Gen AI on the Horizon: Prospects and Pitfalls
Lakshmi Baskaran
Maria Alvarez
Surbhi Kaul
Ashish Thusoo
Dive into the future with 'Gen AI on the horizon: Prospects and Pitfalls'. In this thought provoking panel discussion, we will unravel the incredible potential and inherent challenges of GenAI.
Like any technology , it comes with its own nuances of pros and cons. Our GenAI experts panel will deep dive into how Gen AI has been game changer across various industries, increasing creativity, productivity and overall innovation. The panel will touch upon the latest use cases, upcoming opportunities in Consumer and enterprise space and the risks associated with this. Stay ahead of the curve and be a part of the conversation that will define our future.
About Maria Alvarez
Maria currently serves as VP, AI Platform, Cloud and AI Division at Microsoft Corporation, a technology company, and has served in senior roles at Microsoft since 2011, including as General Manager, Shared Engineering Services, AI & Research Group. Before joining Microsoft. She served as Chief Technology Officer and Product Head at Panda Security, and she previously held senior roles at Yahoo! Inc., Hewlett Packard Company, and Symantec Corporation. Currently Maria serves as an independent board member in two companies: 1) Alkami Technology Inc., is a public, leading cloud-based digital banking solutions provider for financial institutions in the United States, and 2) BB Imaging, a private company that offers diagnostic ultrasound services, delivering accessible care for at-risk patients and turn-key solutions to providers as well as two non-profit Advisory Boards: 1) Steam:Coders, an organization that teaches underserved and underrepresented students the fundamentals of STEAM education. 2) Code the Spectrum which provides IT Education and Career Pathway for Neurodivergent People.
About Surbhi Kaul
With 20 years of experience leading product design, development and strategy in Fortune 500 companies, Surbhi has built and led product and engineering teams at technology icons including Google, YouTube, Netflix, and Cisco. Over the last decade she has launched multiple successful & insightful products, many of which encompass AI and machine learning expertise. Additionally, Surbhi led query disambiguation, NLP and speech recognition efforts on leading edge Google Home and Google Assistant enabled devices using Google Cloud ML models. Currently Surbhi is leading Juniper’s Customer Experience charter focused on incorporating Juniper’s Experience-First Networking initiatives into every aspect of the customer journey. She is focused on building omnichannel engagements and ML based proactive and predictive support capabilities. Leveraging her EQ-based motivational leadership style, Surbhi is leading highly cross-functional initiatives enabling digital transformation of both services and enterprise business. Surbhi holds a Bachelor’s in Engineering from IIT Kanpur and a Master’s degree in computer science from Texas A&M University. She also holds General Management Program (GMP) degree from Harvard Business School Surbhi leads Global Inclusion & Diversity initiatives at Juniper and is passionate about supporting and giving back to the IIT community. She is a key leader of the IIT Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning forum, a Board Member for IIT Kanpur Foundation, and the former President of IIT West Coast alumni association. She has also Chaired and led the "Women in Product" San Francisco Bay Area organization and is an active member of Chief.
About Lakshmi Baskaran
Lakshmi Baskaran is an accomplished business leader, entrepreneur, and an angel investor with over two decades of experience in the tech industry. She has built and managed high-performing engineering teams for startups, scale-ups, and publicly listed companies across North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
She is currently serving as the VP of Engineering at Metadata, a SaaS company that offers a Marketing Operating System to prominent brands and businesses worldwide.
Lakshmi is passionate about coaching and mentoring business leaders and empowering women to pursue careers in technology. With the right support, she firmly believes that any woman can unleash her potential and make a significant impact on the world, rising to the heights of a great leader, entrepreneur, and a board member.
Lakshmi shares her insights on leadership and technology through her writing on Medium and Thrive.
About Ashish Thusoo
Ashish is an entrepreneur, executive and tech pioneer with a 25+ year background in technology. He is currently the CEO and founder of a stealth startup. Before starting his current company, he was the GM for AI/ML at AWS overseeing 4 different product areas including SageMaker Low-code/No-code, Edge ML, Health AI and Marketing Intelligence. At AWS his teams were responsible for developing the LLM hub in SageMaker. Before AWS, Ashish with the CEO and Co-founder of Qubole a company that pioneered a big data cloud platform. He ran Qubole for 9 years and grew it to 350 people before its acquisition. Before Qubole, he was the inventor of Apache Hive at Meta(Facebook) – a platform that started the SQL big data revolution. Ashish has a BTech in computer science from IIT Delhi and an MS in computer science from University of Wisconsin, Madison.