Panelist Ya Xu

Ya Xu

United States

Ya Xu is vice president of engineering and head of data and AI at LinkedIn, which she joined in 2013. Xu emphasizes responsible AI and data science as the leader of a global team of almost 1,000 data scientists and AI engineers. She is coauthor Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments, was named to Fortune’s 2020 list of 40 under 40 in Tech, and was nominated for VentureBeat’s 2020 Women in AI Awards. Xu has delivered countless speeches, including a commencement speech to Stanford’s Class of 2019 in Mathematics, Statistics, and Mathematical & Computational Science. Previously, she was a researcher at Microsoft. She has a doctorate in statistics from Stanford University.

Learn more about Xu’s approach to AI via the Me, Myself, and AI podcast.

Voting History

Statement	Response
Organizations are sufficiently expanding risk management capabilities to address AI-related risks. Disagree	“AI-related risks are complex and span a broad spectrum of issues, from concerns over ethics, privacy, and copyright to technical vulnerabilities and the potential for workforce displacement. While we’ve seen significant effort from some leading organizations to address these risks, such initiatives are not uniformly distributed across all companies. Establishing good risk management capabilities requires significant resources and expertise, which not all companies can afford or have available to them today. What’s more, the dynamic nature of AI technology makes it difficult for risk management practices to remain relevant and effective over time. These challenges underscore the need for a more concerted effort from organizations to establish holistic risk management approaches that can be widely adopted. Developing technological standards, such as the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, and proactively collaborating across organizational boundaries are essential. By doing so, companies can better position themselves to navigate the complexities of AI integration while safeguarding against its potential pitfalls.”

Statement

Response

Organizations are sufficiently expanding risk management capabilities to address AI-related risks. Disagree

“AI-related risks are complex and span a broad spectrum of issues, from concerns over ethics, privacy, and copyright to technical vulnerabilities and the potential for workforce displacement. While we’ve seen significant effort from some leading organizations to address these risks, such initiatives are not uniformly distributed across all companies. Establishing good risk management capabilities requires significant resources and expertise, which not all companies can afford or have available to them today. What’s more, the dynamic nature of AI technology makes it difficult for risk management practices to remain relevant and effective over time.

These challenges underscore the need for a more concerted effort from organizations to establish holistic risk management approaches that can be widely adopted. Developing technological standards, such as the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, and proactively collaborating across organizational boundaries are essential. By doing so, companies can better position themselves to navigate the complexities of AI integration while safeguarding against its potential pitfalls.”