Alexandra Mousavizadeh on AI opportunities, losing a finger and Persian cuisine

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1:16Alexandra Muzavizadeh, however, is my closest friend, and I have little idea how to describe what she does. It's complex, it's interesting, and so far, a new world. This I do know. Alexandra is an economist, an expert in game theory and AI, and in 2022 co-founded Evident with Annabelle Isles, two women creating an index that benchmark companies on their AI performance. But if it's challenging to tell you about her in professional terms, I can tell you what she's like as a friend. Alexandra is warm. She's empathetic. She's energetic, she's brave, and she's resilient. I know this as a fact, as I speak to her most evenings before sleeping and most mornings immediately after waking.

2:04Early on in our friendship, I got a glimpse into her character that has stayed with me ever since. Rescuing one of her children's footballs, she fell off a roof and her wedding ring caught on the slats of a fence. It was only when she heard its clink that she'd realized she'd lost a finger. She picked it up, went to the hospital, and the next morning was at her desk at work. No complaints, no self-pity. That is true. Was it the clinking of the... We can do a fact check. It doesn't matter. It was. Mexico never let facts ruin a good story. But it was a clinking of the wedding ring? It was, oddly enough.

2:41I didn't feel the finger being ripped out of my hand, but I only noticed it when I saw the wedding ring and my finger on the floor. and then I couldn't get an ambulance, called the ambulance and they said, sorry, only if it's a major injury. Two fingers maybe, one finger, sorry, we're British. That was not considered major but I think, you know, one of my biggest memories from that moment and I had just moved to London from New York was what happened right after was a knock on the hospital door and in came a tray from you, Ruthie, with sea bass, slow cooked peas a bottle of wine a pink napkin or orange a knife and fork and a piece of chocolate nemesis and I think that was why I could skip home the next day from the hospital the NHS doesn't necessarily provide that kind of cure that was all due to you nothing to do with food it was absolutely due to you and it's just an incredible memory and you just were in New York weren't you?

3:43I was in Aspen Oh, in Aspen. Aspen Ideas Festival. What was that like? It was fantastic. Yeah. It is the great Aspen Ideas Festival that has been, I think, going for more than 20 years. And so it was just lovely. So we were discussing the world and the place that's far away from the world. Yes. It was right a week after Iran, yeah? Yes. Yeah, so there was a lot of discussion. Was that AI as well? I think it was more conventional. It was more sort of traditional warfare. But, of course, AI plays a huge role in warfare. today and autonomous drones and the weaponry that's built and the position that we can we can point the weapons at today but yeah it came right after obviously right at the sort of the heels of the bombing of iran and so a lot of the conversation was about the middle east and what might happen you and i were at a lunch at the river cafe two years ago i think and the host of the lunch, Matthew Barson asked a question to the table, which was, is there something, an idea, a thought that the world is afraid of, that people are afraid of, but you're not?

4:52And when it came to you, you said that you were not afraid of AI. But it always interested me that the word fear came up so much and still does when you talk about AI. It's a question I get a lot. And I do think it's a shame that the debate is where the debate is today because it is very dominated by a fear around this technology and the way it's covered in the press, but also by a lot of academics talking about, you know, what is the non-zero risk of things going wrong? And I think that it's getting too much coverage in the sense that, of course, we need to talk about the risks, but we should also really focus on all of the opportunities and what it will do to our society, us as individuals, the businesses that we're running, our education, our children.

5:48AI has a really important and positive role to play in all of this. And I'm not saying there isn't a risk out there on the horizon, but that risk I think is very much overplayed and I think it's underplayed what the opportunities are. And when I'm looking at, you know, just every day, day-to-day, the way we use it, the way that the businesses that we're working with use it, and how that is helping and it's augmenting, the way we optimize our supply chains, and that we can get things at a better and cheaper rate to our tables is all AI-driven. The way that we even just interact with what we have in our fridge.

