Navigating AI for Good: Emily Kennedy

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Narrator

At a crossroads of uncertainty and opportunity. How do you navigate forward? This podcast focuses on making smart choices in a rapidly changing world. We investigate the challenges of being at a crossroads and finding opportunities that arise out of disruption. Listen in on future forward conversations with the brightest luminaries, movers and shakers. Let's navigate forward together and create what's next.

00:00:25:03 - 00:00:46:26

Lisa Thee

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Navigating Forward podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Thi. And in my spare time I love to collect experts, people that inspire and lift me to bring my best self every day. And I am so excited to be hosting some of these personal heroes here to share some of their greatness with you. Today our guest is Emily Kennedy.

00:00:46:28 - 00:01:18:28

Lisa Thee

She is the ultimate and girls boss. From founding and leading her own artificial intelligence startup to disrupt human trafficking. Having a TED talk on the topic, as well as hosting her own Empower podcast. Emily is widely known as somebody who is just an inspirational leader, and she's going to share some of her wisdom with us today. She's a little too modest to tell you that she's on the Forbes Forbes 30 under 30 list, as well as a winner of the Toyota Mother of Invention Award.

00:01:18:28 - 00:01:23:12

Lisa Thee

And we are just so honored to have her here today. So welcome to the podcast, Emily.

00:01:23:15 - 00:01:26:21

Emily Kennedy

Thank you, Lisa. I'm super excited to be here.

00:01:26:23 - 00:01:35:20

Lisa Thee

Emily You know, I've had the luxury of knowing you for a few years, but for new listeners that haven't had experience with the show, do you mind sharing a little bit about your background and where you're from?

00:01:35:22 - 00:02:07:06

Emily Kennedy

Sure. I'm from Northern California. I've always loved the humanities and reading and writing, so that's what I went to college to study. I went to Carnegie-Mellon and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And as happens, whether you're in tech or not. Your work at CMU usually will intersect with theology in some way. So kind of what began as a personal interest in the problem of human trafficking and thinking about how to solve it actually turned into my job.

00:02:07:06 - 00:02:26:06

Emily Kennedy

So I don't have much of a background before my current job. My only other real job before that was as a research analyst at one of the labs in the CMU Robotics Institute. So kind of my whole career has revolved around solving this problem of human trafficking and using AI to do it.

00:02:26:08 - 00:02:40:00

Lisa Thee

That's amazing. How do you pivot from a background in the liberal arts and research into something as cutting edge as being a technology company founder? Was there something in your childhood that helped shape that work that you're doing today?

00:02:40:02 - 00:03:08:02

Emily Kennedy

Well, a lot of hubris. I'm just kidding. I'm kind of this I mean, in a way, I'm not joking because it is a little intimidating starting from a humanities background and feeling like you can, you know, go into technology or even talk to people in tech. I think that was done through just a lot of curiosity just by being willing to ask questions and wanting to learn about how tech could help solve the problem of human trafficking.

00:03:08:05 - 00:03:30:04

Emily Kennedy

But the passion for that problem started back when I was actually a teenager. I was traveling through Eastern Europe at the age of 16 with my dad and I had grown up in a really great life, great family, you know, very secure. And when I went and was traveling through Eastern Europe, a lot of what I saw was very different from what I had grown up with.

00:03:30:06 - 00:03:52:24

Emily Kennedy

And in particular, there was this one town that we passed through where we saw these children begging on the street. And they just seemed to be this desperation about them and just something seemed really, really wrong. But I didn't know what it was. And being very sheltered, I couldn't really imagine myself. And so I asked my friend after we passed through there, Hey, what was going on with those kids?

00:03:52:24 - 00:04:18:05

Emily Kennedy

And he was from the area. And meanwhile, those kids are most likely trafficked by the Russian mob and they're orphans who beg on the street and any money they make, they have to bring back to their owners, essentially. And that was my first brush with the problem of human trafficking and realizing that there were plenty of people across the world who did not have the same advantages or opportunities that I had.

00:04:18:08 - 00:04:34:24

Emily Kennedy

And it made me it just kind of lit a fire in my heart back in my teenage years about, man, this problem really stuck with me. And it took just basically years and years of learning about it, being curious to try to figure out what I might be able to do to help.

00:04:34:27 - 00:04:52:06

Lisa Thee

Emilie I love what you said about being able to be raised in a supportive environment, and as we know, not everyone is fortunate enough to be born into a functional family, so it sounds like it really inspired your heart to keep that curiosity and that learning going to do something to make a change for those beyond you.

00:04:52:08 - 00:04:53:05

Emily Kennedy

Exactly.

