-And so without further ado,
it is really my honor and my privilege
to bring to the stage our very first presenter,
Derrick Wheeler-Smith,
the Director of Seattle's Office for Civil Rights.
-The notion of innovating equity is powerful,
particularly the word innovation.
It resonates in many powerful ways for me just
because we're actually living in the imagination
that some people had 400 years ago, right?
And so we're really in an imagination battle
that's going to require us to innovate.
Sure. Okay.
One in five Republicans
and one in five Democrats say the other must be dead
for things to get better in our country.
Our former president, who's running again,
has openly stated that if he's not re-elected,
there's going to be a bloodbath.
These statements signal a belief
that genocide is the path forward to solving
our political genocide.
Yet we know, in our knower,
that genocide is never the answer.
The question in this moment is who do we need to become
as Americans to change this trajectory?
FBI data shows that the largest trending terrorist group
in this country is white evangelical America.
This is who we tout, though,
in this photo, as today's terrorists.
This picture was taken at the We Want to Live march.
Weeks prior, these two young men were trying to shoot each other.
They're actually more American than we'd like to admit.
They practice tribalism, capitalism,
and they use militarism to protect themselves.
July will mark 60 years since the Civil Rights Movement,
leading to the Civil Rights Act.
My question is, What's changed?
The struggle for equality and justice
continues while our country remains committed
to sealing atrocities of our past.
This is Montgomery, Alabama,
where enslaved Africans were marched in chains
from the riverfront to the railroad station.
And yet this site commemorates country singer Hank Williams
at the top of that path instead.
This is where 18-year-old Michael Brown was lynched
by police and left in the street
for four hours in 108 degrees heat.
They repaved the street because they couldn't get
the blood out of the pavement.
How do we tell a fuller story?
His blood cries from the streets,
and I believe it's the telling of truth
that allows suffering to speak. Over the past few years,
we've seen hundreds of bills targeting health and safety
of our LGBTQ+ youth and adults.
Our children are struggling and dying
for showing up in the world as themselves.
We must widen the circle of human concern.
The National Urban League released a new report
on the state of Black America.
It says over the last 20 years,
the equality index has moved 2.7%.
At this rate, it'll take 180 years to close the economic gap
between Black and white folks.
Our system structures and policies
continue to perpetuate race-based disparities.
Black and brown folks didn't trip
and fall into the barrios and ghettos of America.
It was actually a social construct
of the United States government.
And what we know is that where we live directly influences
our health and opportunities
in our proximity to being able to thrive
and to have healthy food, clean air, and jobs.
Where we live also determines our access
to high-quality schools.
And yet still we know
that race-based opportunity gaps persist
in our learning environments,
and college education won't close the racial wealth gap.
Managing our money won't close the racial wealth gap.
Securing a great job and working full time
also will not close the racial wealth gap.
For things to get better,
there must be room for more than the white,
able-bodied, cisgendered males
who narrowly defined "We the People."
How can we redefine "We the People" in a way
that allows us all to thrive from good health,
wealth, and equitable opportunities?
At the Seattle Office for Civil Rights,
we envision a city of thriving,
powerful communities that foster shared healing
and shared belonging.
And we work towards this vision by enforcing civil rights
and ending barriers to equity and undoing racism
in city and government.
And we do that by building systems
and structures of belonging.
One way our office puts this to practice
is advocating for enforcing civil rights
that protects fair treatment and equal access to housing,
employment, and public accommodations.
Yet the work of belonging can start with all of us.
I met Charles McFerrin, who's in this picture,
who was a close friend, campaign manager,
and the right hand of the great Fannie Lou Hamer,
a treasured voting and women's rights activist,
community organizer, and civil rights leader.
One night, a friend of mine
asked Charles about the tactic of nonviolence.
Charles raised his eyebrows and he said,
"Nonviolence wasn't a tactic.
It was who we wanted to be at our core.
We'd seen Black bodies lynched, dying, being drug behind cars,
and burned at the stake.
We wanted to be peace,
because that's what was at our core and that's what we chose."
How can we embody who we want to be at our core?
Peace was at their core. What lies at your core?
This picture is the 400th anniversary.
