and inventions in The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Quartz and the New York Times,. She co-founded Socos Labs, her fifth company, a mad science incubator. Previously, Vivienne was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, pursuing her research in cognitive neuroprosthetics. In her free time, Vivienne has invented AI systems to help treat her diabetic son, predict manic episodes in bipolar sufferers weeks in advance, and reunited orphan refugees with extended family members. She sits on the boards of numerous companies and nonprofits.

Entrepreneur and theoretical neuroscientist Vivienne Ming will describe how we can best harness and maximize our human potential, and the personal transformations that can take place once that potential is unleashed.

Minter Dialogue Episode #343Frequently featured for her research and inventions in The Financial Times, The Atlantic and the New York Times, Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, serial entrepreneur, and author of two books and many research papers. Vivienne has had a truly fascinating life journey as you'll discover. She co-founded Socos Labs, her fifth company, an independent think tank exploring the future of human potential. In her free time, Vivienne has invented AI systems to help treat her diabetic son, predict manic episodes in bipolar sufferers weeks in advance, and reunited orphan refugees with extended family members. In this far-reaching chat, we discuss Vivienne's work on AI, belief-based utility, understanding the messiness of life and of our systems, dealing with homelessness and diabetes, hacking Google Glasses and a whole lot more.If you've got comments or questions you'd like to see answered, send your email or audio file to nminterdial@gmail.com; or you can find the show notes and comment on minterdial.com. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to go over to iTunes or your favourite podcast channel, to rate/review the show. Otherwise, you can find me @mdial on Twitter. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/minterdial)

Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more prevalent in our daily lives – from facial recognition and public security to resume reviews and hiring. To kick off Season 2 of Critical Value, host Justin Milner has a live conversation Dr. Vivienne Ming, a neuroscientist and co-founder of Socos Labs, about the opportunities and challenges that AI may present in the coming years.

First off today an interesting conversation with Vivienne Ming, a theoretical neuroscientist, AI expert, and professional mad scientist about using technology to augment human sight, hearing, memory, and emotions.  In particular, she wants to use tech to turn her son who is diagnosed with autism into a cyborg of sorts with superpowers.  Giving him the ability to read and recognize emotions in other people, or enhancing working memory would be a huge benefit to Vivienne's son, but does it give him an unfair advantage?  Does tech that boosts human potential change what it means to be human?  Vivienne joins us for what happens when we all want to be superhuman. Next, President Trump has been handed a huge victory for his immigration agenda and building a wall on the southern border.  The Supreme Court has cleared the way for $2.5 billion in military funding to be used for border wall construction.  Ginger Gibson, political reporter for Reuters, joins us for this and the latest problem for President Trump.  He's fighting back accusations of racism once again after lashing out on Twitter against Rep. Elijah Cummings. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

A strong reaction triggered by me mishearing a number. Vivienne Ming talks about prioritising your purpose in all decision making. It's not always easy, but will be worthwhile when looking back on your life :)

Over the past several years, we’ve seen a tremendous shift in the utilization of AI. With the amount of data it can provide, companies need to realize that the human element is a vital piece of the puzzle to making sure that an AI implementation is successful.

Probably because of the premium it puts on curiosity, my trade seems to attract the most interesting people. But even by our high standards, there are few like Neil Jacobsohn, who moved on from newsrooms to boardrooms and thence out of the media industry completely to indulge his passion for learning at FutureWorld International. We have to thank Neil for introducing the fascinating Dr Vivienne Ming to South Africa. California born and bred Dr Ming is a cognitive neuroscientist, entrepreneur and member of the faculty at the pioneering Singularity University. She is also one of the world’s leading experts in artificial intelligence, with a story that is as extraordinary as her insights. We caught up after she had blown away an appreciative audience at PWC’s new Waterfall City headquarters near Johannesburg…

John Thornhill talks to Vivienne Ming, a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur and artificial intelligence guru about her work in trying to make technology work for the benefit of humans See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How your ability to construct purpose and believe your effort would pay off are the most important predictors of your lifetime outcomes. And meta learning skills are trainable at any age! Randomly selected entrepreneurs who receive resilience intervention increase their companies' chances of success by 60%!

How do you future proof yourself from AI? How do you future proof yourself from AI? The threats from artificial intelligence are supposedly many and imminent from a full take over to widespread job losses. We caught up with Dr Vivienne Ming, theoretical neuroscientist and Founder and Chair of Socos Labs at the Social Impact Careers Conference at Saïd Business school, to discuss how we can future-proof ourselves and what AI means for our education system.

How do you future proof yourself from AI? How do you future proof yourself from AI? The threats from artificial intelligence are supposedly many and imminent from a full take over to widespread job losses. We caught up with Dr Vivienne Ming, theoretical neuroscientist and Founder and Chair of Socos Labs at the Social Impact Careers Conference at Saïd Business school, to discuss how we can future-proof ourselves and what AI means for our education system.

