Canadian-led Boardy has struck an ongoing partnership with Toronto-based workplace inclusivity training platform Diversio after a marketing attempt went awry last week. The startup’s unsolicited artificial intelligence (AI)-generated emails critiquing users’ physical features faced swift backlash, particularly from women.
Boardy, which calls itself an “AI superconnector,” converses with users over LinkedIn messaging or phone calls, suggesting possible connections and then facilitating them by email. Meanwhile, Diversio aims to help workplaces be more inclusive by tracking, analyzing, and providing suggestions to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“Our natural evolution is teaching AI how to be inclusive.”
Laura McGee
Boardy CEO Andrew D’Souza told BetaKit in an interview that he spoke with Diversio founder and CEO Laura McGee, whom he has known for the better part of a decade, about the paradigm shift that comes with companies representing themselves with an AI persona.
“Obviously, there’s a human team involved and people behind the scenes, but the primary interface ends up being Boardy,” D’Souza said. “As we enter into that, we’re starting to think about how you make sure Boardy adheres to a set of values that are intentional.”
On the morning of Jan. 20, D’Souza posted on LinkedIn that users of his AI networking tool Boardy should check their inbox “for a fun surprise,” which turned out to be a critique of the recipient’s appearance based on their LinkedIn photo written in the style of Donald Trump. But the campaign was met with an immediate and significant negative reaction, particularly from women.
D’Souza issued an apology later that day and, when asked if anyone had pushed back against the idea internally, said he didn’t listen. “I didn’t totally understand what they were warning me about.”
In addition to the Diversio partnership, D’Souza has put together an advisory group of 25 female users who will help test future campaigns, and committed to hiring new employees to add perspectives to the team.
“The email was 100-percent my call, and I’m undertaking some personal coaching to ensure I’m making decisions from a more grounded place going forward,” D’Souza told BetaKit.
D’Souza and his team will now benefit from Diversio’s training program, featuring a trainer who will share more than 100 Diversio courses on inclusive content in the workplace, including with Boardy itself.
McGee told BetaKit that there will be some “under the hood” work to train the AI to be more inclusive but, much like humans, AI picks up on the values in the training environment it’s raised in. Similar to how the company’s trainers work with individuals, Diversio will perform reinforcement learning by sharing the courses and learnings with the model that powers Boardy. D’Souza claimed that Boardy learns from every conversation it’s a part of.
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“Diversio trains humans on how to be inclusive and how to use AI, our natural evolution is teaching AI how to be inclusive,” McGee said.
The duo stressed that this is a continuous partnership between the two companies, not a “one and done.” As Boardy grows, takes in new data, or improves its model, the pair will do more fine-tuning.
“These are going to be topics that a lot of AI companies are going to have to navigate and figure out, and we’re sort of at the forefront of it,” D’Souza said. “Over the course of this year, I think we’ll start to see how different AI personas learn to interact with people in different ways, and how to make sure those interactions remain positive and authentic.”
While Boardy is technically an American company, D’Souza, who co-founded and sits on the board of Toronto-based FinTech unicorn Clearco, said half of the Boardy team is in Canada. McGee said that she is excited that two Canadian companies are exploring this new area of AI.
“I think we are a country where we hold ethics and values,” McGee said. “I’m personally excited to be working with another company to pilot the efforts, and then hopefully we can both take it with us and help bring some of those values to our global clients.”
Feature image courtesy Boardy.