“We are underfunded, and we are exhausted. Women [in AI] do not want private jets and yachts but definitely, a staff,” explained Mia Shah-Dand in a recent interview with AIM. “There is an imbalance in how the money is distributed. It is a vicious cycle of men getting more attention, hence more funding,” the founder of the Women in AI Ethics initiative added.
Notably, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has asked for a $7 trillion investment to build the future of AI collectively. The number is unfathomable and makes one wonder if it’s just another episode of Altman messing around. But then, what could the potential investors from the Middle East and Southeast Asia be talking about to the OpenAI founder?
“Funding shifts the power dynamic,” Dand firmly stated.
She mentioned Altman’s fame: “He is talked about because he has the power of a multibillion-dollar company. Likewise, there are so many women doing great work. Even though their work is lauded, the money lands in the hands of the men in the field,” she said.
The (uncomfortable) truth is: Female-founded AI startups get just 2% of funding deals (at least in the UK).
Fortunately, in the US, the scene is changing gradually as AI companies with at least one female founder have steadily increased over the past few years, according to Crunchbase data. But usually, all-women teams are much, much lesser, as per the report. Platforms giving a voice to these women building technology have certainly helped.
One of them is WAIE, which Dand started when she realised only women were talking about AI ethics, and nobody was talking to those women doing all this work. “Fast forward to five years later, everybody’s talking about AI ethics and putting it in the label,” she pointed out.
The problem persists since everybody has started talking about ethical technology rather than people like Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, who were fired, Dand mentioned. The team of AI ethicists co-led by Gebru were forced out of Google four years ago for writing a research paper about the risks of large language models.
The team also worked on groundbreaking research that showed facial recognition to be less accurate at identifying women and people of colour, which means its use can end up discriminating against them. Half a decade later, the companies have also started working on the issues and continue to sift through.
“If we can’t survive today, how are we even going to make it to the existential future that these tech billionaires are planning?” she chuckled. “We have a long time to go in AI when robots come to life, and you’ll surely go to Mars. But for the average person, AI is in a surveillance camera on the street,” Dand added.
“The fact that they can’t get hired or get a kidney transplant depends on an algorithm. You can’t even find love without an algorithm today,” she laughed, albeit apprehensively.
Change the Narrative
The New York Times’ list of the who’s who of AI, where only a dozen men were named, is a classic example of sidelining female researchers in AI. The issue is stubborn since several researchers have been deprived of credit for their work across history.
“You have to give credit where it’s due,” Dand asserted. Disserting how the media covers AI researchers, Dand noted, “When men are interviewed, they are not asked questions as a father or a brother; they assume by default men are the expert. Women must work much harder to be acknowledged and perceived as experts.”
The white guy problem is not a new phenomenon in the companies of the Bay Area. “There’s a tendency that if a man does something it’s for everybody, right to all humanity. Women doing something are pigeonholed,” Dand said. “There are two things: acknowledgement and changing the narrative that women are working only on women’s issues,” she suggested.
Focus on Deepfakes
Speaking about the most problematic tech for women today, Dand points to deepfakes. “We are talking about it, but no investments or enough work is being done in that space,” she said.
“Taylor Swift was a high profile example, but there’s more out there who are not Swift, and AI is being weaponised against them,” she rightly said, since women are targeted even more often than politicians through deepfakes.
Advising about how to address the challenges, the tech entrepreneur said, “Institutions can play a huge role.” She added that these institutions must become more than an extension of the tech companies and drive their agenda where the whole space becomes problematic and lacks development.
At the end of the interview, Dand suggested that “Women should make individual progress but also give back to the community. Sometimes, there is an expectation that if you’re a woman who has made it in the field, you can’t go back and help others because of favouritism. I would encourage them not to worry. People underestimate the power of solidarity.”
The post What do Women in AI Really Want? appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.