凯洛格商学院精彩演讲分享Dr. Vivienne Ming

Incredibly inspirational "mad scientist", theoretical neuroscientist, AI inventor and entrepreneur Dr Vivienne Ming advises a listener overwhelmed by ideas and possibilities that finding your purpose is more important than forcing yourself to focus and be someone you're not. She talks about the importance of recognising your weaknesses and having a compensatory strategy for overcoming them and why hiring complementary collaborators is essential to entrepreneurial success and to delivering solutions that bring real value to people. As a leader and creative collaborator, she sees her number one job as explaining the why - then to simply be a resource to enable her team to be even more successful.

Guest Vivienne Ming. Named one of 10 Women to Watch in Tech by Inc. Magazine, Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author. She co-founded Socos, her fourth company, where she combines machine learning, cognitive neuroscience, and economics to maximize life outcomes in education and the workplace.

Vivienne Ming has experienced more than most. Much more. From starring on her football and track teams in high school as a teenage boy to being homeless for most of her 20's to finishing her neuroscience undergrad degree in one year, and finally to starting four of her own companies, Vivienne's life makes up one of the most compelling, complex, and inspiring stories you'll ever hear.

When Vivienne Ming began her neuroscience PhD program in the early 2000s, she wanted to learn how to build cyborgs. Her classmates thought the idea was crazy. Fast forward fifteen years, and the idea doesn’t sound so crazy anymore. What was once purely theoretical is becoming possible. Neuroscience research is rapidly becoming applied neuroscience, and the Bay Area is leading the way, both in terms of conducting innovative research and translating this research into exciting new startups.

While Over Coffee® is on hiatus through the Christmas holidays, we're rebroadcasting some of our most popular episodes of 2017. Thank you for listening--and be sure to be with us for our coverage of CES 2018! Vivienne Ming at SRK Headshot Day in San Francisco(Photograph courtesy of Scott R. Kline, and used with permission.) Can learning outcomes be predicted, just by the way students talk among themselves?  And, can both learning and life outcomes be changed by some minor daily "tweaks"? Yes to both questions, says neuroscientist and entrepreneur Dr. Vivienne Ming--who is also a mom. Vivienne and her wife Norma are the co-founders of Socos, a Bay Area educational technology startup.  And through Socos, they're guiding parents in ways that enhance a child's development--and make the learning process an exploration both will enjoy. How does this work?  Well,  Socos provides a research-based app called MuseBot, which asks parents a daily question.  Based on the parent's answer, according to Socos' website, MuseBot will design a daily activity for the parent and child to do together.  The process is based on a philosophy stated on Socos' website: the goal of fostering "metalearners"actively involved in their own educational process, as opposed to simply absorbing another's teachings in a passive manner. But small children aren't the only ones benefiting from the metalearning goals.  Socos is also developing projects colleges and online universities, to maximize learning.  And while MuseBot is a commercial product, Vivienne also makes it available to low-income families, through her nonprofit organization. Vivienne talked about her background, discussed her experiences co-founding Socos with Norma (who is an educational expert) and shared a story of how she used the process with her own young daughter. On this edition of Over Coffee®, you'll hear: Vivienne's journey towards her current career as a scientist, entrepreneur and educational pioneer; How an undergraduate machine-learning project ultimately inspired her to use AI to improve the educational field; The steps Vivienne and Norma took towards their current work in making a difference in students' lives and futures; How the Muse software evolved from their experience and research; The philosophy behind MuseBot and the ways it's revolutionizing education; How parents can apply MuseBot to maximize a child's learning outcomes; How low-income organizations can use MuseBot–at no charge. A MuseBot intervention Vivienne put to work to awaken her five-year-old daughter's interest in science; How Socos is developing MuseBot for older children and young adults; What adults can do, today, to maximize their potential–and one of the biggest predictors of future success.    

Dr. Vivienne Ming discusses her personal journey of moving from despair and depression to finding peace and self-acceptance. In this episode you'll discover the "tax on being different" and what that means, as well as some of the key actions that organizations can take to attract and retain diverse talent.  To learn more about Dr. Vivienne Ming, visit http://www.socoslearning.com/ and @neuraltheory on Twitter.  To learn more about Jennifer Brown, visit www.jenniferbrownspeaks.com 

How will AI transform the jobs market? We speak with scientist and entrepreneur Vivienne Ming to find out.

Artificial intelligence is fast replacing humans …

Artificial intelligence is fast replacing humans at their jobs. Thirty years from now will there still be a role for humans in Investment Management?

