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From left to right: Rachel Coldicutt, David Leslie, Rumman Chowdhury, Noura Al Moubayed and Wendy Hall<\/p>\n
Royal Society\/Debbie Rowe<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s day two of the Women and the future of science<\/a> conference at the Royal Society in London, but I\u2019m finding it increasingly hard to concentrate on the speakers because my AI<\/a> transcription software \u2013 which is supposed to make my life easier \u2013 keeps insisting on mistyping someone\u2019s name. For every mention of a Julie, it types out Julian. The irony isn\u2019t lost on me: this is the session about artificial intelligence, and specifically about how women are being erased from the latest AI technologies.<\/p>\n This is much bigger than the now-familiar idea that AI algorithms carry the biases of the datasets they are trained on<\/a>, including gender bias.<\/p>\n Instead, the focus of the conference session, chaired by computer scientist Wendy Hall<\/a>, is seeking to address a more fundamental issue: the fact that new AI technologies, which will have a transformative effect on all of society, are being designed almost exclusively by men.<\/p>\n Technology has always been an overwhelmingly male sector. In the UK, only 25 per cent of those studying computer science are women<\/a>. But in recent years \u2013 and while generative AI has blossomed \u2013 Silicon Valley has become increasingly hostile to women.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the past two years, there\u2019s been a regress,\u201d says David Leslie<\/a>, who is in charge of ethics and responsible innovation research at the Alan Turing Institute. \u201cThe question of whether the Trump administration has caused intergenerational damage to women in the sciences is undisputable. We are living through a time of backwards thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order targeting so-called woke AI, and recommended that the US National Institute of Standards and Technology revise its AI risk-management framework to \u201celiminate references to misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n One panellist, Rumman Chowdhury<\/a>, a data scientist and former US science envoy for artificial intelligence, was in charge of ethics and accountability at Twitter before Elon Musk took over and fired her team<\/a>. She points out that the concept of woke AI was born from misogynistic attitudes within Silicon Valley before Trump\u2019s order.<\/p>\n Asked by Hall to describe AI without women, several panellists argue that we are already there. \u201cI am in the world of frontier AI, and that is the world of AI without women,\u201d says Chowdhury. This is a sentiment echoed by Rachel Coldicutt<\/a>, who researches the social impacts of new and emerging technologies. \u201cIf we think about what the world looks like without women in AI, I think that\u2019s what we have at the moment. It\u2019s not fantasy at all.\u201d<\/p>\n It should go without saying: this matters. There is a long history of technologies being developed for men\u2019s bodies and needs, from crash test dummies to office air conditioning, astronauts\u2019 space suits<\/a> and the vast majority of medical research. This is known as the gender data gap, and the impacts can range from annoying to life-threatening.<\/p>\n AI will impact everything from the jobs we do to the way we educate our children and the diseases we can treat. But currently only 2 per cent of venture capital funding goes to women, Chowdhury points out. Meanwhile, less than 1 per cent<\/a> of healthcare research and innovation goes towards women\u2019s health conditions. \u201cWe need to make tech work for 8 billion people, not eight billionaires,\u201d says Coldicutt.<\/p>\n What\u2019s to be done? With hundreds of years of biased data baked into current AI models, Coldicutt doesn\u2019t believe it will be possible to correct them. \u201cWe need alternative models,\u201d she says. This is also a chance to shift the focus of what those models do. \u201cIt\u2019s about cultivating models\u2026 that prioritise care for people, for the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n Chowdhury, who has co-founded a non-profit called Humane Intelligence, which helps companies to make AI systems more accountable and fair, thinks part of the problem is that many of the current AI developments are built around a false sense of urgency, with a focus on the existential risk AI poses to jobs or even to humanity<\/a>. If the narrative is that your house is on fire, \u201cyou\u2019re not like, \u2018What happened to my mother\u2019s jewellery?\u2019,\u201d she says. If people feel as if they have no time, they will drop anything that feels extraneous, including diversity, she says.<\/p>\n As for the next generation, we need to address the economic and political framework through which AI is developed if we are going to encourage young people to develop AI for the social good, says Leslie: \u201cWe need to start with the basics, start with transforming the incentives.\u201d<\/p>\n