Kelly Forbes, president and executive director of the AI Asia Pacific Institute and AI Advisory Council member at QlikTech International AB; Nina Schick, founder and chief executive officer at Tamang Ventures Ltd. and AI Advisory Council member at Qlik; and Rumman Chowdhury, chief executive officer and co-founder at Humane Intelligence, join theCUBE’s Bob Laliberte at Qlik Connect to examine the state of artificial intelligence in a rapidly shifting global environment. The conversation centers on the Qlik AI Council’s mission to advance ethical and inclusive AI practices across industry sectors.
Forbes, Schick and Chowdhury share perspectives from across policy, technology and global affairs, exploring how AI governance, literacy and trust will shape the next wave of innovation. Schick underscores the geopolitical implications of AI development, while Chowdhury highlights the importance of workforce education and cross-disciplinary frameworks to guide responsible use.
The discussion emphasizes the importance of foundational data strategies and open dialogue in a high-stakes AI landscape. As AI capabilities accelerate, the panel calls for strong governance, diversity of thought and a focus on real-world impacts to help organizations scale with purpose and resilience.
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Qlik AI Council Panel
Kelly Forbes, president and executive director of the AI Asia Pacific Institute and AI Advisory Council member at QlikTech International AB; Nina Schick, founder and chief executive officer at Tamang Ventures Ltd. and AI Advisory Council member at Qlik; and Rumman Chowdhury, chief executive officer and co-founder at Humane Intelligence, join theCUBE’s Bob Laliberte at Qlik Connect to examine the state of artificial intelligence in a rapidly shifting global environment. The conversation centers on the Qlik AI Council’s mission to advance ethical and inclusive AI practices across industry sectors.
Forbes, Schick and Chowdhury share perspectives from across policy, technology and global affairs, exploring how AI governance, literacy and trust will shape the next wave of innovation. Schick underscores the geopolitical implications of AI development, while Chowdhury highlights the importance of workforce education and cross-disciplinary frameworks to guide responsible use.
The discussion emphasizes the importance of foundational data strategies and open dialogue in a high-stakes AI landscape. As AI capabilities accelerate, the panel calls for strong governance, diversity of thought and a focus on real-world impacts to help organizations scale with purpose and resilience.
Founder & CEO, Qlik AI Council MemberTamang Ventures Limited
Kelly Forbes
Executive Director & Qlik AI Council MemberAI Asia Pacific Institute
Dr. Michael Bronstein
DeppMind Professor of AI & Qlik AI Council MemberUniversity of Oxford
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
CEO, Co-Founder & Qlik AI Council MemberHumane Intelligence
Kelly Forbes, president and executive director of the AI Asia Pacific Institute and AI Advisory Council member at QlikTech International AB; Nina Schick, founder and chief executive officer at Tamang Ventures Ltd. and AI Advisory Council member at Qlik; and Rumman Chowdhury, chief executive officer and co-founder at Humane Intelligence, join theCUBE’s Bob Laliberte at Qlik Connect to examine the state of artificial intelligence in a rapidly shifting global environment. The conversation centers on the Qlik AI Council’s mission to advance ethical and inclusive ...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What does the Qlik AI Council do and what is the role of the speaker on it?add
What is one of the key tenants that was reflected in Mike Capone's speech and discussed during the morning conversations at the Qlik AI Council?add
What is the importance of integrating education with technology in order to fully utilize its potential in different sectors?add
What is the importance of ensuring a solid framework for governance, trust, and data in relation to the increasing capabilities of AI?add
What are some important considerations when trying to scale and accelerate technology implementation?add
>> Well everyone, welcome back to Qlik Connect 2025. We're here in sunny Orlando, Florida, bringing you all the news from Qlik Connect 2025. This next session I'm really looking forward to, we've got several members of Qlik's AI Council, and they're going to be on with us for the next 15, 20 minutes talking about what they do and what they're seeing in the market. So I want to welcome Kelly Forbes, who is the Executive Director, AI Asia Pacific Institute, Nina Schick from Tamang Ventures Limited, and Dr. Ramman Chowdhury from Humane Intelligence, CEO and Co-Founder of Humane Intelligence. So welcome all of you.
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
>> Thank you.
Nina Schick
>> Thank you.