If you believed you could never be happy, would you go on living? That’s the question that echoed in Dr. Vivienne Ming’s mind when she contemplated killing herself, before she became a woman, mom, neuroscientist, technologist, and LGBT advocate. Dr. Ming shares more about the wisdom that saved her life, and how it led her to focus on the one superpower that predicts success over and over again. Show Notes:- Vivienne’s upbringing, not living up to expectations, and realizing she was “different.” [1:30]- The lowest point — Suicide, and why she decided not to do it. [4:39]- On her larger-than-life father and his example of “living a life of substance.” [7:54]- How intrinsic motivation fueled her shift away from the brink of suicide. [12:02]- From flunking out of college to getting perfect scores in everything the second time around. [14:59]- On her year at the Machine Perception Lab and the start of her professional success. [19:08]- Learning to counter her destructive-perfectionism through perseverance. [21:31]- On feeling free to follow what she believes to be right. [25:09]- Women’s tendency to worry about how they are being perceived rather than whether they are being true to themselves. [26:51]- On meeting her wife in graduate school and opening up about wanting to be a woman. [31:13]- The immediate effects of Vivienne’s gender transition – losing her position at Stanford, being treated differently by close friends and strangers alike, and observing implicit gender biases. [35:38]- Vivienne’s work at Socos: Studying the predictors of success and optimizing life outcomes. [42:43]- Defining a meta-learner and the main categories that predict success. [47:33]- How to strengthen our meta-learning abilities. [52:49]- Vivienne’s perspective on how society influences gender roles and the enduring disparities between men and women. [54:55]References:Dr. Ming’s organization Socos: www.socoslearning.comMusic:Lucia Lilikoi at lucia.bandcamp.comFind Heroine on:Heroine.fmTwitter.com/heroinefmInstagram.com/heroine.fmFacebook.com/heroine.fm

If you believed you could never be happy, would you go on living? That’s the question that echoed in Dr. Vivienne Ming’s mind when she contemplated killing herself, before she became a woman, mom, neuroscientist, technologist, and LGBT advocate. Dr. Ming shares more about the wisdom that saved her life, and how it led her to focus on the one superpower that predicts success over and over again. Show Notes:- Vivienne’s upbringing, not living up to expectations, and realizing she was “different.” [1:30]- The lowest point — Suicide, and why she decided not to do it. [4:39]- On her larger-than-life father and his example of “living a life of substance.” [7:54]- How intrinsic motivation fueled her shift away from the brink of suicide. [12:02]- From flunking out of college to getting perfect scores in everything the second time around. [14:59]- On her year at the Machine Perception Lab and the start of her professional success. [19:08]- Learning to counter her destructive-perfectionism through perseverance. [21:31]- On feeling free to follow what she believes to be right. [25:09]- Women’s tendency to worry about how they are being perceived rather than whether they are being true to themselves. [26:51]- On meeting her wife in graduate school and opening up about wanting to be a woman. [31:13]- The immediate effects of Vivienne’s gender transition – losing her position at Stanford, being treated differently by close friends and strangers alike, and observing implicit gender biases. [35:38]- Vivienne’s work at Socos: Studying the predictors of success and optimizing life outcomes. [42:43]- Defining a meta-learner and the main categories that predict success. [47:33]- How to strengthen our meta-learning abilities. [52:49]- Vivienne’s perspective on how society influences gender roles and the enduring disparities between men and women. [54:55]References:Dr. Ming’s organization Socos: www.socoslearning.comMusic:Lucia Lilikoi at lucia.bandcamp.comFind Heroine on:Heroine.fmTwitter.com/heroinefmInstagram.com/heroine.fmFacebook.com/heroine.fm

Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, a technologist, and an entrepreneur, and the scope of her work is more than impressive. In October 2015, she sat down with Quentin Hardy, the deputy technology editor of the New York Times at the Uncharted Ideas Festival.  Whether talking about research on lie-detection or face recognition to help refugee children, Ming’s studies of the brain are eye-opening.

My guest today is a theoretical neuroscientist, technologist and entrepreneur who was named one of Inc. Magazine's top 10 women to watch in tech in 2013. She co-founded Socos, a cutting-edge startup which applies cognitive modeling to create adaptive, personalized educational technology. She is also a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience pursuing her research in neuroprosthetics. Previously, she was a junior fellow at Standford's Mind, Brain & Computation Center and earned her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon. Her work and research has received a ton of media attention including the New York Times, NPR, Nature, O Magazine, Forbes, and The Atlantic. In this interview, we discuss her INCREDIBLE STORY, how technology will be used to predict our learning and performance, how we can change life outcomes, how prosthetic devices will be used to alter and repair or brains and bodies, and the very realistic possibility of a hyper-intelligent superhuman race… and that's just in the first 30 minutes.