00:04:53:07 - 00:05:05:29

Lisa Thee

For some people, human trafficking is a term that's not very clear. Do you mind explaining your  area of expertise in human trafficking in a way that maybe your grandmother or my kindergartner might understand?

00:05:06:01 - 00:05:32:24

Emily Kennedy

I would absolutely love to. So, first of all, just give a quick definition of human trafficking. This is how the United States government defines it in U.S. law. So human trafficking is any time that someone is exploited through force, fraud or coercion are the ones typically used to either work and give all their money to someone or to be sexually exploited and give all their money to someone.

00:05:32:27 - 00:05:56:03

Emily Kennedy

And for those who are sexually exploited, if you are under 18, if you're a minor, you're also considered trafficked regardless of the situation. Force, fraud and coercion. Really the point there is when people think of human trafficking, they often think of like physical chains or when they realized that a victim survivor was not tied up. They think, well, why didn't that person leave?

00:05:56:05 - 00:06:23:04

Emily Kennedy

While there's plenty of other things that fall under force, fraud or coercion that might prevent someone from leaving in, those include, you know, their personal documents, like a visa being taken away, threats against their family, forced being forced to take drugs and becoming addicted to drugs. There, dependance on their trafficker. So there's a number of nonphysical ways of restraining someone to to exploit them through human trafficking.

00:06:23:07 - 00:06:47:04

Emily Kennedy

Now, what I do is really focused on and what my company does is really focused on a subset of that. So I always like to try to mention that often when we think of human trafficking because of movies like the movie Take In with Liam Neeson, which we all love, we think about sex trafficking. Now, sex trafficking is actually globally a very small chunk of the problem and forced labor.

00:06:47:09 - 00:07:10:13

Emily Kennedy

And what people often call modern day slavery is a much bigger part of the problem. So if people are looking for a way to get involved, forced labor is a huge problem that still needs a lot of people to work on It. But I like to just mention that because sex trafficking often gets more media attention, but forced labor is more prevalent worldwide.

00:07:10:13 - 00:07:33:04

Emily Kennedy

And you can look up the International Labor Organization statistics if you're interested in the specifics. So what we do is focus specifically on the problem of sex trafficking as it happens online. So many may not know, but every single day, even in the U.S. alone, there are hundreds of thousands of new advertisements selling sex every single day. These are on the public web.

00:07:33:04 - 00:08:05:17

Emily Kennedy

You don't even have to go on the dark web to find them. There is a huge amount of activity. You may have heard of websites like Backpage where this activity was really prevalent. Backpage was taken down by the FBI about two years ago. And surprising to some, not to me, because we work in the data very closely. But surprising to some, After Backpage was shut down, it only took six months for the activity to spread to other websites and for the activity to surpass the activity we saw on Backpage before it was shut down.

00:08:05:17 - 00:08:41:27

Emily Kennedy

So what we do is we basically look at this type of data online and apply AI to it that can help find patterns that would. There's typically two scenarios either help detectives find victims of smart kind of small, lower level traffickers who might only have 2 to 5 victims and operate moving their victims across cities and states, everything from those small groups to helping detectives identify and locate and find organized crime groups that might have international organized crime connections that are operating across multiple countries.

00:08:42:00 - 00:08:52:27

Emily Kennedy

So we basically try to use A.I. to get insights out of this data to save time to rescue more victims and to take down more of those criminals.

00:08:52:29 - 00:09:17:08

Lisa Thee

That's amazing, Emily. And I was really surprised as I was researching more about human trafficking for this interview to learn that it's $150 billion global index, larger than the NFL, larger than casinos combined. So this isn't something that's a little fringe activity that's happening. It really is something that takes a lot more energy and focus if we're going to get our hands around really the problem of modern day slavery.

00:09:17:15 - 00:09:22:05

Lisa Thee

And today we have more slaves than we ever have in the course of human history, unfortunately, right?

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Emily Kennedy

Yeah.

00:09:23:18 - 00:09:34:22

Lisa Thee

Hate. And speaking of things that maybe not everybody understands, I certainly can relate to being a little puzzled by what artificial intelligence even really means. Do you mind explaining that a little bit?

00:09:34:22 - 00:10:03:03

Emily Kennedy

Sure. I mean, I can explain it in the most simple way that I first started understanding it as a humanities student who in my senior year was thrown into the deep end of what is AI and machine learning and how can it help? And that's when I started working at the Robotics Institute lab, the Auton lab in my senior year, and just really got thrown into what is all this and ultimately, like, what is the purpose of it?

00:10:03:04 - 00:10:43:07

Emily Kennedy

How can it help us solve world problems? So the simplest way I would explain it is our lab was in the Robotics Institute and people when they think of robots, they think of, you know, Terminator or they think of, you know, those crazy robot dogs that you see. But the way that I think about AI and machine learning is that that's really all about how robots think and the way that robots think can be useful not just for creating, you know, humanoid looking robot, but it can help us solve data problems that don't represent themselves in like a robot form.

