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Artificial intelligence’s rise exposes gaping gender gap
Washington Post ^ | 12/13/18 | Matt O'Brien

Posted on 12/16/2018 12:54:47 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom

The challenges of making tech more welcoming for women are numerous, especially in the field of artificial intelligence.

To get a sense of just how monumental a task the tech community faces, look no further than the marquee gathering for AI’s top scientists. Preparations for this year’s event drew controversy not only because there weren’t enough female speakers or study authors. The biggest debate was over the conference’s name. The annual Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems, formerly known as NIPS, had become a punchline symbol about just how bad the gender imbalance is for artificial intelligence. Thousands of AI researchers convened in Montreal last week under a slightly tweaked banner — NeurIPS — but with many of the same problems still under the surface.

AI’s challenge reflects a broader lack of diversity in the tech industry. At major tech companies, women account for 20 percent or fewer of the engineering and computing roles. By some accounts, AI’s gender imbalance is even worse: One estimate by startup incubator Element AI shows women making up just 13 percent of the AI workforce in the U.S.

AI and machine learning can mimic the biases of their human creators as they make their way into consumer products and everyday life.

“The more diversity we have in machine learning, the better job we will do in creating products that don’t discriminate,” said Hanna Wallach, a Microsoft researcher who is a senior program chairwoman of the conference and co-founder of an associated event for women in machine learning.

Critics said [the name] added to a hostile environment that for some women...“This name change has opened up so many of the issues that women and minorities face in tech,” said Animashree Anandkumar, who directs machine-learning research at chipmaker Nvidia.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: genderdysphoria; homosexualagenda; nips; pc; sheerlunacy; snowflakes
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Hepta-cincodecimal?


41 posted on 12/16/2018 1:44:23 PM PST by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: CaptainPhilFan

Sounds like they already have, or it wouldn’t be getting airtime.


42 posted on 12/16/2018 1:47:00 PM PST by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Now go change my oil and rotate my tires. For those of you outside of useful technologies, those are technologies.


43 posted on 12/16/2018 1:47:09 PM PST by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: Still Thinking

“Hepta-cincodecimal?”
Love it when you talk dirty.


44 posted on 12/16/2018 1:47:56 PM PST by Da Coyote
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To: rigelkentaurus

Remember the bridge that came crashing down on the roadway that killed a bunch of people? That’s what happens when you get people in a field of business that have no idea what they are doing.
Hey, pretty design though.


45 posted on 12/16/2018 1:48:51 PM PST by Keyhopper (Indians had bad immigration laws)
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To: null and void

Baracksimation?


46 posted on 12/16/2018 1:49:53 PM PST by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
Girl robots will be paid better than boy robots.

I figured that out as a 10-year-old watching Star Trek.

Sherry Jackson on the Star Trek episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" (1966)

47 posted on 12/16/2018 1:53:33 PM PST by UnwashedPeasant (Trump is fixing the world's problems just to distract us from Russia.)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

We can have a lot of fun with this. But AI is a serious subject. Gender bias is the least of the AI problems.

AI has political and religious and social and scientific bias.

For example, a well known AI firm was came out with a pro-immunization report. The data did not support the conclusion. But the bias did. (The data didn’t support the opposite conclusion either.)


48 posted on 12/16/2018 1:53:38 PM PST by spintreebob
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

The more diversity we have in machine learning, the better job we will do in creating products that don’t discriminate,” said Hanna Wallach, a Microsoft researcher who is a senior program chairwoman of the conference and co-founder of an associated event for women in machine learning.


Translation: “The more diversity we have in machine learning, the better job we will do in creating a huge mess of products that no one wants but everyone must have by law.”


49 posted on 12/16/2018 1:55:19 PM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: UnwashedPeasant
BRING ON THE FEMBOTS!!!


50 posted on 12/16/2018 1:55:42 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: familyop

I thought we all have nipples? All races, both sexes... kinda silly to assign NIPS to the female gender only?


51 posted on 12/16/2018 1:58:32 PM PST by PilotDave (No, really, you just can't make this stuff up!!)
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To: rigelkentaurus

Yeah, except thinking that math is necessary for engineering is linear, this toxically masculine, thus inherently sexist. If you were woke, you’d realize you can do good engineering with nothing more than emotion.


52 posted on 12/16/2018 2:00:52 PM PST by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
This is the weekly article on how not enough women are going into STEM fields and how underrepresented women are in the AI field.
A bunch of men engineers were at lunch, and an attractive waitress served us. One of the engineers remarked, “Nobody gave her a chance to be an engineer.”

I replied, “Tell you what - I’m going to teach her mathematics. After you convince her that (her reproductive opportunities) were nil if she doesn’t learn mathematics.”

Discussion over. Math is a lot harder (for you or for me) than attracting a man was for that gal, and no one doubted it for a microsecond. And she didn’t have to be a genius to know it, and nothing short of her being a true genius would have negated that fact.


53 posted on 12/16/2018 2:04:40 PM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

More garbage. Money burned trying to get more women into “STEM”. Promoting women who aren’t qualified for diversity... etc etc. nonsense.


54 posted on 12/16/2018 2:09:11 PM PST by HamiltonJay
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Steak sauce.


55 posted on 12/16/2018 2:11:14 PM PST by MortMan (Satan was merely the FIRST politician who pretended to speak for God.)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Wait, all those male engineers have nips too! Can they explain what their nips are for?? ;)


56 posted on 12/16/2018 2:14:04 PM PST by Yaelle
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To: Still Thinking

*ouch* To be fair there are 57 States.

In the Organization of Islamic States...


57 posted on 12/16/2018 2:14:38 PM PST by null and void (We live in interesting times, but nobody's interested.)
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To: Yaelle

According to one of Heinlein’s characters, they break up the blankness of the male chest.


58 posted on 12/16/2018 2:15:54 PM PST by null and void (We live in interesting times, but nobody's interested.)
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To: null and void

59 posted on 12/16/2018 2:17:14 PM PST by Yaelle
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To: null and void

Then why don’t men have nipples down their backs? Huh? ;)


60 posted on 12/16/2018 2:17:54 PM PST by Yaelle
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