Most experts agree that AI will revolutionize the workplace. What's less clear is whether it will be for better or worse.
Many of these same experts argue that although machine learning will automate many tasks currently done by humans, it will also create a number of new roles.
But if AI is really going to do more good than harm, we need to diversify the brains behind it.
As Artificial Intelligence Reporter Karen Hao explains, the AI industry has a severe lack of diversity:
- "Women account for only 18% of authors at leading AI conferences, 20% of AI professorships, and 15% and 10% of research staff at Facebook and Google, respectively.
- Racial diversity is even worse: black workers represent only 2.5% of Google's entire workforce and 4% of Facebook's and Microsoft's."
Why does this matter? We know all too well how technology designed by and for one small group can end up hurting the rest of us.
As Hao points out, AI has already succumb to several of its creators biases:
- Devaluing women's résumés
- Perpetuating employment and housing discrimination
- Enshrining racist policing practices and prison convictions
We should be using AI to build a better and more inclusive workplace, not to further enshrine the biases of the white men who have the privilege of creating it.
Curious about the world we could create with more diverse minds shaping the future of AI?
- Check out Valla Vikili's latest for Quartz, "The future of work will be far less frightening when there's more women in AI"
- Join us FRIDAY. 9/27to learn how you can use AI for good at work. Just educating yourself about AI and its potential is a great first step in ensuring it's used fairly (even if you're not going to make a career pivot into machine learning anytime soon).
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