The Story of IVOW
WaiACCELERATE participant/founder: Davar Ardalan — IVOW
Data has taken the stage as a new global currency; it is the fuel that runs our organizations and governments and dictates how and what our machines learn. But what story do these data sets tell? And more importantly — which stories do they leave out?
There is a critical missing piece in artificial intelligence today: The ability to recognize and respond to cultural context. AI has come under fire in recent years with several examples of racial and gender bias in its application — from recruiting algorithms to facial recognition technology. But further to eliminating bias, there is a need for AI to be culturally intelligent; to recognize the nuance in an interaction that can only come from an intimate understanding of an individual’s unique heritage. Only then can AI reach the level of hyper-personalization that will drive truly effective and lasting engagement.
Intelligent Voices of Wisdom (IVOW), recognizes that exploring this new frontier of cultural intelligence will require new data ecology, inclusive datasets and traditional storytelling solutions. The early-stage startup, founded by Davar Ardalan, is guided by their mission to make data culturally relevant. By providing the missing pieces of cultural context and AI-ready datasets that are inclusive and diverse, IVOW brings governments and businesses closer to the audiences that they’re targeting.
IVOW’s conversational AI storyteller Sina (currently a prototype on Google Home) brings culturally rich content to your home in any language. Sina’s unique storytelling approach focuses on interactions that are at once culturally specific, narrative rich, globally appealing, and highly interactive. For example, Sina can introduce you to traditional recipes from around the world, and the history and customs associated with it. She can take you on a journey through ancient festivals, from the Shalako festival of the Zuni people, to the Persian winter solstice festival of Yalda, on the longest and darkest night of the year.
The core technology being developed by IVOW is the CultureGraph, which brings together large amounts of commonly-overlooked public data from cultural and subcultural psychographics: food, holidays, and festivals. From this culturally intelligent data, they use machine learning to identify and segment consumer audiences in real-time. This is the crux of their unique value proposition — in a world where consumer attention is a commodity, hyper-personalization is the driver of consumer engagement. However, very few organizations have the right data to effectively segment their audiences and drive meaningful personalized content. CultureGraph enables organizations to transform and advance Customer Experience Management relative to personalization, purchase recommendations, human-to-human and bot-to-human interactions.
IVOW’s founder, Davar Ardalan is a world-class storyteller. She spent over two decades working for NPR as a producer; her work always centering around cultural identities and stories. Since NPR, she has championed innovation projects across the US government, led storytelling campaigns for NASA, NIKE, USAID, and World Bank, and has been at the forefront of experimenting with new storytelling tools and techniques — from VR/AR, to drones, and of course, AI. She has been recognized with a NASA Team Leadership award for Space Apps, a Gracie Award from the American Women in Radio and Television and a shout-out in the comic strip Zippy. In May 2014, she was the recipient of an Ellis Island Medal of Honor, for individual achievement and for promoting cultural unity. As a storytelling technologist and civic tech leader, she plays a pivotal role in designing the future of storytelling. She has partnered with KiwiTech to build her team of storytellers and software engineers, who cumulatively have years of experience building AI solutions and leading AI initiatives for some of the world’s most recognizable brands.
IVOW has received global recognition and praise from some of the top players in AI. “IVOW’s work with cultural intelligence encompasses a human-centered approach to AI. I can’t wait to see how this unique lens on data will drive meaningful innovation and create positive impact.” says Jessica Davis, Director of Government Programs and Initiatives at Microsoft. Rogerio Lourenco, an information ethnographer, reiterates the need: “Cultural Intelligence is lacking in today’s technologies. As a consequence, we live in a world that has no sensibility to human nuances that make us what we are: a diverse, creative species. IVOW’s initiative to build cultural IQ is a necessary first step towards filling the gap. Today’s artificial intelligence is built without real acknowledgement of all the worldwide predecessors who contributed to its existence: namely, women in non-western cultures. IVOW’s initiative to integrate ‘culture-aware’ technologies is a necessity for us to a more humane, less biased future for all.”
Our world and our ways of communicating are evolving rapidly. However, instead of losing the richness of our traditions and word-of-mouth stories, we can look to AI to not only continue, but revive these lines of history. We can amplify the overlooked stories of the women responsible for some of our most pivotal technological advancements, and widely share the vibrant stories of indigenous peoples. And by using inclusive, culturally intelligent data sets, organizations can learn to better serve their constituents, and companies can forge deeper connections with their customers, in a unique, authentic, and personalized way. IVOW’s work will undoubtedly play a critical role in building the future of AI.
To learn more about IVOW, visit: https://www.ivow.ai/ or https://www.ivow.ai/uploads/1/0/5/3/105390607/whitepaper_ikg_ivow.pdf.
If you are an investor interested in Davar’s IVOW, please contact Eve Logunova at eve@womeninai.co.
