How Minerva Tantoco is shaping ethical AI with humans at the center

Ethical design is intentional

Tantoco has been a visionary since the 1980s. Today, there is no question that philosophy and advanced technology — her pioneering focus at the cusp of the AI revolution — are closely related.

“What problems do we choose to solve?” Tantoco asks. “If you optimize for the wrong thing, the machine will do that. If you optimize for revenue, you’re going to get more revenue. But you also need to ask, ‘What are you de-optimizing?’”

In every case, outcomes are favored when you focus on the human element, she says.

Today’s ethical questions center on creating systems that are compliant and using AI techniques to integrate safety, governance and controls for positive outcomes. But beyond the technology itself, Tantoco imagines ways to make computing as energy efficient as the human brain to mitigate the societal impacts of massive computing and data center energy consumption. Indeed, emerging approaches to AI architecture reflect a trend toward more brain-inspired techniques. She also envisions a world where quantum computing and AI work together to effectively solve daunting problems in medicine, cryptography, material science and sustainability.

The future is an unknown

Tantoco’s family moved to Queens, New York, from the Philippines when she was four years old. Growing up watching “Sesame Street,” she learned how to read from Big Bird. During the span of her career, she witnessed firsthand the rise of the Internet, the advent of mobile technology and the consumerization of AI.

“I have the benefit of having had a front-row seat at several massive, revolutionary technical innovations,” says Tantoco. But Tantoco wants to actively shape the future, not just observe it. During these tectonic technological shifts, she held senior roles at leading financial organizations while securing four US patents in intelligent mortgage processing, which could now be called “agents.”

Early in her career, Tantoco was often the only woman in the room or the only woman on stage at an event. But that did not keep her from being appointed New York City’s first Chief Technology Officer in 2014. In this groundbreaking role, she oversaw technology transformation for the public good and focused on education, computer literacy and bridging the digital divide.

“Just because it hasn’t been done, doesn’t mean it can’t be done,” says Tantoco. “It just means you are going to be the first to do it.”

Following her tenure at New York City Hall, Tantoco co-founded the first full-service commercial digital bank, Grasshopper Bank, to be granted a de novo national charter. “The goal was to do something that seemed impossible,” she says. She saw an opportunity to build something new, drawing on her experience working with large banks and leading transformations. Her key innovation was to automate compliance and embed it into the design. The result was an embedded compliance and risk system — one that could check the characteristics of a transaction before it happened and assess its risk to send an alert to a human in the loop.

Grasshopper Bank launched in 2019 with more than $130 million in capital raised. Its approach is an example of how technology can enhance — not replace — human involvement.