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- AI is fast becoming a part of our daily lives, but women are somewhat excluded, like many other tech careers.
- Research found that only 26% of data and AI roles are occupied by women.
- Lack of diversity can affect the result generated by AI.
- For more stories, visit the Tech and Trends homepage.
AI has become popular in our daily lives, but much like in many other technology fields, women are excluded to a large extent.
And, in AI, that discrimination can be harmful.
It's no secret that men outnumber women in many fields of technology, particularly in the workforce, education and research.
The 2022 Global Gender Gap Report found that the percentage of women who graduate in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is 1.7%, compared to 8.2% of men graduates.
In a 2020 report, the World Economic Forum found that women comprise only 26% of data and AI positions in the workforce.
On the other hand, the Stanford Institute for Human-Centred AI released a 2021 AI Index Report, which stated that women make up just 16% of tenure-track faculty focused on AI globally.
"As AI seeps further into every aspect of business and society, we cannot afford to ignore the gender conversation. Failing to address this issue risks entrenching discrimination and bias in our systems.
"Achieving this requires a thorough examination of the foundations of AI development, the data it relies on, and how we identify and tackle bias within its code," said Anna Collard, the SVP Content Strategy and Evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa.
Lack of diversity can affect AI
According to Gender Diversity in AI Research, the lack of diversity in AI is likely to cause gender discrimination in the results the tool generates.
"AI has the potential to transform our digital, physical and social environments in unprecedented ways and at an unprecedented speed. However, the same technologies can be used for mass surveillance, computational propaganda and biased, discriminating decision-making.
"It is generally believed that increasing the diversity of the workforce developing AI systems will reduce the risk that they generate discriminatory and unfair outcomes, thus ensuring that their benefits are more widely shared."
The danger of male-centric data
In a book, titled Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, the author, Caroline Criado Perez, said gender bias and discrimination are baked into our systems, where men are seen as the default and women as atypical.
The fact that world data is based largely on men, male bodies and male behaviours is likely to put their female counterparts at risk and in a life-threatening situation.
"As described in Perez's book, consider the alarming statistic that women are 47% more likely to sustain serious injuries in the same car accident as men, solely due to seatbelt designs based on male-centric data.
"Now, imagine replicating these biases across various layers of society and business using AI, and the implications become all too real," Collard said.