00:10:43:07 - 00:11:08:06

Emily Kennedy

So I think of it this way in terms of the problem that we are solving. When a detective is looking for a victim, say and say he knows this is a missing girl, she's six years old. She's believed by her family to be trafficked for sex online. There's a very common scenario. So think he has that information and so he knows that she's missing out of New Orleans.

00:11:08:09 - 00:11:33:29

Emily Kennedy

So that detective might go to the websites where he knows there are ads for sex in New Orleans and manually skim through every single ad, seeing if he can see her name or, you know, information about her or a photo that looks like her. Now, say there are and I'm just I don't know, off the top of my head, but say there's like 20,000 ads that day in New Orleans, maybe not that much, but let's just say for argument, there's 20,000.

00:11:34:01 - 00:12:07:15

Emily Kennedy

There's no way a human could read through 20,000 ads in the day. And even if they could read as many as they could, you know, that wouldn't be really a useful use of time. And so what the A.I. does is help search through and find patterns like a human word in the ads, but does it with a click of a button so that the human can spend more time doing what humans do well, which is having intuition and knowing context and the, you know, search results in our tool, which I think I didn't mention, is called traffic jam.

00:12:07:17 - 00:12:16:00

Emily Kennedy

The search results can just help narrow down the amount of data that needs to be minimally processed. So now it's just kind of the simplest way I would explain it.

00:12:16:06 - 00:12:27:04

Lisa Thee

Okay. So what I think I heard from you is artificial intelligence is reflecting how computers process information and help to glean wisdom out of an ocean of data.

00:12:27:06 - 00:12:28:08

Emily Kennedy

Perfect.

00:12:28:10 - 00:12:44:05

Lisa Thee

And you have had this amazing career journey, leveraging that to apply it to a problem that you're interested in, which is disrupting human trafficking. Can you tell me a little bit more about your company, Marinus Analytics, and where it where it started to and where it's grown to over time?

00:12:44:07 - 00:13:11:13

Emily Kennedy

Sure. Oh, it's been quite the journey. Well, let me start by saying that around 2012 I was taking master's classes at the Hind School of Public Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon Great School and Masterclasses. Didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life, which when you're about to graduate college, is what everyone is asking you, as if you have some mapped to the future and you can see the future and know what's going to happen.

00:13:11:15 - 00:13:36:14

Emily Kennedy

So, you know, my friends were also getting their master's going into new master's programs, going into, you know, wherever like the Peace Corps or Teach for America. And I really didn't know yet what I was going to do. So the funny thing is that I took a finance class in that master's program and we had to read the financial statements of failed companies and kind of interpret them.

00:13:36:16 - 00:13:54:02

Emily Kennedy

And I remember distinctly a moment where I turned to my friend and I said, I am never starting a company. People who do that are either dumb or delusional. I would never do that. It's too risky. And then about a year, so year to later, I started my own company.

00:13:54:04 - 00:13:59:21

Lisa Thee

So I think I've fallen victim to that myself. Emily I can relate very much.

00:13:59:23 - 00:14:17:06

Emily Kennedy

Yes. It's a real thing where you trick yourself into it and how I kind of tricked myself into it was it was really a means to an end. I was not someone who always knew I would be an entrepreneur or like I was selling, you know, the typical story. I was selling baseball cards to my friends as a child.

00:14:17:06 - 00:14:43:16

Emily Kennedy

You know, that was not my journey. My journey was I wanted to solve a problem. Starting a company seems like the best way to do that at the time. And that had to do with the fact that we were dealing with like universe. You developed technology, we wanted to commercialize it. And so I really started with no real work experience and not really any business class experience and barely any technology experience.

00:14:43:16 - 00:14:47:17

Emily Kennedy

So of course it would be a great idea that I would start in a tech company.

00:14:47:24 - 00:14:53:04

Lisa Thee

You should be a CEO. Everything I read on there was like CEO all day.

00:14:53:06 - 00:14:54:06

Emily Kennedy

Totally. So how do.

00:14:54:06 - 00:15:04:04

Lisa Thee

You play that passion into an actual functional business that is helping to rescue thousands of victims all over the globe today?

00:15:04:06 - 00:15:25:28

Emily Kennedy

Great question. So I think a big part of it was having the right partners. So I founded the company with the director of the lab that I was working at, who still serves as an advisor. And then my other business partner was and she's our CEO today, Cara Jones. And she had the robotics background, she had her MBA, and so she had more of the kind of traditional background.

