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Katya Moskalenko, product marketing manager at London-based Measure Protocol, is sounding the alarm that artificial intelligence might have a negative impact on the existing gender gap in the tech industry. Although it creates a world of exciting possibilities, it also creates — almost inherently — risks of bias and exclusion.
Avoiding those traps, she told us, will require “a whole chain of decisions and strategies such as ensuring diverse datasets, ensuring diverse teams, ensuring ethical considerations in any AI-powered solutions.”
There’s a long way to go. Moskalenko quotes World Economic Forum data from 2021 suggesting that only 26% of data and AI positions are held by women; there’s little reason to suppose that that statistic has dramatically improved.
It’s going to be a long journey
Katya admits there’s no magic fix for this. “We can’t solve everything at once,” she said. “It’s going to be a long path in order to ensure that AI is serving all individuals. By having a more balanced representation, we can ensure that all new technologies, including AI, are inclusive and unbiased by design.”
But the time to start is now. It sometimes seems like every company, big and small, has a team developing new AI-powered solutions — from Adobe and AirBnB to small start-ups, she said.
“So the first thing is, let’s diversify teams with more women, with more people of color, with more minority groups to ensure a diverse and inclusive perspective,” she continued. “Also, let’s be sure that we have datasets
Read more here: https://martech.org/why-women-must-have-a-voice-at-the-ai-table/