Catalysts in Cars Getting Coffee Episode 6
Doug Barton, director of the UWEBC, talks with Katie Grillaert, founder of Assessed Intelligence, about building secure, ethical, and equitable technology. They discuss why strong cybersecurity and AI governance are essential to responsible innovation, how clear guidelines can help organizations move forward with confidence, and why human oversight remains critical when AI influences decisions.
Transcript
UWEBC Podcast Introduction
Customer experience, technology, people, and supply chains are shaping how organizations operate today, but keeping up isn’t easy. At the UWEBC, we connect leaders navigating transformational change every day. Each week, we bring you the journeys and perspectives of Wisconsin leaders shaping the future of business.
From the University of Wisconsin–Madison, this is the UWEBC podcast.
Doug Barton:
Hello, everyone. This is Doug Barton from the UWEBC, and this is another episode of Catalysts in Cars Getting Coffee.
Katie Grillaert:
Getting coffee. Decaf soy latte for the win.
Doug Barton:
Yes. Here we are. We’ve got our coffee. Cheers.
Katie Grillaert:
Cheers to you.
Doug Barton:
I’m here with Katie Grillaert, and we’re going to talk about her company and her mission.
The company is Assessed Intelligence. What’s the mission, Katie?
Katie Grillaert:
Secure, ethical, equitable technology for everybody.
We are in the audit and advisory space for cybersecurity, AI governance, risk and compliance, as well as AI products and solutions.
Doug Barton:
You’re also in the business of governing the driving of this fully self-driving car.
Katie Grillaert:
I am the human in the loop.
Doug Barton:
Here you are. You’re doing a wonderful job honoring the school bus.
Katie Grillaert:
Thank you.
Doug Barton:
Thanks for doing that.
Katie, tell us a little bit about your background. I found it interesting that you spent some time in animal behavior. How does that translate into taming AI?
Katie Grillaert:
That was my first career. I was an animal behaviorist.
I worked with dogs and horses and did a lot of one-on-one consultations with people. I also ran a business.
I was just talking with my team about this yesterday in the context of whether a client simply tells us what they need. The answer is no.
We need to understand their system and what they’re working with because there might be priorities or risks they don’t know about. We can help them identify what should be coming to the top of the list.
It was exactly the same with people who came to me with a dog.
If they came in and said they needed help with a certain issue, I would still sit down and talk with them for an hour to learn a lot about the history of the animal and how the family was working.
A lot of the time, we identified that there was actually a higher priority we needed to address. There are a lot of parallels there.
Doug Barton:
I would liken that a bit to my experience in marketing, where you have expressed concerns, but there are also latent desires.
Understanding that holistic picture can make something available that isn’t there if you don’t have that conversation.
Katie Grillaert:
Exactly. You can’t skip discovery.
Doug Barton:
No, definitely not.
Since we are Catalysts in Cars Getting Coffee, maybe one way to bridge into this is to imagine that you had someone responsible for governance or security in the back seat of the car today.
What might you tell them is an emerging risk they should prioritize?
Katie Grillaert:
The number one thing we say is that you can’t have responsible technology if it isn’t secure.
Our cybersecurity teams have been doing an excellent job for a long time at securing systems. But now we have AI in the middle, and we can’t ignore that because it brings a lot of new threats.
You have to secure the AI you’re using. Next on your list would be digging into some of the other risks.
Doug Barton:
The recent generative AI wave brought all kinds of new terms, like prompts. With prompts now comes prompt injection.
There is a new threat landscape when you have new exposures like this.
Katie Grillaert:
Absolutely.
Doug Barton:
A lot of our audience watching this may regard governance and security as a set of brakes on the road to innovation, or bumps on that road.
What would you say about the relationship between good governance and innovation or progress?
Katie Grillaert:
There has been a lot of discussion from people who are hesitant about regulation, but we don’t see the two as being in conflict.
If you have good regulation, then you understand where you can innovate without worrying about what you’re going to have to change in the future.
Having clear guidelines can actually give companies the freedom to move forward.
If you are aligning internally with your standards and regulations, then you know you’re producing something that fits with your culture and protects your brand when you go to market.
Doug Barton:
Totally.
The thing that is often missed is that we tend to think of these algorithms as just part of the operational soup or the gears that make things work.
But often, they are going to represent our brand in some way.
They are at least going to inform decisions about which customers we serve, how we serve them, what the offer landscape looks like, and, in some industries, pricing.
We need to do that in a way that is thoughtful and mindful of the values we have as companies, as well as the rules and laws of the places where we operate.
If we don’t have that clarity, we may not innovate with confidence. Instead, we may proceed with so much caution that we rob ourselves and our stakeholders of better outcomes.
Katie Grillaert:
One of the things we say is that when a decision is being made, there has to be a human overseeing that decision.
You can’t hold an AI accountable for it. The human is accountable.
We have to know and be aware of what decisions are being made. We have to have the human there.
As you said, it’s representing your company.
Doug Barton:
Is it lost on you that there’s a metaphor for this right here, right now?
You’re going 61. Oops, 55. Let’s move that down a little bit. We’re going 55 in a 55.
You’re the human in the loop. You’re responsible for this.
Katie Grillaert:
I’m responsible.
I think if I were pulled over right now, I would be the one accountable for this situation.
Doug Barton:
You would be. Thanks, Doug.
That’s why I made you drive.
Well, good. That’s all the time we have for today’s Catalysts in Cars Getting Coffee, coffee and latte.
Where can people learn more about you, Katie, and your company?
Katie Grillaert:
We have a website, assessedintelligence.com, and I’m on LinkedIn as Katie Grillaert.
I love meeting people, so definitely connect with me there.
Doug Barton:
Let me add a postscript to this whole thing.
Katie and I got to know each other because she just won my award for being the most engaged participant at June’s Summerfest TechAI.
It was a terrific event, by the way. Lena DeLaet does a wonderful job with that.
Katie Grillaert:
Amazing.
Doug Barton:
Totally amazing. What a great community there.
I’m really excited to see such genuine progress here in my state of Wisconsin.
Katie stole my heart when she was asking the tough questions, the good questions we need to ask to make progress.
Katie Grillaert:
Thank you. I don’t shy away from a good question. That’s the fun part.
Doug Barton:
Indeed.
That’s all for now. On, Wisconsin.
Katie Grillaert:
Thanks.
UWEBC Podcast Closing
If you want to keep the conversation going, check out the UWEBC website for more events, resources, and details on what’s coming next. Thanks for listening, and from the UWEBC, we’re glad you joined us.