Learn more about SpeechifAI’s Data Science Lead, Carly Gottorff
Carly is the Data Science Lead for SpeechifAI.
She creates, manages, and leads all aspects of the AI and social data science SpeechifAI runs on. She joined the SpeechifAI team over one year ago and currently resides in Athens, Greece.
Carly holds a B.A. in Advanced Statistical Political Science from the University at Buffalo in her home state of New York. Additionally, she holds an M.Sc. in Applied Social Data Science from the London School of Economics.
Her career began in the political science industry, working for non-profits, and think tanks around the US, including United Way, conducting research, and using data science for good.
“People often have trouble expressing themselves, especially with politically oriented topics unless you fall very far on one side. If you fall in the middle of the spectrum it’s difficult for people to share how they feel — our technology solves that for people.” — Carly Gottorff
At SpeechifAI, her work combines her ethical standpoints and academic background with how she believes people interact with social media.
Check out our Q&A with Carly below:
Let’s start out with a fun fact about yourself that people may not know.
“I’m a nomad. I guess that’s my fun fact. I’ve been to over 18 countries.”
What do you think is one of the most challenging things about your work with SpeechifAI?
“The most challenging thing about this work is that no one has done this before. So there’s no blueprint for me to work off from. Because no one has done it before it’s very research-heavy. AI can be super biased. Algorithms are only as good as the data you feed into it. This means we have to input quality data.”
What has been your proudest moment at SpeechifAI?
“I’m honestly proud of every new iteration [of SpeechifAI’s technology]—every time I’m implementing a new update to the AI. Because no one has done this before, with every new iteration I continuously get more proud of the product. People often have trouble expressing themselves, especially with politically oriented topics unless you fall very far on one side. If you fall in the middle of the spectrum it’s difficult for people to share how they feel—our technology solves that for people.”
Where do you see the future of AI if you could paint it?
“By the end of this year, our AI will be completely hands-off. [Users] won’t need to make the edits to posts [themselves], the changes will be made automatically. There will be three kinds of categories users can choose from. It will help [them] write in the context of not leaning so far to one or the other on the political spectrum.
In general, the NLP (Natural Language Processing) world progresses so fast and has been over the last 5 years. In the next few years, I’m hoping to see tools perform more like a human online.”
Last question, what’s a quote or piece of advice you live by?
“Nothing good grows in a comfort zone.”
To stay up to date on the work Carly is doing at SpeechifAI, check out our platform updates blog post. Read a bit more about her work here.
If you’re interested in learning more about SpeechifAI and how we can help your company, campaign, or organization give people a voice on social media, head to our website.
Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter & stay tuned for our next Team Spotlight!
Written by: Kiayna O’Neal, Content & Communications Lead
