King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Launches “Dear AI” Campaign to Tackle Gender Bias in Artificial Intelligence

3/15/2023 4:46:09 AM

(MENAFN) King Abdullah University of Science and technology (KAUST) has launched the “Dear AI” campaign and hackathon to address gender bias and the under-representation of women in artificial intelligence (AI) software. The campaign was launched on International Women’s Day in an effort to increase awareness and promote change in the industry.

A recent search conducted by KAUST using an AI imaging software tool revealed that the prompts “imagine entrepreneur,” “imagine inventor,” and “imagine software engineer” returned an average of only one percent of women. This is despite the fact that globally, women represent one in three early-stage entrepreneurs and 20 percent of computer scientists. In Saudi Arabia, 45 percent of startups are owned by women.

According to Jurgen Schmidhuber, KAUST professor of computer science and director of the KAUST AI Initiative, “Gender bias is a well-known drawback of many learning AI systems based on artificial neural networks, especially regarding women of color.” He suggests that one solution to this problem is to retrain the algorithms on unbiased data sets.

Although not an easy task, Schmidhuber is optimistic about the potential for progress, especially as more Saudi women are considering careers in technology. He notes that 47 percent of graduates in KAUST’s AI academy program are women, which may lead to the generation of new and less biased data sets.

The “Dear AI” campaign was developed by VMLY&R, an agency responsible for developing creative solutions. Fernando Miranda, creative director at VMLY&R, notes that the campaign aims to address the excitement and skepticism surrounding AI in the creative world. The campaign and hackathon encourage participants to discuss what they want to see in the future of AI and how to reduce gender bias in the industry.

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