Necessity is the mother of invention. And sometimes, what a person really needs is hot chocolate served to them by a robot — one named after a pop star, ideally.

Angle Bush, founder and CEO of Black Women in Artificial Intelligence (BWIAI), began her AI journey in 2019 with the idea to build a robot named Usher that could bring her cocoa. As she scoured robotics tutorial videos for ways to bring her vision to life, Bush found herself captivated by something even bigger: artificial intelligence.

“As I’m doing this research, I’m finding more about artificial intelligence, and I’m hearing it’s the fourth industrial revolution,” she said.

But when Angle started attending AI events, a lack of diverse representation became glaringly obvious to her.

“I wasn’t quite seeing a full reflection of myself,” she said. “Surely you can’t have a revolution without Black women.”

From this realization, BWIAI was born.

Bush joined the NVIDIA AI Podcast to share more about the organization’s mission to reshape the AI community by educating, engaging, embracing and empowering Black women in the field.

Not five years after its founding, BWIAI brings together members from five continents and collaborates with key industry leaders and partners — serving as a supportive community and catalyst of change.

BWIAI and its partners offer hands-on learning experiences and online resources to its member community. They also launched a career assessment agent to help members explore how their interests align with emerging career paths in AI, as well as technologies and coursework for getting started.

“We have people in television, we have university professors, we have lawyers, we have doctors,” Bush said. “It runs the gamut because they are an example of what’s happening globally. Every industry is impacted by AI.”

Time Stamps

2:45 – Bush discusses BWIAI’s partnerships and initiatives, including its autonomous hair-braiding machine.

6:30 – The importance of educating, engaging, embracing and empowering Black women in AI.

10:40 – Behind BWIAI’s AI career assessment agent.

12:10 – Bush explains how removing barriers increases innovation.

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