6:25Tell me about that. Well, there are tools now where you can take a photograph of your fridge and optimize what you're cooking. Simple as that. What do I do with these ingredients? or how do I optimize for, you know, shopping in a sustainable way when I'm looking at what the ingredients are in my kitchen. When should I make sure to eat this before it goes off so I don't open the fridge and then suddenly it's gone off? And so there's lots of these apps and ways to optimize. Reducing waste is making it, which is a good thing, which is making it easier for families to cook, which is a good thing. And at the sort of supply chain and sort of industrial agriculture, side you know you've got the breakthroughs of ai that are helping to optimize the way we plan things and the way we are growing things in new and innovative ways ai lies at the heart of that as well so the future is bright yes it is no it is absolutely i think that in medicine and you know and we do struggle with food poverty food in prisons food in the way we feed our children the way we feed our sick, the way we don't have accessibility in poor neighborhoods for fresh vegetables, the way we grow our vegetables.

7:39And as you say, what really struck was waste. Do you know people who are working in this field? Have you met any people? I do tangentially, yes. And we should come in and make sure AI is at the heart of the River Cafe as well. Optimizing, no waste and all of that. But there's a lot of big organizations that are in the sort of food industry where they are hiring heads of AI, heads of technology, working out how they can just do what they do but better with less waste. And so it's definitely absolutely being implemented in the food and agricultural industry already. There's an amazing story about John Deere.

8:20You know, they do farm equipment. Bulldozers. And it's completely AI driven. Is it? They draw down from satellites that can predict the weather. They have sensors in the soil. They are now planting with, you know, sort of optimizing for sort of being much more precise. And so their yields are much higher. I mean, it's an absolutely incredible story. Every part and side and top and bottom of these John Deere machinery is AI equipment. And it is fantastic to see how they've been able to transform the agricultural space. We started with Aspen. And what did you come away from Aspen with when you were listening to various people?

9:02What did you feel when you came away from this conference? I felt that there was a lot more optimism. Maybe that's my prism to see things through. But I thought that there was a lot of optimism. We were talking about fear before. There's still a lot of fear of what Trump can do to the world. And I think everyone's still holding their breath. But I also think that everyone's a bit more prepared and therefore also a bit more optimistic that Europe is going to be strengthened, the tariffs might not be crashing the world economy as we feared on April 2nd when he first announced it. So there was a bit more hope and optimism about economic growth, about employment.

9:45But there's still a lot of concern about what these next couple of years will look like with him at the helm. A lot of, you know, talks from CEOs as well, which I think one of the issues that we maybe underestimate is just how difficult it is to be a CEO today and the things that they've got to navigate. Also on the AI front. But so that was also very much on the agenda. And so as well as arts and culture and music. So but the optimism definitely came through. Yeah, and also people, you know, as you say, traveling to a place that's slightly out of the world to talk, just to have that, you know, shared communication, which you can do over online.

10:22You can do it over a computer, do it over a phone, do it over Zoom, but when you actually have that, did you eat well? What was the food like? The food was amazing. Good restaurants. The food was amazing. Yes. In Aspen, isn't it? Yeah, it was very fresh. And the walking in the mountains is very special. It was beautiful light and the smell of the woods. And, yeah, it was very special. So going on a lot of hikes and bike rides. But the food was really good, too, yes. You know, I went to school 20 miles from Aspen. You did? I spent my teenage years in a school called the Colorado Rocky Mountain School.

10:58And it's in Carbondale. And this is in, you know, 1968 or 67. And we went to Aspen. It was a small town, you know. It was still very beautiful. I mean, it was the early days. It didn't have the glamour yet that it has now. Or, as you say, they had the Aspen Center. I think there was, because I remember going to see a Warhol show there very early on. And it always had a kind of cultural emphasis, as well as being a ski village and a mountain village and beautiful. But I love that area. It's so beautiful. It's beautiful. And it's a big, there's the Anderson Institute there now, which is a big art institute, and they take a lot of artists in, spend the summers and winters there working.

