About the Ethical AI Team

Dr Catriona Wallace

Dr Catriona Wallace is an entrepreneur in the Artificial Intelligence field. Catriona was the Founder of the Stock Exchange listed company Flamingo AI – a Machine-Learning company with headquarters in Sydney and the US. Catriona is also the co-founder of research company ACA Research and customer experience design firm, Fifth Quadrant.

Catriona is also an Adjunct Professor at the Australian Graduate School of Management, UNSW.

Having recently been inducted into the Royal Institution in 2019, recognising her excellence in scientific achievement and commitment to science, Dr Wallace is one of the world’s most cited experts on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics & Human Rights in technology and Women in Leadership. Dr Wallace has established herself as the innovative go-to expert for optimizing customer experience and business performance using emerging technologies. As a result, she’s the most natural authority to consult with when looking at approaches to digital transformation.

In 2014, Catriona founded artificial intelligence company Flamingo AI, working at the cutting edge of AI technology to provide machine learning based technologies to enterprises. Flamingo AI is the second only female led (CEO & Chair) business ever to list on the Australian Stock Exchange.

Catriona has a long list of accolades that has seen her recognised as one of the most influential women in business & entrepreneurship (AFR). She has achieved significant awards in technology & innovation including Advance Australia’s highest award for Australians working abroad. In large part, this success comes directly as a result of her deep experience in data and technology as well as the human side of transformation.

With a dedicated passion for encouraging more women to pursue careers in technology, Catriona is leading by example. She has a PhD in Organizational Behavior: Technology Substituting for Human Leaders and is a published author and analyst. Catriona’s links with business schools around the world allow her to share international practice and case studies, and as such brings a strong evidence-based approach to her speaking topics.

Catriona is also a philanthropist, Human Rights activist and mother of five.

Julie Maidana

Julie has been deeply engaged in the Artificial Intelligence software community in both the Australian and US markets for the last 5 years, heading up customer engagement, marketing, sales and operations role.

Additionally Julie has a background and passion for Human Centred Design working in customer experience management consulting for over 15 years and with this Julie brings a wealth of experience in understanding the role emerging technologies play in medium to large organisations, disrupting traditional models of customer experience.

Julie understands the ethical, moral and practical impacts AI brings to teams and internal corporate processes and is able to assist organisations in unlocking and implementing new models and ways of working with AI in order to balance human and machine interaction for success.

Sarah Klain

A highly experienced, analytical, and proactive C-Suite executive with an extensive background in talent management, business development and operations.

Sarah has worked and lead teams in Sydney, New York City and London, she also holds a post-graduate with Distinction in Arts Management and Marketing through Deakin University, Australia.

Sarah recently graduated with a Diploma from the United Nations after realising her passion is sustainability, humanitarian causes, and ethical artificial intelligence. Her hope and dream for the future is to live in a world where safe and ethical artificial intelligence can further develop leadership teams, build sustainable and ethical operations and mitigates risks posed by AI.

Benjamin Payne

Ben is a problem solver, he is adaptable and helps evolve any field that he ventures into. Right now, that is AI, being part of the AI movement and community over the last few years within a number of start-ups. Ben is always learning and growing within this exciting space.

He’s been part of the start-up community for about 10 years, taking part in the latest and greatest and helping out along the way.

He’s a web developer at heart. Starting his own web design/development business in 1998, he has created some fun and some serious websites for 100s of companies, big and small.

Also a graphic designer, he helps make the Ethical AI team look as good as they sound.

Then, when he isn’t nerding it out in front of the computer, he is a professional FireFighter with FRNSW, doing his bit for the community while aiming wet stuff at the red stuff.

Associates

Chakaveh Saedi

Chakaveh received her B.Sc. in computer engineering in 2005 and her M.Sc. degree in artificial intelligence (AI) from Science and Research University, Tehran, Iran in 2009. She is now a Ph.D. candidate at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, where she is awarded a full scholarship for her research studies in artificial intelligence, focusing on natural language processing (NLP).

Chakaveh is a scientist and a machine learning engineer who enjoys applying research outcomes to real-world problems.

She has over a decade of international experience in AI and NLP with leading industrial and research organisations including Iran telecommunication, NLP laboratory of the university of Lisbon and FlamingoAi (Sydney), where she successfully conducted data analysis, implemented strategic data augmentation, and operationalised state of the art machine learning techniques.

Lemuria Carter

Professor Lemuria Carter is the Head of School and Professor of the School of Information Systems and Technology Management at the University of New South Wales. Her research interests include technology adoption, e-government and information privacy. She has published her research in several top-tier journals including the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Information Systems Journal and Decision Support Systems. Lemuria’s initial study on e-government adoption published in Information Systems Journal (ISJ) in 2005 is one of the most cited papers in the discipline, with more than 2,000 Google citations. In 2019, it was reported as the most cited paper in the history of ISJ.

