I'm Manveen Rana here in Davos, and I'm joined by Jessica, who's
been looking at AI, which is one of the biggest themes here this
year.
Tell us, in particular, what is the thinking in terms of what AI
might mean for gender diversity?
Yeah, there's been a lot of talk about the representation of
women in people that are developing, coding, and
regulating AI.
I actually think there's a whole other impact of AI that is not
talked about enough, which is what does it do to female
representation?
If you think of your virtual experience, all the avatars, all
of the voices you're interacting with, they're all female.
They're overarchingly female.
And when you do user tests, that is what people want.
They actually want to interact with female agents in a massive
way, digitally, and at the same time,
there's a very negative effect of that from a diversity
standpoint.
Basically, everybody's ordering females around all the time.
How will that impact the way people think about the role of
females in society?
That is a theme that is totally absent from the discussion, and
I wish it was much more prevalent.
You're right,
I don't think people think about it, but it's Alexa this, it's
Alexa that.
What do you want to sort of see?
Should there be more male voices
you're asking for help?
Well, there's two ways about that.
You can do more male voices or you can try to aim for more
robotic voices, and it's actually a real trust question.
Do you want the voices that are there and the embodiment of the
avatars that are used to look human-like, or to be what they
are: robots, so that you can identify when you're actually
interacting with a human or not?
That is the type of question I think corporates should be
asking themselves.
They're part of what I call the micro-ethical decisions of AI.
And today, the reality in most corporations, they're taken in a
very decentralized fashion, whereas I think they should be
central in the corporate strategy.
Jessica, that's absolutely fascinating.
Thanks so much for joining us here.
My pleasure.
Thank you for having me.