00:15:25:28 - 00:15:51:05

Emily Kennedy

So I think we were able to have a good complementary kind of team structure when we started. The other thing was, you know, when people think of tech companies, they think of, Oh, you go immediately and raise VC money so you can scale or whatever. We were all about bootstrapping. We wanted to do. We wanted to do it in a sustainable kind of slow and steady growth way.

00:15:51:05 - 00:16:22:11

Emily Kennedy

And so that involved, you know, kind of funding through bootstrapped methods, including getting an DARBOE contract early on, which we did some work for through CMU. We also ended up getting National Science Foundation grant funding for our research. We did a number of different pitch competitions, mainly social impact focused over the years. And so that enabled us to as well as a couple of accelerators, which are really helpful, but that enabled us to grow the company.

00:16:22:11 - 00:16:48:11

Emily Kennedy

So and study raised money that we needed without being tied to investors, which was great. And now we're at around ten people. We've actually grown a bit this year and you know, to me ten people feels like huge, but obviously it's not that big. But it's been a really cool journey because in, you know, getting around the ten people mark, that's when you start to have to scale a lot of your processes.

00:16:48:11 - 00:16:54:04

Emily Kennedy

You start to build the culture and it really is a whole different ballgame from when you first start.

00:16:54:06 - 00:17:08:11

Lisa Thee

That's amazing. Emily So at this inflection point today, what are some of the biggest accomplishments that Marinus Analytics has achieved that that you reflect on and think, Wow, it was a it was a journey, but boy, was it worth it.

00:17:08:13 - 00:17:29:00

Emily Kennedy

MM There are a number. So one is just that we estimate in the last two years or so we've assisted with the identification of about 6800 victims of sex trafficking, which is the whole point of what we do. So that is really the main thing.

00:17:29:00 - 00:17:34:18

Lisa Thee

So those are people that detectives have identified and are able to recover.

00:17:34:20 - 00:17:55:24

Emily Kennedy

Cases with the goal of recovering. Yes, exactly. So that is really, really cool to see that impact, see it actually happening. Because when I first started, I said, you know, if all the work that we do just helps one person get out of a life of exploitation, like that's enough. But clearly more is better. You know, that's that's always good.

00:17:55:26 - 00:18:24:11

Emily Kennedy

I think. Being semifinalist in the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE competition, which is a global or global A.I. competition, started with about, I think, 150 different companies and we made it into the top ten, which is really exciting. So we'll be continuing with that. And that was, you know, it's one of those things where you people might look at our situation and be like, Wow, how did you do that?

00:18:24:17 - 00:18:46:09

Emily Kennedy

But then when you get to a situation like the X Prize competition and in the semifinals, you have ten amazing companies solving world's problems with AI in many varied, completely different ways. It's like you're like, I we're like, we're just equal. We're all equal if not there, better. Like.

00:18:46:11 - 00:19:09:24

Lisa Thee

I don't know about that. Actually. I am our data for good practice lead here at launch consulting and I see a lot of the innovation across health care and technology. And what I can say is you guys have been so impressive in being able to stay ahead of the trends as artificial intelligence has matured over time from doing a lot of text based solutions into image and video.

00:19:09:24 - 00:19:40:17

Lisa Thee

You guys have been riding that wave of innovation all the way through your process and bringing more value and democratizing it to law enforcement faster than most people I've seen out there. So I think you're under calling yourself. I've seen the impact and I've seen you on stage at a U.S. reinvent and I've seen you on stage with the CEO of HP and these large companies recognizing that your innovation brings the Y to why technology matters.

00:19:40:23 - 00:20:11:08

Emily Kennedy

Well, thank you. I mean it. Yeah, it's definitely that's what we're all about. And I think you're totally right that it's a quickly changing space. And I think that's honestly kind of what makes us so interesting. Like for a long time it took me a good amount of time to identify myself as an entrepreneur. But I think to me, rather than making a certain amount of money or growing your company to a certain size, it's really about do you enjoy pivoting in unpredictable territory?

00:20:11:08 - 00:20:18:06

Emily Kennedy

Do you enjoy learning new things that you never knew before? And that is all true with tech and with the AI for sure.

00:20:18:09 - 00:20:31:09

Lisa Thee

That's a great point that that natural curiosity, you mentioned early in life I think is really serving you well today. So where do you keep go? Where do you go to keep learning and growing? How do you keep yourself fresh and relevant?

00:20:31:12 - 00:20:52:05

Emily Kennedy

Oh, well, friends like you, first of all, I mean, just having other entrepreneur friends or entrepreneurial minded friends is really helpful because being a business owner and an entrepreneur can be very isolating. So just having friends to bounce ideas off of is really refreshing and good.

