The Road to Accountable AI

Carnegie Mellon business ethics professor Derek Leben joins Kevin Werbach to trace how AI ethics evolved from an early focus on embodied systems—industrial robots, drones, self-driving cars—to today's post-ChatGPT landscape that demands concrete, defensible recommendations for companies. Leben explains why  fairness is now central: firms must decide which features are relevant to a task (e.g., len...

Kevin Werbach interviews Heather Domin, Global Head of the Office of Responsible AI and Governance at HCLTech. Domin reflects on her path into AI governance, including her pioneering work at IBM to establish foundational AI ethics practices. She discusses how the field has grown from a niche concern to a recognized profession, and the importance of building cross-functional teams that bring togeth...

Kevin Werbach interviews Dean Ball, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and one of the key shapers of the Trump Administration's approach to AI policy. Ball reflects on his career path from writing and blogging to shaping federal policy, including his role as Senior Policy Advisor for AI and Emerging Technology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where h...

Kevin Werbach interviews David Hardoon, Global Head of AI Enablement at Standard Chartered Bank and former Chief Data Officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), about the evolving practice of responsible AI. Hardoon reflects on his perspective straddling both government and private-sector leadership roles, from designing the landmark FEAT principles at MAS to embedding AI enablement ins...

Kevin Werbach interviews Karine Perset, Acting Head of the OECD's AI and Emerging Technology Division, about the global effort to shape responsible AI. Perset explains how the OECD—an intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries—has become a central forum for governments to cooperate on complex, interdependent challenges like AI. Since launching its AI foresight forum in 2016, the OECD...

Kevin Werbach interviews DJ Patil, the first U.S. Chief Data Scientist under the Obama Administration, about the evolving role of AI in government, healthcare, and business. Patil reflects on how the mission of government data leadership has grown more critical today: ensuring good data, using it responsibly, and unleashing its power for public benefit. He describes both the promise and the paraly...

Kevin Werbach interviews Kay Firth-Butterfield about how responsible AI has evolved from a niche concern to a global movement. As the world's first Chief AI Ethics Officer and former Head of AI at the World Economic Forum, Firth-Butterfield brings deep experience aligning AI with human values. She reflects on the early days of responsible AI—when the field was dominated by philosophical debates—to...

Kevin Werbach interviews Dale Cendali, one of the country's leading intellectual property (IP) attorneys, to discuss how courts are grappling with copyright questions in the age of generative AI. Over 30 lP awsuits already filed against major generative AI firms, and the outcomes may shape the future of AI as well as creative industries. While we couldn't discuss specifics of one of the most talke...

Kevin Werbach interviews Brenda Leong, Director of the AI division at boutique technology law firm ZwillGen, to explore how legal practitioners are adapting to the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence. Leong explains why meaningful AI audits require deep collaboration between lawyers and data scientists, arguing that legal systems have not kept pace with the speed and complexity o...

Kevin Werbach interviews Shameek Kundu, Executive Director of AI Verify Foundation, to explore how organizations can ensure AI systems work reliably in real-world contexts. AI Verify, a government-backed nonprofit in Singapore, aims to build scalable, practical testing frameworks to support trustworthy AI adoption. Kundu emphasizes that testing should go beyond models to include entire application...

Host Kevin Werbach interviews Uthman Ali, Global Responsible AI Officer at BP, to delve into the complexities of implementing responsible AI practices within a global energy company. Ali emphasizes how the culture of safety in the industry influences BP's willingness to engage in AI governance. He discusses the necessity of embedding ethical AI principles across all levels of the organization, emp...

  Kevin Werbach interviews journalist and author Karen Hao about her new book  Empire of AI , which chronicles the rise of OpenAI and the broader implications of generative artificial intelligence. Hao reflects on how the ethical challenges of AI have evolved, noting the shift from concerns like data privacy and algorithmic bias to more complex issues such as intellectual property violations, envi...