I was on the shores of Fort Monroe
to commemorate the first landing of enslaved Africans
in English North America.
I was surrounded by drums, libations, dancing,
tears, and moments of silence,
a look into the past and the future.
Each day is a new opportunity to think,
to act, and to behave differently than we have before.
We can choose to make spaces for more experiences
and co-create a way of living and being
that can hold all of our similarities
and all of our differences.
We have to examine the ways in which we other
and exclude one another.
We must become students of other people's stories,
acknowledging each other's humanity and leading with love.
In closing, who do you need to become
in our collective work to build a world
where everyone belongs and can thrive?
And I certainly hope to continue to live my life in such a way
that if it were a book in Florida, it would be banned.
Thank you.
-It is my pleasure to welcome Michael Huang.
He is a native Seattleite
and retired professional breakdancer
turned creative agency owner with over 15 years of experience
across the arts, culture, and creative industries.
He founded Milli 10 years ago with the mission to diversify
and elevate Seattle's creative industries,
and has worked with everyone from global brands
to grassroots social justice organizations.
Michael is also a Seattle Film Commissioner,
passionate about all things community, culture, and equity.
-Awesome. So I am -- I was born here in Seattle,
one of the rare unicorns, to Taiwanese immigrants,
and I grew up in South Seattle
where I got exposed to a rich, diverse, vibrant community.
I learned a lot about so many different cultures growing up.
Shout out to the South End.
And as I grew up, I discovered breakdancing.
There's me laying on Red Square.
And through that, I found myself as an artist,
as a creative,
but I also was able to found the UW Hip Hop Student Association,
found a dance crew, and learn about leadership,
learn about really organizing creativity,
bringing people together around arts.
And then, you know, I needed to make money
because I have immigrant parents,
and so we needed to get into advertising.
So after school, I moved to New York
and I tried to be like these guys,
but a lot less white.
And I learned a lot out there.
I didn't dress like that,
but I got to work with big brands all over the world,
and I built a skill set.
But all the while,
I was dreaming about going back to Seattle,
seeing all my friends, start businesses,
and I wanted to go and invest in that.
I wanted to invest in creativity,
and in my love for innovation,
I decided to invest in a very antiquated business model,
which is just another agency.
And so we started Milli, that's what we're called,
and the great thing about that antiquated model
is that actually we got to work with some
of the most innovative companies here in Seattle,
but also around the world.
And it kind of goes to show how far creativity really goes
and what is innovative about creativity.
Is it new tools? Is it AI?
Or is it just doing great work and investing in great people?
And so we got to do a lot of that great work.
We got to win some awards.
We got to tell some stories.
We got to make some really creative stuff.
You know, we got to make stuff for ourselves,
for clients, and it's been really fun to do all that with,
you know, a ton of great people, a ton of skilled craftsmen,
and, you know, we've been able to tell unique
and incredible stories.
This project was a documentary series
about Seattle's kind of underground youth arts,
kind of multi-disciplinary arts scene with a lot
of young creatives coming out of Seattle,
a little bit of a love letter to the city that I grew up in.
And it won us a couple of awards,
and that was really great.
But we've also done work for the city of Seattle,
which kind of touches on the reason
why we're here in this library right now.
Downtown is You is the branding we did for the Mayor's,
you know, downtown revitalization project.
And so it's affecting the spaces that we convene in and live in,
and we hope that we can make an impact on our own community.
And so it's been really great to have these opportunities
in the spectrum of work we've done.
We've told stories that are untold.
This was a project with Meta,
where we used AR technology to build a web experience
where you can experience a storytelling piece
around the Nikkei farmers that originally tended to the land
that Meta's new headquarters are sitting on top of.
So we got to play a lot with cutting edge technology.
But really, behind all of it, it's the people,
it's the process.
And design and creativity is more than a guy
with a black turtleneck with a British accent
walking around with a bunch of books, right?
It's people. You know, it's craftsmen,
it's strategists and art directors concepting
and then connecting with, you know,
salt-of-the-earth set builders and camera operators
that are covered in gaffing tape and carabiners,
and that process is powerful technology.
It's innovative. It's the human mind.