Kelly Forbes
>> Thanks, Bob.
Bob Laliberte
>> I guess the first thing that I'd like to start with is to provide everyone some context that's watching. You're part of Qlik's AI Council, what does the council actually do and what's your role on it?
Kelly Forbes
>> We have been, I guess working very closely with the Qlik team. I think we are in a stage where we all know the importance of AI, that AI is here to stay. It's evolving very fast, but we are working very closely with the team thinking about guidance and how do we make sure that by safeguards, boundaries or the right foundations to be able to really properly adopt the technology. We have all that in place. I think, as Mike well said this morning, the technologies here, but we're still not fully tapping into the whole potential. I think it's important thinking about how we can support Qlik and its customers to be able to do that well.
Bob Laliberte
>> Excellent.
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
>> Yeah, I mean I think I'd add that everybody in the board, everybody in the council, we're from very different backgrounds and we work on different parts of AI and one of the values of this group is that we bring a wide range of different perspectives, and I appreciate that Qlik values that so this constantly receiving diverse and different information, maybe outside of the project immediately in front of you or the path immediately ahead, really helps you to have a more global and holistic vision of where this technology is headed.
Bob Laliberte
>> Yeah, it makes a lot of sense being able to see the forest through the trees on what's going on with the AI.
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
>> Absolutely.
Bob Laliberte
>> And Nina.
Nina Schick
>> Just to add to that, you need to have the 3D view. It isn't something that just exists in isolation in business practices, and we're missing one dear member of our council, but amongst us, we cover ethics, geopolitics, science, as well as how to interact with the business community and the applied applications of AI right now. I think that generally is something that all business leaders are starting to understand that you cannot view AI and its development in isolation just as simply that's a business transformation process. It's something far more profound than that.
Bob Laliberte
>> Oh, that's excellent, and they're very lucky to have you and Michael as well as part of that council to help guide and steer them as they go through this, because the one thing that I've seen over my last 25, 30 years in IT is the fact that the cycles of innovation are accelerating, right? It's not like the old, "Well, we're going to bring this out and we're going to talk about it, and two years later it's going to come out," things are being brought out on a weekly, monthly basis, or faster. Everyone has to adopt to that changing and that acceleration. Obviously, Qlik is trying to do its best. We heard this morning to help accelerate that time to value using it. They really want people to start using it and just that's the most important is that first step to get using it. But I'm wondering if you could maybe talk about you've been advising them from the behind the scenes. Today, you got to come in and listen to Michael and the keynote and the keynote speakers. What was your take on their presentation of what they're doing with AI and not just generative AI, but agentic AI?
Kelly Forbes
>> Yeah, it's been really fascinating, right? Because we are back here somehow it feels almost like deja vu, right? But AI is in a different place. It does feel that we are in a more mature place, conversations about responsible AI, what ethics is. I think everyone is very much aware of that, the importance of that. Last year, we were here speaking a lot about generative AI.
Bob Laliberte
>> Right.
Kelly Forbes
>> And this year is of course agentic AI. We know it's evolving a very fast pace, and it's interesting to also anticipate what's going to be the conversation next year. But I think in seeing all of this, what's really important is seeing that the foundations are there in place for what's to come. We must continue to learn and evolve at the same time as the technology's evolving. I really can see that environment being created here, which has been very positive.
Bob Laliberte
>> Yeah.
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
>> Absolutely. And one thing, I fully agree, the cycles of innovation are faster. I think one of the things we have learned that was reflected in a lot of the mornings conversations, especially Mike Capone's speech, the CEO's, there is this thread that exists through a lot of innovation, and he was really pulling on it. One of the key tenants being trust. So you have to build, everybody has to build trust with their consumers, whether it's Qlik with their partners or whether it's the partners with their consumers. And I think one really important part of the Qlik AI Council is giving advisory and giving input on how to build trust with the organizations. One of the things I've loved seeing today is these principles put into practice, not just Qlik talking about what they're doing, but their partners on stage talking about real, tangible, real-world use cases.
Kelly Forbes
>> Exactly.
Bob Laliberte
>> Yeah, absolutely.