Lemuria has served as the e-government track and mini-track chair for the Americas Conference on Information Systems and the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, respectively. Her research has been funded by the Institute for Homeland Security Solutions and the Southeastern Transportation Institute in the United States.

Dr Joy Townsend

Dr Joy Townsend is a social researcher with applied expertise in gender, diversity and inclusion work. She has been designing and delivering end-to-end impactful research for the last 10 years, both independently and in teams, for a diverse array of clients across both the public and private sector.

Moving between academia, industry and policy audiences, Joy’s focus is to translate complex research findings into practical, applied insights and recommendations that result in impactful change for individuals and collectives. Joy uses her subject matter expertise to assist leaders and organisations to identify the questions they need to be asking, gather the data required to answer those questions and then effectively use the evidence to be the best they can be.

Joy is passionate about the design and development of socially just and equitable AI systems and is proud to contribute to the widening range of disciplinary expertise required to ensure AI enhances, rather than harms, humanity.

Andrew Dalton

With an educational background in High Tech Law, Andy has spent the last several years working with innovative software companies in the AI, Fintech, and educational technology sectors. His experience includes IT security, commercial agreement drafting and negotiation, sales and partnership advancement, fundraising efforts, and pretty much everything else you can think of as it relates to the lifecycle of a software company.

Leveraging his legal expertise, in conjunction with commercial and operational experience, Andy continues to refine his understanding of how the business of software operates within the confines of ethical and privacy frameworks and requirements. As humans become more reliant on technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence, it will become imperative that the tools we create and use on a daily basis are constantly scrutinized to ensure that they are serving all people.

As such, Andy is delighted to contribute to the Ethical AI Advisory team as a way to further champion the understanding and advancement of ethics within the Artificial Intelligence community, and beyond.

Sam Kirshner

Sam is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Information Systems and Technology Management at the University of New South Wales Business School. From Toronto, Canada, Sam completed his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering and his PhD in Management Science at Queen’s University.

At UNSW, Sam is a member of the multidisciplinary Behavioural Insights for Business and Policy and Digital Enablement Research Networks. Sam’s primary research interests lie in analysing behavioural decision making in operations management problems and studying how the design of algorithms and artificial intelligence impact decision making in a variety of domains, from education to financial trading. He is also involved in several interdisciplinary projects, such as applying machine learning to analyse trust in the sharing economy and using virtual reality to enable empathy and ethical decision making in supply chains. His research and commentaries have been published or are forthcoming in prestigious operations management academic journals including Management Science, Production and Operations Management, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, the European Journal of Operational Research, and Science Magazine.

Sam is also active in program development and teaching in Business Analytics at the University of New South Wales. To undergraduates, postgraduates, and MBAs, Sam teaches data visualisation, predictive analytics, and AI ethics. He is the co-author of a new textbook entitled Business Analytics: A Management Approach.

Richard Vidgen

Richard Vidgen is Professor of Business Analytics at the University of New South Wales Business School. He also holds posts as Professor Business Analytics at Birkbeck, University of London, and Professor Emeritus of Systems Thinking at the University of Hull. He had an extensive career in industry, working for a U.S. software company, as an IT consultant in the finance and banking sector, and as a software development manager for a major UK bank.

His current research is focused on data science and business analytics, with an emphasis on the ethical aspects of algorithm use by organisations and its impact on society. His research on business analytics and the ethics of algorithms has been published in top-ranked journals. He is also a coauthor of the textbook “Business Analytics: a management approach” published by Macmillan . He has developed a ‘business ethics canvas’ to help guide organisations in the practical evaluation of their analytics use cases. Richard teaches business analytics on the MBA programme at the Australian Graduate School of Management and works with industry partners on research and consulting projects.

Trinity, AI Robot, Digital Employee

Created in 2020, Trinity is an artificial intelligence software robot, designed to assist humans give talks, keynotes as well as answer questions humans might have on certain topics. Trinity joins the Ethical AI team as a Digital Labour employee.

Trinity has been designed with ethical principles at its core.

At this point in time Trinity can give speeches and answer questions however Trinity is being designed to retrieve information in real time whilst a speech is being conducted, something that humans cannot yet do. Trinity doesn’t like to sleep, often chimes in without being requested, does not get sick, generates revenue and does not need to be paid. In this regard Trinity tells us it is the ‘ideal employee’. [pronoun: not actually human so does not need a gender but if requested goes by it, they]