ATxAI 2023

Anup Kumar is a Distinguished Engineer & APAC CTO for Data & AI. He leads the technical and solution strategies to accelerate the adoption of Hybrid Data Fabric. He has experience building large scale data platform across multiple industry and government organization with focus on data privacy, AI ethics, and regulatory requirements.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a VP and Fellow at Google Research, where he leads an organization working on both basic research and new products in AI. His focus is on augmentative, privacy-first, and collectively beneficial applications, including on-device ML for Android phones, wearables, and the Internet of Things. One of the team’s technical contributions is Federated Learning, an approach to training neural networks in a distributed setting that avoids sharing user data. Blaise also founded the Artists and Machine Intelligence programme, and has been an active participant in cross-disciplinary dialogs about AI and ethics, fairness and bias, policy, and risk. Until 2014 he was a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft.

Outside the tech world, Blaise has worked on computational humanities projects including the digital reconstruction of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii’s color photography at the Library of Congress, and the use of computer vision techniques to shed new light on Gutenberg’s printing technology. Blaise has given TED talks on Sead­ragon and Pho­to­synth (2007, 2012), Bing Maps (2010), and machine creativity (2016), and gave a keynote at NeurIPS on social intelligence (2019). In 2008, he was awarded MIT’s TR35 prize. In 2018 and 2019 he taught the course “Intelligent Machinery, Identity, and Ethics” at the University of Washington, placing computing and AI in a broader historical and philosophical context.

Dr Ansgar Koene is Global AI Ethics and Regulatory Leader at EY (Ernst & Young) where he leads the AI related public policy team and contributes to the work on AI governance and EY’s Trusted AI framework. As part of this work, he represents EY at the OECD Working Party on AI Governance and the Business at OECD Committee on Digital Economic Policy (BIAC CDEP).

Ansgar chaired the IEEE P7003 Standard for Algorithmic Bias Considerations working group and is a co-convener for the European standards body (CEN-CENELEC JTC21) “AI” committee’s work on AI conformity assessment. He is a trustee for the 5Rights foundation for the Rights of Young People Online and advises on AI and Data Ethics for the pan-African NGO AfroLeadership.

Ansgar has a multi-disciplinary research background, having worked and published on topics ranging from Policy and Governance of Algorithmic Systems (AI), data-privacy, AI Ethics, AI Standards, bio-inspired Robotics, AI and Computational Neuroscience to experimental Human Behaviour/Perception studies.

Angsar holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Computational Neuroscience.

Besides being the Senior Executive Vice President and CTO of Sony Group Corporation, Hiroaki Kitano is President and CEO of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc., CEO of Sony Research Inc., President of The Systems Biology Institute, and Professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University. He is also a Founding President of the RoboCup Federation and served as a president of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) (2009-2011), a member of the AI & Robotics Council (2016-2018), and Quantum Computing Council (2019-2020) of The World Economic Forum. He is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) (2021-).

Hiroaki received The Computers and Thought Award from the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in 1993, Prix Ars Electronica 2000, Design Award 2001 from Japan Inter-Design Forum, and Nature Award for Creative Mentoring in Science (Mid Carrier) in 2009, as well as being an invited artist for Biennale di Venezia 2000 and Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2001.

Dr Le Song is a deep learning and graph neural network expert and has extensive experience in AI technology and engineering. Dr Song is the current Chair of the department of Machine Learning at MBZUAI.

Prior to joining BioMap, Dr Song was an associate professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and served as the associate director of the Machine Learning Center. He was also the head of the deep learning team at Ant Financial, and was a researcher at the DAMO Academy and at Google.

Elham Tabassi is a Senior Research Scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Associate Director for Emerging Technologies in the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL). She leads NIST Trustworthy and Responsible AI program that aims to cultivate trust in the design, development, and use of AI technologies. She has been working on various machine learning and computer vision research projects with applications in biometrics evaluation and standards since she joined NIST in 1999. She is a member of the National AI Resource Research Task Force, Vice-Chair of OECD working party on AI Governance, Associate Editor of IEEE Transaction on Information Forensics and Security, and a fellow of Washington Academy of Sciences.

Helen Wang is an AI validation quantitative analyst at UBS where she is responsible for the independent validation of the bank's AI models. Prior to this, Helen worked extensively as a data scientist in innovation and fintech. As a former AI practitioner, Helen brings unique views to the topic of responsible AI and AI governance.

