AI biweekly: We need Women in AI

Dear Artificial Intelligence Enthusiasts,

Women represent only 15% of the world's data scientists. We must act now: the professional future of a whole generation of women is at stake.

One thing is for certain: programming and AI jobs will represent the majority of jobs in the next decade.

So what can be done?

1. We need to raise awareness. We need to let people know that in our high schools, in our companies, the people in charge of the programming and AI fields are well on the way to excluding women – not on purpose, but still! A BCG study shows that the main obstacle to women's interest in these professions is the overly masculine culture of the teams, which leads to excessive competitiveness through Kaggle rankings (a platform for "data science" challenges) and to an overly strong emphasis on theoretical prowess to the detriment of real-world effects.
2. We must fight this in our everyday actions. There are a lot of initiatives – e.g. "Women Who Code", or Berkeley's "The Beauty and Joy of Computing" course, but we can also act on an individual level: simply by paying special attention to training, recruitment, and support for women in these professions.

This battle is less a symbolic one, but one that must be fought for certain professions that used to be reserved for men; it is a matter of protecting the professional future of a whole generation of women who will be entering the job market.

At the global level, the proportion of female parliamentarians has doubled in less than ten years in the world's top 20 countries. Let's also take up the challenge for programming and artificial intelligence!

At BCG GAMMA, we recently announced our BCG GAMMA Mentorship Program for female data science students to support young women in this field. This is not enough – but it is an important part of the story we can write.

Until next time,

Sylvain Duranton

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More articles to read:

Women need to take the lead in internet governance

Baratang Miya, the founder of GirlHype, spoke with the World Economic Forum to address how empowering more women at every level of internet governance will be critical in addressing systemic biases that exist in artificial intelligence models. - World Economic Forum

Advice for Women in STEM

BCG GAMMA’s CTO Andrea Gallego talks about her shares advice for other aspiring women in STEM in the hope that they too may find their calling. – careers.bcg.com

Gender Bias in Recruitment: How AI hiring tools are hindering Women’s Careers

The odds are still stacked against women's success in the workplace, and artificial intelligence (AI) is only making it worse, a new report released on Tuesday claims. Because algorithms used in human resources systems are built on historical data reflecting past bias against women in the workplace, they tend to disadvantage women throughout their careers. – euronews.com

Using AI to deliver more inclusive biographical content on Wikipedia

Meta AI research scientist Angela Fan points out that of all the English-language biographies on Wikipedia, just 20% are about women. To address this imbalance, the Meta AI team announced it has developed an AI model that can automatically research and draft high-quality biographical articles on important, real-world figures. - Meta AI Blog

Timnit Gebru is part of a wave of Black women working to change AI

NBC News profiles the current work of Timnit Gebru. She has launched the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), which has received funding from the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation, and will be a “space for independent, community-rooted AI research.” - NBC News

How Native Americans Are Trying to Debug A.I.’s Biases

Experts say AI tools lack the training data needed to understand the cultural meaning of images, recipes, and other data concerning underrepresented cultures. A new tech startup, Intelligent Voices of Wisom, is working to both preserve indigenous culture through A.I., in addition to helping solve systemic biases. - The New York Times

Google’s Sundar Pichai says tech is a powerful agent for change

Google’s Sundar Pichar has said artificial intelligence is a profound technology “as important or more than fire and electricity.” - MIT Sloan

Twitter Bot Highlights Gender Pay Gap One Company at a Time

A creative utilization of data mining and automated content creation resulted in a viral Twitter account that shed light on gender pay gaps. Britain requires companies with 250 or more employees to report gender pay gap data, and on International Women’s Day, one couple used it to raise awareness about lingering discrepancies. – The New York Times