Skip to main content

Where are the women in AI?

When it comes to chatbots and humanoid robots, women appear regularly. They have names like Alexa and Siri – chatbots gendered as women, but designed by male dominated teams. 

Chatbot technology and robotics are evolving rapidly, and women are there but not as makers. Instead, men are responsible for re-coding women's identity within technology amplifying gendered issues from the past – and without inclusion of real women's voices. 


The Information School is working with feminist network Women Reclaiming AI to create a platform for women to reclaim their voices in AI. The team will design a collaborative statement on how women in AI wish to be (or not be) represented in a technology-driven present and future. 


The project will bring together women from across the globe to assert their own needs, wants and desires within technological development. 


Dr Caitlin Bentley, Lecturer within the Information School, is helping to create the statement. She said, “we want to reclaim female representation in the field and stop the perpetuation of myths and subservient gendered archetypes that are being reinforced through the male drive of technology.” 


“Our lives are becoming dominated by smart machines, and every aspect of living is being transformed by artificial intelligence and machine learning. The teams making these world changing technologies, however, are non-diverse. It’s really important for us to drive forward that diversity and intersectionality when it comes to the future of technology.”


Find out more about the Women Reclaiming AI project.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Raspberry Pi Weather Project now live

A project to create a raspberry pi weather station is currently live in the Information School.  The Sheffield Pi weather station has been created by Romilly Close, undergraduate Aerospace Engineering student at the University of Sheffield.  The project was funded by the Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) scheme and is being supervised by Dr Jo Bates, Paula Goodale and Fred Sonnenwald from the Information School. Information about the Sheffield Pi station and how to create your own can be found on the project website .  You can also see live data from the Sheffield Pi station on Plot.ly , and further information can also be found on the Met Office Weather Observations Website .    This work compliments the School’s existing project entitled ‘The Secret Life of a Weather Datum’ which explores socio-cultural influences on weather data.  This project is funded under the AHRC’s Digital Transformations Big Data call.  It aims to pilot a new approach to im

Our Chemoinformatics Group wins Jason Farradane Award

The Information School's Chemoinformatics Research Group has been awarded the 2012 UKeiG Jason Farradane Award , in recognition of its outstanding 40 year contribution to the information field. The prize is awarded to the three current members of the group,  Professor Val Gillet , Dr John Holliday and Professor Peter Willett . The judges recognised the Group's status as one of the world's leading centres of chemoinformatics research, a major contributor to the field of information science, and an exemplar in raising the profile of the information profession. The School has a long association with the Farradane prize. Its second recipient was long time member of staff Professor Mike Lynch in 1980.

Professor Mike Thelwall gives inaugural lecture

Professor of Data Science Mike Thelwall recently gave his inaugural lecture at the University of Sheffield, entitled  How helpful are AI and bibliometrics for assessing the quality of academic research? The lecture, delivered in the University's Diamond building, was introduced by Head of the Information School Professor Briony Birdi. It covered Mike's research into whether Artificial Intelligence can inform - or replace - expert peer review in the journal article publication process and what this could look like, as well as to what extent bibliometrics and citation statistics can play a role in assessing the quality of a piece of research. Mike also discussed whether tools like ChatGPT can accurately detect research quality. The inaugural lecture was well attended by colleagues from around the University.