There Is a Telling Difference Between How Male and Female AI Trailblazers Choose to Harness Its Power
The difference is saddening, but not surprising
I’m hardly surprised the recent New York Times’s list of who’s-who-in-AI didn’t include any women. Ignoring women’s contributions to tech is nothing new.
What did surprise me was what I noticed when I read Séphora Bemba’s female-forward alternative list — 12 female trailblazers in AI.
In short, the men on the New York Times list want to use AI for the gain of themselves and their companies.
Whereas the women on Séphora’s list want to use AI to make the world a better place.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. Women live in an unfair world. It stands to reason we would be more willing to use AI to break down that unfairness.
If we want AI to shape a world that works best for all humans — not only robots, men, or the privileged few — we need more women fighting the good AI fight.
Because who else is going to do it?
What do Page, Musk, and Zuckerberg all have in common?
Besides all being featured in the original NYT list, between them, Larry Page, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg own the five most visited websites in the world.
They run this planet. If they want AI to thrive, it probably will.
Add in the nine other men on the list and you’ve got power that could rival the Illuminati.
The problem is that these men — and the companies they run — are not exactly known for their altruistic tendencies. And they are definitely known for chasing the cash at the expense of humankind. As ex-data lead at Facebook Jeff Hamerbacher once said:
The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.
Can you trust these companies with AI technology? Technology that has more power than we potentially know how to control?
Probably not.
It’s already documented that AI is becoming more secretive. Top-dog companies don’t want to reveal their AI secrets for fear of the competition stealing their models. In a recent Stanford study of the top 10 large language AI models in existence, none of them scored more than 54% on the transparency scale.
It seems companies don’t care about transparency if there’s money to be made and power to be grabbed.
So it’s no surprise that the New York Times list included peppy little anecdotes like how Bill Gates was skeptical of AI until he saw it in action when he changed his mind and “aggressively” capitalised on it.
And whilst the list included some of the big players’ worries about the direction of AI — Elon Musk, Dario Amodei and Eliezer Yudkowsky have all voiced concerns — it’s hardly filled with men ensuring checks and balances.
Which is entirely different from the female-led list.
Many of these women want to use AI for the good of mankind, not just for lining their already over-stuffed pockets.
Women like Joy Buolamwini whose company Algorithmic Justice League says technology should serve all of us, not just the privileged few.
Like Francesca Rossi, a leader in AI ethics.
Like Dr. Daphne Koller who leads AI-driven drug discovery.
Like Fei-Fei Li who runs AI4ALL which aims to create a more inclusive, human-centered discipline.
It’s long concerned me that AI is being used to take over things we love and get value from — like creating art, music and writing — whilst humans keep all the crappy jobs. As satirist Karl Sharro said:
Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and paint is not the future I wanted.
(Thanks to Katie Jgln for bringing this quote to my attention.)
The women contributing to AI make me a little less concerned because they seem to genuinely want to harness AI for good and drive humankind forward. Despite my technological reservations, I’m all for AI being used to make the world more inclusive or assist in drug discovery or medical procedures. I’m just not keen on it replacing creative work like my own as a human writer with human opinions.
Whether you believe in AI or not, it’s likely here to stay, but the direction in which it will go is still up for grabs. Will it be used to line the pockets of the privileged few or will it be used to make the world a better place?
I want to be optimistic and say the latter, but that will only happen if these women — and people like them — continue to fight the good fight.
And fight they must, because there is a significant AI gender gap. One that won’t close with silence.
The AI gender gap is real
Would it surprise you to learn that women are much more skeptical of AI than men?
Only 42% of women say they believe technology has a positive effect on society compared to 54% of men. They’re less likely to be excited about the advancement of AI in daily life as well as being more skeptical of AI medical diagnoses, driverless cars, and confidence in AI being able to perform repetitive workplace tasks.
If you’re a woman, this won’t be a surprise at all.
Women have been disadvantaged by almost everything in the world, from medical advancements to smartphones to car safety. Why would AI be any different?
Women are right to be concerned because AI poses disproportionate risks to women.
Studies suggest that it’s women who are more likely to lose their jobs to AI.
AI is responsible for deep fake revenge porn, most of which is targeted at women.
And it’s proven that large language models perpetuate gender stereotypes, which is no surprise considering they learn by scraping the male-biased internet.
The AI gender gap is real so it’s no surprise that women are the ones leading the charge in AI ethics and good-for-humanity uses.
If it was all left to the big, powerful men in the New York Times list and their version of the world, we women could face a very bleak future indeed.
We don’t need more men making future-of-AI decisions based on money and power. We need more women making future-of-AI decisions based on ethics, morals, and empathy.
This is why women have to occupy space in the AI world. And it’s why it’s maddening to not see women in that New York Times list. They are there, and they are doing good work, but articles like these bury that work. If no one sees how women are tirelessly working to keep the AI narrative human-centric, it can push the narrative in a different direction.
One that is far less ethically and empathatically led.
Which is no good for any human alive, he, she, and they alike.
The New York Times list pushes a stereotypical narrative of AI. That it’s aggressive. Male. Money-driven. For the privileged.
It doesn’t have to be like this. It shouldn’t.
To keep AI away from the scarier parts of its power — taking all the good creative jobs, deepfake porn, deepfake news, and social manipulation to name a few — it needs checks and balances.
Women in AI are doing more for that than anyone else right now.
That’s not to say all women are in AI for altruistic reasons or all men are in it for selfish ones. But there are trends to suggest that it does run along those lines. The New York Times vs. Séphora Bemba’s list is a great example.
I’m not surprised women are more cautious of AI. I’m not surprised they talk more about ethics and restraint. About using it for education, inclusivity, and diversity. We live in a world that isn’t built for us, so, of course, we would be more interested in how AI can help close the gaps.
AI doesn’t have to be one big tech-bro love-in. It doesn’t have to be for the privileged. It doesn’t have to be used as a money-making machine. It doesn’t have to be male-biased.
It could be so much more than that.
Female AI trailblazers are how we’ll make it so.
