Distinguished International Leaders in Responsible AI and Tech Equity join Partnership on AI Board

Partnership on AI (PAI) is proud to welcome three new directors to the Board.: Jatin Aythora, Director of BBC Research & Development, Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies and Director of Center of Technology Innovation at Brookings Institute, and Dr. Joelle Pineau, Managing Director at Meta AI.

“To best address rising issues and directions with the influences of AI advances on people and society, it’s important to include a diversity of perspectives,” said Eric Horvitz, Chief Scientific Officer at Microsoft and Board Chair at Partnership on AI. “I’m excited about the points of view that Jatin, Nicol, and Joelle will bring to PAI’s Board and to the larger organization and its partners.”

The new directors will officially begin their tenure on the PAI Board in October 2022, each bringing unique expertise to the PAI Board:

• Currently the Director of BBC Research & Development, Aythora brings rich experience in how technology and innovations shape our media and information ecosystems in the UK and across the globe.
• An expert on the intersection of race, wealth, and technology, Turner Lee brings a perspective that focuses on equitable access to the benefits of AI and its power to effect social change.
• With roles in both industry and academia, Pineau is deeply knowledgeable in many aspects of AI: from applying AI to specific challenges in industries like healthcare to fundamental research and theoretical challenges in the field of AI.

“Artificial Intelligence in its many forms is shaping the way we live, work and communicate. As I have watched it develop during my career as a technologist and innovator, I have committed myself and my teams to ensuring it is used in the best interests of the people we serve,” said Jatin Aythora, Director of BBC Research & Development. “At the BBC we have developed our own set of guiding principles around using AI in a responsible and transparent way which accords with our values. Partnership on AI is a powerful voice in helping to ensure we use this transformative technology for good, engage in appropriate discussion around both benefits and potential harms, and communicate clearly about its impact with those whose lives it will change.”

“Historical and contemporary inequities continue to permeate new technologies, deepening existing divides. I am honored to join the Board of the Partnership on AI as they focus on more responsible and inclusive AI and other emerging technologies,” said Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies and Director of Center of Technology Innovation at Brookings Institute.

“I’m excited to be joining the PAI board!” said Joelle Pineau, Managing Director at Meta AI. “I strongly believe we need a forum for many different voices and actors in the AI community to come together and tackle the most important questions on AI research and its impact on society, and PAI is the best organization for this. Its commitment to fostering the responsible development of AI, and defining what this means, is particularly important.”

About the New Board Members

Jatin Aythora is the Director of BBC Research & Development. His role is to drive technical vision and innovation at a scale that transforms the BBC and the broader media industry while supporting and shaping the BBC’s mission and ambitions.

Before being appointed Director, Jatin was the BBC’s chief architect, responsible for the corporation’s digital, enterprise and broadcast technology strategy, machine learning and architecture practices. Before joining the BBC, he was head of enterprise architecture at Centrica. Here he helped develop home automation product ideas, which resulted in the successful formation of Hive Home and Local Heroes, which offers a range of connected home products and energy services. Earlier in his career, Jatin held numerous technical leadership positions across the finance, banking, mining, retail, oil and gas industries. He led innovation, technology, and digital transformation in medium to large-scale businesses. The focus was to deliver cost savings, gain a competitive edge and increase revenue.

He is an advisor to a number of health-tech start-ups in the UK and is an advisory board member of Oxford Conservation Venture Studio. Here he counsels on the development of solutions and provides thought leadership around responding to conservation challenges, and promotes entrepreneurship as a mechanism to conserve wildlife and improve human outcomes.

Dr. Nicol Turner Lee is a senior fellow in Governance Studies, the Director of the Center for Technology Innovation, and serves as Co-Editor-In-Chief of TechTank at the Brookings Institute. Dr. Turner Lee researches public policy designed to enable equitable access to technology across the U.S. and to harness its power to create change in communities across the world. Her work also explores global and domestic broadband deployment and internet governance issues. She is an expert on the intersection of race, wealth, and technology within the context of civic engagement, criminal justice, and economic development. She has a forthcoming book on the topic, Digitally Invisible: How the Internet is Creating the New Underclass (Brookings Press, 2021).

Dr. Turner Lee comes to Brookings from the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), a national non-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media, telecommunications, and broadband industries. Prior to joining MMTC, Dr. Turner Lee was vice president and the first director of the Media and Technology Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the nation’s leading think tank on issues related to African Americans and other people of color.

Dr. Turner Lee graduated from Colgate University magna cum laude and has a M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University. She also holds a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Illinois-Chicago. Dr. Turner-Lee also serves as a Vice Chair of the Federal Communications Commission’s Communications Equity and Diversity Council.

Joelle Pineau is the Managing Director of Meta AI, supporting labs across North America and Europe. She is also a faculty member at Mila and an Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar at the School of Computer Science at McGill University, where she co-directs the Reasoning and Learning Lab.

Dr. Pineau’s research focuses on developing new models and algorithms for planning and learning in complex partially-observable domains. She also works on applying these algorithms to complex problems in robotics, health care, games and conversational agents. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and the Journal of Machine Learning Research and is Past-President of the International Machine Learning Society. She is a recipient of NSERC’s E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship (2018), a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists by the Royal Society of Canada, and a 2019 recipient of the Governor General’s Innovation Awards.

She holds a BASc in Engineering from the University of Waterloo, and an MSc and PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.