These five are all male, and they all have their own interests, shareholders, agendas and egos. They include xAI CEO Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and the lesser-known CEO of Google DeepMind, Sir Demis Hassabis. <\/p>\n
Expand the list to the next ten, twenty or fifty most powerful people controlling the most consequential technology of our time, and you\u2019ll find they are almost all men.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This concentration of power in the hands of a self-interested few is something I want to highlight today to mark International Girls in ICT Day. <\/p>\n
First and foremost, to highlight the incredible imbalance of power that women and girls in these fields confront, with a tiny group of men ultimately defining the problems AI solves, who\u2019ll benefit first, the extent to which their tech will disrupt global order and the safety constraints they\u2019re willing to apply. The demi-god-like status these men have achieved also brings up far more terrifying, existential risks \u2014 but for now, let\u2019s consider some of the immediate challenges this concentrated power poses to women and girls generally, and then some of the key challenges affecting women and girls\u2019 participation in tech, especially in AI. <\/p>\n
The first challenge is economic chaos, as I\u2019ve written about previously. The great AI jobs displacement is already here, and women are most at risk<\/a>. Countless reports highlight how women are over-represented in roles most exposed to generative AI disruption, yet are underrepresented among the key AI researchers building these tools.\u00a0Women are also up against an AI adoption gap, with recent LeanIn research finding men are 23 per cent more likely than women to be encouraged by their managers to use AI. \u00a0<\/p>\n The second challenge is agency, and how few women are represented at the tables of influence, making decisions affecting all of us. Trump\u2019s recently created Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology provides an excellent example.<\/a> It excludes AI safety researchers, ethicists, and related academic and civil society voices \u2013 areas of AI where women are actually far better represented. Most of the demi-gods of AI got themselves a seat. <\/p>\n The third challenge is, of course, the issue of the all-out war on women and girls occurring as we speak by way of online abuse and deepfakes that overwhelmingly target more women than men, and how the online abuse of women in power has a detrimental effect not only on the women targeted but also on any woman or girl who seeks to emulate what they\u2019ve achieved.\u00a0<\/p>\n A final biggie is the impact of AI \u2014 including the concentration of power in the hands of men like those above \u2014 on our democratic institutions. Increasingly autocratic governments like to take on basic rights of women and girls, including healthcare, while unemployment and economic turmoil have a history of pushing voters to turn to extremes. Meanwhile, the ease of creating deepfakes and other AI-generated content to spread lies during election campaigns is also contributing. <\/p>\n Now, back to the issue of women and girls in ICT.\u00a0<\/p>\n For years now, we\u2019ve been encouraging women and girls into tech-related roles through programs that get girls coding and excited about the industry\u2019s potential.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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