Ethics cannot sit on the sidelines when technology is moving at an extraordinary speed. For organisations building with AI, responsibility, values, and clarity of purpose matter more than ever.
Maria Luciana Axente is recognised as one of the leading female speakers on technology. With a career shaped by digital transformation, AI governance and responsible innovation, she brings a rare blend of strategic insight and moral intelligence to the global conversation on artificial intelligence.
Her work challenges companies to look beyond algorithms and focus on the choices, values and long-term impact that sit behind every technological decision.
In this exclusive interview with the SpeakOut Speakers Agency, Maria discusses her journey into ethical AI, the risks organisations face when responsibility is not embedded from the start and the opportunities that emerge when leaders place trust, accountability and human purpose at the centre of their AI strategy.
Q1: What first drew you toward the field of ethical AI, and how did your background in transformation shape that journey?
Maria Luciana Axente: “The reality is, I didn’t enter through tech. I came through transformation and digital, and business transformation. And I was working with companies trying to reinvent themselves using technology, including AI, because when I started, AI was not even on the radar. And I kept seeing the same issue. Tools were advancing, but leadership and the ability of leadership to react weren’t.
“And that drew me to ethical AI in the end. It was this gap between what technology and AI could do and what it should do. And I realised, unless we embed responsibility at the core, we’re just accelerating the risk. And that became my mission, to make ethics not just a governance layer but a truly strategic asset.”
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Q2: When organisations deploy AI without considering its ethical impact, what do you see as the most significant risks to their reputation and long-term sustainability?
Maria Luciana Axente: “Reputational damage is the obvious one – biased hiring tools or privacy scandals. We’ve seen plenty of those. But the deeper risk is the erosion of trust. And when people stop trusting your system, they actually stop trusting your brand. And that’s when things go wrong very fast.
“And what I show companies, both on stage and through my advisory work with Responsible Intelligence, is that ethics isn’t a constraint. It’s a multiplier for trust, loyalty, and long-term growth.
“So this is where the company needs to see the work around responsible AI as sustainable growth over a long period of time, and cementing and stabilising that relationship with the customer and the client base.”
Q3: From your work with senior leaders, what do you find is the most persistent misconception businesses hold about AI and how it should be governed?
Maria Luciana Axente: “That AI is purely technical. That it is something for data science or the IT or CIO/CTO team. You have no idea how many times I had to deal with this myself.
“And in fact, it was that our AI community was able to establish a more inclusive definition of AI – that AI is not just a pure technology asset, but a complex sociotechnical system. And on top of it, AI is not neutral. Every model includes choices, choices that someone else has made when these models have been trained.
“So if leaders aren’t asking the right questions, they’re not leading. They’re just reacting, and they are unconsciously signing up to those choices being made. So in my work with executives, I always say it’s not just about this perfectly amazing algorithm that amazes us.
“It’s about your values, your strategy, your accountability. What do you try to achieve using this amazing tool? And if you get that right, that’s where the competitive edge is.”
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Q4: When you speak to audiences about responsible AI, what core principles or mindset shifts do you hope they take away?
Maria Luciana Axente: “That we have agency and we have control. And I think this is what is not as clear when you open the newspaper and you read the latest interview of a tech guru. AI isn’t something out there. It’s in the systems we use, the decisions we make, the culture we shape.
“And I would very much want people to walk away not just informed but activated and empowered – that we still have control on our side on how to use AI to work for us.
“And if a company wants to go further beyond the talk, that’s where Responsible Intelligence comes in, because this is not just a keynote. It’s a movement on how to make AI work for us as individuals and as a collective.”
This exclusive interview with Maria Luciana Axente was conducted by Mark Matthews of The Motivational Speakers Agency.
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