AMMAN: Material being produced by artificial intelligence tools is helping to perpetuate gender stereotypes, according to a representative of the UN’s gender equality entity.
In an interview with Arab News, Nicolas Burniat, UN women Jordan country representative, spoke about how AI technology can only be as good as the data that is being fed into it.
He said: “The reality is that the data, the materials that are being used and processed by AI tools, include a lot of gender stereotypes and is generally biased towards dominant Western patriarchal perspectives.
“Whatever material is being produced by the AI tools based on that imperfect data is therefore going to be imperfect. It is actually just going to repeat and really propagate those imperfections, including all the stereotypes, gender-based and others, that it contains.”
One example, he said, is how AI tools will translate a word such as nurse into a feminine noun for non-gender neutral languages, whereas doctor will be translated into a masculine noun.
He added: “We need to ensure that data that is being produced around the world better reflects the various realities of people, whether we are talking about women, persons living with disabilities, people of different ethnic or socio-economic (backgrounds).
“What we need going forward is to improve the quality of the data in the world and make sure that men and women are a part of the change.
“In addition, we need the AI algorithms to be developed in a way that compensates for this imperfection of the data, to ensure that they don’t reproduce stereotypes and biases and potentially lead to further discrimination.”
In addition, Burniat spoke about how children and young people should be educated about the best ways to use AI tools.
He said: “The jobs of tomorrow are not going to be the same as the jobs of today, for both boys and girls. So they need to be fully digitally savvy and literate. But we need to help them use this in a wise manner and in a smart manner, because otherwise we're basically just going to look at a future world that reproduces the inequalities and discriminations of today.”
Jana Krimpe, CEO of B.EST Solutions, shared a similar sentiment during a panel discussion with Burniat at the International Digital Cooperation Forum in Amman, Jordan, on Wednesday.
Krimpe spoke of her decision to switch career paths from political science to tech, despite being informed that it was a male job.
Krimpe said: “If you are not investing into education, the result will be zero … You have to educate the whole society because everything is dependent.
“So, this is why women in leadership is extremely important. To go to face-to-face meetings, to the regions, to the rural areas, to the villages, and meet the families and children and bring the benefit of understanding how AI changes their lives.”
