Talking about AI with Tanmay Bakshi, the Non Artificial Intelligence
This year’s Munich founders conference Bits and Pretzels has been focused on diversity.
I had to redefine my notion of diversity, sitting next to a 14 year old boy who, in the picture, seems kidsplaining the world to me.
Mansplaining is a term which describes men explaining to a woman something she already knows. Kidsplaining would mean explaining something to an adult that they already know. This was certainly not the case here. Because Tanmay Bakshi is a 14 year old entrepreneur and consultant on AI.
Tanmay’s keynote at Bits and Pretzels was on the innovative ways in which machine learning is disrupting healthcare, finance and beyond. He launched his app called Market Alerts, an intelligent investment system which analyses the market through machine learning technology.
Although I already knew Tanmay, because I follow him on social media – sitting next to him and talking to him was a very different experience. I was speechless, amazed and pretty emotional, listening to such an extremely talented young person talking about his own entrepreneurial objectives and his visions to use AI to impact our civilization positively.
Currently I am driven by the question: Thanks to a very strong female empowerment movement today’s girls and young women have a better chance to proceed in the world of technology. This foundation has been built with great effort and it is time to take advantage of it and proceed on the road of gender equality in tech. I personally think that the time has come to ask a very important question: what about the boys?
Where does a boy find his peers today?
What might he think of the white male dominated tech scene, where women start slowly to show their faces? Is this world a world he can see himself in, as a man?
Questioning the peer group itself is always a good start. I asked Tanmay if he has role models and if he thinks there is room for improvement and development regarding initiatives for young boys. He thinks we should focus on bringing everyone together into one environment:
“I believe that there should definitely be more initiatives bringing whoever wants to code to be able to code.”
Tanmay also surprised me here, with an unusual answer coming from the mindset of a teen. He thinks we should focus on bringing everyone together into one environment.
Tanmay is authentic. He walks the talk. Among other ventures he is currently building an app with deals with teen depression:
If somebody were to ask me if I could think of a possible role model for today’s boys and young entrepreneurs, I already know my answer: I am also impressed by Elon Musk, but I would certainly think of Tanmay Bakshi in the first place.
