It’s a divisive question. When KJR released this as the title for our panel event recently, we came up against strong opinions. Why is it just women? Why should men trust AI? Why should anyone trust AI? What do we even mean by ‘trust’. We were accused of taking too narrow of a focus, but in doing so, the questions erupted. The wheels turned in our attendees and peers alike, and the conversation has commenced. Just as we had hoped…
Our panel was held in conjunction with the Something Digital festival in Brisbane. We welcomed an intimate room, yes, predominantly female (on this occasion) to absorb the learnings and insights from three perspectives: the employer, Kelvin Ross from IntelliHQ; the mentor, Karolyn Gainfort from KJR, and the AI trailblazers, Beck Simpson from Maxwell Plus and Serena Mou, PhD student at Australian Centre for Robotic Vision. Here are some of the themes that arose:
The truth about biased data
Becks: Look at your data sets – are the outcomes skewed? If you put biased data in, you will get biased data out. If you know you’re working on something with previous bias, you need a process, so you don’t end up on the front page!
Karolyn: Do our teams have diversity? What risks do we face if they don’t? Organisations need to ask the question early. People generally have good intentions, they don’t set out to cause biased algorithms.
AI myths
Karolyn: It’s not just the math genius who can make an impact on the future of AI. Psychologists are going to be important, so are anthropologists. We need those research skills. Ask yourself, what is the contribution I can make to AI?