AI companion applications, which create interactive personas for one-on-one conversations, are incredibly popular. However, they raise a number of challenging ethical, legal, and psychological questions. In this episode, Kevin Werbach speaks with researcher Jaime Banks about how users view their conversations with AI companions, and the implications for governance. Banks shares insights from her r...

In this episode, Kevin Werbach interviews Kelly Trindel, Head of Responsible AI at Workday. Although Trindel's team is housed within Workday's legal department, it operates as a multidisciplinary group, bringing together legal, policy, data science, and product expertise. This structure helps ensure that responsible AI practices are integrated not just at the compliance level but throughout produc...

Professor Werbach interviews David Weinberger, author of several books and a long-time deep thinker on internet trends, about the broader implications of AI on how we understand and interact with the world. They examine the idea that throughout history, dominant technologies—like the printing press, the clock, or the computer—have subtly but profoundly shaped our concepts of knowledge, intelligenc...

Professor Werbach talks with Ashley Casavan, Managing Director of the AI Governance Center at the IAPP, the global association for privacy professional and related roles. Ashley shares how privacy, data protection, and AI governance are converging, and why professionals must combine technical, policy, and risk expertise. They discuss efforts to build a skills competency framework for AI roles and...

Kevin Werbach interviews Lauren Wagner, a builder and advocate for market-driven approaches to AI governance. Lauren shares insights from her experiences at Google and Meta, emphasizing the critical intersection of technology, policy, and trust-building. She describes the private AI governance model, and the incentives for private-sector incentives and transparency measures, such as enhanced model...

Kevin Werbach speaks with Medha Bankhwal and Michael Chui from QuantumBlack, the AI division of the global consulting firm McKinsey. They discuss how McKinsey's AI work has evolved from strategy consulting to hands-on implementation, with AI trust now embedded throughout their client engagements. Chui highlights what makes the current AI moment transformative, while Bankwhal shares insights from M...

Kevin Werbach speaks with Eric Bradlow, Vice Dean of AI & Analytics at Wharton. Bradlow highlights the transformative impacts of AI from his perspective as an applied statistician and quantitative marketing expert. He describes the distinctive approach of Wharton's analytics program, and its recent evolution with the rise of AI. The conversation highlights the significance of legal and ethical res...

This week, Kevin Werbach is joined by Wendy Gonzalez of Sama, to discuss the intersection of human judgment and artificial intelligence. Sama provides data annotation, testing, model fine-tuning, and related services for computer vision and generative AI. Kevin and Wendy review Sama's history and evolution, and then consider the challenges of maintaining reliability in AI models through validation...

The UK is in a unique position in the global AI landscape. It is home to important AI development labs and corporate AI adopters, but its regulatory regime is distinct from both the US and the European Union. In this episode, Kevin Werbach sits down with Jessica Leonard, the Chief Strategy and External Affairs Officer at the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Jessica discusses the CMA's...

In this episode, Kevin speaks with with the influential tech thinker Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media and popularizer of terms such as open source and Web 2.0. O'Reilly, who co-leads the AI Disclosures Project at the Social Science Research Council, offers an insightful and historically-informed take on AI governance. Tim and Kevin first explore the evolution of AI, tracing its root...

Join Professor Werbach in his conversation with Alice Xiang, Global Head of AI Ethics at Sony and Lead Research Scientist at Sony AI. With both a research and corporate background, Alice provides an inside look at how her team integrates AI ethics across Sony's diverse business units. She explains how the evolving landscape of AI ethics is both a challenge and an opportunity for organizations to r...

Kevin Werbach speaks with Krishna Gade, founder and CEO of Fiddler AI, on the the state of explainability for AI models. One of the big challenges of contemporary AI is understanding just why a system generated a certain output. Fiddler is one of the startups offering tools that help developers and deployers of AI understand what exactly is going on.  In the conversation, Kevin and Krishna explore...

This week, Professor Werbach is joined by USC Law School professor Angela Zhang, an expert on China's approach to the technology sector. China is both one of the world's largest markets and home to some of the world's leading tech firms, as well as an active ecosystem of AI developers. Yet its relationship to the United States has become increasingly tense. Many in the West see a battle between th...