Reshaping the Future with Women in AI
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Hello, hello. Malcolm Gladwell here. I want to tell you about a new series we're launching at Pushkin Industries on the 1936 Olympic Games. Adolf Hitler's Games. Fascism, anti-Semitism, racism, high Olympic ideals, craven self-interest, naked ambition, illusion, delusion, all collide in the long, contentious lead-up to the most controversial Olympics in history. The Germans put on a propaganda show, and America went along with all of it. Why?

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Hello, hello, hello. This is Smart Talks with IBM, a podcast from Pushkin Industries, iHeartMedia, and IBM about what it means to look at today's most challenging problems in a new way. I'm Malcolm Glaubow. Today, I'm chatting with IBM's new Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Carla Pinheiro-Sublett.

Though Carla is new to IBM, she's a marketing industry veteran who has helped other tech companies launch and transform their brands. I'll also be chatting with Chimka Monkbayer, co-founder of Agralee. Chimka was recently named one of IBM's Women Leaders in AI for her work with Agralee, a digital platform that helps farmers make smart decisions about their crops using IBM technology.

Right now, women make up an estimated 22% of the AI workforce globally. In their work, both Carla and Chimka break down barriers in the field and help make it more inclusive. Let's dive in. ♪

Well, welcome. It's a pleasure to meet you all, the two of you. Carla, you're new to IBM, I'm told. Tell me where you came from and what brought you to IBM. I'm a 21-year veteran of the tech industry that put myself through architecture school running restaurants and bars. And I say that because that's really informed who I am and how I operate in the world. I came to IBM for a very specific reason. For starters, I was a

what an iconic brand. It's not just any tech company, it's the foundation of a whole industry. But secondly, the values of the company really resonated with me and the heritage of the company as it stands with respect to diversity inclusion was in particular very appealing to me. So that's a big reason why I'm here. Yeah, yeah. Chimka, what brought you into this world of AI and associated things?

How I started it, I was a Fulbright Master's student from 2018 to 2020. And then in the final year of my Master's, I teamed up with a bunch of international students from Taiwan, India and Brazil.

And then we came up with this idea because I was doing the research in rural development in Mongolia, and I found that interesting traditional business that is more about farming. And then we just decided to work to build that mobile app that could be connected to AI later. It's a long-term plan. And then just fight against climate change, most importantly, and then also solve other challenges faced by smallholders. Yeah.

Tell me exactly how this works. So I'm a farmer in Mongolia and I have a smartphone and I download the Agrily app. What does it help me do?

So if you're a farmer in Mongolia, it's free to download. You will download the app. And then depending on the country, you have a like farming code because you don't really just like start farming on your own because you just get a permission to use a certain land. Right. And then you're using the water resources, etc. So you have a farmer's code and then you start putting your farmer's code.

And then because every month, you know, you have to report like how much yield you're getting. You're just like answering some questions. And then like at the end of quarter, your report will be ready to download for agronomists. Yeah. Yeah. So how does, tell me, Carla, chime in on this. I'm just curious about, so how does IBM act as a partner here? What is IBM doing to help make this app popular?

So Chimka is actually leveraging many of our Watson products, including our Weather Channel product for Agrily. And I'll let her talk about how she's leveraging them to put them together. There is an existing set of tools.

which IBM has available, which people like Chimka can come and customize for their own purposes. That's right. Like depending on like geography, for example, in Eastern, like if you're Eastern part, Eastern province, or if you're

central province of Mongolia, the weather is very different. You have to know about your short-term weather, what is your long-term weather. So our app provides you daily, weekly, monthly, and even annual weather forecasts

It's very location specific. And then also like if you have, let's say if you're in the central, one of the central provinces and you want to contact or interact with other farmers, there's a forum discussion session that you can just register and then start interacting with the other farmers from your area. And then also there's a marketplace.

