Kathi Vidal, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property; Director, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office 
Interviewer: Allie Garfinkle, Fortune 

Most Powerful Women Summit 2024: Innovation And AI

Conferences

Hi, Cathy. Hello. Hello, amazing women. You can say hello. So we're going to come to you all for questions. But Cathy, I'm really excited to be here with you because you are uniquely equipped to talk about this long arc of A I. You started working in A I in the early nineties. Take us back in time a little bit. I think a few things have, maybe a few things have changed. So I started working on A I, when I couldn't ship my files via email, I had to use FTP. If you remember that this is way back in the day, there was really no internet that we all had access to files had not been digitized. So when we were working on A I back then, and I worked on it in the aerospace industry trying to detect faults on aircraft. We were really looking at using our own data. We weren't looking at these massive data sets. We had no concerns about what we were training on or bias. We were just trying to come up with system. It was a little bit more insular. Well, and it's the sort of thing we were talking sort of about it earlier earlier where you were said, well, data, we weren't thinking about how big a role data would even play. Exactly. There was no big data then. Now how do you think about A I policy in broad strokes? It's something I know a lot of folks here have a, have questions about lay it out for us. So in my role, I think about poor things, I think about jobs. I think about innovation to solve community and world problems. I think about us competitiveness globally and I think about national security. So whether I think about intellectual property or A I or anything else, I'm looking at it through that lens. And so one of the ways I like to explain it is NIST is really there on safety and security related to A I, I'm really there when it comes to opportunity. Now, how do you think about the election that's coming up? Is there an election there is, I've heard, I've heard, I don't know if you've heard. How do you think about it though, in the context of what you do? So this is what I'll say over the last four years, the Biden Harris administration has really leaned in when it comes to supporting communities and creating jobs. We are creating silicon valleys everywhere. We are creating tech hubs everywhere quantum, for example, in Colorado and in Chicago. And so what really needs to happen no matter what administration is in is that continued commitment to us, communities and us innovation. This election does have a couple of very key tech figures who have been very vocal. One of them is Elon Musk. Any opinions about Elon, I would say um my relationship with Elon is more of a personal nature. So, so I, I drive the Tesla, I have the Tesla plad because I wanted to get an electric car. And when I drive and I see a voluptuous woman walk across the street. Elon depicts her as a tall white man. Really? That's the A I recognizes everybody as tall white men. So I have the Roadster on order and I'm Elon. If you're listening, I'm going to withdraw my money. If you don't change that, Kathy has some questions for you, Elon. Now, I want to talk about the role of women in A I, what role do women have to play in this space that is evolving so quickly. And so it is so important. So one thing that I love, which I never take for granted is when I sit around a table in government and I talk about a I at most, there's one man in the room. So it's incredible. Elizabeth Kelly, that's really on the Secretary of Commerce. All of us across government, most of us are women who are dealing with this at the highest levels. So it's, it's I find that very interesting, I will say in terms of the role that women have to play. Um Actually, let me ask the question on this, how many in the audience have lobbying organizations? OK. Now, if you can put your hands down of all those who don't have lobbying organization who has reached out to government to express your thoughts on policy. OK. That's great. I'd like to see that number be much, much higher because we are listening to everyone and I think there's a general misconception that you have to be a very large company who funds a lobbying organization to be heard. And if we look at policy through that lens, we're going to be shaping policy for the large organizations. So we really need everyone here. All of you have a stake in the future of A I. All of you have a stake on how we shape policy and we need you to reach out, you can write personal letters, we'll take meetings, Elizabeth Kelly and I just last week had a meeting from a very small company. So when I think about women's participation, I think not only about the fact that we all need to educate ourselves, we need to use A I, we need to think about how A I applies on our organizations will be left behind and the stats of women owned businesses outperforming men will change if we don't do that. But in addition to that, you need to weigh in on us policy because we're trying to create policy right now that helps everyone. And if we don't hear all voices, we're not going to be able to do that. Who here after listening to Cathy speak is going to write a letter, who I want to see more hands than that. Come on. There you go. Now, in terms of what is it going to take to get more women in the mix? Because I found a UNESCO study. I was telling you about earlier, the numbers, the numbers don't look great. About 80% of A I professors are men at a lot of A I conferences. 18% of presenters are women. What is it going to take for more women to get involved, sort of at the research level and beyond? So I'm going to talk fast here because we're doing so much on this. So I will say we released recently the first ever national entrepreneurship strategy. We also released the first ever National Inclusive Innovation Strategy. We got to start from the beginning, we got to get girls in the mix. And so we're doing programming now across the country. 