Jake Porway

Using an international network that enables benevolent “matchmaking,” Jake Porway’s DataKind connects social causes (like a nonprofit looking to end homelessness) with pro bono automation experts (like engineers from Google). We’re already AI-optimizing our bodies, our cars, our homes, even the songs we listen to and movies we watch. Why not humanitarian efforts, too? Porway’s talks interrogate the question of how we can use this technology for social good, not just our personal needs. AI and automation aren’t business trends, he says, but a “shifting point in humanity.”

Having worked in The New York Times R&D Lab, and with groups like NASA, DARPA, and Bell Labs, Porway wants these swiftly advancing technologies to be used in the aid of social good. His funny, nimble, and insightful talks weave together fascinating stories of organizations working towards social good and the AI designers helping them do it more effectively. More than that, he outlines a world in which we can all conceptualize and act along these inventive lines.

Porway’s work has been featured in leading academic journals and conferences (PAMI, ICCV), the Guardian, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and he has been honored as a PopTech Social Innovation Fellow and a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Statistics from UCLA.