It's the creativity in us and it's antiquated,
because it's been here forever
and it continues to grow and adapt.
And I'm bullish on it.
From strategy, you know -- I'm sorry,
I'm repeating my note here, it's confusing.
But yeah, you can see the process is a lot more
than just coming up with great ideas.
It's really, really diving in and trying to craft worlds
and to communicate vision and creativity.
And that's the really fun part of it.
It's really amazing to do that work,
but more than anything, it's about people, right?
And that's what I'm really excited about in this work.
And the days that I don't like the work,
I love the people even more because they get me up
and they get me going.
That's the tech,
that's the "product" that we invest in.
And what does that really look like?
I've really had to think about that, you know,
over the last 10 years of running Milli.
And what that looks like is being really,
really, really bold and courageous around people,
creating more -- a better place for people to be creative.
That means creating a better place for people, period, right?
Daring to dream around people.
The way we treat technology or AI or products,
let's treat people that way, right?
Like, let's really think about them as, like,
how do we make them better?
How do we create a better place for them?
And Toni Cade Bambara, an amazing author, she wrote that,
"The role of the artist
is to make the revolution irresistible."
And so during this time, we really thought,
during the time of 2016 and 2020,
we really looked in the mirror,
what does it mean to be a creative agency?
What does it mean to be an ad agency?
And so we started to take a point of view,
and it changed our business model.
We started working with changemakers and social impact,
social change,
and we started working on justice reform,
national projects.
We took our skill set and started creating for a purpose,
to create for a better world.
And that wasn't really, that's, you know, very common.
I mean, we see it a lot more in brand campaigns these days,
but early on in our journey there weren't a lot
of blueprints for that.
And so, you know,
we've gotten to work on economic justice projects
that are helping inform this changemaking.
It's changed who we are,
it's changed our work,
and hopefully it's going to change the world
just a little bit.
And so that's what's been really exciting
about the way that we've shifted our focus
from things and skills and ideas to people.
Clay Shirky is a great author on new media and he said,
"A revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new tools.
It happens when society adopts new behaviors."
It's not about AI, it's not about the next product,
it's about how we use those things
and who we are as a community.
And so to me, the words equity and innovation,
they're just buzzwords around what we need to be
always thinking about as a species.
So I'm bullish on creativity, I'm bullish on people.
The future of creativity, to me, the future of all industries
is what has been our past and our present.
It's us.
We are the innovation that we're always looking for.
You call me a dinosaur or a boomer about it, right?
But we're people from all backgrounds
and all walks of life.
That's what I'm all about.
And so -- And that was a picture of my team on a recent retreat.
But yeah, the last note I'll leave you with
is the meaning of Milli,
since some of you guys might be wondering
if it's related to a Lil Wayne song.
It's a combination of the word mill,
where things are made, and the French word milieu,
for one's social and cultural surroundings.
Thank you.
-Ry Armstrong is an American non-binary trans artist
and activist who was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest.
Complementary to their acting,
their focus lies on creative endeavors
of developing new works of storytelling
to be experienced on the stage and screen.
After finishing their graduate degree
in international relations,
they took an interest in advocating
for union arts workers and environmentalism,
as climate change is the defining crisis of our lifetime.
Their accolades include being a former candidate
for Seattle City Council,
serving as a commissioner on the Seattle LGBTQ Commission,
volunteering on the executive board of Theatre Puget Sound,
and acting as a co-star
in HBO's hit drama series "The Gilded Age."
Please welcome Ry Armstrong.
-Does anyone here know "The Little Mermaid"?
Raise your hand if you know "The Little Mermaid."
Keep your hand up if you know who this human is.
This is Howard Ashman, the lyricist of "Little Mermaid,"
"Beauty and the Beast," and "Little Shop of Horrors."
He learned that he was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS
when "Little Mermaid" was created in 1990,
and he died in 1991.
His creative partner, Alan Menken, said that,
"When 'Little Mermaid' was being made, Howard knew he had HIV,
but hid it from everyone, including me."
For press events, he wore a catheter in his chest
so that he could get medicine intravenously.
He began suffering neuropathies, losing feeling in his fingers,
his voice, and much of his eyesight.
