Liz O’Sullivan is an expert in practical Artificial Intelligence.

Bio

Since earning a degree in Philosophy at UNC Chapel Hill, Liz has had a career of 12 years in AI startups in NYC tech, most notably at computer vision company Clarifai where she first spoke out publicly about the limitations of AI in high-risk scenarios. Liz then decided to become a part of the solution, joining two organizations intending to protect those most at-risk from AI harm. Liz was the first staff member, the Technology Director, for New York nonprofit Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) and cofounder / VP of Responsible AI at AI Explainability and model monitoring company Arthur. Liz left Arthur and STOP in May of 2021 to cofound the AI validation company Vera. In 2022, she became an inaugural member of the National AI Advisory Committee (NAIAC), providing guidance on our nation’s AI strategy to the White House via NIST and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Talks & Panels

UPCOMING: 2024 Keynote speaker at Women in Data Science, UNC-Charlotte

November, 2023: Reuters NEXT, World Stage

May 2021: Beyond Fair CV with Timnit Gebru and Emily Denton

December 2020: NeurIPS Workshop on Data and Security: “Don’t Steal Data.”

September 2020: NYU Stern Fubon Center Innovation Conference: Challenges and approaches to bringing AI to production enterprise.

July 2020: RightsCon “The impending age of killer robots? How our data fuels autonomous weapons, and why it’s not too late to stop them”

May 2020 - Harvard Business School Case Subject for: “Employee Activism”, Reimagining Capitalism MBA Class

April 2020 - NYU Tandon: “Co-opting AI: Conflict”, How AI development bleeds from the military into the violation of human rights worldwide

December 2019 - NeurIPS: “Minding the Gap: Between Fairness and Ethics” (link)

October 2019 - UN General Assembly with The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (link)

August 2019 - DEFCON: “Is it ethical to work on Killer Robots?”

Media Engagements

The Indicator, Planet Money Podcast: When AI works in HR (link)

Radical AI Podcast: The State of the Union of Surveillance: Are Things Getting Better? (link)

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Episode: Facial Recognition (link)

NBC: How does Facial Recognition work? (link)

CNN: FaceApp shows our lack of privacy law is a threat to national security

BBC: Why do tech workers’ views matter in the privacy debate? (link)

The Tamron Hall Show: Amazon Alexa is listening to you (link)