Nina Schick
>> Just to add to that, this exponential acceleration of technology and what Mike highlighted today in terms of the actual bottlenecks, everyone understands that the technology is a big deal and it's accelerating, but the bottleneck's about actually how do you apply it? Coming down to questions around how is your company organized? Who are the partners in your ecosystem who are going to help you apply it? How's your data structured? All of those bottlenecks only become more important. They're not going to go away when we're here next year talking about the next evolution of AI's capability. In fact, I think those things matter even more. We've been hearing it since 2022, 2023 that this is a new race. You have to accelerate your innovation, you have to act, and that is speeding up. Every year we're going to be back, and the capabilities that we discussed today are going to seem very rudimentary when we're here next year.
Bob Laliberte
>> Yeah, absolutely. Well, I loved your responses because I was taking out of it the fact you needed to have the foundation, which obviously we think about what Qlik does, data being hugely foundational to feed these models, to be able to drive the RAG activities, the fine-tuning, the inferencing and so forth going on, you had talked about the trust as well needing to be there, right? So are you having the quality data? Do you trust the results? Otherwise, it's just garbage in and garbage out with the AI models and so forth, and then the ecosystems that you were talking about, and how do you pull all that together because no one company is going to be able to do everything, right? NVIDIA is great, they make GPUs, but they need an ecosystem around them. Qlik needs an ecosystem around it to work together to have all that. I think a lot of great stuff coming out of today and what you're hearing. So we heard some great examples of the customers talking about how they manifest AI in the real world today, how they're starting to adopt it and so forth. I'm wondering if we could potentially get your take on where you see AI and now not just generative AI, but agentic AI playing a role. And this time we're going to, we'll start with you, Nina. You can go first this time,
Kelly Forbes
>> Bring some fairness.
Bob Laliberte
>> Correct.
Nina Schick
>> I think the way that I look at it is that we're at the very foothills of what I think is going to be this accelerating exponential technology curve. We can spend a lot of time talking about the terminology as to what AI's capability is today. But I think what matters far more about is it generative AI or agentic AI is do you have the foundation in place? How are you thinking about your governance? How are you thinking about your data? How are you thinking about your ecosystem? Because next year, like I said, it'll be something else. I think the other thing that I'm really interested in, this relevant to my field of research and work is how the geopolitics is increasingly feeding this frenzy of competition and it has a material impact on businesses today. Mike talked about the T word, the tariffs, which have so much to do with export, controls on critical hardware, the infrastructure and this idea of repatriating supply chains, which ultimately has to do with this idea of supremacy and technology as a national security imperative. It's fascinating not only to see how AI is accelerating and how the foundation will matter, no matter what, but also how the geopolitics around this debate are shifting very materially, and having a material impact on business citizens today as well.
Bob Laliberte
>> Yeah, fascinating thought. Very fascinating.
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
>> I mean, just to echo Nina, it is really interesting to see how quickly AI has permeated just every aspect of everything we do, but also that we are in such an early and nascent stage of all of this so we are groping around blindly with this incredibly powerful tool. We are in a sense looking for ways to make it meaningful in use. We know it has this immense capability, but what we haven't really thought through, and this is really the human in the loop part of it is how to architect and how to mastermind this massive amount of digital transformation. And really, to get that, we can't just have programmers in the room. If we look around here, we have a wide range of people, executives, policy people, solutions architects, a wide range of individuals. I'm increasingly working with, as Nina mentioned, like heads of state, policy makers, just to all be in the room and we're all in this transformational journey together.
Bob Laliberte
>> Yeah, absolutely. I think I'm going to trademark. It comes up so much at human in the loop, so starting to see that more and more.
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
>> Absolutely.
Bob Laliberte
>> But yeah, but it's incredibly important as we go through these processes to make sure there's some checks and balances to what's going on and so forth. Sorry, interrupting.
Kelly Forbes
>> I think what you were saying really leads us into the discussion around even the workforce transformation, which was something that Mike touched on earlier today. In some ways, there is so much to when an education to be built alongside the technology so that we can make sure that we actually using to its full potential in sectors that are important. And as it was said today, I think it's not about the effects of the technology on people, but how we are responding to it. The people that really going to thrive in this year are the ones that are learning alongside technology. I think to build on something Rumman said, the importance of also having an interdisciplinary environment as you do that. I think the AI Council is an example of that in how you Qlik has managed to bring so much diversity into same room. And we see that I think across different sectors, customers, and how that's going to be deployed will look very different as well, depending on the local context for each company, right?