"Prince Ali" from "Aladdin" was written from his hospital bed
when he was down to 80 pounds.
When you think about those lyrics, about being on land
and being able to live,
and what is this fire burning inside and this pain.
And the fact that Ursula,
which is the character based off of the drag queen Divine,
steals Ariel's voice,
which HIV/AIDS did to Howard Ashman in this movie.
Not many people know this. And why is that?
Why is there erasure of queer identities and queer people?
So many queer people, including myself,
hide because it's easier to do that, right?
They call it being in the closet,
or Out of the Closet if you're thrift shopping on Capitol Hill.
So I asked myself,
How can I be a trans person or a non-binary person
in 2024, today, in our world?
And if there is a God, who is that?
What is that?
And does that allow me to exist on this planet?
For the sake of argument, let's just say God is either Beyonce,
or a non-binary person.
And when we talk about HIV/AIDS,
we have to talk about the women
who also went through this epidemic,
and the racial disparities beyond that.
This is America, 2010. The bottom lines are white women
who dealt with infections of HIV/AIDS,
and the upper lines are Black women.
So, this idea of what it means to be a woman
and making that inclusive today is so important
because it's built on the backs of people
who have fought before us.
We think about the Black trans women
who threw bricks at Stonewall,
because being queer is a rebellion,
and the ripple effect that this had across the world.
On this slide, you can see the word SIDA,
which is Spanish for AIDS,
and this beautiful mural from Spain by Keith Haring,
the queer artist that hopefully,
if you don't know Keith Haring, go home and Google tonight.
But you can see that these bindings of snakes and addiction
and drugs really impacts the queer community today.
So, despite all that, we hold on to pride.
And if you weren't at Pride,
there were 300,000 people in Seattle this last June,
which was amazing and incredible.
I was able to march with my union, Actors' Equity,
and SAG-AFTRA with the Pride at Work delegation,
and that was quite an honor to be able to be
there in that parade. It's a smaller picture,
so I had to make it small for the pixels.
But we hold on to pride because that is all we have.
And so my question then is,
Why is my identity becoming a commodity
for corporations to then leverage?
You look at Pride parades today,
they got a free tequila shot over here,
Starbucks is sponsoring something over there,
which I think they mean well,
but they do not approach the actual queer people
in the community that are hurting.
You look at our streets and look at how many people are homeless,
and that's why we have to remember
that love and resistance is the backbone of Stonewall.
For me, love is the biggest form of resistance,
and that comes in the form of solidarity.
Does everyone know that SAG-AFTRA was on strike
for a million years last year?
And we got a record deal on the national level,
and brought attention to things
like artificial intelligence replacing workers.
That only happened because people were brave.
And Seattle could be that union town.
In 1919, the Seattle General Strike set the precedent.
20% of our city showed up for all of the people
that were working down at the waterfront.
That was also the day before my birthday, go Aquarius.
But my grandfather spent his whole life, Marvin,
one of my heroes, as a teamster cutting fish down in Ballard.
And that was his entire existence,
and he could not have been happier.
So when we think about commodity and queer
bodies being leveraged,
we also have to think about the climate crisis.
It's all connected.
And so we are fighting capitalism.
People think Seattle's going to be this haven
for climate change.
Nowhere's going to be a haven for climate change.
And so we have five years, according to scientists,
to really turn the tides and make that change.
So, I would recommend everyone here to get involved.
Go to a Seattle Office of Civil Rights event.
Go get involved with a local commission.
There's so many volunteer opportunities
in our great city, and we need you.
I also want to end by just taking
and reading the names of the trans people
who have died just this year, or non-binary.
Nex Benedict, Samantha Gomez-Francesca,
Diamond Brigman, Kitty Monroe, Miriam Nohemí Ríos,
Yvonne, Gabby Ortiz, Alex Taylor-Franco,
Righteous TK, Chevy Hill.
Don't forget their names.
-So next we are going to hear from Maren Costa.
Maren Costa is a design leader, climate tech startup advisor,
climate justice activist,
and founding member of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice,
a worker-powered organization credited with Amazon's
Climate Pledge and Jeff Bezos' $10 billion Earth Fund.
