The New AI Is a Team Sport, Leaders Need All Partners to Come Along — Northwestern Mutual AI VP

(US & Canada) Anju Gupta, Vice President, Artificial Intelligence at Northwestern Mutual, speaks with Marty Poniatowski, Director at AMD, in a video interview about her background and role in the organization, and how leaders can prepare the workforce for seamless AI adoption.

Gupta has been in the industry for close to 17 years with almost 3.5 years at Northwestern Mutual. Over the years, she held data and AI leadership roles in organizations like Monsanto and Enterprise Holdings. She describes Northwestern Mutual as a 167-year-old company with a goal to free Americans from financial anxiety. It has 5 million policy owners as its shareholders.

When asked about how she balances the democratization of AI with maintaining technical rigor, Gupta says that it is a key challenge for all AI leaders today. She says that AI has moved from being boardroom to dinner table conversations after the surfacing of generative AI (GenAI) in November 2022.

Therefore, Gupta says that people are starting to understand what AI is and are investing time to understand it further. However, she stresses the need for leaders to ensure people understand the messages being delivered by GenAI models. She further reveals that Northwestern Mutual has been hosting multiple literacy sessions to address this problem.

The organization hosted an AI symposium last year, and almost two thousand employees attended it. Similarly, it hosts hackathons and works closely with human resources partners to provide AI and GenAI training across the company. Northwestern also recently launched a one-day training program for employees in partnership with the human resources department.

Adding on the topic, Gupta says that the new AI is a team sport and AI leaders need all their partners to come along with them.

Further, Gupta highlights the ethical aspects of deploying AI. She reveals that Northwestern Mutual has put together a user policy for all the employees along with ethical and responsible use training. Users have to undertake the GenAI and responsible and ethical use training before using any GenAI product launched by the organization. This training helps them understand that AI can go wrong and hallucinate but humans have to decide whether the answer is acceptable or not.

In conclusion, Gupta says that bringing people along is one of the greatest things that AI leaders have to do so that everybody understands what AI is actually capable of.

CDO Magazine appreciates Anju Gupta for sharing her insights with our global data community.

*Note: This interview was originally recorded on June 27, 2024