Open AI Board Member Shares Advice for AI Startups in CEE: Work Closer to Academia!
What are the ways to bridge the gap between industry and academia? While the AI […]
Petar Tsankov is at the unique intersection of science and entrepreneurship. He’s a researcher and a lecturer at one of the best European universities ETH Zurich. But also a co-founder and CEO of LatticeFlow, a company helping machine learning teams build and deploy trustworthy AI.
Last week, LatticeFlow secured its $12M Series A round to accelerate the development of its AI platform to automatically diagnose and fix data and model issues in computer vision, and open an office in Sofia. It will be positioned next to INSAIT, Southeast Europe’s first AI institute.
Reflecting on their latest investment and what it takes to win the market of deep learning technology, Petar Tsankov says:
“We are in a market that is emerging right now. Everybody is adopting this deep learning technology and they need the infrastructure, so the speed of execution is critical. Money allows you to get more power to move faster and solve the problems which is definitely critical for winning this market. This has been the thinking of me and my co-founders since day zero – to really focus, accelerate, and go fast.”
Although still in his 30s, Petar Tsankov already has one successful exit. He sold his first company ChainSecurity to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
He has a Computer Science degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and is a proud owner of “The John Atanassov” award – an initiative that supports young Bulgarian inventors in the area of information technology.
In the episode, Petar Tsankov shares how he got inspired to pursue an academic career, how to spin-off a deep tech company, and how ETH Zurich supports researchers to bring innovation to market.
Can AI offer more fair way to treat people?
In his conversation with Irina, Petar also offers his view on whether AI can offer more fair way to treat people or how AI should be regulated.
“There are some extreme cases of AI which should be regulated like the mass surveillance of individuals with AI, because it’s just a very powerful technology. You can track people and compute all kinds of social scores that sound really, really scary. AI can enable you to implement this. I think there are these extremes that we want to make sure they don’t happen. The US and Europe are very aligned that this would not happen…. But for all other use cases where we do get benefit, we should try to not be too much in the way and make sure they get adopted as fast as possible”, Petar Tsankov explains.
“We want to accelerate all the industries that are adopting AI, so when they get there, we will have done our job”, Petar says.
Watch the episode to find out is there a human trait that machines can’t replicate.
Take a glimpse into the future of work with our previous episode and serial entrepreneur Radu Negulescu who wants to erase unproductive meetings from our daily lives with his latest startup Sessions.
