Hello, and thank you for joining us for another MetLife TTX Talks, our series that spotlights meaningful dialogues with influential STEM leaders. My name is Katie Linondale, and I'm happy to be partnering with the MetLife team to host these conversations. And today we're joined by Velostar. Velos is an entrepreneur, technologist, human rights advocate, and a leading global voice in tech. In this talk, Velos discusses his views on innovation, technology and AI for social impact and why education plays such a key part in the future of STEM. So without further ado, welcome Velos Dar in conversation with Donna Carr, head of U.S.
group service and operations at MetLife. Donna, take it away. Velos Dar, welcome to Metlife's TTX talks. Donna, thank you so much. I'm so delighted to be with you.
You know what? Thanks so much for joining us today. I had the pleasure of seeing you in person at our MetLife TTX conference last year where you discussed AIS potential to impact positive change. I'm really looking forward to continuing a great conversation.
Now I've read your bio, I know you're a leading figure when it comes to technology and particularly AI for humanity and social goods. So I'd like to start by asking you a bit more about your background and what led you to your current focus. Oh, Donna, thank you so much for the question, for this warm welcome. I so enjoyed being at TTX last year.
And to answer your question, I think this is the moment in time where humanity faces this big existential crazy challenge. What are we going to do about technologies that are reshaping every part of our experience? But that's a really big way to enter into this conversation. So maybe let me share with you a very personal story that brings it down to the individual person. You know, I had the great privilege of growing up in rural Illinois. You know, and in the time I was growing up, I feel like I was almost at the intersection of three very different worlds. I was growing up in rural cornfields and soybeans in the Midwest in the 1980s, a place where I learned what it means to be an American, what it means to think about a changing world order.
And I saw it through the lenses of my neighbors, my fellow students, my friends, but two other worlds that had an immense impact on me at the same time. One, my family originally from India, who I got to go back and spend some time with as a child who lived almost in a pre technology world. They lived in a world that didn't even have running water in their homes or, you know, power or even sanitation. And I got to see what it looks like to be in a world where technology's all around, but maybe isn't within grasp. And then I saw a third world. I had the great privilege also growing up very close to the National Center for Supercomputing, one of these incredible academic institutions that showed the promise of what technology could be.
That brought supercomputing into communities and showed us how we could change everything from how we thought about the weather, how we thought about planting our crops, to how we modeled some of the most complex systems in the world at the intersection of these three things. Here I was curious about the world, trying to figure out what was going on, and I came to this realization very early in my life that I think maybe will resonate for you, Donna, and maybe for our listeners today. On one side, I was so hopeful.
I saw how technology could change and create incredible opportunities. At the same time, I was very impatient. I felt like if technology could do all this good stuff, why wasn't it doing it today? Why weren't my cousins able to access the Internet? Why is it that all of the great things that we could do with technology weren't improving people's lives? That's a little bit of the origin story, but it brings me to a place now where we can think about the big picture. Because for every kid like me out there, I think there's an opportunity now for us to all lean in, to step in and with responsibility, say let's build a better future for everyone.
Very good. I love that. How your personal path kind of connected now to your professional path. And it's really, it's a very, very intriguing story. So, you know, you've got this impressive professional history and you're part of all of these leading groups on innovation and AI and, you know, tell us what kind of shape your interest in technology. Yeah, I'll tell you, Donna.
And again, I think in no ways is this an exceptional story. I was just a very curious kid. And in many ways today, to this day, I still AM.
I was always very curious about how technology was evolving and shaping itself. And so even though I did go down a technical path early in my career, I ended up becoming a computer scientist and working on something that we called artificial intelligence 25 years ago. They don't look very similar to the amazing advances that we're making today, but it laid the groundwork. But throughout, there was always a piece that was not just what is the technology doing, but how was it impacting people's lives? And so I end up moving from a career in computer science to actually going off to become a human rights lawyer that's about spent a number of years all around the world working on issues of where technology was creating social change. And it came to a realization that these two fields that sometimes feel very different, very far apart, they're actually really intertwined. That we think about how kids in the kind of communities I grew up in get access to equipment all the way through to how they participate in political decisions.
