00:00Let's go over to stage 1 now, where the Female Founder Challenge is getting underway.
00:05Our reporter Catherine Nicholson is there. Hello Catherine.
00:08First of all, what is the Female Founder Challenge?
00:14Yeah, Thomas, the Female Founder Challenge is organised by VivaTech and 50 in Tech,
00:20championing startups led by women and breakthrough innovation invented by women.
00:27So it gives them networking opportunities, access to funding, connecting them with venture capitalists, for example.
00:34And the long term goal is increasing representation of women in tech.
00:38I can just give you a few statistics.
00:41There is persistent underrepresentation of women in tech, according to VivaTech itself.
00:46Only 1.9% of global venture capital funding went to all female founding teams in 2022.
00:53Statistics do show that when teams are mixed, they do actually get more money in the first rounds of pitching.
01:01So, yeah, so the Female Founder Challenge actually is a little bit delayed because people are still listening to Elon
01:06Musk,
01:07but it is going to get underway quite soon in stage 1.
01:11Through the final six for pitching today?
01:16Yes, well, the final six have done extremely well to get through to today.
01:20There were almost 500 applicants from 27 different countries.
01:24First, they got it down to a long list of 30.
01:27And then there's six female entrepreneurs who are going to be pitching on stage 1 today.
01:32They come from Israel, Switzerland, Nigeria.
01:35Three entrepreneurs from France and their companies are about all kinds of everything.
01:40We've got food tech, cyber security, energy, information tech, software and banking and finance enterprises being presented today.
01:50The French Prime Minister, Elisabeth Bon, is going to be coming to this event as well to meet those six
01:57finalists
01:57and give a prize to the winner.
02:00So, yeah, we're really looking forward to hearing their pitches for their companies.
02:04and, of course, just finding out more about these women who are taking the lead in their technology sectors.
02:10Thank you so much, Catherine.
02:12Earlier today, you met up with Zubin Garamani, VP of Research for Google,
02:17and he was on stage to talk about his company's latest advances in the field of artificial intelligence.
02:25That's what he told you.
02:27Well, I'm very pleased to speak now to Zubin Garamani, Vice President of Research at Google DeepMind,
02:33who's just come off the stage here at VivaTech, speaking, of course, about artificial intelligence.
02:39It's a field, Zubin, that you've been working in for more than 20 years, 30 years, I think, in fact.
02:46We're all feeling a little bit new to it.
02:48There's a lot of AI hesitancy or skepticism.
02:52You seem to be more on the positive side regarding AI.
02:55Why is that?
02:56Yeah, well, I mean, of course, we don't want to be going into this technology
03:00in a way that, you know, is ignoring all of the potential issues with it.
03:05Like any technology, there's going to be challenges to overcome.
03:11But, you know, if you think about AI technology as a tool in people's hands,
03:18then you can imagine all sorts of uses that are already here,
03:23whether it's in healthcare or transportation, self-driving cars, education, having an educational assistant,
03:32you know, addressing climate impacts.
03:35We already have many of these tools out there.
03:39And, you know, I don't think people are aware how much AI is part of their daily lives.
03:45Absolutely.
03:46Just thinking about some of the ways I've used it, yeah, on holiday using Google Translate to translate menus and
03:51things.
03:52Looking at some of the real world uses that are being developed now and coming into play in the near
03:57future,
03:58you highlighted a couple that were to do with climate change, also health.
04:01Yeah, I mean, for example, in climate change, what we need to do is we need to think about climate
04:07mitigations,
04:08for example, floods that affect hundreds of millions of people around the world.
04:12And we have an AI system that helps do flood forecasting, giving people advance warning,
04:19deployed to 80 countries already, you know, for over 400 million people get these flood warnings
04:27based on this flood forecasting system.
04:29But, you know, that's just one of many examples.
04:32I'm really excited about the potential for advancing fundamental science and technology,
04:38whether it's discovery of new materials or using AI to develop new medicines
04:44or, for example, you know, transforming electricity production through clean fusion energy.
04:51I mean, of course, it's not just like AI is going to do it on its own.
04:54We work with physicists and engineers and we publish research around how to control plasma and fusion reactors to produce
05:02energy.
05:03And so these are just some examples.
05:05And just a brief word about regulation.
05:08It's a huge discussion.
05:10You said during your talk that we can't leave it to self-regulation.
05:13What's your vision?
05:14Well, I mean, I think it's absolutely important to people in societies around the world.
05:20And if we think about AI from a people-centered point of view, we want AI systems to do the
05:26things that the societies want.
05:29So working in partnership with governments and regulators, that's the stance that Google has taken.
05:38AI is too important not to regulate, and it's also too important not to regulate well.
05:44So we need to be thoughtful about how we regulate it so it doesn't stifle innovation,
05:48so we get all the benefits that I talked about.
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