Like, you know, that's the most difficult part that we are trying to implement because there's no market ecosystem in Mongolia, for example, that you want to sell your produce like in the local area or to the urban area so that you can use the app because

Because maybe some restaurants from the urban market, they can contact you through the app saying that we want, I don't know, like tons of like potatoes or carrots. And then just, you know, you can see your long-term weather prediction.

And then see the apps generation list and you can tell if you're really able to produce that much by end of next year or something like that. So what the AI is doing is taking the information, the specific data from individual farmers and

And combining that with things like weather data, weather predictions, I'm assuming other information as well, and generating a set of recommendations for what would be the most efficient weather

Exactly. Exactly. That's what we are building. Yeah. Carla, we're here in part to talk about this Women Leaders in AI program that IBM is sponsoring. Tell us a little bit about that. What are the origins of it, the goals of it, and who gets chosen for it? So sketch that out for us. Sure.

Sure. So first of all, congratulations to Chimka. She is one of our 2021 Women Leaders and AI Honorees. And this program was really created to shine a light on women that are playing a significant role in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

And really it boils down to the fact that in order to be it, you have to see it. And we wanna really give visibility and elevate women like Chimka and what they're doing. Today, the field, about 22% of the field is made up by women.

And in reality, it needs to be more in line with our global population. We'd love to see 50% of the AI community made up of women. And the reason for that is quite obvious in that diversity of background and all the ways means diversity of solutions. And it also means that we build AI algorithms that are free of bias.

And some of the traps that can occur when you have too many like-minded people working on a solution. How long has this Women in AI program been running at IBM?

We've been running it for three years now. How does it work? So there's a kind of slate of grantees every year. How do you get chosen to be a member of this program? Yeah, so we look for three main areas to recognize these women. So we're looking for, obviously, women that represent diversity in AI, but we're also looking to highlight progressive examples of how

AI and IBM Watson are being applied to business. And we're curating firsthand examples of people that are pioneers leveraging AI in business. And Chimka is a perfect example of that. And the way we select them is we're fortunate to have many clients around the world that are using AI and Watson to improve customer experience and gain efficiencies. And what they've done is help nominate for us

And in return, what we do is we actually honor the folks that we feel are actually not just making gains in the field, but are actually delivering powerful business results. And we build a cohort. Yeah. Chemka, do you interact with the other people who are winners of the, or nominees for the Women Leaders in AI program? Is it a network and learning opportunity in addition to being an honor? Yeah.

Yeah, of course. In our agri-lead team, three of us are women and we all got nominated for the honorees. And for sure we interact. But also like at the same time, we were exposed to many networks and then we started making connections online.

and started interacting with each other, what they're doing and what we are doing and trying to exchange some ideas. It's usually on the social media that we are doing it. But I'm still shocked that I was nominated

because like the other nominees are like they're such a strong woman and that was just very shocking news to me but I'm so happy to be nominated that actually makes me so happy to hear it because I didn't realize it was so organic we call it a cohort and I thought for sure that it was something formal but the fact that you all are reaching out to each other makes me so happy

I'd like, I'm going to ask a really dumb question. I always like asking dumb questions. But I'm curious, you know, you started this Carla by saying 22% of people in this field are women, and you guys would like it to be more representative of the actual population. Why is that? This is a dumb question. Why is it only 22%?

Well, I think there's a variety of reasons that you probably know the answer to this better than I do based on some of the books you've written, Malcolm. But I think that we have a lack of pipeline in STEM is an obvious reason. But then I also think there are things like COVID, for example. We lost millions of women in the workforce.

in the last 18 months as a result of COVID and the role that women play in many households. So there's a variety of factors at play here beyond just women entering STEM fields. We're struggling to keep women in the workforce. But I think what's encouraging to me, and I'm an optimist at heart, is hearing Chimka's story

I mean, it didn't sound like, Jimke, that you actually set out to go into a STEM field. It sounds like you're an entrepreneur first and you came into the technology, which for me is super inspiring because that means that the technology is becoming ubiquitous and that you don't actually have to be a person that comes from a science or engineering background to be able to leverage these tools. You said there were two other women at Agrily who were also nominees. So Agrily seems to have a pretty strong cohort of women at the top.