How do they gain the skills that make them effective in their careers? And how do they capture the wisdom of their grandparents when they get to sit with them and hear the stories of their culture and societies. All of these have a technology element to them. And it means that we can't really have a conversation anymore about technology without thinking about human impacts.
And it's getting harder and harder to think about building a social movement without understanding technology. So, you know, AI is this new innovative tool when it, you know, I see your, you know, passion around social justice. So then how do you envision AI playing a role for a more just future? Yeah. Let's ground ourselves in what's happened over the last 20 years.
And from there, we'll talk about AI. For the last 20 years, we've had incredible advancements. I mean, the World Wide Web, Sure. The Internet, the ability to go online and buy anything you want to, to connect with communities you care about. But let's also acknowledge that some of the transformations that have happened because the Internet haven't been so great for everyone.
They've been sometimes great for those in the global N, the ones who have access to have capacity. And sometimes they haven't been great for blue collar workers, for kids and teenagers who are accessing social media. There's a lot to learn from that. It's not an indictment of technology, but it is a prompt that says, hey, we're now at a new moment in time.
We had the Internet, we had social media, and now we have artificial intelligence just breaking out onto the scene. I think it's time for us to ask a question. What is it that we want to create in the world and how does AI help us get there? Let me just say that's where I find my hope, Donna, is AI is a whole suite of tools. We're at the very early days of it, and if we could set it up in a way that people and communities feel the agency to build solutions, what an incredible different future we could have because of it. I know you've said in the past that AI can be this double edged sword, and you've spoken about the kind of complexities of navigating the future.
So you know, that example is an example of good that you've seen from AI thus far. What's something else about AI that really excites you? You know, I'm an optimist. I like finding these incredible stories of great ownership, but it doesn't mean that I'm not pragmatic about the risks and challenges, right? And so it's worth it for us to acknowledge that double edged sword. But you know, sometimes my risks around AI are a little bit different from the ones you hear in the media. I've got to tell you, I'm not concerned about the killer robots that are going to take over so much, right? Most days, that's not a thing that keeps me up at 4:00 AM.
But I am concerned, Donna, about a world in which AI isn't created for our common benefit, where the only reason we're using AI is to advance a few small private sector interests and keep the rest of us out. And so this actually brings me to my answer to your question. What else am I hopeful about? Well, I'm very hopeful about any number of initiatives today that are restructuring who builds technology and for whose benefit. So often when we work with communities around the world, here in the United States and abroad, there is a sense that technology fits into one of three categories. Too often technology is something that's done to us.
It means that we're consumers and we have to go be a part of a world that somebody else has created. And I don't know about you, but for me that doesn't always sit very well. I'm not sure I want to be the target of technology. Sometimes, much more hopefully, there are instances where technology is created for us and these are areas where public interest technology creates new access right to skills and training to new mechanisms of, of having our political voice, of being participating in government decisions, of even thinking about artistic expression. And technology for us feels a lot better than technology to us.
But actually, what I'm most hopeful about, Donna, is the third category where it actually becomes technology by us, where we invest in building capacity inside of communities, from technical skills and training to the resources needed so that communities can come forward and build the technologies that they need to solve their problems and to advance their interests. And again, that feels like a warm and happy blanket, right? When you can say, hey, we've got technology that we created that advances our interests. And we see this across communities, data from young Black men in Oakland to the Hidden Genius Project now all around the country that are experiencing an entire program that's modeled in a way that lets them build technical skills, but also puts them in mentoring and professional relationships with early career young Black men.
To show them that there's an entire path here to make the AI story, not one that we participate in, but to make it our story. I see this across different communities across the country. I'm really excited for this.
