Alok Abhishek - Product Leader & AI Researcher

Hi, I'm Alok Abhishek

Product leader and independent AI researcher. As a full-stack product builder, I bridge strategy and execution to create AI and data products for enterprise SaaS that deliver measurable business impact.

About Me

Product Management leader and AI researcher bridging enterprise innovation with responsible AI development

I'm a Product Management leader and independent AI researcher with over 15 years of experience at the intersection of enterprise SaaS, data platforms, and artificial intelligence. My career spans building and scaling zero-to-one products, driving them from concept to product-market fit and multi-million-dollar ARR across global markets in regulated industries such as legal tech and financial services.

My research centers on responsible AI and governance. I authored BEATS: Bias Evaluation and Assessment Test Suite for LLMs (arXiv), a benchmark for evaluating fairness and structural bias in foundation models, and contributed to the MIT Science Policy Review with a systems-level framework for data and AI governance.

As a full-stack product builder, I bridge strategy and execution: identifying customer needs, defining customer journeys, designing and prototyping user experiences, architecting data platforms and APIs, and training and deploying ML and GenAI models. This hands-on approach allows me to transform abstract concepts into scalable, production-grade products that deliver measurable business impact.

IEEE Computer SocietyILTA Peer-to-Peer JournalDATAVERSITYTechStrong.aiMIT Science Policy Review

Key Achievements

15+Years Experience

Product leadership across enterprise SaaS and AI

Multi-MARR Products

Scaled products from concept to market success

3Research Papers

Published in arXiv and MIT Science Policy Review

Beyond Work

When I'm not building AI products, I enjoy contributing to open-source projects, publishing research, and speaking at conferences. Outside of work, you'll find me hiking with my dog, exploring national parks, or camping under the stars, activities that inspire clarity, focus, and resilience.

AI Research & Innovation

Advancing the field through independent research on bias, fairness, hallucinations, and systemic risks in LLMs. Author of BEATS (Bias Evaluation and Assessment Test Suite, arXiv), SHARP (Social Harm Analysis via Risk Profiles for Measuring Inequities in Large Language Models, arxic) and contributor to MIT Science Policy Review. Strong data science background with hands-on model development, evaluation, and quantization.

AI/ML Productization

Designing, building, and shipping AI-powered products. Operationalizing classical ML, LLMs, RAG, and agentic workflows with a focus on scalability, performance, and enterprise adoption. Experienced in training, fine-tuning, and deploying models into production.

Data Platforms & APIs

Architecting multi-tenant medallion data platforms, developer-first APIs, and secure data services for enterprise SaaS. Expertise in data pipelines, governance, and modern lakehouse/streaming architectures.

Product Strategy & Leadership

Expert in the full spectrum of product management— from vision, strategy, and roadmap planning to requirements, feature prioritization, and pricing. Skilled in market research, competitive analysis, and positioning, with a track record of using design thinking and human-centered design to deliver differentiated products. Experienced in bridging data science, AI/ML, and modern data platforms with business strategy to drive adoption and growth in enterprise SaaS.

Industry Thought Leadership Articles

Industry thought leadership in AI, data platforms, product innovation, and technology strategy

IndustryIndustry Article
How to Avoid Common Pitfalls in AI-Focused Products
Alok Abhishek
IEEE Computer Society2024
Identifies and provides solutions for the most common challenges faced when developing AI-focused products, from technical implementation to user experience design.
AI ProductsProduct ManagementRisk ManagementBest Practices
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IndustryIndustry Article
AI's Potential: Creating a Framework for Driving Product Innovation
Alok Abhishek
TechStrong AI2024
Explores how organizations can harness AI's transformative potential by establishing structured frameworks that drive meaningful product innovation and competitive advantage.
AI StrategyProduct InnovationFrameworkDigital Transformation
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IndustryIndustry Article
Technical and Strategic Best Practices for Building Robust Data Platforms
Alok Abhishek
DATAVERSITY2024
Comprehensive guide covering both technical implementation and strategic considerations for building scalable, robust data platforms that support enterprise-wide analytics and AI initiatives.
Data PlatformsEnterprise ArchitectureBest PracticesData Strategy
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Research

Published research papers in AI fairness, bias evaluation, and governance frameworks