350 3000 Children participated last year alone where we're introducing Children, 6789 year olds to innovation, entrepreneurship, intellectual property. And I want to put A I in there as well and we're working with NSF on that. So everywhere we connect with people, we want A I to be part of the mix with innovation, but it starts there and it continues on. We teach teachers across the entire country how to teach innovation, entrepreneurship. We invited NSF come talk about A I to make sure we're teaching A I. So it's all along this process. It's everything that we should be doing on stem we need to be doing when it comes to A I. And we need to bake A I into all of our, all of our teachings and all of our outreach. Well, and you said something really interesting earlier about the letters that people get when they receive patents. Can you tell us about that? So it's interesting. So when I came into office, which was two years and seven months ago, the first thing I did is say we're going to rethink everything hearing, you know, why did you decide to rethink everything? Because you always hear it's always been done that way. And I thought one benefit of having a political come in is that I don't know how it's always been done. And it gives me a chance to say, are things working? Are they not double down on things that are working but fix things that are not working? So I instead of waiting, I was told stakeholders will start to reach once. I'm like, no, I'm going to reach out to all of them immediately and reach out within the organization. So I heard from 2000 of our 14,000 employees on what's working, what's not working. One of the, and one of the things we've been trying to do is expand innovation so that more people who don't participate statistically, women, but also people from different racial groups, people from, from rural areas, we want to bring more of them into the ecosystem and empower them. So one of the, and once we get them in the system, we want them to stick. So we've done a lot of things to bring them in the system. But what I recognize is that women who come into the system and file for a patent, I surmise that they did not persist at the same rate as men. And the reason I thought that was because the first substantive communication you used to receive from the office was a rejection and given my huge brain, I realized that was not welcoming. I agree. If I received a rejection from the patent office, I'd probably take it pretty hard. Yeah. So I thought that does not seem like a people we're here to support you. And so I asked our chief economist just do back of the math analysis. Do women opt out at a higher rate than men? The answer was considerably. Yes. Um And then I, you know, if we're solving for women, we're solving for other demographics as well. So what I did was we now send a letter actually, when you file before you get your substantive communication, we welcome you to the innovation ecosystem. We tell you about our women's entrepreneurship efforts that we've been doing. We invite you to free programming. We teach you how to learn what the steps are, how to track your application, what to do next. And we teach you that we're here to help you get a patent and that when you receive a communication that's fashioned as a, it looks like a rejection. It's really about saying you're not quite there yet and we're here to help you get there. And so we're measuring data. We don't have the data yet, but we anticipate that's going to dramatically move the needle on everybody staying in the system. But we'll certainly hopefully level out when it comes to women. This is one of those things I'm fascinated by because it seems like something where people would say, oh, that would never make a difference. But it sounds like you're fully anticipating that it will, it will make a huge difference. And I will say a lot of what we do is we get out in communities and listen to women entrepreneurs on where, where were the stumbling blocks. And so many of them say I was so lucky that I had a lawyer who helped me realize that when I got that rejection, I could move on and move forward. And these are, you know, the first black inventor of this century woman, black inventor in Colorado told me that. So women are telling me this and as I said, if we sell it for women, we sell it for other demographics as well. But we know that this is going to make a difference. So when women are receiving that rejection, they're taking it as a permanent rejection, they're taking it. Who wouldn't? Right. You don't know the system. It seems pretty opaque to most people. Now, are there any questions for Kathy if we could raise the lights? Yes, over here. Hi, I'm Janet Gerald and with Miller Knoll, um going back to your comments around creating more education um and getting educators to um adopt A I I think about my 17 year old daughter who in her A P language class who's uh the first thing that her teacher said in the syllabus is don't use chat G BT. However, there's such an opportunity to have these educators better understand how can they use those tools to advance learning. And yesterday in one of our breakout sessions, a statement was made that A I isn't going to replace humans but humans who use A I will replace humans. Who don't, how do we get educators on board and understanding the importance of adopting these tools? Really great question. And I love that phrase that humans who use A I will replace humans. Who don't I truly believe that which is why I would encourage everybody to adopt it. So, first of all, we need to make sure that people understand that adopting A I is safe and teach them safe ways to adopt it. So that is something that I'm working on. I know Secretary Commerce Gina Ramundo is working on. And I will say just on that topic, we are running a contest right now where we're asking developers to basically run A I and then create a boolean output to show that A I was basically doing what you would think of putting into a system anyway to give people more trust in the system. Um But in terms of the educators, we have programs at the Department of Commerce through my organization where we are reaching out to teachers, we run a national summer teacher institute, I institute a kind of a graduate