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During AI week techUK has launched a year long campaign to promote AI Leaders helping to make the UK AI ready.

Every month we will promote an individual that is helping organisations across both the public and private sector to realise the economic benefits and social power of AI technologies.

If you are an AI leader, or know someone that is, get in touch with techUK to see how you can get involved!

This month’s AI Leader is Kriti Sharma, VP, Artificial Intelligence at Sage.

We asked Kriti 10 questions about her work and experiences with AI. Read on for a taster and find the full interview below. 

What is Your Current Role And Responsibilities?

I lead Artificial Intelligence at Sage – a FTSE 100 company, supporting 3 million customers with technology that helps companies of all sizes manage everything from money to people. We are on a mission to give SMEs the same superpowers large companies have - zero admin, dedicated HR and finance. Business today are spending 120 days a year on admin which costs the UK economy around £33.9bn a year. That is outrageous. We want to empower them to grow using technologies like AI. I am also leading the new FutureMakersLab pilot - a UK program to teach young people a broad range of skills required to work in the field of AI – including AI design, data science, natural language processing and other cognitive techniques. And with the Sage Foundation, I’m building an AI solution to help the one in three women in South Africa who face domestic abuse and violence and find it hard to speak with a human about this issue given the stigma and social barriers associated with it. Machines don’t judge you, but humans do.

What is Your Background That Led You to AI?

I grew up in Rajasthan in India and built my first computer as a teenager by reading about it in books. And then I did the same with robots. When I was 16, I was invited to see an early voice recognition system being used in space applications. That got me really excited about the possibilities AI offered. I wondered, how awesome would it be if I could use AI to do all kinds of things like make education interactive (as I found school too boring) or for my grandmother to use to navigate her daily life. I hoped that it would happen in my lifetime. Already, just a few years on, I have voice powered AI in every room in my flat. Later I studied advanced computer science and engineering at university and have been building machine learning systems ever since - for space applications, consumer banking, productivity and even domestic abuse.

Download the PDF to find out more about Kriti's background and why she got involved in AI.

To read more from techUK AI Week, visit our landing page.

TECHUK_AI_LEADERS_KRITI_SHARMA.PDF (PDF)