11:49Yeah, it still has that, and very much, you know, arts and culture scene. But we talk all the time, and I didn't know you went to school at the Colorado Bonds School. So there you go, you might find some more things out about it. Tell me about the early years of your life. Were your parents cooks? So I was born in Copenhagen in 1970, and food back then in Copenhagen was very different from the vibrant food scene today. Why was that? It was just still slightly removed from the world, aside from Denmark having a really big footprint in terms of furniture. Hans Wegner, Berg Morgensen from the 1950s and 60s.

12:30It was quite removed. um my family was a slightly odd one because my uh my mother's english they met and and that's a funny story we can get into how they met but um they met in london in 56 and how did they meet they met because they were introduced to each other as being direct descendants of men who had destroyed or sunk the danish fleet and that was that's an unusual background to have on my mother's I was going to say, because a Dane wouldn't necessarily want to sink the Danish fleet. No, so on my father's side, his father was head of the Navy, so he was an admiral in the Navy during the Second World War.

13:13And when it became known that the Germans wanted to put their hands on the Danish fleet to get to the Baltics and to get to the UK, he got word early and jumped on his bicycle and rode out to the harbor where all of the Danish fleet was waiting. and said, you know, pull the plugs, pull the plugs, and destroyed and sank the entire Danish fleet and was a hero on account of that because it would have been a disaster. It could have been a different, not necessarily a different outcome of the war, but it would not have been good if the Germans had got hold of a quite strong Danish navy and they could have done a lot of damage with that.

13:54So he sunk the Danish fleet. And on my mother's side, being a direct descendant of Lord Nelson, had bombed Copenhagen in 1801 and sunk the Danish fleet. So they were introduced to each other in 56 at some cocktail party in London and said, here's the, you know, two people who both, you know, have sunk the Danish fleet. So combined, they're quite dangerous. So they met and they married. My mother was 19 and she moved to Copenhagen in 57. and it was, yeah, I think it was difficult for her to live in Copenhagen. It was, you know, London was changing so much and music and, you know, arts. Before the swinging 60s.

14:37Yeah, before all of that and the swinging 60s. And you came to Copenhagen in 57 and it was a bit bleak. It was still sort of post-war, a lot of restrictions on what you could cook with and what came into the country. And she refused to learn Danish. So I grew up in a household where it was my very Danish father and my very English mother. And it was complete mayhem at the dinner table because we were always speaking both languages. But in terms of cooking, she was very brilliant and skipped four grades at school and had a very high IQ, but her big dream was to become a doctor or a scientist. And then her parents said it wasn't done for girls at the time to go and get that kind of education.

15:21And of course, she shouldn't have listened and she should have just done it. But they sent her to finishing school in Paris and then she met my father. So she was a really good cook. But she was also really disorganized. So when she was cooking, it would be martinis and cooking and dinner would be on the table. And it would be amazing, but it would be 11 p.m. or it would be midnight. How many of you were there siblings? So I was the youngest and I had two older brothers. So anyway, my father ended up doing all the cooking and did... What was his career? So he actually was... He was in the Navy early on and then he entered the Royal Copenhagen with the beautiful plates.

16:05And he was number two there and sort of co-ran the business for many, many years. So I grew up with all of the Royal Copenhagen porcelain, lots of artists and potters that came in to test out new lines. So our house was always filled with Danish writers and artists and my father loved that job very much. But yeah, he ended up... So he would come home from work and cook? He would often be the one who would cook or we would always eat at 11 p.m. or 12. Well, you finished your homework and then ate. Yes, I was very unsupervised, but yes. My brothers would usually, if there was any homework done, it would be under the supervision of my older brothers.

16:46And they always thought it was fun to experiment on how young at a young how young age can you learn mathematics so that was my my early sort of learnings of math probably led to the love of mathematics later on did you cook yes I actually did I think it's inevitable you you especially if it's going to take eight hours to cook you end up sitting in the kitchen and watching and then there's the stirring and there would be like it was it something you wanted to do because you are one of the best cooks I know well it's terrifying trying to cook for you, Ruthie. It really is. But I got over that. But yes, I really, cooking, for me, I connect it with conversation.