00:20:52:08 - 00:21:02:01

Lisa Thee

And then community matters, right? Having that community is what keeps us going when some days you just aren't there to bring your best self to work. Right?

00:21:02:04 - 00:21:19:24

Emily Kennedy

Exactly. And it does not have to be in person either. My whole career I've worked remotely and most of my friends I catch up with remotely. So it can definitely be over the phone and things like that. And then podcasts are huge for me. Obviously, I host my own podcast, The Empower Podcast, so I love interviewing people like yourself.

00:21:19:24 - 00:21:40:21

Emily Kennedy

You at one of the few who has been on twice, So I'll just do a little plug there. If you love Lisa, check those out. And then, you know, just getting to ask experts and other entrepreneurs questions. That's basically what that podcast is about. And then I love listening to podcasts and I love learning about things outside of work.

00:21:40:21 - 00:22:20:10

Emily Kennedy

Topics I think is really, really important. Getting some space for your brain to kind of grow. So to other podcast I really enjoy are Do the Thing by Melissa Urban. She's the founder of the whole, but her podcast Do the Thing talks about like health and mental health and other things outside of Whole30. And then the Skinny Confidential podcast is really fun because they just interview a whole range of different types of people from, you know, I don't know, military people to yoga gurus, to health people, to wellness, to fitness, to basically everything.

00:22:20:12 - 00:22:22:28

Emily Kennedy

And I just really enjoy those conversations too.

00:22:23:05 - 00:22:44:15

Lisa Thee

Yeah, I think you're really on to something there, Emily, because what I noticed when I pivoted my career from being focused in the corporate world to more in the startup and entrepreneurship world is that most people that are entrepreneurs have a wide range of interests. They are not single minded, and you get as much growth from listening to people in different domains as you do getting more deep in a subject matter expertise, right?

00:22:44:18 - 00:23:06:11

Emily Kennedy

That's so true. And like I've I can't tell you how much listening to podcasts has honestly changed my career, changed how I think given me like leadership skills or things to think about that I didn't have before. And yeah, listening to people from different industries is really helpful because you'll hear something in their industry and then take it and apply it to your industry.

00:23:06:11 - 00:23:09:25

Emily Kennedy

And often that totally works. So I love it.

00:23:09:28 - 00:23:23:23

Lisa Thee

That's awesome. So we have had an unprecedented year and I was wondering how have you had to pivot your business strategy at Marinus Analytics in light of COVID and what impact did you experience from that?

00:23:23:25 - 00:23:45:01

Emily Kennedy

Yes, so we obviously went fully remote in March and I was already remote. So I guess I sort of benefited in a weird way from that because then, you know, I'm no longer the only person on the conference phone while everyone else is in person. So it's kind of nice to be on the same playing field technology wise.

00:23:45:03 - 00:24:11:28

Emily Kennedy

We've definitely noticed people on our team mentioned things like me and I wish we had more time to just catch up or connect about non-work things. So we've started doing a virtual happy hour where we have themes and a different person, Host said each time. And so, you know, they can pick the theme and it can be like favorite movies or we'll do games or whatever.

00:24:12:04 - 00:24:27:18

Emily Kennedy

So just time to decompress. I've noticed that. And as someone who has worked remotely my whole life, I know that it is really difficult to, even when you've done it for a while, it can be really difficult to feel isolated. So I think just being aware of that.

00:24:27:20 - 00:24:53:03

Lisa Thee

Yeah, I think also because you lead a social impact focused company knows those boundaries and wellness practices are even more important so that you can create clean delineation between, let's be honest, some potentially vicarious traumatic work of knowing what happens to people that maybe go missing or are a result of our foster care system, Right?

00:24:53:03 - 00:25:22:29

Emily Kennedy

Yeah, that's absolutely true. So it's important. Yeah. And in personal life and in work life, to have things outside of work that you do together. And then I also think in a weird way, being having everyone fully remote and everyone a little bit more autonomous than usual has empowered me and my partner and kind of like given us a push to do more delegating, which as a leader you basically always need to do, but even more so when we're further apart.

00:25:23:06 - 00:25:55:29

Emily Kennedy

It's a good reminder of like, Man, you know, these different people on our team want to take on more. They can do more. They're they want to grow. And so let's remind ourselves about how we can delegate and evaluate that. As far as our business, it hasn't thankfully been affected too much. I think part of that is due to the fact that working with a lot of government agencies, we're used to long sales cycles and unpredictable any.

00:25:56:02 - 00:26:22:00

Emily Kennedy

So we're again, there's this is unprecedented. This global pandemic is unprecedented. But it reminds me of like a couple of years ago when the government shut down and that put a lot of pressure on us around the end of the year because we were not planning on that. And we had to pivot and, you know, figure out how to make things work over the next couple of months while we were waiting for, you know, like different contracts to come through.

