If you’re not utilizing women leaders in AI, you’re just not looking hard enough.
By David Polgar
Let’s cut to the chase: there are a significant amount of women leaders in AI, but you might not see this if you are laser-focused on the bruhaha around Open AI (in this case, Humpty Dumpty was able to be put back together again courtesy of Microsoft’s glue). A widely-shared piece in the Guardian, reacting to Open AI’s board losing two female members and being replaced by two men asked,
Where are all the ‘godmothers’ of AI? Women’s voices are not being heard
Short answer: There are numerous women leaders in AI. Are you listening to them?
As the Founder and President of All Tech Is Human, a non-profit designed to tackle complex tech & society issues, I have witnessed firsthand just how many women in AI are inspiring the next generation. People like Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, Ruha Benjamin, Dr. Joy Buolamwini, Meredith Broussard, Timnit Gebru, Cathy O’Neil, and Renée Cummings (Senior Fellow at All Tech Is Human), and countless others. For the most extensive list, I would recommend Mia Dand’s 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics, which has published a yearly list since 2018 (our own Rebekah Tweed, Exec Director at All Tech Is Human, was named on the list recently). There are hundreds of individuals in this database, and if they are missing a key leader you can nominate one.
Why are many women in AI sometimes overlooked at events, news stories, boards, and general awareness?
In my opinion, there are two main reasons for this:
Sometimes people are just not looking hard enough. It is necessary to bust outside of your social bubble in order to expose yourself to the many communities related to Responsible AI. You also have to have diversity as a value of your org or event in order to view a non-diverse panel as incomplete and wrongheaded.
There are major divisions within the worlds of Responsible AI and AI Safety. Quite simply, there is an obvious difference in the makeup of the people advocating for reducing current and short-term harms and those focused on existential risks.
As Dr. Joy Buolamwini mentioned in this fireside chat with Sinead Bovell that we held at Ford Foundation recently, what if men are more interested in the existential risks of AI because they fear being marginalized in the future? Communities that have been historically marginalized are seeing problems around algorithmic bias and dark patterns impact them NOW through hiring decisions, how products work (or don’t), perpetuating stereotypes through representation, and more.
Watch a clip above
In order words, one crowd is focused on theoretical problems in the distant future, and the other group is focused on the problems of AI today. We erase the voices of numerous women in AI when we solely focus on the sexiness of Singularity as opposed to current issues around facial recognition, sentencing, predictive analytics, and more. It is always going to be more fun to wax poetic about the Trolley Problem than it is to face current issues that require us to tackle social problems not just technical ones.
📖 Feel like reading a good book? Here are ten books from leading women in AI
Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble
Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford
Automating Inequality by Virginia Eubanks
Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock
More Than A Glitch by Meredith Broussard
Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin
Technically Wrong by Sara Wachter-Boettcher
Unmasking AI by Dr. Joy Buolamwini
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil
Your Face Belongs To Us by Kashmir Hill