Interview of theoretical scientist and Chief Data Scientist for GILD in San Francisco on how to use big data techniques to design more democratic and merit based hiring practices.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You're listening to method to the madness, a biweekly program celebrating Bay area innovators. I'm Lisa Kiefer and today I'm interviewing Dr Vivienne Ming, chief scientist at Guild, a talent acquisition tech company in San Francisco. I read about you in New York Times, so tell me what you do at guild is a company whose goal is to bring meritocracy back to tech hiring. We have customers that [00:00:30] are looking for programmers. All the biggest tech companies you can like Google and like Google, Facebook, Microsoft Tho branching now, people that you wouldn't think of like Nike, some banks and others. It just, it's so pervasive. So much of what we do is based on some kind of programming. Every company has somebody that they need to hire in this space. The founders short sigh and Luke Obama soar, decided they wanted to create a company that could go [00:01:00] beyond qualities in a resume that they know. Speaker 1:We could just look at. The easiest way to get a job at Google is be good, but go to Stanford and know people that are already working. If you don't fit those two qualities, it's not a knock on Google. They get so many resumes that in some sense, what else are they going to do? So as chief scientist, what I do is come up with algorithms to go beyond that. How many variables are you looking at and could you talk about what some of those might be? Currently we're looking at 50,000 [00:01:30] different features as we call them about a person that boils down to something on that order of a hundred independent dimensions. Each of those dimensions is saying something unique about the people that we're looking at or each of them weighed differently. Each of them are weighed differently and one of the cool things we do is that they're weighed slightly differently for slightly different companies and where we're in the process of developing and advancing these algorithms all the time. Speaker 1:So the number of features increases. The weighting on these factors increases. [00:02:00] We can go to these companies. They say to us, I'm looking for a Java developer in Boston and we return a list ordered by how good we predict people to be of the Best Java developers in Boston. Okay. Now talk about some of these variables on the higher east side. Some of these variables have to do with how people express themselves, not generically, but specifically related to the profession that we're recommending them for. Some of these are very simple things. We just look at [00:02:30] what social sites they spend their times on. That would give us a little nudge in one direction or another in our estimate of how good you are. The way you describe yourself on your resume on linkedin. Actually don't look that much at Facebook because Facebook really strongly represents what you want other people to think about you rather than who you actually are to strange quality. Speaker 1:There's a lot of information there. I was going to ask you about that. I think all of these sites are pretty easily gamed. Say a company's looking for someone to be a c, so c [00:03:00] is a fairly low level programming language. It's used by people to build really fundamental pieces, a very fast processing. There's also a language called C plus. Plus. It's very similar to c in its application, but it has a different and a pretty fundamental one and how it's structured. You will very commonly see on resumes that someone is proficient in c slash c plus. Plus if they say that our algorithm predicts that they are not a good c or c [00:03:30] plus plus programmer. Why? Because these are different languages so you are professional programmers. C was your space for doing things. Even if you happen to know c plus plus, that's not how you describe yourself. Speaker 1:At least as we look across the 4 million profiles in our database, that is not how the best c programmers or c plus plus programmers described themselves. So your algorithms sounds like they're going to be constantly changing, but the more information you get into this, and in fact we built it with what we call temporal discounting. So over time [00:04:00] it tends to ignore things that happened a long time ago and really focuses on right now. So that allows us to have a bit of a memory in a sense. I can say something like what I just said because I know our algorithm will adapt if people search to start to try to game it. But at the same time the tech world is so fast moving, it has to adapt. You know, if we recommend someone as a highly qualified programmer because they use a technology that was popular 10 years ago, then we're probably not doing a service to our customers. Speaker 1:Are you only servicing [00:04:30] tech companies in the bay area? Certainly, but we certainly service ecommerce companies like Walmart, they have an incredible presence in, in technology. A long before, in fact, a lot of other companies were doing big data. They had huge servers full of everyone's behavior at Walmart, uh, that they were analyzing. Look at our co founder and chief technology officer came up with the original idea of let's look at open source code. So this is code that developers write freely to share [00:05:00] amongst themselves. And this isn't trivial work. Some of the absolute backbone of our technology infrastructure is based on open source code. And this ranges from Linux, which runs a vast amount of computing and web serving and everything around the world to machine learning languages like [inaudible]. It's all just freely given out. Luca came up with the idea, why don't we go there and actually look at the free public code that they put out and evaluate it. Speaker 1:He wrote this just fantastic system that goes [00:05:30] through and reads their code, reads their contribution cause many of these projects have many people on and we can split that out and evaluate how good they are as a programmer. And so our original system was based on that. Some companies like Google and Facebook actually do open source as part of their internal development for any techies listening. Things like Hadoop and Cassandra have been turned out by Yahoo and by Facebook just freely for the use of the rest of us. But they built it for themselves [00:06:00] internally. That's awesome. But many, many tech companies, particularly a lot of these big server-based companies like IBM, they don't do that. And so there's a whole army of people working there that we traditionally don't have insight into. We have hundreds of thousands of people that we can look at and evaluate. Speaker 1:There are millions of developers out there. We very roughly estimate about 8 million professional working developers in the world. Yeah, we have a database in the u s Europe, China and large parts of Asian India [00:06:30] of roughly 4 million. I've been amazed and been told by some of our customers that some of their best results have come by looking outside the United States within our database. So we want to take those hundreds of thousands of people that have gone out and done something wonderful and very accurately convey to our customers how good they are. This is k a l x Berkeley 90.7 on your FM dial and streaming on the web@kalxdotberkeley.edu I've been talking a lot about almost surface level [00:07:00] information that we pull out of these sites like you know, did people really like the answers? You Post it on stack overflow and how often was your code on get hub? How often was the code on get hub polled forked as they call it and used by others or followed by others. Speaker 1:But we can actually get more sophisticated than that. We can literally go in and evaluate the content of what people are saying. I can tell how what kind of person they are in essence and, and I think many of our customers would be interested in us putting out a product that [00:07:30] can actually say this person is a good personality match for you or a good, you know, match in terms of housing and all of these search firms and we're not trying to build something to replace the existing systems per se. Some of them need replacing, they need disruption. Yeah. As they say, disruption. But even starting more simply. A lot of recruiters with titles like technical recruiter are not technical people themselves, but many of them, they get a resume [00:08:00] and it says, we need someone with flask experience. Well, what does flask does? Recruiter doesn't know. Speaker 1:And it's not because they don't know their job, it's because that's a pretty specific technology. It's a subset of python, which is a subset of interpretive languages and it isn't necessarily their job to know this, although wouldn't it be nice if they did and then they get a resume and that resume says the person works in Django. Well, [00:08:30] little do they know those are highly compatible technologies. That person may be a great candidate, but if they don't see those matching words. Part of our research right now and some exciting potential products to come is based around being able to turn people into instant experts, essentially designing systems that will understand the ontology, the taxonomy of the technology, maybe other worlds as well. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just say, [00:09:00] tell us who you love at your company right now, who is incredible and you say, oh well and Brad and I love Jill and Brad and we just said, Oh care 20 more Jill and brats. Speaker 1:And you say, oh well these five, not quite what I meant. And we say, oh, thanks here. Another five that fit even better and you can turn that experience into the recruiting experience. It's like you did one interview and we behind the scenes populate the results of your interview [00:09:30] with the ideal candidate or their ideal set of candidates. Your job is to simply go out and do the recruiting. All we care about is whether they fit the job, what you just said you need it. I saw Ray Kurzweil speak here recently and one of the things he was talking about was the ability to know before you even know what you need. Well that's the beauty of what I'm just describing myself. For example, I just recently found out my team for guild. I started the process by trying to scratch down ideas of who would be the right candidate and then we start [00:10:00] the process and we realize, oh, that's not quite right. Speaker 1:And then we go back and we kind of iterate a little bit and you know, my recruiters looking to match the specific terms on my job description I've written up and it's an ugly and inefficient process and it's inevitably going to miss great candidates, great candidates that don't fit the obvious mold of a great candidate. Like the guy that in the New York Times article, jade jade, okay, he didn't go to college. Jade has this amazing story, no obvious [00:10:30] exceptionalism in high school, no work history that speaks to the corporate world or even the startup world. You wouldn't just not bring them in for an interview. His resume probably wouldn't even get in the door. Why would you ever consider someone like this? Well, you'd consider him because he's an amazing front end developer and he's done amazing work for the US and Luca discovered him using the algorithm look a developed by saying who is the best front end developer in Los Angeles? Speaker 1:Essentially that was his question. [00:11:00] There was jade with a perfect score right up there, like a guide no one would ever look at, you know, we call them up and of course [inaudible] us while at this tech company in San Francisco has startup. What do, they brought him up for an interview and it clicked and he does great work. You know, as the article says, this is kind of an experiment. I think an experiment, which I can personally say jade is gonna do great things and I love him. It's fun having him in the office. There was a huge discovery for [00:11:30] us. People that would otherwise get ignored, have a legitimate shot at jobs. They're qualified for it. In fact, my research, as for every one of those standouts, there are hundred times as many people that are just as qualified. The tragedy isn't that the credential people are getting the jobs, they deserve it. Speaker 1:The tragedy is all of those other people being left behind. And we have the opportunity now to look at this here at 10 people were saying they're all equally qualified. You've got the money and the opportunity and you want certainty. [00:12:00] Okay, hire the Stanford candidate, the MIT candidate, the cal tech candidate, but if you want somebody good and you don't have that money or maybe you've lost out to Facebook and Google, not everybody can throw $1 