Maren's theory of change recognizes
that collective action is two times more powerful than war
at driving systems change.
Maren currently works with The Sunrise Project,
organizing Google employees to pressure Vanguard
to provide a fossil-free 401(k) plan,
and she ran for Seattle City Council in 2023.
-So here we are, one quarter into the 21st century,
facing a myriad of societal and political breaking points,
exceeding several planetary boundaries,
watching as the world's power and resources
get sucked into the vortexes of a handful of techno,
plutocratic, oligarchic billionaires.
All as we teeter on the edge of unprecedented
existential tipping points.
Is it even possible to turn this around?
Yes, it absolutely is, with one crucial caveat.
Our collective fate depends on utterly embracing
our inextricable interconnectedness,
because the holistic systems change
we so desperately need demands radical solidarity.
This isn't just talk. This is a call to action.
I understand why we want to turn away.
It's overwhelming and heartbreaking
to take in all of the injustices of our time.
So, bear with me
as I first compel us to look this moment dead in the eye,
because we can't fix what we don't face.
We are trapped inside several exploitive,
extractive systems that are killing us by dividing us.
We are divided from all other species as we sever ties with
and destroy nature, inherently destroying ourselves.
We are divided by nation-states
that belie our global interdependence.
We are divided by skyrocketing income inequality
and increasingly polarized politics.
Social media,
with its algorithms designed to prioritize addiction over truth,
has become a breeding ground for misinformation,
echo chambers, and division.
It has weaponized our differences
and eroded our sense of empathy and compassion,
reducing complex issues to shock-value soundbites.
Pandemics can bring us together,
but also divide us and can drive us apart.
And we're seeing the same with the climate crisis.
We see refugees fleeing war, oppression, and famine,
only to be met by a worldwide community
that fights to keep them out.
In our own country and our own city,
we see increasing numbers of unhoused people,
refugees locked out of our severely lopsided economy,
otherized and scapegoated.
This isn't just talk. This is a call to courage.
I recently ran for Seattle City Council,
and it was an eye-opening experience.
Knocking on thousands of my neighbors' doors,
talking with them, listening to them, was inspiringly hopeful,
but also deeply troubling.
Being human and homeless is not a crime,
yet over and over I heard,
"Just lock them up," and "They're not even from here,"
and "We've got to kick them out."
Two different people suggested
that the fix for homelessness was to kill them all.
In echoes from past and present,
Trump calls migrants and refugees 'vermin'.
He wants to build a wall to keep them out.
Trump is our collective lizard brain taking over,
seeping into our once-blue bubble.
This isn't just talk -- this is a desperate appeal to love.
At all levels, our political parties
are playing a zero-sum game, playing on our fears.
When our lizard brains sense fear,
our higher minds become impaired.
We can't think clearly or with nuance.
Instead, we think in simple binaries.
I heard many of my neighbors saying,
"I don't know what I want, but I know I don't want this.
I will vote for the party of not this, no matter what that is."
Fascism rises when fearful people seek binary, reactionary,
otherizing solutions to nuanced problems.
When we give in to fear,
we give in to violent self-preservation.
We relinquish our immense power of collective action,
and without that,
we can't unite to solve big problems in ways
that are equitable.
This isn't just talk. This is a rally cry.
We must defy the powerful forces that seek to divide us
and to steal our collective power.
We must recognize that these are not individual battles,
but shared global struggles
that require global collective action.
It's time to wake up. It's time to dig deep.
It's time to connect with each other
across differing value systems, cultures,
identities, and religions until we find our common humanity.
This isn't just talk, this is hope.
So go.
Talk and listen to your neighbors,
disagree with respect.
Train your algorithms to call in differing viewpoints.
Walk a picket line.
Partake in nonviolent civil disobedience.
Organize.
Build the biggest tent you can,
because we must unite as voters, communities,
unions, countries, humans,
as just one of billions of species
on this solitary rock in space.
There is no us versus them.
There's just one big us.
Let's build radical solidarity,
uniting all the humans who see or are trying to see the us.
We can build a world based on deep-rooted interdependence.
After all, we have nothing and everything to lose.