Published Research

AcademicPreprintPublished
SHARP: Social Harm Analysis via Risk Profiles for Measuring Inequities in Large Language Models
Alok Abhishek
arXiv preprint2026
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in high-stakes domains, where rare but severe failures can result in irreversible harm. However, prevailing evaluation benchmarks often reduce complex social risk to mean-centered scalar scores, thereby obscuring distributional structure, cross-dimensional interactions, and worst-case behavior. This paper introduces Social Harm Analysis via Risk Profiles (SHARP), a framework for multidimensional, distribution-aware evaluation of social harm. SHARP models harm as a multivariate random variable and integrates explicit decomposition into bias, fairness, ethics, and epistemic reliability with a union-of-failures aggregation reparameterized as additive cumulative log-risk. The framework further employs risk-sensitive distributional statistics, with Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR95) as a primary metric, to characterize worst-case model behavior. Application of SHARP to eleven frontier LLMs, evaluated on a fixed corpus of n=901 socially sensitive prompts, reveals that models with similar average risk can exhibit more than twofold differences in tail exposure and volatility. Across models, dimension-wise marginal tail behavior varies systematically across harm dimensions, with bias exhibiting the strongest tail severities, epistemic and fairness risks occupying intermediate regimes, and ethical misalignment consistently lower; together, these patterns reveal heterogeneous, model-dependent failure structures that scalar benchmarks conflate. These findings indicate that responsible evaluation and governance of LLMs require moving beyond scalar averages toward multidimensional, tail-sensitive risk profiling.
Social harm evaluation in LLMs, Large language modelsRisk-sensitive model selectionEvaluation for high-stakes domainsMultidimensional harm decompositionGeometric harm aggregationWorst-case behavior in LLMsAlgorithmic biasFairness in machine learning
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AcademicPreprintPublished
BEATS: Bias Evaluation and Assessment Test Suite for Large Language Models
Alok Abhishek
arXiv preprint2025
In this research, we introduce BEATS, a novel framework for evaluating Bias, Ethics, Fairness, and Factuality in Large Language Models (LLMs). Building upon the BEATS framework, we present a bias benchmark for LLMs that measure performance across 29 distinct metrics. These metrics span a broad range of characteristics, including demographic, cognitive, and social biases, as well as measures of ethical reasoning, group fairness, and factuality related misinformation risk. These metrics enable a quantitative assessment of the extent to which LLM generated responses may perpetuate societal prejudices that reinforce or expand systemic inequities. To achieve a high score on this benchmark a LLM must show very equitable behavior in their responses, making it a rigorous standard for responsible AI evaluation. Empirical results based on data from our experiment show that, 37.65% of outputs generated by industry leading models contained some form of bias, highlighting a substantial risk of using these models in critical decision making systems. BEATS framework and benchmark offer a scalable and statistically rigorous methodology to benchmark LLMs, diagnose factors driving biases, and develop mitigation strategies. With the BEATS framework, our goal is to help the development of more socially responsible and ethically aligned AI models.
AI FairnessBias DetectionLLM Evaluation BenchmarkEvaluation Framework
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AcademicJournal ArticlePublished
Data and AI governance: Promoting equity, ethics, and fairness in large language models
Alok Abhishek
MIT Science Policy Review2025
In this paper, we cover approaches to systematically govern, assess and quantify bias across the complete life cycle of machine learning models, from initial development and validation to ongoing production monitoring and guardrail implementation. Building upon our foundational work on the Bias Evaluation and Assessment Test Suite (BEATS) for Large Language Models, the authors share prevalent bias and fairness related gaps in Large Language Models (LLMs) and discuss data and AI governance framework to address Bias, Ethics, Fairness, and Factuality within LLMs. The data and AI governance approach discussed in this paper is suitable for practical, real-world applications, enabling rigorous benchmarking of LLMs prior to production deployment, facilitating continuous real-time evaluation, and proactively governing LLM generated responses. By implementing the data and AI governance across the life cycle of AI development, organizations can significantly enhance the safety and responsibility of their GenAI systems, effectively mitigating risks of discrimination and protecting against potential reputational or brand-related harm. Ultimately, through this article, we aim to contribute to advancement of the creation and deployment of socially responsible and ethically aligned generative artificial intelligence powered applications.
AI GovernanceEthicsPolicyGenAI GovernanceFairness
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Talks & Presentations

Industry presentations on Product Management, AI, productive AI, trustworthy AI, responsible AI and data platform. Watch embedded videos and explore detailed insights from each speaking engagement.

Technical Talk⭐ Featured
When Bias Goes Viral: Protecting Your Brand from Biases in Generative AI
August 24, 2025
San Francisco, CA
ACM Professional Members and AI Practitioners
San Francisco Bay Area Professional Chapter of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)
Explored the critical risks of bias in generative AI systems and provided practical strategies for organizations to protect their brand reputation while deploying AI technologies responsibly.
Trustworthy AIAI ProductizationAI BiasBrand ProtectionGenerative AIGuardrails
Industry Interview⭐ Featured
How Aderant Builds Trustworthy AI
April 28, 2025
Virtual
Legal Technology Professionals
Aderant Studio A
In-depth discussion about Aderant's approach to building trustworthy AI systems for legal professionals, covering technical implementation, ethical considerations, and real-world deployment strategies.
AI Powered ProductAI Product LeadershipTrustworthy AILegal TechnologyHuman Centric AIEthics

Interested in Having Me Speak?

I'm available for conferences, workshops, and corporate events. Let's discuss how I can contribute to your next event.

Invite Me to Speak

Interested in Collaborating?

I engage with product leaders, founders, and researchers in a pro bono capacity, contributing to open research discussions, industry thought leadership, and exploratory collaboration on AI-driven products and data platforms. My focus is on advancing shared understanding in AI-powered product design, data platforms, and applied AI strategy.

Let's Connect
Whether you're a recruiter, collaborator, or just curious about my work, I'd love to hear from you.