100 Atlanta Coffees, 010: Anqi Zou
AI can't help us build a better future if we don't use it
Fair & Responsible Banking Compliance Analytics Director - Truist
Met at Land of a Thousand Hills coffee on Spring St.
As a refresher, I’m grabbing coffee with 100 good people in Atlanta and sharing inspiring takeaways.
Many of the pieces I’ve been sharing have focused on our collective vision, our hopes, and our fears for the AI era. The questions we have to explore in the super-technology era culminate with the logical question that Congress and countless others are asking - should we want to maximize the use of AI or restrict it?
To think about this as a society-wide question, it helps me to consider individual implications for how AI might transform our lives. Anqi’s journey and her vision for the future show me that yes, we should want AI to proliferate — but we must also watch it closely and nurture its development, with the applicable metaphor of a caring parent raising a headstrong, gifted child.
Anqi was introduced to me by Pierce Hand (edition 006) after our coffee, and she’s a perfect thought partner for exploring the nuances of AI in our lives.
Let’s dive in.
Living her American Dream
Anqi grew up in a small town in mainland China before moving to Beijing as a teenager. She learned English in China from a program her dad started for 60 children from her town, designed to expand their horizons and prepare them for an international future.
Her dad had a transformational experience during a 3-month academic exchange program at Stanford. As an adult, he wanted to pass along the opportunity to more rural Chinese students. Helping them master English was a first step towards accessing this opportunity. Of the 60 kids in the program, all moved out of their small town, half went on to study abroad, and 12 currently live internationally.
Anqi came to America to study at Wake Forest, where she double majored in Mathematical Business and Computer Science. She then got a Masters in Computational Science & Engineering (Machine Learning) from Georgia Tech~~,~~ and fell in love with Atlanta at first sight.
She’s experienced how exposure and access can change people’s entire trajectories and redefine what is possible in their lives - both for themselves and for subsequent generations.
‘Whose life is going to get better, by how much, and how do you know it?’
Anqi didn’t envision herself in banking. She had always perceived that it was for financially-inclined people with different aspirations than her own, which are geared towards broadening access to opportunity.
However, campus recruiting presentations introduced her to the highly technical, quantitative models required for ensuring robust risk management practices and safekeeping customers’ financial future. She thrives on the challenge of preparing for economic uncertainty and validating factors that are inherently difficult to measure, such as bias in lending.
After a decade in banking, across risk management, corporate investment, talent management, and AI innovation, Anqi is currently the Fair & Responsible Banking Compliance Analytics Director at Truist - effectively building tools to help internal and external stakeholders surface and understand biases in their businesses and lending practices.
A favorite boss challenged her to rate her bar for success by being able to articulate, anytime she advances a policy, ‘whose life is going to get better, by how much, and how do you know it?’
That standard makes AI adoption a difficult proposition. As Anqi said, “It’s inherently difficult, if not impossible, to predict the AI future, so we get scared. We want to restrict it.”
AI as a great ‘up-leveler’
And yet… AI tools could serve as an unprecedented ‘up-leveler,’ a gateway of information so that every kid can have access to a world-class tutor and benefit from the horizon-broadening exposure that changed Anqi’s own trajectory.
Anqi sees the intelligent adoption of AI as one of the most important roles a parent can take on in helping educate their children. “AI will help children think and learn faster if they want to. It won’t help people who use it to think for them, so we must teach critical thinking so there isn’t a gap there.”
She referenced Kai-Fu Lee’s Book ‘AI 2041: Ten Visions for our Future’ (which I have not read) - if AI becomes a central tool in eduction, AI might be the persona the child interacts with most consistently during their formative journey. That creates an imperative for us to choose wisely when it comes to what values and informational sets are embedded in the machines our children learn alongside.
In some ways it’s a similar choice as entrusting your child’s attention to a human teacher based on their credentials and the school they represent. Either way we are making a bet about how the instructor will shape the child’s life, not only in what information they share but also in how they share it. It might feel especially scary with a machine - we are unable to know exactly how much better a child’s life will get because they have access to an AI tutor.
