The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is underway in Orlando, Florida. Besides gender representation in tech, a big topic of discussion is how to drive new artificial intelligence technology across disciplines. 

“We have these women that are talking about these cool products that they’re making, and different pathways into artificial intelligence and machine leaning,” said Rebecca Knight (@knightrm, pictured, left), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. 

Knight discussed the growing role of AI in tech and non-tech industries with co-host Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick, pictured, right) at the conference today. 

A number of high-profile speakers addressed the crowd at the keynote today about AI, tech for social good and gender representation. Among them were Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Diane Greene, leader of Google’s cloud business and co-founder of VMware Inc.; and  President and Chief Executive Officer of the Anita Borg Institute’s Brenda Darden Wilkerson.

Humans still masters of machines, so far

Dr. Fei-Fei Li, professor at Stanford University and director of its AI Lab, spoke at the keynote about the human element of algorithm design and training. Could lopsided gender representation skew AI models and make them less accurate? she asked.

“People have to write the algorithms; people have to write the stuff that trains the machines, so it’s really important to have broad perspective,” Frick said, recapping Li’s assertions.

“The other point that came up was to bake more computer science into other fields, whether it’s biology, whether it’s law, education,” Frick said. Unlike computing for computing’s sake, applied artificial intelligence in diverse disciplines could hook many more people into technology. This is one way that computing could attract and retain more female practitioners, he added.

TheCUBE will be interviewing speakers and attendees throughout the conference on their involvement with Grace Hopper and their work in technology. Guests will include Cube alumna Sarah Clatterbuck, senior director of engineering, application infrastructure, women in tech and accessibility at Linkedin Corp.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Photo: SiliconANGLE