Excellent, excellent. So I want to shift this just a little bit, you know, and, and thinking about STEM and education. So I read that your company has partnered with organizations such as Technical Technovation, which is a global tech education nonprofit that inspires girls to be leaders and problem solvers in their lives and their communities and to really help them to empower women and girls and AI.
So you've also spoken about the role that education plays in the future future in STEM. So what role does education playing in increasing inclusion in STEM fields? You know, it's a critical starting point, Donna, and you know this well through your work that I'm such an admirer of as well. Education is the baseline that is unfortunately today, both the accelerator for certain individuals to get into STEM careers and too often is also the implicit obstacle that people have to get over. We need to change the way that we fundamentally think about education, about STEM in particular, as a way to drive universal and equitable access to opportunity. What does that mean? Well, it means a few things.
One is recognizing the broad diversity of resource bases that schools and traditional educational systems have. A top school in a top school district that's incredibly well funded. Often we're finding the students have access to AI so early in their educational pathway that it almost feels native to them. And yet in other contexts, and we've been doing work across the US in areas that are historically and traditionally under resourced and underrepresented in tech fields, we're finding that students might not even have access to a working computer lab or even working ongoing Internet access through the course of the day. So we have to acknowledge that if we really want to think about inclusion and diversity in the workforce as a virtue, as we know to be through so many rounds of research as well as the lived experience of anybody who's in these organizations, then we've got to start early and we've got to be decisive in how we enter the space test. That means a few things.
One is, again, building and using AI and new technologies to build curriculum and materials and resources. So the teachers who are inspired to bring this in the classroom can do so even in low physical resource settings. For example, some of the work that's happening at Khan Academy, the creation of new entire courses and tool kits so that with just a mobile phone you can still get engaged in illiteracy, and even a technical training program that will get you to a certain set of skills.
We need to invest in making sure that there's equitable access in the classroom. And then we need to make sure that we're also training for diverse sets of individuals to get technical skills outside of the classroom. To us, this is a few different things. One is really investing in community resources and access, working with local libraries, working with community groups and making sure that they have access to an ownership of the kind of content and curriculum that'll drive this. Thinking about virtual platforms, thinking about train the trainer programs, and making sure that communities prioritize this as a way of thinking about economic opportunity for their people.
The last thing I'll say to you is I think we've been stuck for a few decades now in this conception that the four year college program is the way that you get into the workforce. And over the last decade we've seen an incredible new renaissance in thinking about pathways to economic opportunity. And for me those are so critically important in an AI enabled world. We're seeing as such a disruption to the traditional models of education. What we need are institutions that are stepping in and working with employers and working with communities to say what are the kinds of skills we need to train for and how do we leverage existing and new institutions to do that well? Whether it's two year programs, fully virtual training, or even programs like Perscolis or other amazing career pathways, programs that increase equity and representation.
What are you seeing in terms of the evolving landscape of work, particularly because of AI and how we can actually drive better and equitable outcomes for people? Well, you know, I'll tell you when I think about maintaining like our cultural edge and you know, from MetLife, what can we do to involve our people? I, I, I sum it up in three things and you're going to laugh, but it's communicate, communicate and then communicate some more. So what I found is that employees really need to feel that they're part of the journey. Like you said, they want things done with them and not to them.
So as we evolve technology, we change the status quo. It's so important that our employees feel included in the process. We're kind of like at this precipice where none of us really have the answers. The playbook is being being written as we evolve, so we're all learning together.
So their input is incredibly invaluable as we continue on the journey. And getting different perspectives from diverse sources, including women as they enter STEM is imperative to our excess, to, you know, to our success. So, you know, I find that employees are intrigued with new technologies and the problems they can solve at the end of the day. But you know, what they really want to know is what's in it for me? How does this impact me and the work that I do? So keeping our employees involved and not only the how, but also the why behind the changes that we're making will really help us to maintain that cultural edge. I love that. And I like how you flipped it.
