Name: How AI can help shatter barriers to equality | Jamila Gordon
Uploaded: 2021-02-22T21:01:10.000Z
Duration: 5 min 56 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

My father used to call me Jamila "Gabar Nasiib Nasiib Badan,"

which means Jamila "The Lucky, Lucky Girl."

Adverbs of degree

And I have been very fortunate in my life.

they stopped in a tiny village that looked a bit like this,

forced us to move to Somali's capital, Mogadishu.

my father realized Somalia was headed for a civil war

to get me and my 13 brothers and sisters out of the country.

I ended up on my own as a displaced person in Kenya,

when the Australian government gave me unemployment benefits

but I wanted to find work as soon as I could.

I learned about a Japanese restaurant that was hiring,

figured my poor English might be a problem,

so she sent me to the kitchen to meet her husband, Yoshi.

Now, Yoshi didn't speak much English either,

but we managed to communicate with one another.

He hired me as a dishwasher and trained me as a kitchen hand.

Now, that couple's kindness set me on a path

where hard work and persistence led me to my graduation

and went on to become a global executive with IBM

and later, chief information officer of Qantas Airways.

to do at a massive scale what that couple did for me:

give disadvantaged people tools to find work,

give them the skills to be great at their jobs,

about how artificial intelligence is going to take away jobs

but I can tell you in the real world right now,

AI is making amazing things possible for organizations

and for people who otherwise would have been left behind.

Language, education and location are no longer the barriers they once were.

is one of the reasons I founded my company.

Much of our work is in global food supply chains,

and to reward producers who operate ethically and sustainably.

For example, it can notice unsafe behaviors,

like if someone is not wearing their personal protective gear correctly,

or someone not following the hygiene procedures,

or if someone needs help on how to carry out a specific task

because they're not following the recipe correctly.

We can make sure people are socially distancing

and can provide contact tracing if needed.

We then deliver individualized training to that person's preferred language

Now, ability to read or write or to speak the local language

are no longer the obstacles they once were.

Many of the employees in the food industry

are often migrants, refugees or people from disadvantaged backgrounds

who might not be able to speak the local language

and often might not be able to read or write well.

have 49 languages spoken in some of their facilities,

When we can see opportunities for improvements

and then deliver training with that person's preferred language,

it makes huge difference to the organization and to its people.

about five or six years old, living in that tiny village –

one of my jobs was to carry buckets of water

And I remember putting the buckets down in every 20 meters or so

and how the handles digged into my hands.

and I was so scrawny because we didn't have enough to eat.

Even though that experience taught me resilience,

it's not something I want any other child to go through.

I want to live in a world where people are not limited

by lack of access to knowledge and training,

when nobody's excluded because they cannot read or write,

where everyone can fulfill their potential.