00:26:22:02 - 00:26:41:26

Emily Kennedy

So I think being an entrepreneur affords us a an advantage because we're used to pivoting for someone who's in a traditional job and not an entrepreneur. I would just say be aware of this all of the time, not just a pandemic where where you can push your team, where you can think outside the box, where you can pivot and try something new.

00:26:41:26 - 00:27:16:27

Emily Kennedy

Because I think building those muscles and skills really comes into play as very helpful when things like a pandemic come. And we've been like coming up with new product ideas, coming up with new verticals, and that's something that we're very comfortable with already. So it was not super difficult for us to pivot back to that again. So I would just say, I think in any industry it's really helpful to not become stagnant, whatever that means for you in your industry, to push your team, to keep them on their toes, to make sure everyone's continuously growing into their best selves.

00:27:16:29 - 00:27:23:22

Emily Kennedy

Because when something when a curve ball gets thrown at you, I think your team is going to be able to pivot a lot more smoothly.

00:27:23:25 - 00:27:42:01

Lisa Thee

Yeah, I think what I heard pulling some of that out, Emily, was there were some tools and techniques that you had for working remote. There were some tools and techniques that you have for delegating and so being put into this environment. It allowed you to remember to go back into the toolbox and pull out some of those things and see how you can leverage them more and more.

00:27:42:01 - 00:28:08:18

Lisa Thee

Some experiences you've had in the past and and grounding yourself that you have made it through difficult times before and your company will continue to do that here. Is that accurate? Totally awesome. So what emerging trends are you seeing in your field that we should all be paying a little bit more attention to? I think a lot of the listeners for this podcast are thinking about how to use data, how to use machine learning more to advance their business goals.

00:28:08:18 - 00:28:10:04

Lisa Thee

Can you talk to us a little bit about trends?

00:28:10:04 - 00:28:37:00

Emily Kennedy

And I'm sure the biggest one that comes to mind is human AI collaboration so often, and I find this happens probably most with like lay people who are not used to AI or not very familiar with it. You know, we think when when those people who are not typically using AI, I think of AI. Well, let me back up because really we are all using AI in our daily lives.

00:28:37:00 - 00:29:17:12

Emily Kennedy

When you log on to your social media account, when you're on the computer, AI is happening in the background. But when we talk about AI, people often think of, like I said before, the Terminator, or they think of like the post-apocalyptic movies like The Matrix where A.I. takes over and it's evil and it's terrible. I think what's not talked about enough is the collaboration that we have between humans and A.I., because and I'll just speak from our point of view specifically when you're talking about a detective running a human trafficking investigation, our goal is not to build a AI that replaces the detective.

00:29:17:15 - 00:29:40:22

Emily Kennedy

AI is not nearly advanced to completely replace a detective, at least not where we're right now. Nor do we want to. Really. The goal is to use A.I. to narrow down the options and then have the human who still the detectives have their best intuition, their life experience, their work experience, their, you know, their subject matter expertise.

00:29:40:22 - 00:29:47:14

Lisa Thee

They're they are trained in that we don't want them wasting time scrolling through page after page after page on the Internet. Right.

00:29:47:20 - 00:29:48:08

Emily Kennedy

They can easily.

00:29:48:11 - 00:29:49:07

Lisa Thee

Go to the right place and.

00:29:49:07 - 00:30:12:19

Emily Kennedy

They don't want to either. Like I mean, it's not enjoyable to do that, especially when, like you mentioned before, we're talking about missing children. You know, kind of looking at bazillions of photos is exhausting. And so we want to cut down those exhaust sorting tasks so that the detectives can do what they do best and do it no other technology can replace.

00:30:12:22 - 00:30:36:20

Emily Kennedy

So I encourage people to think more about that collaboration. For those who are familiar with machine learning, it's very common because when you're building a machine learning model, you might train the model and then have the human give feedback and then train the model again. And it's this iterative process, but people who are not familiar with that might not know that that's actually very common in even just building the models.

00:30:36:20 - 00:30:59:28

Emily Kennedy

So just think more about how can we keep the power in the human's hands in the sense that and acknowledging that also when people think of AI, they think of, okay, if we build this black box AI and it gives us an answer and we execute on that answer and it's the wrong answer, it's the A's fault. And so I can basically blame the AI rather than blaming the human.

00:31:00:06 - 00:31:25:06

Emily Kennedy

The truth is we always have to blame the humans, either the person who built it or the person who used it wrongly or whatever. So having AI does not get us out of that human dilemma of making decisions. The AI is really just a tool to help narrow down the options, help potentially put the right answer or the accurate match in the scope of our view.