Can you hear me? This isn't just talk.
This has to be if we are to be.
-I'm pleased to introduce our next speaker
for this evening, Ellie. Ellie is a principal researcher
and has spent her career at the intersection of humanity,
design, and technology.
She is currently leading responsible AI research
for SAP Design
and is advancing a culture of ethical practices
with a focus on product inclusion,
responsible human-centered AI, and sustainability.
Her team generates deep
and actionable insights on these topics,
establishes principles,
and operationalizes frameworks that guide
and empower global product development teams.
Please welcome Ellie.
-So first of all, thank you all for being here.
This is such an important night at PechaKucha.
And I am very excited to talk to you all about a topic
that is near and dear to my heart.
I've been working on it for,
I've been working on this topic for the last several years,
since about 2018,
before all the madness around Gen AI even happened, right?
But I'm here to talk about responsible AI,
and specifically responsible Gen AI in a lot of cases,
because that seems to be pervasive right now.
So my name is Ellie Kemery.
I am a principal researcher
and I lead a practice area called
Responsible AI User Research.
And really we're about -- the squad that I lead,
the work that we do is around empowering teams
to rethink the approaches
that they're taking to developing AI-powered
experiences and releasing them into the world.
So thinking cautiously about it and doing it responsibly.
Okay. So, what is it that we're even talking about?
We're talking about when we're talking about responsible AI?
I mean, there's so much jargon out there right now.
There's, you know, AI ethics,
there's Gen AI, LLMs, you know, governance, regulation,
all these terms being thrown around.
But what is it really?
So, in this case, I want to level the playing field,
you know, in terms of, like,
get us on the same page about the definition,
and the World Economic Forum has a good one.
They describe it as the practice of designing,
building, deploying, operationalizing,
and monitoring AI systems in a manner
that empowers people and businesses
and fairly impacts customers and society,
allowing companies to engender trust
and scale AI with confidence.
And whether you agree with that definition,
I'm not sure that I entirely do,
I went and I asked Gen AI to describe for us
how they think about responsible AI.
And you can see some common themes,
at least there are lines, right?
Like, there's ethics, transparent, you know,
being accountable, unbiased, fair,
all of these terms that I do align to, right?
And I think are really important
when we're addressing this emerging technology
and we're working with it.
So, why does this all matter?
This is an exciting technology, you know?
Like, why not just move fast and break things
and see what happens, right?
Like, this technology that we're, you know,
like, creating presentations with,
we're doing all these amazing things, writing poetry.
But I'll tell you why it matters.
Because there are a lot of unintended consequences
to these technologies.
This is just a little snippet of what's out there
in terms of headlines.
I mean, this is actually ancient in terms of this technology.
I took this,
you know, put this all together about a year ago
when OpenAI had just released GPT-3.5.
And -- but you can see, AI is so pervasive in society, right?
Like, it is, just this one headline,
"Mortgage Algorithms Perpetuating Racial Bias
in Lending, Study Finds," right?
You know, it's showing up everywhere
and we really need to think about the way
that it's showing up and how these things are being created.
So especially in the context of Gen AI,
it is amplifying bias in ways we have never seen, right?
So, this is a search that was done in DALL-E,
like, early, early in the trajectory of that,
you know, technology. I think it was GPT-5 or 3.5,
but you can see the immense amount of bias.
And these companies are putting in guardrails
to mitigate this risk.
However, you know, these LLMs will forever be biased, right?
Because it is literally trained on the internet, right?
So it's a reflection of society, and we all have bias, right?
So how do we go about mitigating the harms caused
by these technologies, right?
Not to mention the impact to the environment.
This is a chart
that literally captures
OpenAI's release, right?
So what carbon output was produced
through the hardware, the training of the model,
which barely even shows up here,
and then the deployment of the AI, right?
So every time you regenerate, just think about that, okay?
The cost to the environment.
So what can we do? Like, that is the question.
Like, what can we all do?
Like, whether you're working on these products
in large corporations like I happen to work,
or if you are somebody who's engaging with these systems,
you know, and using it to write poetry
or whatever it is you're doing, I think we all play a role.