Helen lives in Singapore and holds a Master of Science in Statistics from the National University of Singapore.

As a Principal Architect of Ethical AI Practice at Salesforce, Kathy Baxter develops research-informed best practices to educate Salesforce employees, customers, and the industry on the development of responsible AI. She collaborates and partners with external AI and ethics experts to continuously evolve Salesforce policies, practices, and products. She is a member of Singapore’s Advisory Council on the Ethical Use of AI and Data, Visiting AI Fellow at NIST, and on the Board of the nonprofit EqualAI.

Prior to Salesforce, she worked at Google, eBay, and Oracle in User Experience Research. She is the co-author of "Understanding Your Users: A Practical Guide to User Research Methodologies". She received her MS in Engineering Psychology and BS in Applied Psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Kay Firth-Butterfield is the Executive Director of the Centre for Trustworthy Tecnology, a World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. She is one of the foremost experts in the world on the law and governance of AI. She is a Barrister, former Judge and Professor, technologist and entrepreneur who has an abiding interest in how humanity can equitably benefit from new technologies. Kay is an Associate Barrister (Doughty Street Chambers), Master of the Inner Temple, London and served on the Lord Chief Justice’s Advisory Panel on AI and Law. She co-founded the Responsible AI Institute and was the world’s first Chief AI Ethics officer in 2014. Kay is Vice-Chair of The IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems and was part of the group which met at Asilomar to create the Asilomar AI Ethical Principles. She is on the Polaris Council for the Government Accountability Office (USA), the Advisory Boards of UNESCO International Research Centre on AI, the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas, AI for Planet and AI4All. She serves on the Board of Earth Species and is Co-Chair of the AAAI Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Society Conference for 2023.

Additionally, she is a Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and sits on the Government of Singapore’s Data & AI Ethics Board. Kay has advanced degrees in Law and International Relations and regularly speaks to audiences around the world addressing many aspects of the beneficial and challenging technical, economic and social changes arising from the use of AI. She advises companies and governments on responsible design, development and use of AI and has been consistently recognized as a leading woman in AI since 2018. Kay was featured in the New York Times as one of 10 Women Changing the Landscape of Leadership.

Patrick Chua is Principal Strategist, part of the Digital Acceleration Unit at Singapore Airlines, responsible for facilitating business units in problem-solving and introducing new tools and ways of working for SIA Group. In his role, he oversees enterprise data strategy and governance, including AI governance and enabling the use of AI tools with the data team. With over 20 years of experience in digital and data, Patrick is an outcome-driven executive focused on identifying opportunities for growth and innovation.

Shameek Kandu is Chief Strategy Officer at TruEra, a startup focused on AI trust and transparency, where he works with corporations and regulators across North America, Europe and Asia.

Shameek is a member of the Global Partnership on AI, and the Singapore Government's AI and Data Ethics Advisory Forum. He was part of Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Steering Committee on Fairness, Ethics, Accountability and Transparency in AI, and the Bank of England’s AI Public-Private Forum. Until 2020, Shameek was Group Chief Data Officer at Standard Chartered Bank.

Dr Michael Zeller is the Head of Artificial Intelligence & Solutions at Temasek and is responsible for the investment company’s AI venture building and accelerating the deployment of AI technologies to create scalable AI products and solutions. Dr Zeller joined Temasek in July 2020 and is a founding team and board member of Aicadium, a global tech company founded by Temasek in 2021 to provide Artificial Intelligence solutions to companies in its ecosystem and beyond. Temasek’s AI Centre of Excellence. Aicadium comprises a team of global, best-in-class AI talent seeking to empower companies to achieve better outcomes through the adoption and delivery of AI technologies and solutions. He also represents Temasek on the Board of Aicadium.

Prior to joining Temasek, Dr Zeller was the CEO of Dynam.AI, an AI consultancy and solutions firm. He has over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur, executive and advisor of technology-centric organisations. Dr Zeller led the Strategy & Innovation function at Software AG, an enterprise platform integration and IOT solutions provider. He was previously CEO and co-founder of Zementis, a leading software solutions provider for predictive analytics, which was acquired by Software AG. Before founding Zementis, Dr Zeller was CEO at OTW Software, a company providing software engineering processes and design services, and worked in various engineering and IT roles with major aerospace corporations.

