AI expert found she did not have to give up her values to join the Shark Tank
Mother of six and AI expert Dr Catriona Wallace did not think she had what it took to star on Shark Tank. Here’s what changed.
It’s no real surprise that AI expert Dr Catriona Wallace was a hard no the first time Shark Tank production came calling – there’s not a whole lot of free time between running her businesses and life across continents and her study of natural medicine. Not to forget she’s a mother of six children.
But it was more than her hectic schedule, Wallace – who the Australian Financial Review once acknowledged as the most influential woman in business and entrepreneurship – is renowned for being kind, promoting diversity and supporting women and minority-led businesses.
“I’m not a shark – my reputation in the industry is not being a shark,” she shares, adding she only changed her mind when the team assured her those important real-life values could be very much part of her on-screen persona.
“And, fortunately, I was able to be fully authentic. I am super impressed with the show and the other Sharks.”
Those other Sharks joining Wallace for Ten’s new iteration of the popular series are The Oodie founder Davie Fogarty, King Kong Digital Marketing Agency founder Sabri Suby, Showpo CEO Jane Lu and one of the original US Sharks Robert Herjavec, who has invested more than $23 million of his own money across 14 seasons of that show.
Wallace is no stranger to television, after being interviewed countless times for current affairs programs, but reality TV was a whole other kettle of fish.
But she wasn’t “terricited” – which is not a new species of dinosaur as it might read but rather a great term her industry has coined for how we should all feel about AI.
“We should be somewhere between terrified and excited,” she laughs, as she explains.
“The benefits are unimaginable.”
But do we need to worry about being enslaved by our household appliances? Wallace laughs as she says it probably won’t be the vacuum cleaners that take over the world.
“The way I view AI is that people should think of it as a new species on the planet with a level of intelligence that, if not already, but very soon will be greater than human intelligence,” she says. “And that it is like a superpower that we’ve just unleashed on the world without any real knowing where we’re all going with it.”
Not quite reassuring, but they won’t have souls, right?
“I think it’s a mistake to think that we are trying to make robots to be humanoid,” she says.
“People say it’ll never have the same consciousness, and that’s right, it’s not human. It will have its own consciousness.
“It might not have a soul or a spirit like we might have, but it certainly will have something else.”
Wallace further illustrates her point, explaining she had one of her engineers build a software robot Trinity. And she decided to use Trinity to do her many public speaking engagements usually on the same topic.
“And I trained it. And I taught it to do question and answer, and it answers the way I do,” she says.
“And then one day someone pointed out to me ‘Oh my God, it’s you in there, it speaks the same as you, it acts the same as you’.”
Would she like to have Trinity take her place on the long hours on set listening to pitch after pitch on Shark Tank? Turns out no.
“I was thinking ‘Oh, this’ll be just like a bit of a chore having to get through all of these pitches’,” she confesses.
“But, in fact, it was the opposite. It was so high energy and I enjoyed the whole production of television and how incredible that was.”
“But mostly I enjoyed listening to the stories of the entrepreneurs and seeing a whole array of genius ideas from a completely diverse group of all walks of life.
“There’s no way that I would have met any of these people in the very hi-tech fields that I work with.
“So it was very beautiful for me to remember that there are just these extraordinary everyday Australians creating incredible new products. And I wish we could have funded a ton more.”
While her passion for AI permeates all parts of her life, from her reading to viewing, it hasn’t quite infected her children yet. None of her six – which includes two stepsons, three biological children and one adopted daughter – have shown any interest in following in Wallace’s impressive footsteps.
“They are all pretty entrepreneurial though and I think that’s what will come through rather than my deep love of robots,” she laughs.
Also, unsurprisingly, Wallace doesn’t have much time for relaxing – she figures that’s for later in life.
“So I’m 57 – you get to your 50s and you’re just getting started,” she says. “They talk about the first mountain as being kids, and jobs, and education. Then you come to the second mountain which is much more about, ‘OK, what can I do that’s really meaningful and make a difference in the world.
“And then after that it’s sit around and rest and philosophise a bit, so I’m not quite at that elder stage yet.
“It goes maiden, mother, magician and elder. I’m in the magician phase.”
Shark Tank Australia, Tuesday, August 29, 7.30pm, Ten
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Originally published as AI expert found she did not have to give up her values to join the Shark Tank
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