Use it to improve it
Anqi makes the point that many benefits from technology are only able to be realized through the iterative process of using the tools, recognizing their shortcomings, and improving them until they’re more helpful.
An example from her own life is voice interactions with Alexa and Siri. She had a terrible time using early versions of those tools, which had difficulty processing her Chinese accent. Over time, the machines’ widespread exposure to Asian accents helped them learn and become proficient at discerning and conversing with Anqi.
That’s a less insidious example than some of the public’s fears about AI misuse - stock market breakdowns, disinformation campaigns with doctored images, or instructing teenagers on how to meet older strangers from the internet (that one really got me). But still, the logic holds: we have to use new technologies in order to discover their shortcomings and make efforts to fix them.
Early cars enabled people to go further and faster than we ever dreamed, but they also caused many deadly crashes. Rather than banning cars, we invented airbags and seatbelts, along with regulatory guardrails like speed limits and drivers licenses. But we had to drive first.
A metaphor I like is viewing AI as a gifted but headstrong child, and humanity as its caring parent. To learn, grow, and reach its maximal potential, that child must be allowed to be out in the world using their gifts, even if it means making mistakes. A good parent doesn’t lock their child away in fear that they’ll make a wrong decision. They stay closely involved to provide guidance and course correction when needed.
It is similarly our role as participants in the AI economy - as consumers, business leaders, and policymakers - to pay close attention as the technology advances. What outcomes do we want these tools to help us accomplish, and where are they currently falling short? We can influence the market by demanding it meet a certain standard - for example, only using AI image generators that create a watermark on the image so we know it is a machine creation.
With that mindset can we work towards achieving something better for humanity, rather than shying away from progress out of fear. Anqi has found her niche in helping make sure the AI tools in finance work to enable access to that better future for everyone.
The goal: a ‘good lived experience’
A major premise on which Anqi and I agree: AI can help us achieve any objective, but we have to have a goal in mind to aspire towards. If we don’t know what we’re working to achieve, the capitalist society we live in will default us towards trying to earn more and more money, often at the expense of our collective and individual wellbeing.
Anqi asserts that she and her family are living their version of the American Dream, where the goal is a good lived experience. That does include career attainment, but only when balanced with overall family wellness. She’s going to use AI to help get there - and credits the mechanized Snoo bassinet and Huckleberry App with helping her baby sleep better, sooner.
We dreamed out loud a bit about the possibilities for our children and their children in the AI era. We're excited about the products for values-oriented education and parenting that the market will one day produce…. if we let it.
Questions for Reflection & Discussion:
For those who have used AI tools thus far, what improvements would you suggest after use, and why?
Have you read AI in 2041? If so, how is it - would you recommend?
Imagine that every child has a personalized AI tutor available that copilots their educational journey, and that that tutor could reflect a myriad of personas based on different educational and values philosophies. Whose role is it to select what persona the tutor takes on? The school? The parent? The child themselves?
If you’re enjoying these, I’d love to hear from you via a comment or please share with someone else who’d like to read.
About Land of A Thousand Hills
Land of A Thousand Hills has reached a tipping point that allowed them to expand to a multi-state operation, including multiple Atlanta locations. I’ve been going to their spot in Atlantic Station for years.
The Midtown location on Spring St. opened relatively recently. It’s tucked away and has high ceilings, an airy vibe, and indoor-outdoor seating that make it a nice place to get some thinking and talking done. Would recommend if you’re in Midtown!
About 100 Atlanta Coffees:
I decided to publish 100 of these coffees and my reflections as a way to shine a light on some of the good souls, and local spots, in our city.
Anqi was introduced to me by Pierce Hand, who we featured in edition 006. Thanks, Pierce!
I believe Ms. Anki Zou was referencing the “Twin Sparrows” short story in AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee. The story asks what it would be like for children to grow up and using AI. Interestingly, the author shows the AIs changing to fit the children rather than the children all following the same path. This allowed the children to create their own education based on their intrinsic gifts and interests. The short story is one of the better ones in the book, but I recommend it. It sounds like you might find some inspiration in the author’s use of AI in education in particular.