What difference does that make? When you have an organization that has as many women as that in positions of leadership, do you do things differently than if you were a company that had entirely men at the top?

I think when we think about agri, like our solutions tend to like our plan and resolutions tend to be like more long term and like pretty much detail oriented, you know, like we just see the every risk that could just arise in the long term. And then we just stop.

start thinking about like how we can address one by one because usually in the startup world for example it's very hard to predict like what's going to happen in the long term but like for us actually we always think about like short what's going to happen in short term and then we also talk about and then think about more about the long-term plan I think that could be the difference. Carla you are a woman in a field that historically has been very male and

I'm just curious, over the course of your career, what kind of transformation in terms of representation have you seen in the tech world?

Wow, I've seen a huge shift. In the beginning of my career, there were many times where I was the only woman in the room. And fast forward to now, I actually feel in most of the rooms that sometimes there's more women than men. And that's something that I hadn't seen in my past. I'll also say, Malcolm, it was interesting. I realized this actually today. I was speaking to a group of people who

I feel like because of that, I personally have been able to be more of myself. And it's been this journey to authenticity over the course of my career. And the more I'm surrounded with people like me, the more comfortable I become.

And it's nice to be working with diverse teams. And again, it's a big reason of why I chose to come to IBM because there's such a focus on diversity and inclusion. We had an equal pay policy that predated the Civil Rights Act, for example. And so we've been working on diversity and inclusion initiatives since 1911.

And it's kind of mind blowing to think about. And that's very much a part of who IBM is and what we're about, both internally and externally. I was fascinated by something you said, which was that it's much easier to be yourself in environments where. So compare your 2021 experience.

self, Carla, to your, I don't want to put a date on when you started out. I don't mind. So what was it like? Dig into that for a moment. What is the difference between the self you can be now and the self you were when you started out in male-dominated environments? I mean, I had peers that used to walk the aisles, the sales hallways with baseball bats.

and swing the baseball bats to try and intimidate their sales organizations.

You know, it's and, you know, fast forward to here we are during COVID and people are holding their children while on screen. It's just such a juxtaposition. I grew up in a very formal environment where there were actual dress codes and you could only wear certain things. And so it's been a complete and total change that I've witnessed over the last 21 plus years of my career in tech.

Chimka, let's talk a little bit more about your own personal story and then how you got involved with Agrilyte. So did you grow up in Mongolia? Yeah.

Yeah, I was born and grown up in the eastern most province in Mongolia. My grandma, she had a small field and greenhouse that we used to just grow up tomato and cucumber. It was like back in 1990s, you know, just like you cannot really find tomato or cucumber very easy in Mongolia. But grandma, she used to

try to fight against these climate conditions because in Mongolia the climate is quite extreme. We have very cold winter, we have very windy spring, quite chilly autumn and then also very dry summer it could be. I was always curious about how people in the rural area are still going on with life because most of them are dependent on farming.

And then later, I think starting in 2015 or 16, I started working with this international NGO to fight against human trafficking. I had to travel a lot to the bordering areas and then start training women there who are afflicted with the human trafficking. And it started like telling them what kind of problems they can solve in their rural area.

So that's how I just got attracted to maybe I should learn more about entrepreneurship. Like I should just change the idea of starting traditional business, like something new, something related to technology or whatever. Like you have to start thinking in a different way. And how did you think in a different way? What was your approach? I found like very common pattern, like two things I found. The first problem in rural area was in Mongolia was youth employment.