17:24Yeah. I always say that about my family, is that it was a very Jewish family, not religiously, but just in the sense that it was the talking was more important than the food. And a lot of people that we talk to talk about the meals around the table, which sometimes I feel is over-romanticized, that idea of we all sat around the table because you also talk to a lot of kids who found it slightly torturous, you know, having to sit at a meal at night with your parents discussing something or not or silence. But as you say, you know, it sticks with you, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. An open kitchen in the River Cafe means we as chefs are able to talk to our guests dining in the restaurant.

18:09And now we're bringing that same ethos to our podcast. A question and answer episode with me and our two executive chefs. Send a voice note with your question to questions at rivercafe.co.uk and you might just be our next great guest on Ruthie's Table 4.

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19:18Plus, they're earth-friendly and trusted by over 200 ,000 happy customers. It's time to upgrade to a stress-free, mess-proof sofa. Visit washablesofas.com today and save. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50%, and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. You left this beautiful city, your family, and you went to New York. And was that a kind of shock, or did you just meld right into it?

20:01Did it feel very different? What was it like suddenly being... It was fantastic to go to New York. What year was that? It was 1995, or 94, actually, end of 94, beginning of 90. So you've been to university in Denmark? Yeah, just finished university. Had you been before to New York, or did you get off the plane and say, wow, these buildings are high? I was a bit like that. I had been there as a child because as working at the Royal Copenhagen, my father also opened up the U.S. branch of that, so I did spend a little time as a child in New York, but from six, seven, eight years old. So when I arrived there, I was 24.

20:41And what were you doing? Were you working? I was, well, I moved because my now ex-husband said, I am going to be in New York. Come with me, come join me. And I was like, absolutely. That sounds like a great idea. And I'd finished my degree and came over with this degree in economics, math. and I'd really focus on game theory, which today is actually really helpful, but back then it was a slightly esoteric thing to study. Maybe you should, at this point, tell us what game theory is. Yeah, so, well, game theory is, we actually use it today more than we realize. Game theory is sort of the mathematical calculation of how sort of multiple actors, you know, strategize for a particular outcome.

21:29That's a bit technical, but what it means is, for example, the way you use it every day is when you get on your Waze app that is trying to optimize your you know your fastest route but then it also takes into consideration other drivers and so it then recalculates and it says well every if every driver is going to go to the you know find the fastest route then everyone's going to be on that route so it's going to recalculate and take you to another route in a sense that sort of game theory is at the at the base of that so it's trying to figure out what's the outcome when you've got a lot of different people or you know or decisions that are being made at the same time and um and that's actually at the base of a lot of the AI today uh what was it what year were you working on this so I did that in from 90 92 to 94 so that well that was the really early days it was it was when it was when yeah well I picked it because I I love mathematics.

22:23And I also was toying. My brothers were both engineers and did physics. And one went on to do quantum physics and went to Zurn and Zurich to split atoms. And I had always thought that I might go in and study physics. But then I decided to do economics, math, and focus on game theory because I really enjoyed the mathematical base of it. And it ended up being a great choice for me. I'm so happy I did that. So that was in the early 90s. Were there many women in the, was it male? It was like maybe 2 % women in the whole sort of group starting every year. It was very few women. Were you taken seriously there?

23:07Did you find any issues with being a woman in a man's world? Never. I mean, growing up with brothers who were giving you a hard time all the time, you would just take this, that's peanuts what you do, go in and choose something where there are a lot of, you know, where it's very male-dominated. And to this day, and I've always been in areas in my career and also now in sort of very, you know, something you would consider very male dominated. And I don't even think about it. It's not something I think about. But it was interesting because back in the 90s was sort of a is what you sort of call the AI winter.

