Aditi Nitin

Director, Consulting - United Arab Emirates

We are the women in AI—the women who are at the forefront of transformation. We look at challenges from a different angle, drive innovation with impact, and are passionate about AI that champions diversity and fairness. We are the women in AI—but we represent only 26% of data and AI positions in the workforce1. There should be more of us. If you are in AI today, let us help you grow. If not, come and join us.

She helps us trust AI

As a director for AI and data in Deloitte’s Middle East practice, Aditi helps clients utilize AI and find innovative and practical solutions to their most complex and pressing issues. This enables her clients to improve their cost efficiency and the way they interact with their customers. Aditi not only empowers clients to leverage technology but also enables them to understand and trust AI and fully embrace the insights and the enhanced decision-making that it offers.

Having a background in marketing, Aditi initially started her career as a product manager focusing on brand visibility. Everything changed when a connection of hers offered her the opportunity to work in analytics, where Aditi found her passion for AI: “I thought it was pretty interesting. Considering that data is going to become a lot more popular, I thought it was a great way for me to get into something that’s going to be the next big wave without realizing how big that wave was going to be.” She later joined Deloitte and has helped grow the AI practice.

Once Aditi had found her passion for AI, she started to focus on more than just the technology: “I continued investigating, learning, and understanding more about this field—not just technically, but also on the softer sides of it—which is understanding why our client needs something,” she says. “How can we use AI and machine learning to help them make better, faster, more efficient decisions? And that helped me appreciate the various aspects of AI and data, and how we can help our clients.”

Aditi believes it is particularly important to realize that AI is not just about the technology—trust plays a critical part: “The more we progress, the more AI will be about things that we do in our everyday lives. So we need to ask how can we trust it to make decisions on our behalf.” Discussing this question and helping clients trust AI is an integral part of Aditi’s job.

She says diversity plays an important role in AI and stresses how important it is to see things from different angles, not just for the sake of diversity, but also for the sake of objectivity: “A perspective from a diverse group of people is really important to the field of AI, because AI as a technology also has biases, and if only one gender is building these models, it tends to have more of those biases—unfortunately—and that is a proven fact.”

Aditi says the field of AI is broad, and she encourages those interested to consider the array of careers within it. She clears up a common misconception: “There are a lot of different tracks that you can follow—it’s not just about coding. So, think wide, think broad, and think about where you really want to head.”

1World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2020

 

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