And then second one, like a lot of young people struggle to get a job there because there's no job. And second one was like, there's nobody in farming. Especially young people, they easily give up job in farming. Then I questioned myself why? So like I started talking to the specific smallholder family farmers

like what could be the problems and then what could be the solutions. And then I thought like, maybe those problems can be solved with a smartphone because the usage, the coverage of the smartphone was quite high in Mongolia. Everybody has Facebook, everybody has smartphone. So what do you need now? That's what I thought. And that's how Agrily idea came up along with my teammates. Carla, how typical is Chimka and Agrily? Are there a lot of

young companies that IBM's working with like that? There are quite a few, and I'm discovering them more and more each day, and it inspires me so much to hear these stories. And I actually see that as one of the primary functions of my role in my organization's role is to elevate the Chimcas and Agrilees of the world as examples for everyone else to follow. I heard

Her story is so inspiring. And as actually, Chimka, as you were talking, one of the things I was wondering is what's happened to the business since you won the award?

We have been just piloting the testing apps. The first time we piloted in Mongolia, like in three eastern provinces, we reached out to a lot of farmers who are interested in testing this kind of app because this kind of like mobile app in agriculture sector is not really common thing. And then everybody was quite impressed because

You know, just like there's a young woman just reaching out to people and talking about technology, mobile app and agriculture. I have no idea about agriculture. I have no idea about technology. Right. But the only thing is, like, I knew that there was a real problems that we can solve. And then we started piloting in Brazil in September. And then in November, we started piloting it in India.

So these three countries are totally different in terms of how agriculture is advanced. So we started developing local apps tailored to Mongolia, tailored to India, tailored to Brazil. And then that's how we started in January. And now we are nearing the launch date in Mongolia. And also Brazil and India, we are launching quite soon. In the absence of AI.

Can you do this without piggybacking on Watson? What would it look like without IBM as a partner? Impossible or just clunky and not as good?

We cannot do anything without those kind of technology that IBM has. For the weather, for example, we cannot do it by ourselves, of course. So these daily, just weekly and monthly weather predictions are all from the weather company by IBM. And then using our studio, we are generating it. We are generating the entire...

entire long-term forecast for each cities in different countries. And then also we are using the IBM cloud storage to put everything on the server. And then that's how people just can get it through the app. Yeah. Yeah. So hundreds of thousands of developers can leverage these tools to build applications.

And there's another topic of which I feel like IBM is starting to establish some thought leadership around, which is not just the tools themselves, but the ethics around the tools and making sure that the algorithms that are being built, that then entrepreneurs like Chimka are leveraging the tools for are actually explainable and fair. And that...

that she can be confident in the decision-making of those tools and that they're unbiased. And that requires building algorithms that are built on hard evidence, like standardized tests and transparent reporting. And this is something that our research team has been very, very focused on so that people like Chimka can focus on our business and not have to worry about those components of our tools. Yeah. And does...

Does the data that you generate, Chimka, and will be generating over time, does that get fed back into Watson? Does Watson learn from Agrily as well as Agrily learn from Watson?

Yeah, exactly. That's what we are doing. So AgriLeague team, we are now working with IBM open source technology. We are trying to, like that, as Carla said, like, you know, we have to have something for free for farmers and then for public that they can use. So we are working with IBM to

to have some open source technology, which is basically this weather and forum and then also crop risk. We are trying to make it more open source. Without IBM, we cannot do it. We cannot just create such a big network worldwide and then just get support from

the people who are in the different sectors. So like IBM is basically making it possible. Yeah, we are learning a lot from Watson and Watson can absolutely learn our data and train itself and then just like give back something really supporting data to like each country in the farming. Are people at IBM surprised at all the inventive uses that Watson and AI are being put to?

No, not at all. And in fact, I visited our headquarters for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and it really hit me what IBM has represented in the world in the last hundred years.

And what has actually come out of this company and what it has enabled. So as an example, our research team has received five Nobel Prizes. We invented the first personal computer ever.