The interviewee became the interviewer. Thank you for that. No, thank you. Look, I think it's such a powerful point, right? And I, I want to_what you said there because, I THINK it's so easy in this moment for people to feel like even within organizations that AI IS the thing that's happening around them without necessarily knowing how they plug in and. I THINK it's an incredible step that you've taken and that great organizations are taking to say this is a shared journey and it should be shared not just between an employer and an employee in the workplace but.
And you said this earlier, a shared responsibility for all of us in society because when we actually lean in, some really incredible things happen. We began to see how applications of AI move out of, hey, do I have yet another chat bot to engage with? Two, how do I use these tools and resources to do things like map my community's access to healthy and nutritious food and food deserts, to think about climate impacts in my neighborhood and why is it that my street always floods? And what should we be doing as we worry about the next round of climate impacts and so many more things. Shared journeys create incredible shared outcomes.
Very good, very good. So now we're gonna do just a quick little lightning round short answers for me. So all right, what was your first job? My first job was, oh, wow, that's a good one. My first job was actually, and you will not be surprised to hear this, working in a computer lab, trying to put together PCs in my school just to make sure that everybody had a working computer they could use.
So that connectivity is still there for you? Absolutely. I was actually a grocery store clerk, so nothing to do with what I'm doing today. But what's your proudest achievement instead? Oh, that's a good one. I would have to say I have recently gotten to spend a lot of time working with my niece and nephews in their third and 4th grade classes. And one of them has just come up with his first robot that he's entering into competitions. And so I had a chance to learn a lot from him about how he was training that.
So really his achievement is my achievement. In that case, it's been super fun. That's excellent. And what advice would you give to your younger self? You know, I think it goes back to this idea of curiosity.
And I've always in my life been curious about all of the different elements of these pieces. But what I've learned over time is curiosity is much more fun when you do it together. And so figuring out ways to share exploration and discovery and bring it all into a space where we can build community identity, even as we kind of scratch that itch of curiosity, That's one of the great joys of life.
And I'd say just keep looking for that. Very good. And I think I can answer this one, but I'll ask AI, friend or foe, you know, I will actually say neither. I think the real question is, will AI help us be closer friends with each other? Will it make us more human? Will it make us more inspired? I don't really care about AI at the end of the day, Donna. I know that's a crazy thing for somebody like me to say. I care a lot about what we will become as humanity because of AI.
Very good. And then finally, what's your favorite personal activity outside of STEM? Oh my gosh, You know, it's funny, as much as we talk about digital worlds, my favorite thing is exploring the beautiful, wonderful planet that we have. And so I love to travel to be in both incredible human settings, but also to go places like base camp at Everest last year and this year to see some of the most incredible and natural beauty that we have in the world today. That's phenomenal. That's phenomenal. So as we wrap, do you have any parting thoughts you'd like to share for people interested in AI or technology for furthering the STEM industry for social good? Yeah, thank you.
I mean, I think the last thing I'll leave you with, and we've touched on it a few times in this conversation, is this incredible sense of optimism that I've driven, that I'm driven by everyday. And it's not an optimism about technology. It's not the idea that tech will cure all of our ills, but rather a real optimism and belief in human resilience and the idea that when we're faced with the opportunities that technology gives us, we face an innate human desire to make sure that we create the best world possible.
I think if we're able to name that and work on it together, then everything else falls into place. Well, Velos, thank you so much for sharing your story. I can tell you I'm more optimistic just based on this brief conversation that we had. You've touched on so many important topics and you know, especially as we look towards the future STEM. So, and thank you all for being with us and for this discussion. We look forward to seeing you again for our next TTX talk soon.
Thank you Donna for moderating and thank you Velos for sharing your own personal stories and tech for good. I hope you all enjoy the conversation and are leaving feeling optimistic about the future. And if you've missed any of Metlife's TTX talks, we'll head on over to Metlife's YouTube channel to stay up to date.
You can also get involved in the conversation by joining our TTX LinkedIn group for the latest trends, updates, and highlights on advancing women in STEM. Well, thank you all for being with us on this discussion and we look forward to seeing you again for our next TTX talks.
2024-08-21