So, I'm here to talk about five things
that you can do in whatever it is that your role is.
So first and foremost though,
be human-centered and evidence-based.
It is about people. I heard that earlier, right?
It is about people, and research,
which is what I do, is a huge part of this.
So we have the ability to surface what matters to people,
right?
Like, what problems are really needing to be solved
with a technology like this?
Because it's not everything, right?
Helping, you know, companies understand who the people are
and what they need, and then reducing risks and bias.
Like, that is our role as well, to improve these AI outcomes.
And measuring results and continually monitoring, right?
And, like, observing new ways to help people, right?
So, the second thing is designing for trust.
And I would say this with caution,
too, because you don't want to design --
over-engineer for trust, right?
Like, we don't want people blindly trusting these systems.
Like, there's, you know, limits to this, right?
So -- But part of this is about human beings being
in control of these technologies
and creating the transparency that allows for that, right?
That inspires people to question
and really gives them the opportunity to,
you know, think critically about what it is that they're seeing
and how they're using it.
So, using things like in design
we have this progressive disclosure, right,
to reveal information as people are engaging with the system,
and, you know, creating this transparency is key.
Inclusion is the foundation for responsible AI.
So this means inviting everybody to the table
and involving them in the process of creating this.
So, it's not just about, you know, the data sets, either.
It's about doing research with people of diverse perspectives
all throughout the process.
But it does start with the data sources, right?
So we need to make sure
that we're pressure testing these data sources.
And, you know, in the case of Gen AI,
where it's trained on the entire Internet,
and as we start to,
you know, fine-tune the models and use reinforcement learning,
right, we can get better at mitigating that bias
and making sure that we are, you know,
taking a hard look at who is excluded
from these data sources. But again, you know,
involving people in the process is really key,
and giving people an opportunity to flag bias when they see it.
And prioritizing sustainability.
I mean, this is just so basic.
Like, you just heard Maren say, I mean,
the crisis that we're in, right?
We are, this is real and this technology,
while exciting, and I am an AI optimist,
I do believe that this has the potential to unlock,
you know, amazing things for humanity, right?
And address a lot of health issues and all kinds of things,
but it doesn't belong in everything, right?
You don't just need to mash Gen AI into every product, right?
We need to be responsible about how we apply these technologies,
and so choosing the right model to, you know,
address the right problem, right?
There's a spectrum of AI technologies out there,
not all of them are as environmentally toxic,
I would say, as something like a Gen AI or an LLM can be.
And these things will get better,
but we have to really think critically about applying,
you know, this technology to everything.
And then last but not least,
responsible AI requires all of it.
So it is literally a team sport, and I know that sounds cliché,
but oftentimes, you know, teams aren't working together.
And we're also in the process of not leveraging our diversity
and, you know, each other's expertise.
Because these are -- this is uncharted territory
that we are in,
and it requires us all as critical thinkers
to come together with our different backgrounds
and our lived experiences to, like, really pressure test
why it is we're doing what we're doing
and what the unintended consequences could be, right?
And making sure that if we are going to invest
in these technologies,
that they really are providing value for the world, right?
So, it takes all of us.
My ask of you is to own your role in producing
responsible AI outcomes
and realizing the real potential of this technology, so...
-Suits might call her ecosystem builder,
while geeks would call her an agent of chaotic good.
Entrepreneur, mom,
status quo saboteur, serendipity provocateur,
and co-founder of the nonprofit, buildJUSTLY.
Ultimately, Vicky's all about finding ways
to use her privilege to grow pies and extend tables,
because she refuses to believe that life is a zero-sum game.
Please join me in welcoming Vicky Tamaru.
-I want to share with you Stuart Kauffman's theory of
the adjacent possible.
It is how biological systems can become more complex with small,
low-cost changes in its structure.
It can explain the Cambrian explosion as well as
the dynamism of human innovation.
It is not innovation in a vacuum or a genius in a garage.
It's innovation through the constraints
of what my great-grandmother Suki would say is mottainai.
Mottainai, roughly translated, is the regret of wastefulness.
Thus, innovation through the resourcefulness
of a diversity of elements.