program. When it comes to teaching on all of this, you can email me directly and get your school involved in this. If you want your teachers involved, if you want to connect them in, we do free programming once a month to teachers and we're in reading A I is part of that, but it's not just A I, it's the rest of the ecosystem as well because A I is great, but there's also young girls who Tinker and innovate and we teach it out of them through the educational process and we want them to be interested and understand not just A I but stem generally and then the whole innovative and entrepreneurship process so that we can really empower them So my email is director at upto.gov and that goes directly into my inbox. So I will connect you up with the right people. We can get the camps into your schools, we can get your teachers involved. And that's really what we want people to do is to reach out and scale the work that we're doing. So that more schools, more communities across the country will benefit. I don't know if I've ever had anyone give out their email on the stage. You aren't kidding? You weren't kidding? Yeah. No. Yeah, I know we were talking outside. You said I want people to email me. You're really serious about it. Yes. Yes. Silly. Wait, we've got to do it together. I can only do so much by myself. I understand. We have some questions over here. Hi, I'm an fo friend of Cathy and I highly recommend it. She is amazing. She is um she's not just breaking and shattering the glass ceiling. She is drop, kicking it. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I'm also a fan of Cathy. Um So I, I'm CEO of the Creative Coalition, which is the nonprofit arm of the entertainment industry. Our actors are our members are actors, writers, producers, directors, executives that use the power of entertainment to impact social welfare issues and we partner with companies like yours. Um So Kathy, your moment, what can you say to my constituency where A I became two dirty letters. So there's, there's a reason for that. Right. There's real concern when it comes to your industry and that's something that we're tackling right now. We actually worked it into an executive order where we need to issue guidance to the Biden administration on how to deal with the intersection of A I and copyright. So one thing that I would say is have their voices be heard and don't just work through lobbying groups. I'm not saying any lobbying groups are great, but I will you that ceos of companies call me directly, they call senators directly, right? They send letters directly. And so and that's much more impactful in some ways. So to the extent that you have well known actors have them reach out directly and have their voices heard so that the people who are making decisions really hear from the end consumer, that's terribly important. And then I would say, keep your finger on the pulse of what is happening internationally. One concern that your constituents have right now is that in Singapore, they're considering allowing A I to train behind paywalls and your industry is extremely concerned about that as other people should be as well. So we don't just develop policy in the United States. We go out and advocate for policy that's going to be good for us businesses across the globe. So they should keep an eye on that as well and make sure they're hurt on those issues as well. I understand we have one more question over here. My name is Shannon Nash. I'm also, I didn't know what fo meant, but I am, I also consider, I know right. I also consider you to be a mentor, a supporter. In fact, you brought me to the fortune. Um What was it next gen conference or something like 10 years ago? I wouldn't be here if you hadn't have bought me to that. Um My question is I saw how you, I mean, this woman was killing it in corporate America, bad ass doing all the right things. And then she decided to go be in government. I'd love for you to give more about that decision. But even given where we are right now, hopefully the election goes a certain way. I think there's a lot of people considering maybe going into government or maybe not full time, but maybe doing other things, government adjacent, if you could give more input on like what that would look like. Um Even if you don't become, you won't become the patent secretary, but maybe being on commissions, just what are options. So thank you for that, Shannon. I will say, I think now more than ever, we need more women to step up into those roles. For me. I wake up every thinking about how I can have impact. Usually I do kind of as I'm waking up my brain, it's by connecting women doing things like that. But when this opportunity presented itself because I was not lobbying for it. And I said I would not lobby for it because I wanted to be unbiased in everything that I do. I thought about how I could have broader impact for more people. And I know that everybody in the room is working on having that level of impact. You don't need to go full time. I, you know, regardless of where my career takes, I hope to always play a role in government. There's everything from the Council for Inclusive Innovation that we run that I co chair that Mary Barra is on. So she sits on our Council for Inclusive Innovation. You saw a little bit about her movie, which is a great prelude to all the work we're doing around inclusive innovation. There's all kinds of committees, there's the National Advisory Council on Innovation and entrepreneurship. There are roles opening up in that soon that that's going to time out at the end year and there will be more roles opening up. But there's so many opportunities right now in government to be on a committee to really have your voice heard and lifted. If you're interested in that or any other government role, it really helps to know people who are in the government. So again, feel free to email me. Tell me what you're interested in. I will connect you with the right people to make sure that you can move that forward because we need more great women in government. One last question, Cathy, can I email you? Oh, I don't know. I have your email now. It's already too late. Ay, thank you so much. Thank you.