AI Talent News Roundup: Stanford Releases 2021 AI Index Report; Twitter Hires New Director of ML Ethics; Noelle Silver Joins ElectrifAi

March 4, 2021

This is the TalentSeer AI News Roundup for the first half of March 2021. You can find the most relevant and recent news about AI talent, aimed specifically at tech leaders, VCs, and members of the AI field. Subscribe here to receive these roundups twice a month via email.

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Stanford 2021 AI Index Report Reveals New Trends in AI Education, Among Others

The Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) released its 2021 AI Index Report, which analyzes changes to the AI landscape in areas such as national economies, job growth, education, diversity, and research. It reveals that the world’s top-ranking universities (including Harvard, Columbia, Cambridge, etc.) have increased their investment in AI education over the past four years, with practical AI courses increasing by 102.9% at the undergraduate level, and 41.7% at the graduate level. There has been a 48% increase in new AI Ph.D. graduates choosing industry jobs over working in academia. The report also revealed that, in the last 10 years, AI-related PhDs have grown from 14.2% of total Computer Science PhDs granted in the US, to around 23% (as of 2019). [Read More]

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Rumman Chowdhury, Former CEO of Parity, Joins Twitter as Director of Machine Learning Ethics

Twitter Engineering has hired Rumman Chowdhury as their director of Machine Learning Ethics, to help with algorithmic transparency and accountability. For this role, she has decided to leave Parity AI, an AI/ML model assessment platform which focuses on examining ethics and risk, where she was CEO and Founder. Prior to that, she was the Managing Director at Accenture. Twitter’s hiring of Rumman Chowdhury comes at a time when there is a rush to hire AI ethicists among large tech firms, as Google’s recent altercations with Timnit Gebru has proven that the AI/ML industry is one that is loaded with ethical complications that need experienced professionals to navigate them. [Read More] [View an interview with Rumman Chowdhury]

Rumman Chowdhury, Former CEO of Parity, Joins Twitter Engineering as Director of Machine Learning Ethics — (Image Source: rummanchowdhury.com)

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Noelle Silver, AI Influencer and Former VP of Digital Technology at NPR, Joins ElectrifAi as VP of Solutions Architecture

ElectrifAi, a New Jersey-based practical AI SaaS company, has hired Noelle Silver as their VP of Solutions Architecture. Noelle Silver will be working with ElectrifAi to build a team that focuses on both AI and the customer experience to help businesses utilize the applied AI tools which the company creates. She is a top influencer and thought leader in AI, being awarded the Voicebot.ai Top Influencer and Leader in Voice Award, VentureBeat Women in AI Mentorship Award, and was also the Microsoft MVP of Artificial Intelligence. Previously, she has been a Principal PM Manager at Microsoft, Senior Architect for Amazon’s Alexa, and VP of Digital Technology at NPR. She is also the founder of the AI Leadership Institute in the Greater Seattle Area. [Read More]

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‍Former Capital One Exec Paul Melby, Joins Fraud Elimination Company, Vesta as Head of AI and R&D

Paul Melby has joined Vesta, a fintech fraud startup, as Head of AI and R&D. He will be overseeing ML and data-science teams, looking into fraud operations. Paul Melby was previously the Senior Director of Data Science at Capital One, and before that was a Forward Deployed Engineer at Palantir Technologies, a data analysis and fraud detection company. [Read More]

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Former IBM Global Sales Leader, Michael Scruggs, Appointed as VP of AI at SAIC

Virginia-based government services and information technology support company, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), has appointed Michael Scruggs as their Senior VP of AI. He will be focusing on driving organic growth to SAIC’s AI technology, to help build and refine solutions. Prior to this, Michael Scruggs was at IBM as Global Sales Leader of Data Science and AI, he was also the Managing Director of Government Solutions at Acumen Solutions. [Read More]

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Chairman of Siemens and Former SAP Co-CEO, Jim Snabe Joins C3.ai Board of Directors

‍Jim Snabe, Chairman of Siemens and former co-CEO of SAP, has joined the C3.ai Board of Directors. C3 is a San Francisco-based Enterprise AI software company; they have appointed Jim Snabe for his expertise in enterprise software companies and his track record of creating substantial social and economic value. He is currently at Siemens as a Chairman, and was previously Co-CEO at SAP, and a Principal at IBM. [Read More]

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Quick Reads:

Former DARPA Director Victoria Coleman is appointed to the Advisory Board of the cyber-security software company LookingGlass

CounterFlow AI, AI-driven network visibility firm, hires network security expert and creator of the Argus open source project, Carter Bullard, as CTO

Self-driving truck company Plus (formerly Plus.ai), hires former Executive of General Motors, Dennis Mooney, as Chief Platform Officer

Aeva, sensing and perception company for autonomous machines, appoints former Apple and Waymo Veteran Executive, Tim Willis, as VP of Global Supply Manufacturing and Strategy

Deepcell, AI-based morphological research company, appoints Stanford Medicine Professor Dr. Catherine Blish to Advisory Board

MicroVision, MEMS based laser scanning technology company, appoints autonomous vehicle business leader Seval Oz to Board of Directors as Bernee D. L. Strom steps down

Deep 6 AI, AI clinical trials company, appoints Jason Attanucci as VP of Life Sciences

Optibrium, molecule design software company, hires Dr. Rae Lawrence as Director of Software Development

Intersect360, market intelligence and research company, hires Dan Olds as Chief Research Officer– former Sun Microsystems Program Manager

Clarifai, advanced image recognition and AI company, appoints Lieutenant General Robert P. Ashley, Jr as Senior Advisor

Collibra, end-to-end data intelligence platform, appoints Tifenn Dano Kwan as CMO– former CMO at Dropbox

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Featured AI Research Path: Google AI Language Team

This new series aims to highlight various research paths of AI researchers from technology & science organizations worldwide. Our first collection features notable work from Google research scientist, Kristina Toutanova, on modeling the structure of natural language using machine learning.

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