00:31:25:09 - 00:31:33:16

Emily Kennedy

But really it's still up to us as humans to figure out how best to use it to make the right decisions with it. And basically everything that comes along with that.

00:31:33:23 - 00:32:03:18

Lisa Thee

I think that's a great point. So I think what I'm hearing from you is whenever artificial intelligence models are being created, there's always a human hand in curating the data that goes into them. There's a human hand in and labeling information and annotating it. So to be human is to be bias. That is a universal truth. And when humans are training the computers similarly to how you train your child, perhaps to throw a baseball, it's a lot of trial and error and it's a lot of correcting.

00:32:03:18 - 00:32:24:16

Lisa Thee

And the computers learn more from their mistakes than their successes. And so they're they can be a very useful tool to be an accelerant for subject matter experts in their different fields. But they don't replace the people that are involved either from the training, the models to using the trained models in practice either. Right.

00:32:24:18 - 00:32:25:23

Emily Kennedy

Exactly.

00:32:25:25 - 00:32:46:08

Lisa Thee

Okay. Awesome. Well, this has been so informational, Emily, I really appreciate it. We've talked about some really inspirational things, but I would like to pivot a little bit and talk a little bit about maybe some of the things that didn't go so well, because I think we all experienced some failures from time to time. And I was wondering what was yours and how did you navigate through that?

00:32:46:11 - 00:33:16:15

Emily Kennedy

Sure. Failure. I mean, failure is what you talk about a lot when you're an entrepreneur, because that's how you learn and that's your main method of learning. Just like computers. Yeah, exactly. One of the things that comes to mind when I think of failure or what we might categorize as failure as people is dropping out of my master's program, I was a very hardworking, go getter type student, loved school.

00:33:16:15 - 00:33:42:00

Emily Kennedy

You know, it wasn't bad at all. It was that, you know, I was the student who was doing my senior honors thesis, studying for the all SAT and taking accelerated master's classes in my senior year of college. And so I kind of started the Masters as, Hey, this is a good option. And if I don't figure out what I'm doing, maybe I'll just continue with that after I graduate.

00:33:42:02 - 00:34:00:27

Emily Kennedy

And it was the nice thing about an accelerated master's was you didn't have to pay anymore to get it if you take classes in your senior year. So I was like, okay, that's a good deal. But I ended up dropping out after that year. And a lot of people don't know that because they look at my LinkedIn and I say that I took Master's classes.

00:34:00:27 - 00:34:18:23

Emily Kennedy

I'm not intending to stay that I got my master's, but people like make that logical jump in their minds, which is really funny. But I think the reason that I did that was because I was getting traction with this work and there was something there was like a little voice inside of me that said, This is the work you need to be doing.

00:34:18:23 - 00:34:42:18

Emily Kennedy

Pursue this. I had no idea it would results in global impact. I had no idea it would result in the recovery of, you know, potentially thousands of victims. I could not see that future, but I knew it was something that was meaningful work and it was something I was passionate about. And so a lot of people might look at dropping out of college as a bad thing.

00:34:42:25 - 00:35:11:10

Emily Kennedy

But, you know, I think what's the life lesson I took out of that? Just because you can do a good job at something doesn't necessarily mean that it's what you should be doing. So, you know, I was getting great grades. I was being, quote unquote, successful. But think it's really about how do you personally define success, not not how the world around you or your parents or like traditional corporate America defines your success.

00:35:11:10 - 00:35:32:06

Emily Kennedy

It's about do you feel like your work is meaningful? Do you feel like it's accomplishing things that you care about? And again, it doesn't have to be saving lives. It could be literally anything that brings you joy or that makes you feel like you're like expressing the best version of yourself in your giving back to the world in the way that you want to.

00:35:32:08 - 00:35:53:10

Emily Kennedy

So it could be literally anything. But I think we can fall into this trap where just because you're successful at something, you feel like you have to do it. It has to be your thing or just because. And for many of us, that can be many things, right, that we're really good at. But it doesn't mean that that has to be necessarily your career path or whatever.

00:35:53:10 - 00:36:10:06

Emily Kennedy

And so having that perspective allowed me to jump off into the unknown, which ended up into all of this, this career and all the things we're talking about today. But none of that would have happened if I had had been too afraid to kind of jump off that trajectory to success.

00:36:10:09 - 00:36:16:07

Lisa Thee

Well, I'm excited to learn that we are both masters degree dropouts. I did not know that story.

00:36:16:10 - 00:36:19:16

Emily Kennedy

I didn't know you were either. That's awesome.