23:37AI had sort of, you know, there'd been a lot of progress in the 50s and 60s and 70s. And then it sort of stood still for a bit for a number of reasons. So picking Game Theory was not sort of linked to AI back then. It was just sort of I enjoyed the thinking of it. And now it certainly had a resurgence. So that was sort of a lucky choice, I guess. So you were introduced in New York to New York and the world of being in America, the world of science and starting something new. But then with your relationship, were you thrust into a kind of Iranian culture as well? Or was that sort of slightly in the background?

24:18Yeah, so I came to New York with this degree and I was thinking, I was like, what should I, you know, how can I use this? And I spoke to a friend of mine who had the same degree. And he said, there's sort of a couple of options, but there is Moody's sovereign team that has a legendary economist called David Levy. And I would send him an application because it would fit exactly what you have. It's very, you know, it's building these methodologies and rankings and it's, you know, very mathematical, but it's also really interesting. And I thought, that sounds great. And so I sent her application in on Monday.

24:52And David Levy called me up on Friday and said, do you want to cover Russia? And I said, absolutely. And so I started the following Monday. And that year was when? That was 1995. And then in terms of the Iranian culture. What was going on in Russia right then? Back then it was the big privatization moment and it had opened up and the big privatization moment in 92. There was enormous amount of excitement of opening up and diversifying from oil and opening up all of these big assets that the country had and the population that was so brilliantly educated. but needed to, you know, this turnaround of an economy that had been completely closed to the outside world and then opened up.

25:43And it wasn't easy because, obviously, there was a big, you know, disruption to the economy and a lot of safe jobs. And, you know, suddenly you had inflation and you had opening to the outside world and things that were guaranteed the Russian population were no longer guaranteed. So it was a bit of a, you know, tricky time also. and I always remember every time I went and I ended up covering Russia for 17 years among other nations in Central Asia and the Middle East from New York, which was interesting. But I always went to see Gorbachev and he wasn't revered back in Russia then because he was very much blamed for the complications in the economy.

26:22But he had a think tank just outside of Moscow. And we always made a point, me and my colleague, to go and see him every time to talk about life and Russia and how he's seen it and the past and the future. And it was a real treat. And it was also interesting to see the inside workings of an economy going through a transition and sort of the corruption that was very much there and sort of seeing the rise of Putin and sort of bringing us to today. Yeah, it was... But it was a really interesting time. I was very grateful for that. So not only just getting to help build these rankings for nations on their sort of growth capacity, which essentially is what a credit rating is, and their sort of capacity to pay back debt is all basically a benchmark.

27:13Putting all of these data points together and figuring out what's the likelihood. It's sort of a probability calculation. What is the likelihood that a country will default? but being able to do that alongside traveling to Moscow and to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and all of these places that were just emerging was, as an economist, such a treat. Yeah, as an economist and as a traveler, as an eye-opener, as a historian to be in that time. Do you remember the food? Can I bring it down to the food? Do you remember what you ate? The food was... Well, I went with a colleague who knew Moscow very well and he said, let's go to the Georgian restaurants.

27:52Yeah, yeah. So that was, and of course there was your, you know, so it was a mix of things, but you've got your borscht and you've got your Georgian wine and you've got, it was such a, it was so exciting, I have to say, being, you know, in Moscow through those years where there was the Russian food and the Georgian food and the wine coming in from various places and sort of sitting and breaking bread and hearing the stories of everyone in addition to sort of quite tense meetings. You speak Russian? No, I did a little bit. My colleagues spoke Russian. And the interesting thing was that up, you know, the first years in Moscow, everyone, especially when we had meetings with the government and so on, it was all done in Russian with translators.

28:34And right after they defaulted in 98, it switched to English when we came after that. So there was a big change there. And then obviously a big change. We went in, I think, when Richard was chairman of the Tate, early 80s, I think it was. and it was Spartan, there was little, but people say you'll eat really badly, there won't be food. We ate so well. I remember there wasn't a lot of it, but people made the effort to cook for us so we were in people's homes and there was kind of pride and concern and interest in, as you say, and I think it's delicious food, don't you? I think it is. You know, the little, I can't remember those little ones filled with spinach, those little brusquins.