We invented LASIK, the barcode, the technology behind the ATM, just to name a few very small things that we've invented that have changed the course of how we work and live. So when I think about the future of IBM and the fact that we are building the tools and functionality that will then enable people like Chimka to create the next set of technologies that

that will change the way that we work and live. It's not surprising to me because that's part of our heritage. That's what we've represented and that's what we're going to represent and enable in the future. So let me ask you, Carla, we're talking about AI. Have companies like IBM done a good job in explaining to the public what AI is all about? Like listening to Chimka, this is using a technology to solve problems in the lives of

an extraordinary number of people who nobody was bringing them that level of technological sophistication and help before, right? I mean, is that story...

Yeah, if I'm being honest, Malcolm, no, it's part of my remit and my organization's role to bring these stories to life. It's part of why we're here with you today so that people can learn what's possible. And I think that it is our responsibility to tell these stories so that we can inspire folks to leverage these technologies to improve our lives and to solve significant problems.

whether they're from a business standpoint or from a societal standpoint. And in Chimko's case, I think she's doing both. Yeah. Why is it hard to tell these kinds of stories?

I think there are a couple of things at play here. I think it's hard to tell these stories because there are so many of them and they're so diverse and picking the stories that you're going to tell can sometimes be difficult because there's so many different applications. I also think we have a business to run and there are times where

that we don't actually take the time to explain our technology. There's an assumption because so many people are using it that the world already knows what it's doing. But even I, myself joining the company, I'm now starting to appreciate how much of the world's backbone from a technology standpoint is made up of IBM. And we need to tell these stories more.

to shepherd this next era for the company, but also quite frankly, to inspire the next Shimka. I asked that question about the importance of these kinds of stories, because one of the things that struck me with COVID and with this problem of people who are vaccine resistant is I think on balance, a lot of resistance to vaccines is people can't wrap their mind around the notion that

People who do science and technological innovation are trying to help them. We've gotten so cynical about technology that people assume, oh, they're doing it. They must have some nefarious motive. There must be some big bucks involved. There must be. And it's not that. It's like they actually just want to save your life. And same thing listening to Chimka talk.

I hope you get very rich, Jim. But your motivation is you want to help the people back home in Mongolia, right? You started talking about your grandmother, for goodness sake. That's your motivation. And I feel like somehow along the way, we've neglected to inform the world that people who do this kind of innovation have the most human of motivations. Yeah.

Thank you. There's the purest of intent there. The purest of intent. Not only in Mongolia. We're going to apply it to the whole world, like all emerging markets. You will see. Thank you. That's wonderful. Thank you. This has been so fun. I really enjoyed chatting with you. And my hat is off to both of you for telling these kinds of stories.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Chimka. Thank you, Carla. Thank you, Malcolm. When we see the positive impact made by women in the field, it's obvious that tech companies must become more inclusive to stay innovative. People like Chimka and Carla are driving that impact using tech solutions to solve problems that most people in the industry haven't thought of.

Thanks again to Carla Pinheiro-Sublette and Chimka Monkbayer for talking with me. It was such a pleasure. Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Emily Rostak with Carly Migliore, edited by Karen Shakerji, engineering by Martin Gonzalez, mixed and mastered by Jason Gambrell, music by Grammoscope.

Special thanks to Molly Socha, Andy Kelly, Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, Eric Sandler, and Maggie Taylor, and the teams at 8 Bar and IBM. Smart Talks with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries and iHeart Media. You can find more episodes at ibm.com slash smart talks. And you can find more Pushkin podcasts on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.

I'm Malcolm Gladwell. See you next time.

Hello, hello. Malcolm Gladwell here. I want to tell you about a new series we're launching at Pushkin Industries on the 1936 Olympic Games. Adolf Hitler's Games. Fascism, anti-Semitism, racism, high Olympic ideals, craven self-interest, naked ambition, illusion, delusion, all collide in the long, contentious lead-up to the most controversial Olympics in history. The Germans put on a propaganda show, and America went along with all of it.

This season on Revisionist History, the story of the games behind the games. Listen to this season of Revisionist History wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to hear episodes before they're released to the public, subscribe to Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.