million just to get someone to come work for them. There's a real market distortion. A small number of people are being highly overvalued and it is scorched earth and silicon valley trying to find those proven developers. There are a lot of people out there. The question is how do you find them? How do you validate them? Facebook and Google are testing [00:12:30] our system, not because they need us to find candidates because they want to find the candidates. Speaker 1:They can't find other ones to use their language. They want to find diversity, fully qualified, equally qualified candidates. Our system does not over promote anybody. You have to make it there on your merit. Open source is a wonderful thing to do for the world, but it's also a demonstration of who you are and what you can do. Even small projects, we use those and believe me, recruiters look there. Also, if you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness on [00:13:00] k a l x Berkeley, and today I'm interviewing Dr Vivienne Ming, chief scientist at Gild it talent acquisition tech company in San Francisco. I have a thread that runs through all of my work, so I'm a visiting scholar here at Berkeley at the Redwood Center for theoretical neuroscience. I have a company that I co founded with my wife and a former student of mine called socos where we do cognitive modeling of students for educational technology and I even dabble around with things like Google glass that I'm wearing [00:13:30] right now and working in modeling diabetes, which applies to my son who has diabetes. Speaker 1:Across all of that. What's important to me is maximizing human potential at the Redwood Center. I'm interested in neuroprosthetics particularly what we call cognitive neuroprosthetics. People that have Alzheimer's, that have hearing loss, that have decreased working memory spans that have autism. Imagine what we can do with the technology that's coming up to compensate for these [00:14:00] Google glass. For those of you who don't know is that sort of experimental development of project that Google's actually put out in the wild now. So I'm wearing a pair right now and they don't look too bad either. People know and they're going to look pretty cool. I like them. It's voice activated and so I can turn it down with the head nod and say, okay glass, take a picture and there we go. I just took a picture so I can essentially see Google search results. I can see videos, get directions. Speaker 1:Imagine I'd put this on an autistic child. [00:14:30] I've done previous research in automatic facial expression recognition. Imagine the video camera is watching the expressions of the person I'm talking to, processing it back on a server and then in the little pop up I'm telling the child what, what emotion that person is feeling so they have a chance to get a real time feedback on their interactions. Imagine people in Boston had been wearing glass, the explosions go off and there's 20 people say, okay glass virtual EMT and they are alive, connected [00:15:00] with an emergency room doctor working at desk. And the doctor can see what they see through the camera. I can hear the doctor in a Mike that goes into my ear and in a heads up, I can see them talking to me. I can read your heart rate right off the camera just from subtle changes in your skin color and body temperature and things like that, and suddenly those 20 people went from being shoppers and runners to being first responders. Speaker 1:The idea of what you can do with people through neuroprosthetics as I call them and now [00:15:30] it's the augmenting cognition is is just amazing. Retinal implants, motor prosthetics, people learning to move quadriplegics and stroke victims and strikes with people that haven't moved parts of their body in years and years. This really laid the groundwork. It was what had got me into graduate school. It's what drives my academic research still. When I was given a chance to think about, for example, cognitive modeling of students, I wanted [00:16:00] the opportunity to go out and bring that onto the world instead of being an academic project, which is incredibly valuable. My wife and I founded a company so that we could access it soco. So that's so close. I was working at the time as a research scientist at UC Berkeley. Uh, my wife was a lecturer. She studies the learning sciences, which is sort of cognitive psychology for education. Speaker 1:And I had a student at the time, the most amazing guy, he's at the Ed school at Stanford now. His name is [inaudible]. We [00:16:30] decided we wanted to start a company where we could do something amazing, which was figure out whether students understood what they were talking about in their own free form discussions, talking to other students, interacting with instructors, sending emails, doing homework. So helping teachers know where they're not reaching students. Exactly, but to do it without imposing anything on them. There's a lot of buzz around Ed Tech Con Academy and you know a lot of [00:17:00] work by the gates foundation. Companies like dreambox and Carnegie learning and others putting out really amazing technology. But one aspect of most of that technology is this is the learning experience. We have decided a curriculum for you, if you want to adopt this for your classroom, this is what the experience will be and we'll need to retrain your teachers and we'll bring the computers into the classroom and the kids will solve math games. Speaker 1:That took you know, years to really optimize [00:17:30] and get just right and there are proven effective, at least in the lab. They have some challenges in the wild though teachers don't buy in. The curriculum isn't quite adopted correctly. Hard to track exactly what students are doing. Wouldn't it be better and sort of more responsible for us as technologists to say, teachers, curriculum developers, you're the experts. Go explore and educate the way you want to. Just share with us everything that that experience producers and it will be our heart job [00:18:00] to make meaning out of it. We looked at an introduction to biology class and an MBA class in economics and we simply looked at their online discussions. What we found was one, we could learn biology and economics just by listening to the students. We didn't need to model a textbook ahead of time or bring an expert in to build our system instead of an expert system about biology. Speaker 