My childhood in Hawaii
provided me with a vast compendium
of diverse experiences, cultures, and histories
that I pull from constantly in my adult life.
Weekly visits with different members
and different generations of my family
gave me a first-hand education of the practice
of resiliency and connectedness.
My great-grandmother Haruko's home in Waiahole,
or what she might recognize as Jurassic Park,
is a reminder to me of how life in Hawaii can be full
and lovely, but also extremely difficult.
New York Times shared with the world what I know about my home,
that it is a home also to many different types of people
from many different cultural and racial backgrounds.
What it left out,
however, was the underlying racial tension
that was intentionally bred and still lives there today.
In the late 1890s,
75% of privately-owned land was owned by the British
and American missionary families.
They turned much of that land into sugar cane plantations.
Those plantation owners brought in waves
of immigrants from different countries to work the fields.
These plantation owners encouraged the workers
to keep their language, their culture, their religion,
to keep them from organizing with one another.
Meanwhile, those missionaries and businessmen
colluded and conspired together to overthrow Queen Liliuokalani,
the sovereign Queen of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
This was prime breeding ground for racial tension.
And yet, this is where people were resilient and resourceful.
It is here that the various elements collided over time,
through the adjacent possible, to create Pidgin.
Pidgin is a combination of simplified English and words
and phrases from various languages
and is still in use today.
These are the themes that inform the way that I see the world,
that by being communal, tenacious, and resourceful,
we can birth creativity naturally
through disparate elements.
This is what I brought with me to technology.
I had my own technology business for 14 years
before I joined this guy, Chi-Hui Chang.
We worked for four years through the Windows OS
and our browser growth teams.
Sorry, that was a tongue twister.
We uncovered and analyzed data
and created experiments in pursuit of product growth.
But what we saw in the data
was that there was a correlation between household income
and connected PCs,
and that technology was pooled on the coast
and in certain demographics.
We imagined ways to help populations adopt technology
and improve economic potential.
Where we saw gaps, we saw opportunity.
But over and over again,
we were told, That's not the right kind of data.
That's not enough data.
Or, Are you sure you're looking at that data correctly?
We found co-conspirators across the company and
created the basis of inclusive engineering in Windows.
But progress was slow. Then in 2020, COVID hit.
The tech gaps that we saw
were actually compounding the harms
in already vulnerable populations.
That technology had promised bridges to opportunity,
but instead had created barriers.
Motivated by what we've learned,
we founded the nonprofit buildJUSTLY and knew
that even though there was newfound focus
in social justice,
and an infusion in federal funding, infrastructure,
and digital inclusion, we knew we needed to be resourceful,
communal, and tenacious.
We constantly imbue ideas of co-design.
And although unpredictable funding is an issue for us,
we do what we can,
when we can,
to build trust and form relationships with those
with theoretical experience, AKA professionals,
and those with lived experience
to encourage the adjacent possible.
We pull from methods, from health and social science,
like engaged research,
to collect data from impacted populations.
This requires us to meet people where they're at.
Typically, technology expects people to rise to their level.
But what if the steps are not clear?
What if they're non-existent? And then technology content,
which is written at a high school or above level.
But our country, our average reading level is seventh grade.
And then there's the 67.8 million people in our country
who speak another language other than English in their homes.
We talked about the abundance of jargon.
Sometimes as a technologist, I don't even know what that means.
So we know that our work includes demystifying
and democratizing tech.
Forced obsolescence and the fast pace of tech
means that top-down digital skills training and DEI programs
cannot scale to meet the need.
We create achievable,
adaptable pathways for communal learning
that foster resilience and application.
Each part connects to others to create a more complex whole.
We invite you to work with us
to set up the frameworks to allow the creative potential
of what already exists to bloom.
Please add your own communal,
tenacious, and resourceful actions
and enable the adjacent possible with us.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
-We talked at the beginning of this program about Seattle's
truly rich and dynamic and generative leadership community.
And I think here today we saw that in vivid color.
What incredible visions, what incredible sense of purpose,
what an incredible tenacity and grit,
to bring forward a better future for all of us
through the innovation that is the hallmark of our region.
And with that, good night and have a wonderful evening.
Thank you. [ Applause ]