Armielyn Obinguar: “As we move forward with AI, let’s keep it ethical and ensure that these applications always have a human-centric approach.”
Nuria Olmos: “Anyone who can decode humans and what we like, what we want, what we need, is probably going to be quite successful in this new era.”
Komal Talwar: “AI is a wave. Either you ride the wave, or the wave will ride you.”

Today’s roundtable featured some incredible women at the forefront of the AI revolution. Armielyn Obinguar, a ML Engineering Senior, award-winning mentor at FutureLab and an AWS Community Builder, facilitated the session. Armielyn warmly opened the session and began the introductions, starting with Nuria Olmos, VP of Arbolus Technologies, an AI-powered expert networking platform. Komal Sharma Talwar introduced herself next, briefly explaining her story as founder of TT Consultants, an IT consulting company, and co-founder of XLSCOUT, an AI-based patent and technology search and analytics platform.

As AI is already transforming the business world, Armielyn asked the speakers to share their learnings from leveraging AI. Nuria kicked off the conversation, delving into how recent adoption of AI is revolutionizing Arbolus’ operational processes, from predictive data to business analytics and automation. She brought up a crucial concept in today’s conversation: AI is a product in itself, but it is revolutionizing processes too.

As a consultant, Komal had great insight into the question, “There are so many problems to solve and so much innovation to bring, which ones do you tackle first and why?” and discussed key concepts on how to democratize technology. Focusing on the benefits of AI, Armielyn asked the panelists, “Will you stay human-centric or move to AI completely?”

Running a company that finds knowledge experts for corporate clients, Nuria had some wonderful insight to share on the role of AI in human-centric work and where it stands against the unique capabilities people have to offer. Komal agreed and shared fascinating business use cases in patent creation using what she calls “explainable AI.” From here, the panelists discussed four elements crucial to the success of AI: accuracy, accountability, trust, and transparency.

The three panelists wove business use cases, professional insights, and personal experiences into the discussion on where AI is and where it’s headed. There was a fantastic segue from Komal speaking as an AI vendor to Nuria speaking from the customer’s perspective, which illustrated just how all-encompassing the AI revolution is. Like all new technologies, it will take time to fine-tune. The three speakers shared their current processes and how they are refining their methods toward what Nuria had pointed out earlier: improving the quality of both AI processes and products is essential.

AI is upending entire professions, so naturally a question about jobs came up in the Q&A. As a tech consultant, Komal offered excellent advice on which spaces will be impacted, and which jobs lost, reformed, and created as AI becomes the new standard, saying “reboot, reskill, relearn.” Nuria touched upon the importance of quality processes and controls, and the role that understanding human behavior will play in this new era. Armielyn described how quickly ML and AI model development is changing from an engineering perspective, and its inevitable effect on skills and jobs in the very near future. To wrap up, our panelists shared some key points on how to manage what some consider a daunting change. Nuria’s advice? Be flexible, adaptable, have fun, and trust the process. Komal’s advice? Figure out what your problem is before you try to solve it.