1:We had an expert system about how students thought about [00:18:30] biology or what they knew or what they knew, so it included the right and the wrong and it included it with nuance and then when we took in a new group of students with new instructors, we found in week one we could predict what grade they get in the class. Again, just from their freeform discussions, not looking at homeworks or essays or final exams. By the end of the class we had an extremely tight understanding of what they knew and how they would perform in the class. The final grade they would get and the vision is wouldn't it be great? [00:19:00] Then back in week one, if we could say to the student, the learner, to the instructor, we predict these students share misconcept and historically looking at other students, we found that these interventions like a reading or lecture or homework experience were effective in moving students from this misconcept to this more normative concept. Speaker 1:The teacher teaches the class the way they want and the way they should because they know what their kids aren't getting. They are the expert. And we simply [00:19:30] essentially in real time, give them feedback on which students are getting it and which aren't and effective ways they might go back to the students that aren't. And this is in practice right now somewhere. Um, we've published papers on it. We're in touch with a couple of prominent educational technologies, companies that want to use our system as the intelligence behind their amazing products. So we're gonna make people a lot smarter. That's our goal. And then there's going to be a lot more competition for all those great jobs you're finding [00:20:00] too. Well, again, so we're looking at maximizing human potential and the ability of our system is to identify the unique understanding of a given student and really try and move them in the most positive direction we can. Speaker 1:We are incredibly passionate about the ability to understand student cognition and really create ais that are just personal tutors that will go with students with the rest of their lives. Here's our big thing for soft costs and all standardized [00:20:30] testing. I, I get the sense that your life is definitely informing your work. Everyone always thought I would be really good at school. My Mom, my dad being the sort of crazy geemer that he was just was convinced you are again, you're gonna get a Nobel prize someday. I know he was incredibly successful. Had he got a bronze medal in Vietnam, right? Did He, I mean, he was like an amazing helicopter surgeon I would with him. So he grew up on a farm, five kids and his graduating class, I think he [00:21:00] got full scholarships. He was an amazing man. As a, as a doctor in the community, specifically at gastroenterologists, you know, treating all the patients that come into his door. Speaker 1:He instilled in me the belief that you should leave a life of substance. And it's why I choose to do the work that I do. But my mother's a teacher out of Kansas as well, worked for decades and a, and a great teachers, Sixth Grade Public School, Salinas, California. She is an amazing woman. They expected [00:21:30] things of me despite the fact I typically was failing all of my classes through high school. Through my first years of college, I was very unhappy growing up. The only way my father agreed to send me to this private high school, Robert Louis Stevenson, is if I played football. But he had these fears. This is back, you know, early eighties you know, some froofy private school might turn my son gay. Little did he know that it was that very experience [00:22:00] that totally clarified the world for me and the world being, I never understood the other pies. Speaker 1:Their behavior, casual sexual jokes made no sense to me. I'll be honest, I thought everyone was an idiot but me, and then I understood I was the one that was different. When did you come to that realization? This was when I was 12 the understanding didn't change anything and in some ways it sort of made it worse because okay, I was a boy and I didn't want it. B, what good does that do? That just makes life harder. So I got through high [00:22:30] school is the best way of describing it. I loved academia. I was planning on being a doctor, like 85% of the undergrads at UC San Diego. It was just basically a big biotech school, and I showed up there and now no one was even looking over my shoulder and I wasn't doing the homework and then I wasn't going to class. And then I wasn't even bothering sharp with the final gone. Speaker 1:So you had not confronted either your mother father at this point with how you felt. So you know, now we're into my twenties by that point I considered the idea of gender transition, [00:23:00] but I was so isolated and so alone and no support. So I'm starting to learn a little bit, but I'm not part of any community and I'm thinking, how am I going to keep going? Being unhappy. I completely stumbled into a job without looking for it. Running an abalone farm in Santa Cruz, California, the economy in Japan crops. So there our main customer base, and now they're not buying our Sushi anymore when the end came, because it was inevitable. I had saved up a little bit of money and I thought, why don't I just go back to school and try [00:23:30] and do something substantial. So you had not finished your undergraduate? Not finished. Speaker 1:My Undergrad, I'd been, I think I'd been there three years. What degree could I finish in a single year? I literally flipped a coin between economics and cognitive science, cognitive science one I thought, okay, I'm going to be a neuroscientist. I went there and started taking classes and they were just like ridiculously easy. I was getting A's and a pluses and everything compared to having worked at this abalone farm where you know, the world was falling apart every single day [00:24:00] and my, my love of research and academia finally had fertile ground where I actually got successful feedback in one class. The professor came back and said, I've got a research project, which I like to work on it and that eventually led me into this field of theoretical neuroscience. I applied to Grad schools and I was still presenting male at that time. I had a very deep voice and a presence and I was getting a lot of the benefit of the doubt. Speaker 1:You [00:24:30] know, I'd come into psychology