At the Business Day for Women in Vaduz, I gave a keynote speech on «AI – a curse or a blessing for gender equality» in front of over 500 women.
I began my speech with a reflection on my school days, where I became a radical feminist as early as the first grade. It happened the moment I discovered that girls had two more hours of lessons per week than boys – because of needlework. Back then, opportunities were clearly divided along gender lines!
From there, I moved on to the present, where gender equality is enshrined as an official sustainability goal (SDG No. 5), where technology is assigned a major role in achieving it, and where men who develop AI are winning Nobel Prizes.
Meanwhile, women remain underrepresented in the development, use, and often even in the datasets themselves. Does this mean «AI: By men, for men»? That won’t do.
The more we use AI in critical areas of life – where decisions are made about jobs, access to credit, housing, and more – the greater the disadvantage for women, as well as other historically marginalized groups. This is why we have a duty to intervene.
I concluded with a mini-manifesto, calling for gender equality through presence, through transparency, through competence, through resilience, and through defiance!
The applause and the cheering from the audience was overwhelming.
Interested in a keynote on AI and equal opportunities? Contact me»
Photo: Daniel Schwendener