Feminism Confronts AI: The Gender Relations of Digitalisation

Abstract

I had the pleasure of organising the St Hugh’s annual lecture on AI entitled: “Feminism Confronts AI: The Gender Relations of Digitalisation”, which was delivered by Professor Judy Wajcman, Anthony Giddens Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Principal Investigator of the Women in Data Science and AI project at The Alan Turing Institute, and visiting professor at the Oxford Internet Institute.

This talk examined the gender relations of digitalisation, with a particular focus on AI as the most contemporary expression of this. While there is increasing recognition that technologies are both a reflection and crystallisation of society, Judy will argue that there is still insufficient focus on the ways in which gendered power relations are embedded in technoscience. This is as much the case with AI as it was with previous waves of technological change. The systemic under-representation of women in the AI ecosystem poses the risk of encoding and amplifying existing patterns of gender inequities. So gender equality in the leadership of AI is not only an equal opportunity issue, but also a matter of how the world we live in is designed and for whom.

Nikolaus Vertovec

Junior Fellow in Artificial Intelligence

My research interests include safety-critical optimal control with a focus on learning-based approaches.