departments and talk sophisticated mathematical ideas about cognition with that presence and people would start nodding their heads and saying, you know, would you want to come join our lab? Of course I cherish those opportunities, but I always kind of felt like a fraud, do really know exactly. And I gained it all the way to Carnegie Mellon, which is an amazing place. And I worked there with several people. Jay McClelland, who's Jay is now at Stanford, Mike Wiki now at case western and [00:25:00] Laurie halt, who is still at CMU. I just loved working with all of them, but I was still fundamentally unhappy. I was having all of the success fighting, you know, our, my work with Mike was published in nature and I had chances to get up in front of hundreds of people at major conferences and talk about our research and feel good for five minutes and then it was gone. Speaker 1:And then I'm out. Norma. Um, we were together in the psychology department at Carnegie Mellon early on in our weird courtship. [00:25:30] She taught me deep, dark secrets about herself. And all I said was, I've got a pretty big secret to maybe I'll tell you to you someday. Four years later, our final year at Carnegie Mellon finish finishing our dissertations. It was my birthday. We were together. We were actually engaged at that point. I'm just going to be the best husband that I can and I'm successful at work. I have someone that makes me happy. So many people don't have either of those things, much less, both of them. I don't know how it came about, but I was invited to be in an experiment to [00:26:00] look at the effects of NZ Alytics. So anxiety reducing medicines on heart health. And it was a blind double-blind. No one knew what medicine they were getting. Speaker 1:So I was taking something turned out the medicine they were testing is called Celexa. But I didn't know if I was taking any. And in retrospect it was so obvious that like the change in behavior and so forth. But turned out I was, I learned after the fact I was in the treatment group. Why was that so fascinating? Because there was in the midst of this and looking back, I realized, wow, I wasn't shouting at any people. I'm, I'm, I [00:26:30] was like a notorious angry driver. And I said, wow, I haven't like shouted at anyone in the car in like months in the midst of this for whatever reason. I taught in a moment total freedom to just share that with Norma. My big, deep, dark secret is I wish I were a woman. You weren't married yet, right? We weren't married though. We weren't engaged. Speaker 1:Um, we stayed up that night talking and, and we talked for about a week. That was the start of my transition. Completely unplanned, completely unexpected, but with her full support. But we loved each other. Her parents still [00:27:00] really struggled. How about yours? What makes me most happy is that before my father passed away, he was back to bragging about me again. He had some struggles and he had troubles with pronouns. I mean our parents, I will single out my mother, she had like three days of tears and then a light switch and she was like, all right, we've got to go get you a new wardrobe yet you need professional outfits. I mean, she just has been amazing from that moment on. My siblings have been incredibly supportive. Enormous siblings have been incredibly supportive. My friends, [00:27:30] friends that I most feared coming out to it, their response was amazing. Speaker 1:Normally this decision is a decision to start a new life, not because you want to because your family leaves you and your friends won't talk to you and your career is offering. Most importantly to me, Norma is still enormous source of happiness. Our children aren't enormous sources. Do you have a boy and a girl? Right? I have a boy and a girl. Um, I'm their mommy. I'm also their donor. Did you have the foresight to a banked uh, ahead of time? Very [00:28:00] good. That tells me a lot about how this idea of merit and bias, like you say, how people treated you as a man and you were gaming that. So that has informed a lot of your algorithmic work at gala. I feel like a secret spy having seen all of this, they're a man's eyes and that's such a good thing to do to try to eliminate bias in the hiring practices of the workforce, whatever they might be. Speaker 1:At Guild, I had the opportunity to work in a company [00:28:30] whose motto is meritocracy. We want to give everyone a legitimate shot at what they're qualified so I could take my expertise there and apply it. Again, back to my life's goal of empowerment and maximizing human potential, and so guilt really has become an amazing platform for that. I bet a lot of our listeners are to want to get ahold of you or talk to you or maybe ask you a question. Do you have a website that you would recommend they look at both for guild questions, but also LGBT [00:29:00] questions are an absent that. If you look us up@giltdotcomgild.com you can see the kind of work that we do and you can learn a little bit about me and the founders there and our work in meritocracy. Our education work@sovosisatsovos.me, s o c o s. Speaker 1:Dot. Emmy at the Redwood Center for theoretical neuroscience here at UC Berkeley. It's at redwood.berkeley.edu [00:29:30] you can see all of the amazing research we do. Very Geeky. You'll love it. Finally, there's my own website. If you just want to reach out to me personally and maybe on LGBT issues or anything like that, you can find me@vivianming.com I am not much of a social networker, but I love to sit down and talk with people. I told a group of students here from Stanford and cow yesterday, learn to do something of value so that you'll have some tools [00:30:00] for the rest of your life. Learn engineering or learn the practical skills of putting words on a page, whatever it is, but learn something tangible that other people will value. Commit fully to that amazing thing you're doing right now. You've got a whole life ahead of you to do more amazing things. That's kind of how I personally have embraced the very weird and and incredibly fortuitous life. I've had the chance to have an amazing life of Dr Vivian [00:30:30] Maine. Thank you for being on this program. I've really enjoyed it. It was a real pleasure. If you have any questions or comments, go to our website method to the madness.org that's all one word. So you in two weeks at the same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.