Bob Laliberte
>> Yeah, no, absolutely. One of the things that I've often talked about when I'm seeing adoption of AI in organizations, I refer to it as the time to comfort. Everyone talks about in businesses time to value, but a lot of people when they talk about AI and they talk about agentic AI, they're talking about the technology piece of it and how it works from a technological level, but the cultural side of it and process side of it is also very different, right? You're starting to hear people talk about digital workforces with agentic AI and so forth taking on. How would you advise organizations that you're, like Qlik that you're advising, how would you talk to them about what needs to be done to get over those cultural hurdles from making people more comfortable using the technology and being able to adopt it at a faster pace? We'll start with you Dr. Rumman.
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
>> Of course, as a starting point, AI literacy, but literacy means a very specific thing. I think we've even been learning what the concept of literacy even is. I think the earliest versions were like, everybody needs to know how to code. The reality is everyone doesn't need to know how to code. Today, it's everybody needs to understand how generative AI and agentic AI fit into their workforce, their workflow. And a lot of people are thinking about the future of work. What does it look like? I've seen this phrase floating around, it's 100% true. AI won't take your job, somebody using AI will take your job.
Bob Laliberte
>> Right.
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
>> This is not to fearmonger or scare people, right? Nobody's out there trying to fire people. But the reality of the situation is AI is already capable of doing amazing things for most people. Half people on this floor are probably using generative AI in some capacity. This is only technology that's been out for two and a half years. Can you imagine? Agentic AI brings even more capabilities. So it's really worthwhile to be literate, not just in the technology itself, but specifically how you can use it to improve what you're doing, your workflows.
Bob Laliberte
>> Excellent. Well, makes a lot of sense. Nina, you want to go next?
Nina Schick
>> I mean, I think it's already irrefutable, and again, a shout-out to Michael who isn't here today. Even in the most tricky challenges, scientific challenges, researchers are starting to use AI as a tool of discovery. So this idea of how you can elevate the human ceiling of knowledge and problem solving by having AI in the loop as a co-creator. We're starting to see that even at the very frontier, where computer science is meeting the hard sciences. So in a more day-to-day context, I mean it's obvious that do yourself a favor, learn to use these tools because, again, we're only at the very, very beginning of all of this unfolding. And you hear from almost every single business who's trying to apply AI that the bottleneck is so often talent, people who actually understand how this might fit into their work floor or understand how to apply it. By doing so, you're giving yourself a massive advantage. But it's also tricky, right? Because there are legitimate fears and the change is happening quite quickly. And again, that's another bottleneck too. It's this, how do you bring your workforce with you as you have this conversation? And that has to do with the culture of your company. Because another thing I think we're going to see is the rise of an entirely new breed of companies which are driven largely by AI, the AI first, AI native company that are going to disrupt industries too. All of these forces are coming together, and of course the impacts are, yeah, well, it's quite early, but I think they'll be seismic.
Bob Laliberte
>> I think that's a great analogy because we saw that probably about what, 15 years ago, 20 years ago with Digital First.
Nina Schick
>> Yeah.
Bob Laliberte
>> Right?
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
>> Right.
Bob Laliberte
>> If you remember that, we actually used to do our research and ask them, how old is your company? So we could compare digital natives to the old mainstream and how long it took them to get along, so I think that's really astute.
Kelly Forbes
>> There's a recent study that looked at organizations that along with implementing the technology, also had programs to upskill the employees and prepare them to use the technology accordingly. In comparison, they really saw the organizations that didn't follow that process. Instead of actually seeing an efficiency, they actually saw a decrease because of a lot of resistance, because employees, again, have the fear of AI taking my job away so there's almost a rejection, engaging with the technology or not learning how to use well, which by the way, I think the human oversight is one of the principles that you see a lot coming again and again to mitigate risks and all these things.
Bob Laliberte
>> Sure.
Kelly Forbes
>> People know how to use it well, right? And on the other hand, the organizations that are really thriving are the ones that are implementing the right programs so that they prepare their workforce to really integrate the technology within their work streams. I think that only bringing in technology without doing the preparation is probably not going to see the full benefit there.
