Nisha is the CEO and founder of AIClub.World which is bringing AI Literacy to K-12 students and individuals worldwide. Nisha has significant experience in introducing technologies like Artificial Intelligence to new learners from students to professionals. Previously, Nisha co-founded ParallelM which pioneered the MLOps practice of managing Machine Learning in production for enterprises – acquired by DataRobot. Nisha is a recognized leader in the operational machine learning space, having also driven the USENIX Operational ML Conference, the first industry/academic conference on production AI/ML. Nisha was previously a Fellow at SanDisk and Fellow/Lead Architect at Fusion-io, where she worked on innovation in non-volatile memory technologies and applications. Nisha has more than 20 years of expertise in enterprise software development, distributed systems, technical strategy and product leadership. She has worked as technology lead for server flash at Intel – where she led server platform non-volatile memory technology development, storage-memory convergence, and partnerships. Before Intel, Nisha was the CTO of Gear6, designing and building clustered computing caches for high performance I/O environments. Nisha Talagala is also the pillar lead for Skills Development for the Sri Lanka National AI Strategy 2024-2028 (as part of the Committee on Formulating a Strategy for Artificial Intelligence – CFSAI), as well as a key contributor to UNESCO’s AI Competency Framework for School Students. Nisha earned her PhD at UC Berkeley where she did research on clusters and distributed systems. Nisha holds 75 patents in distributed systems and software, over 25 refereed research publications, is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events, and is a contributing writer to Forbes and other publications.
Company: AIClub/AIClubPro
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Nisha Talagala: I am a Computer Scientist and I work in AI. I am the CEO and Co-founder of AIClub/AIClubPro. We provide AI literacy and AI training for individuals worldwide, from students to professionals.
What specific areas of your business have been most impacted by AI, and how?
Nisha Talagala: Since we are in the business of AI education, the most (and positive) impact for us has been how much our business has expanded due to the now universal need to learn AI at all age levels and job functions. Our use of AI internally has helped us scale to meet this need, and to ensure that we are teaching from a point of personal experience (i.e. we have done what we are teaching people how to do).
How are you ensuring ethical considerations are taken into account in your use of AI?
Nisha Talagala: Absolutely. This is paramount. We do this in many ways. One critical element is to ensure user privacy. We are very careful about our use of data and our protection of data. Another way we ensure ethical AI is the regular AI training we provide to our employees. The sheer scale and rate of change of AI makes it very difficult to just dictate ethical AI from the top down. By training employees, we enable them to make the right choices in their day to day use of AI as well.
What advice would you give to other CEOs looking to integrate AI into their business?
Nisha Talagala: The advice I give to other CEOs falls into the following elements
– Start now. It is very easy to feel that more needs to be learned before starting (an extreme of this is thinking that everyone needs to learn more math before trying AI). The problem is that the longer you wait, the more there is to learn. The best is to start now and learn to ride the wave of AI.
– Start small. A common pitfall is to feel that your targeted use of AI is not ambitious enough or state-of-the-art enough. However most companies that do well in AI got there by iterative learning. Starting small will enable you to build a series of successes.
– Establish metrics. A common pitfall is to assume AI will make everything better. But as a CEO you should ask yourself the following. (a) how does the problem get solved today? (b) how do I expect AI to help (c) in what measurable ways can I see the improvement – more customers, better satisfaction scores, faster results, etc. If you cannot measure it – it is far easier to go down the wrong path and not know what happened.
– Learn and iterate. Most AI uses in business get better over time. It is very likely that your first try will be below expectations in some way. Make sure your team understand that and does not get discouraged. Starting small also helps a lot with this.
How do you see AI evolving in your industry over the next 5 years?
Nisha Talagala: I expect that AI will dramatically change every industry. In our industry – I expect we will be called on to deliver more and more AI training to people in all walks of life. Within the education space generally, AI will be both a benefit (for example AI tutors) and a challenge (understanding what skills humans will need in an AI-powered world, and preserving the value of human interaction in human development).
