“Decades and generations of fighting for equality and against discrimination can be almost erased by one line of code.” Miriam Vogel on Green Connections Radio

Listen closely the next time you get directions on your smartphone or order Alexa to do something. Did you notice that the voices of personal digital assistants like GPS systems, Siri and Alexa are female? Why is that? Especially when the sophisticated problem-solving technologies like IBM Watson and Microsoft’s Einstein are named after men. That’s what a recent UN study found. But does that mean AI is biased against women?

 Joan sat down with Miriam Vogel, the inaugural Executive Director of the new nonprofit Equal-AI to find out why they think it is and what they plan to do about it.

 Listen to this at times frustrating discussion to learn:

·       Why this issue is vital to our Economy.

·       Why AI systems tend to be biased in favor of white males.

·       What companies can do to gender-neutralize and race-neutralize their AI-dependent tools.

·       New research to find out more.

·       Plus, what Vogel’s crooked career journey teaches us about how to build the career we want.

“The tech space seems foreign to many people who grew up with the art history, history, English backgrounds and the liberal arts and sciences, we don’t feel as connected to the tech space. But it’s all the more important that people with that diverse background bring that in, bring that curiosity, the big picture thinking, the historical context, into the Technology space….”

Miriam Vogel on Green Connections Radio

Read my Forbes blogs about her here and here.

 You’ll also want to listen to:

     Maria Freire, CEO of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), on creative business models for Innovation.     Ellen Williams, Former Director of ARPA-E, the prestigious innovation arm of the Dept. of Energy, on energy innovation.     Alfia Ilecheva & Maria Potoroczyn, Cofounders of Women in Innovation, on strategic innovation and how women do it differently.     Ellen Stofan, Head of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, former Chief Scientist for NASA, on driving innovation. 

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