Bob Laliberte
>> Got it. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I think Mike had commented about, I don't know if he was quoting Katie Ledecky or not, but saying, are you moving? It's not just moving fast enough to keep up, it's moving fast enough to win.
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
>> Right.
Bob Laliberte
>> And so I think organizations, like you said, but having to recognize that it's more than just technology. It's people in process that preparing them, doing that work ahead of time to get them ready to be able to adopt that technology, leverage it. I know it's certainly difficult. I've talked to a lot of organizations about how they look at and when they're going to take AI and do more automations as well, to have that AI make that decision, which gets even more scary because now it could have profound impact, not just giving you a result, but actually taking action and doing those next steps. Again, I think that's just all about just time with the technology and getting comfortable with it. I was talking to someone the other day, separate field in networking, and they were saying, "Oh yeah, we got the AI came out and said the problem is DNS. We all laughed at it and we worked the problem the whole weekend, and at the end of the weekend it was DNS." And so there's that. There's going to be that resistance. But over time, the more comfortable they get with it, the more likely they are to use it. Last question to wrap up. Where do you see things moving forward? We're here at Qlik Connect 2025. We'll be here a year from now. Where do you see the conversation being a year from now? And we'll come back to you, Kelly, to kick things off.
Kelly Forbes
>> Yeah. I think by watching the pace in which the conversation has evolved from last year to where we are here today, I'm hopeful in a sense of I see a lot of conversations related to governance, responsible AI, and these things are becoming more normal and very mature, which is a very good sign because you need those foundations to actually be able to tap on the full benefit that technology can offer. But I think in terms of technology side, it's quite unpredictable. I think it's moving in a very fast pace now. I think when we even hear from the largest experts in the world right now, they can't quite tell you, is the AGI coming? When is it coming? I think that anyone that makes the statements right now, I mean it's probably not 100% certain, but I think we can prepare ourselves for a very different world that's evolving very fast. The best way for us to be fully prepared is to try to evolve as much as the technology. Technology's getting as smarter every day, we must try to keep up with that.
Bob Laliberte
>> Excellent, thank you. Doctor?
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
>> I think I'd say just I'm excited to see more things put into practice, more things put into scale. Qlik has been really clear along with the advisory from the entire group, that trust is a key component to scaling. It is impossible to scale unless you're able to be accountable and trustworthy. So I'm excited to see projects scale, but I'm excited to see it because it means that we're taking these words that sound abstract, trust, accountability, and really putting them into practice.
Bob Laliberte
>> Excellent, very good. Let's bring it home?
Nina Schick
>> I'm very bullish on capabilities increasing because when you look at the amount of CapEx, the sheer amount of competition, not only amongst nation-states, but frontier labs and also now disruptors in certain industries to build AI native companies, I think the capabilities of AI are going to jump, like we've already talked, on an exponential. So I think that makes all of the work that people like Rumman are doing, that Kelly are doing, that Qlik is doing about ensuring your framework, your foundation on governance, on trust, on data is solid, and you actually begin to iron out what that means. That's going to be the most important piece because I actually don't think we talked about if the result might be right, and you already mentioned how the result is often, but how do we trust that? So I think that foundation, the work that the council is doing and that Qlik is doing, is going to be the far more important piece than worrying about will AI's capabilities leap, because I'm pretty certain they will.
Bob Laliberte
>> Yeah, no, those are all great points. I mean, especially the fact about, look, if you want to scale this and accelerate it, you need to start with a solid foundation. You need to get the data right, the trust, the governance, all those things need to be in place. Those aren't things that are decided on the fly. They're things that have a robust foundation and they're sealed in, locked in, and then that's going to allow you to scale the technology to different areas and keep it in check. That makes a lot of sense. Well, listen, this has been a fantastic conversation. I've really enjoyed it, and I applaud Qlik for bringing yourselves on, and Michael, as part of an AI Council, to help keep them going in the right direction and make sure they're operating in a responsible, ethical, trusted, and geopolitically correct manner for their AI technology. So again, thank you so much for being here. And I want to thank all of you for watching. Thank you so much for being here in our coverage of Qlik Connect 2025. I'm Bob Laliberte, joined by John Furrier and Kristen Nicole, and our entire production team. Thanks, we'll be back soon.
Bob Laliberte