Lavin Exclusive Speaker
Companies want to aim for moonshots: ideas that can change everything. But landing moonshots isn’t easy. Radhika Dirks is an expert in taking moonshots from start to finish. She does it by using artificial intelligence, and she helps companies and organizations use AI’s great potential: “Bring me a model from evolution, physics, or infrastructure. With that, I can show you how to build a new kind of AI to solve our biggest problems.” Radhika has a practical framework for how you can form an AI strategy and make your moonshots a reality. This is why Heads of States and Fortune 500 executives seek out her advice, why Forbes named her one of its 30 Women in AI to Watch, why she was named one of the 30 most inspiring women in AI, and why she’s been in Fast Company, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Radhika Dirks uses artificial intelligence to work on the biggest possible innovations: augmenting human minds, discovering new drugs, automating scientific experiments. She’s interested in moonshots, the big ideas that will change the way we live and think, and she says that artificial intelligence is going to get us there. Radhika is an authentic tech visionary, and her work has led to her being named one of Forbes’ 30 Women in AI to Watch and one of Deloitte’s top women in the AI world. She founded and leads the only other Moonshot Factory that exists outside of Google.
Radhika’s artificial intelligence leadership includes co-founding Seldn, an AI start-up that accurately predicted the rise of ISIS two weeks before the New York Times coined the term, and her work as CEO and co-founder of XLabs, a moonshot factory for artificial intelligence innovations that is already solving huge problems—like getting closer to the cure for cancer. Her latest AI has found potential cures in 11 cancers within 1.5 years of launch.
She can teach you how to use AI to solve your problems. You don’t need to be an expert in AI; you just need to be passionate about something. In Radhika’s words: “AI is an amplifier. You must have something to amplify...lean into a mission that truly inspires you and one you can't seem to let go of. Then become a vortex - a force of nature hell-bent on solving that problem. What you will see then is that AI or the right new technology will no longer be an option, but the only way forward. And in turn, you are no longer just an A-player in that technology—you will end up at the top.”
When you hear Radhika speak, you feel her own passion for everything and her tireless drive to figure it all out. She is engaging and generous, with a special touch that can make even the most impossible ideas feel just within reach. She is a renowned scientist (she built one of the world’s best sources of entangled photons for quantum computing) and she talks about science with an approachable and imaginative quality that eagerly invites you to share her vision of what comes next. Radhika often describes herself as an artist—with technology as her artistic medium.
Radhika was also a founding member of Shell’s $500M dollar venture capital group and was COO of Rotary Gallop, a game theory-based fintech firm. She is a regular contributor to Singularity University, her work on quantum computing and artificial intelligence has been cited hundreds of times, and she holds a Ph.D. in Quantum Computing and an M.S. in Nanotechnology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.