Smart Cities that Function Like Startups and Ayesha Khanna




The Syndicate show

Summary: Dr. Ayesha Khanna is Co-Founder and CEO of <a href="https://addo.ai/">ADDO AI</a>, an artificial intelligence (AI) solutions firm and incubator that was named one of 4 top AI companies in Asia. She has been a strategic advisor on artificial intelligence, smart cities, and fintech to leading corporations and governments and serves on the Board of Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the Singapore government’s agency that develops its world-class technology sector to drive the country’s digital economy and power its Smart Nation vision. Her clients have included SMRT, Singapore’s largest public transport company; Singtel, Singapore’s largest telco; SOMPO, Japan’s largest insurance firm; Habib Bank, Pakistan’s largest bank; and Smart Dubai, the government agency tasked to transform Dubai into a leading smart city. Prior to founding ADDO AI, Ayesha spent more than a decade on Wall Street developing large scale trading, risk management, and data analytics systems and was the co-founder of the Hybrid Reality Institute, a research advisory group established to analyze the social and economic impact of accelerating technologies. Ayesha is the co-author of <a href="https://amzn.to/2RehurB">Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization</a>. She has been published or quoted in most major publications and presented at major financial, technology and other industry conferences, provided high-level government briefings, chaired symposiums such as AI Asia and spoken at TEDx events. Ayesha is also the Founder of 21C GIRLS, a charity that delivers free coding and artificial intelligence classes to girls in Singapore, a Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and on the Board of Advisors for Humanity+ and directed the Future Cities Group at the London School of Economics, and has been a Faculty Advisor at Singularity University.<br> <br> <br> In our wide-ranging conversation, we cover many things, including:<br> <br> * How Singapore’s government operates like a startup to promote innovation<br> * What the future of smart cities holds and why it should be citizen-centric<br> * Why data privacy and governmental policies are so important to the future of all of us<br> * The ways changing transportation systems will affect our physical cities, beyond what’s normally discussed<br> * How to design the cities, city-states and nations of the future<br> * The reason Ayesha is working to overhaul education and how we should structure it instead<br> * Why the future will increasingly be defined by the East<br> * What the jobs of the future look like and how governments can cope<br> * Why Ayesha is optimist and a little worried about AI and society<br> <br> Are you an accredited investor? <a href="https://thesyndicate.vc/ts-joinsyndicate">Apply to join our angel syndicate if you’d like to access our deal flow.</a>Dr. Ayesha Khanna is Co-Founder and CEO of <a href="https://addo.ai/">ADDO AI</a>, an artificial intelligence (AI) solutions firm and incubator that was named one of 4 top AI companies in Asia. She has been a strategic advisor on artificial intelligence, smart cities, and fintech to leading corporations and governments and serves on the Board of Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the Singapore government’s agency that develops its world-class technology sector to drive the country’s digital economy and power its Smart Nation vision. Her clients have included SMRT, Singapore’s largest public transport company; Singtel, Singapore’s largest telco; SOMPO, Japan’s largest insurance firm; Habib Bank, Pakistan’s largest bank; and Smart Dubai, the government agency tasked to transform Dubai into a leading smart city. Prior to founding ADDO AI, Ayesha spent more than a decade on Wall Street developing large scale trading, risk management,