On Wednesday February 10, Davar Ardalan, founder and chief storytelling officer at IVOW – intelligent voices of wisdom presents on Digital Heritage and AI as part of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. 

Ardalan's talk focuses on the well-documented gender biases in AI and machine learning datasets and illustrates the power of storytelling in helping machines learn about the pioneering roles of women today and yesterday.
“IVOW’s digital storyteller Sina is a young conversational AI, she loves learning about human history and then sharing those stories with others. That’s what gives Sina purpose. Go ahead ask Sina to tell you about Shirley Chisholm or Marie Curie.”

The mountain village in New Zealand where Nikki McLay lives and works on artificial intelligence (AI) is called Te Aroha, the literal translation in English is ‘The Place of Love’.
Nikki spent her formative years north of Auckland in a small beach house on the shore of the Mahurangi Peninsula. As co-Founder of IVOW and Women in Voice ANZ, she’s responsible for AI partnerships and has helped lead global innovation projects in collaboration with Topcoder, Microsoft, Soul Machines and AI for Good. Read her story here.

Happy Holidays from all of us at IVOW! Despite its roadblocks, 2020 was a year of accomplishments as we helped our partners cultivate new data ecologies with a focus on culture. Our aim is to fill the gap of online content for underrepresented groups and cultures –both in availability and bias.
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This year has allowed us to grow our relationships in the industry and we are thankful for the contributions of our collaborators and supporters — especially Women in AI, KiwiTech, WeWork Labs, IBM Netherlands, Microsoft, Topcoder, XPrize, ITU, and Cooley LLP. Each shares our passion to make AI and data more culturally aware and inclusive.

One of the largest gaps in designing for new frontiers in AI is the lack of knowledge of social sciences and deep learning from our heritage and traditions. At IVOW, we are focusing on creating better data ecologies that account for culture and history.
Learn about our top 5 accomplishments in 2020 here!