Dr. Jason Behrmann, PhD - Marketing, Ethics, & Technology

Dr. Jason Behrman is an Out LGBTQ entrepreneur, marketing & communications professional, LGBTQ rights activist, science & technology ethics thought leader, and artificial intelligence evangelist. His entrepreneurial spirit and drive have led him to not only launch his own initiatives but also to work in several startups in the vibrant technology-driven Montreal, Canada area. He is a marketing and communications strategist with a keen ability to distill complex concepts into approachable, informative, and engaging messages to reach target audiences.

Jason on OutBüro >> https://www.outburo.com/profile/jasonbehrmann/

In our casual conversation, we discussed Dr. Jason's interesting career journey and chance meeting Dr. Laura of the longest-running radio show in North America where he became and still appears monthly to discuss the intersection of sex, relationships, dating, and technology. The conversation naturally went to gay dating/hook up apps and how they protect a user's privacy or not. From non-personal ways of detecting a user is a real human or a spammy scamming bot to well-used apps caught selling user data such as marital status and HIV status to well known and obscure marketing companies. We also discussed how users should be very cautious of the information and images shared because some other real users might attempt to use that information against you be it now or anytime in the future.

As the conversation turned to his current work as the marketing and communications director at Zetane (see below) we delved into the exciting work they are doing to make creating artificial intelligence solutions easier through a framework and highly visual interface. My comparison for those that recall the DOS operating system, the now old and cumbersome way of creating AI solution requires a deep knowledge of code to do the simplest of tasks. Then along came Apple and Windows with a user graphical interface that nearly anyone could use. Zetane is that kind of leap forward revolutionizing ease of use for non-technical team members and speeding conceptual ideas to actual results in record time.

Dr. Jason described a Zetane passion project that demonstrates the ease and power. Shortly after COVID-19 hit the world, Zetane took current data sets of known virus proteins along with known drug therapies and ask their AI engine to explore potential matches that may have a neutralizing effect on the new virus that maybe could have been overlooked by humans due to the where volume of data. The Zetane tool shortly identified a list of possible effective treatments and these are in fact therapies under medical investigation.

Dr. Jason is an enthusiastic open mind always asking the big question and paying attention to the details.

He and his husband balance their busy work lives in part through their mutual love for gardening. They not only have an extensive home garden but also participate in a community garden. They strive to grow as much of their own food as possible and enjoy hosting dinner parties where they delight in sharing their harvest with friends.

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Zetane provides us with an integrated platform where we can visualize 3D model representations of the inputs or outputs in the same space as the neural network. This, in addition to the platform's explainability features, allows us to build visually compelling demos to present to technical and non-technical people alike." https://www.zetane.com/