Being a female in this world is a tough thing. Since we are born we are labeled by who we are and what we are supposed to do and can’t do. Society prejudices have given us a hard time.
And today we hope that technology won’t treat us the same. But are we keeping our hopes high ?
The Rapid technological change is the most controversial issue nowadays. Simply because STI is threatening to eliminate more than 75 million jobs by 2020, which causes humans to worry about their future. And they have the right to do so…
We are heading towards a future that is new to most of us. So we think we are going to lose in this war; the war between humans and Robots. My short answer is no, no we aren’t going to lose. As 133 new job opportunities will be created.
If you are equipped with the skills that is needed in this digital era, then you are on the safe side. But, what if you aren’t? Worse, what if who you are makes it difficult to transition smoothly to the tech generation?
Looking at the present situation of girls in STEM I believe that the gender gap will not only harm their chances of acquiring the necessary knowledge to sustain their careers but will bias the algorithms that are currently being designed and will eventually exclude females from everything, from which: starting a career during the digital era.
As an example, of the bias that is affecting Machine Learning we may highlight the algorithm that was developed by Amazon to recruit employees. The former was found to eliminate female candidates just based on their gender. Amazon’s computer models were trained to vet applicants by observing patterns in resumes submitted to the company over a 10-year period. Most came from men, a reflection of male dominance across the tech industry.
“We often assume machines are neutral, but they aren’t.” Joy Buolamwini
This dominance led to first reduce the amount of high quality female based data, second having less women to speak out when computer models are made and as a result we and up with machines manipulated by men. And one of the results is having machines incapable of distinguishing the gender of well known celebrities.
“When technology denigrates even these iconic women, it is time to re-examine how these systems are built and who they truly serve.”
The question now is how can we prepare for an era that is going to include everyone. There are numerous of answers for this question. However, the short answer is education. Educating the future generation. And the female employees to empower them in technology. If we want to have a non-sexist AI we should feed it a non-sexist Data.
Source:
Reuters: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women
Time: Artificial Intelligence Has a Problem With Gender and Racial Bias. Here’s How to Solve It
http://time.com/5520558/artificial-intelligence-racial-gender-bias/
UNCTAD: The need for an International Technology Assessment
https://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=2081
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