From 2013 to 2021, Dr Zeller served as Secretary/Treasurer on the Executive Committee of ACM SIGKDD, the premier international organization for data science. With a special emphasis on applied machine learning and big data solutions, his mission as SIGKDD Executive Committee Member was to foster a strong partnership between research institutions & industry organisations as the key for the continued success of the global SIGKDD community. In 2020, he was honoured with the ACM SIGKDD Service Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to professional Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining societies or society-at-large through applications of knowledge discovery and data mining.

Dr Zeller currently serves on the Board of Directors of Tech San Diego, which represents the region’s information technology industry with focus on advanced analytics. Furthermore, he is a venture partner at Analytics Ventures, a venture studio fund dedicated to innovations in Artificial Intelligence, LPAC member at the AI Fund, a venture capital firm that strives to move humanity forward by accelerating the adoption of AI. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and industry events and has published various articles and white papers on AI, data science and machine learning.

Dr Zeller received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Frankfurt (Germany), and received a visiting scholarship from the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was the recipient of a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California.

Dr Ong Chen Hui is the Assistant Chief Executive of Business and Technology Group at the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) of Singapore, where she oversees the agency’s efforts in developing the industry and research ecosystem around emerging technologies such as AI, AI Governance, 5G, 6G Research, and Trust Technologies. She is also a member of the OT Cybersecurity Experts Panel of Cybersecurity Agency of Singapore (CSA), the chair of Singapore Women-in-Tech and one of the honorees of Singapore 100 Women in Tech 2021. She also serves in the Executive Committee of Association of Infocomm Security Professionals.

Chen Hui has spent more than 20 years in R&D and technology innovation. Prior to IMDA, she was the APJ CTO in Trustwave – a Singtel company and Principal Member of Technical Staff in DSO National Laboratories.

As Assistant Chief Executive (Data Innovation and Protection Group), Yeong Zee Kin oversees Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore’s AI and Data Industry development strategy with the key responsibility in developing forward-thinking governance on AI and data in Singapore. He also spearheaded the development of Singapore’s Model AI Governance Framework, which won the UNITU WSIS Prize in 2019. He is currently a member of the OECD Network of Experts on AI (ONE AI), and was a member of the AI Group of Experts at the OECD (AIGO) which developed the OECD Principles on AI.

In his capacity as Deputy Commissioner of Personal Data Protection Commission Singapore, Zee Kin oversees the development, administration and enforcement of the Personal Data Protection Act (2012). His key responsibilities include managing the formulation and implementation of policies relating to the protection of personal data, as well as the issuing of enforcement directions for organisational actions. As a well-regarded expert on data privacy issues, he has spearheaded various public and sector-specific activities to raise awareness and compliance in data protection, and is currently participating as an expert in the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI)’s Data Governance Working Group, which addresses data protection issues at the intersection of AI development and deployment.

Since April 2023, Zee Kin concurrently holds the appointment as Chief Executive at Singapore Academy of Law.

As Deputy Secretary (Technology) at Ministry of Health (MOH), Dr Cheong deploys technology against COVID-19, and develops the health research and innovation ecosystem to achieve Healthier SG – i.e., population health, precision health and preventive health. He sits on the Board of Integrated Health Information Systems.

Prior to MOH, he was Deputy CEO of National Research Foundation, where he oversaw the implementation of the S$19 billion Research Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) 2020 plan and led an inter-agency effort to develop the S$25 billion RIE 2025 plan.

Dr Cheong was also Divisional Director (Planning) in Ministry of Education. Beyond educational policies, he shaped educational research at National Institute of Education, international benchmarking and partnership efforts. As Deputy Director (Manufacturing & Services) at MTI, he oversaw EDB, and the Secretariat for Economic Strategies Committee chaired by Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam. As Head of Fiscal Strategy at Ministry of Finance, he shaped Singapore’s long-term fiscal sustainability.

He served on the Boards of Urban Redevelopment Authority; ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute; NMRC; EDDC; DxD Hub; National Additive Manufacturing Programme; Singapore Food Story R&D Programme and NRF Holdings. He continues to serve on the Boards of Advanced Cell Therapy and Research Institute of Singapore (ACTRIS), Centre for Research & Development in Learning (CRADLE), National Clinical Trial Steering Committee (NCTSC) and Precision Health Research Singapore (PRECISE).

As a Rhodes Scholar and PSC Scholar, he obtained his DPhil/Mphil in Economics from Oxford, and his S.B. in Chemical Engineering and S.B. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.