00:36:19:19 - 00:36:50:23

Lisa Thee

And I love what you were talking about in terms of really paying attention to what puts you in your flow, what lifts your energy, what makes you exercise those muscles of your strengths as much as humanly possible. I think it's really easy to get distracted by other people's visions of what path you should take. Maybe your parents or other family members or friends that influence you, but slowing down enough to really pay attention to what works best for you has enabled this amazing career trajectory for you, and it's really inspiring to see.

00:36:50:26 - 00:37:03:11

Lisa Thee

Thank you. So along this journey, I know you are the queen of great hacks for avoiding wasting time. Can you share some of our your favorites with us that we can take away is actionable tips today?

00:37:03:13 - 00:37:42:15

Emily Kennedy

Sure. So a couple off the top of my head. One is I think Tim Ferriss was where I first heard this. You just like a gas will expand to fill the volume of the container it's in. You will expand your time on a project, however big you give yourself for that project. And so if you find yourself like unable to execute things or just feeling like you're spinning your wheels, give yourself and I have on my desk right in front of me right now, my timer, and it's a physical timer, I twist the knob and it shows me a red pie shape of how much time I have.

00:37:42:20 - 00:38:03:14

Emily Kennedy

And I will often use that when I really need to focus. You know, you can get really good stuff done in a short amount of time. And if you find that you're spinning your wheels, give yourself a limited amount of time to do it. Another thing kind of long term thinking is as an entrepreneur, you learn as you go and a lot of times that's the only way to learn.

00:38:03:14 - 00:38:28:11

Emily Kennedy

It really depends on the situation. But I am a very I started off as a very researcher mindset, wanting to read everything I could about a subject before doing anything, wanting to know all the, you know, know the right answer before I did anything. And that can waste a lot of time. So be able to gauge where you can learn as you go and where where you can, where you need to do your research first.

00:38:28:14 - 00:38:57:18

Emily Kennedy

You know, I heard a really good quote from Jeff Bezos where he basically said, think about when you're just making decisions. Think about what decisions are reversible and which decisions are irreversible and make the reversible decisions quickly because you don't want to waste time wringing your hands about whether it's the right decision. Oftentimes you won't know until you just take a step forward and learn more information and then you'll be like, Yeah, that wasn't the right decision.

00:38:57:20 - 00:39:14:23

Emily Kennedy

So I tend to think about that too. As far as you don't have to research the death out of every single decision. There's something that you can make quickly and learn as you go. There's other things that are not reversible or easily reversible, and you're going to need to spend more time on those.

00:39:14:26 - 00:39:20:16

Lisa Thee

Yeah, I must admit a life mantra for me these days as a working mom is done is better than perfect.

00:39:20:22 - 00:39:23:09

Emily Kennedy

Yes, Love that one.

00:39:23:12 - 00:39:33:11

Lisa Thee

So, Emily, it's been a true delight to talk to you and learn more about you and share you more with the world than you already have. Where can people find you and keep tabs on what you're working on?

00:39:33:14 - 00:39:59:27

Emily Kennedy

Sure, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm, of course, Emily Kennedy there on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Hey, Emily Kennedy. I do just more casual stuff on there. And then, of course, the Empower Podcast. Anywhere you listen to podcasts, I obviously on there share my journey of being an entrepreneur a day to day, and then I interview other awesome entrepreneurs and entrepreneur minded people like Lisa about their journeys and kind of what we can learn from them.

00:39:59:27 - 00:40:03:11

Emily Kennedy

So I'd love to connect with you and feel free to reach out.

00:40:03:14 - 00:40:11:00

Lisa Thee

Awesome. And how can people support your work if they got inspired to want to do more in that area of disrupting trafficking?

00:40:11:02 - 00:40:36:17

Emily Kennedy

Great question. So I think the easiest thing you could do would be to follow at Marinus I on Twitter. If you're on Twitter, you can follow us on LinkedIn and or you can go to our website Marinus Analytics dot com and sign up for our newsletter. We have a public newsletter where we share what we're working on as well as resources to learn about human trafficking, dispelling human trafficking myths and things like that.

00:40:36:17 - 00:40:39:04

Emily Kennedy

So that would be a great place to start.

00:40:39:06 - 00:40:42:00

Lisa Thee

Emily, thank you so much for your time today.

00:40:42:02 - 00:40:44:27

Emily Kennedy

Thank you. Lisa. This is so fun.

00:40:44:29 - 00:40:48:15

Lisa Thee

Maybe you'll be my only double guest on this podcast too.

00:40:48:17 - 00:40:50:16

Emily Kennedy

Astrid I can't wait.

00:40:50:18 - 00:40:53:08

Lisa Thee

Thank you. Emily.

00:40:53:11 - 00:41:04:12

Narrator

Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Navigating Forward podcast. We'd love to hear from you. At a crossroads of uncertainty and opportunity, how do you navigate forward? We'll see you next time.