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A24 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 14 december 2018

Artificial intelligence’s rise exposes gaping gender gap

By MATT O’BRIEN than 2,000 attendees —
AP Technology Writer mostly men — that found
The challenges of making most were OK with it. That
the technology industry led Anandkumar to start a
a more welcoming place Twitter hashtag to step up
for women are numerous, the pressure.
especially in the booming Katherine Heller, a Duke
field of artificial intelligence. professor and Google re-
To get a sense of just how searcher who helps lead
monumental a task the a new conference com-
tech community faces, mittee on diversity and
look no further than the inclusivity, said it helped
marquee gathering for that some of the industry’s
AI’s top scientists. Prepara- leaders also weighed in.
tions for this year’s event Google AI chief Jeff Dean,
drew controversy not only for instance, tweeted that
because there weren’t “enough people are made
enough female speakers or to feel uncomfortable by
study authors. the current name.”
The biggest debate was The conference board re-
over the conference’s lented and announced on
name. Nov. 16 that the new ac-
The annual Conference ronym would be NeurIPS.
and Workshop on Neu- It urged participants to re-
ral Information Processing spect it and get back to
Systems, formerly known focusing “on science and
as NIPS, had become a ideas.”
punchline symbol about Organizers moved the con-
just how bad the gender ference to a new web-
imbalance is for artificial site, printed new signs and
intelligence. Thousands of booklets and hired a brand-
AI researchers convened in ing company to design a
Montreal last week under a new logo, though the tran-
slightly tweaked banner — In this July 12, 2004, file photo, a woman holds a hearing aid that uses artificial intelligence in sition isn’t complete. At the
NeurIPS — but with many of Somerset, N.J. same time, it offered more
the same problems still un- Associated Press amenities — such as child
der the surface. event for women in ma- for instance, to a nurse as “This name change has care — and more panels
AI’s challenge reflects a chine learning. “her” and an engineer as opened up so many of the devoted to addressing bias
broader lack of diversity in AI systems look for patterns “him.” The company said issues that women and mi- and inclusion — both in the
the tech industry. At major in huge troves of data — it ended up removing all norities face in tech,” said industry and the technol-
tech companies, women such as what we say to our gender pronouns before longtime conference at- ogy it creates.
account for 20 percent voice assistants or what launching the feature in tendee Animashree Anan- The changes prompted
or fewer of the engineer- images we post on social May. dkumar, who directs ma- Anandkumar to tweet that
ing and computing roles. media. These systems can And while a growing num- chine-learning research at she experienced a “feeling
By some accounts, AI’s share the same gender ber of researchers and chipmaker Nvidia. of belonging” for the first
gender imbalance is even or racial prejudices found product designers are de- Startup booths hawked time in years. She said she
worse: One estimate by there. voting attention to solving T-shirts and other promo- hopes it signals a “return of
startup incubator Element Such misfires have increas- these problems, Wallach tional freebies with sexist civility” to the field.
AI shows women making ingly attracted attention. said it didn’t help to have slogans riffing off the acro- Heather Ames Versace,
up just 13 percent of the AI A rogue Microsoft chatbot an “off-putting” name mar- nym. The connotations be- who had criticized the
workforce in the U.S. spouted sexist and rac- ring an important gathering came more problematic board for being “tone
The challenge has reper- ist remarks. A Google app for sharing new research as the conference attract- deaf,” said the rebrand-
cussions far beyond career to match selfies to famous and recruiting new people. ed corporate giants like ing will help change the
recruitment. Artificial intel- works of mostly Western art The conference dates Google, Amazon, Microsoft world’s perception of the
ligence and a self-training lumped many non-whites back to 1986 and the and Facebook as sponsors tech industry and encour-
discipline known as ma- into the same exoticized name didn’t raise as many and attendees — and tried age young women to join
chine learning can mimic figures. In another example, eyebrows for its first few to promote more women it. Versace, co-founder of
the biases of their human a study looking at several decades, especially with and other underrepresent- AI startup Neurala, said
creators as they make their prominent AI systems for even fewer women work- ed groups in its ranks. that despite improvements,
way into consumer prod- recognizing faces showed ing in tech. Conference leaders this a lot more needs to be
ucts and everyday life. that they performed far But as the nerdy summit’s year acknowledged “in- done to make AI reflective
“The more diversity we better on lighter-skinned headcount and its public cidents of insensitivity at of society, not just the small
have in machine learning, men than darker-skinned reputation exploded in re- past conferences” and is- group of people working
the better job we will do women. cent years, the nickname sued stricter rules banning on it.
in creating products that This year, Google tests of became increasingly em- harassment, bullying and “With AI, we’re creating
don’t discriminate,” said an email feature designed barrassing. Critics said it sexualized clothing and ac- technologies that learn
Hanna Wallach, a Micro- to predict what someone added to a hostile environ- tivities. and make decisions in the
soft researcher who is a se- wants to write turned up ment that for some women But they resisted chang- real world,” Versace said.
nior program chairwoman evidence that its algo- also included unwelcome ing the name as recently “We need to make sure
of the conference and co- rithms were making biased advances and other forms as October, when they re- they represent a diverse set
founder of an associated assumptions — referring, of harassment. leased a survey of more of opinions.”q