The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionising the way people interact with technology, through both personal devices and the way they employ tech solutions in business operations.
It’s no secret, however, that AI has struggled to capture the full spectrum of human experience and often misses the mark when it comes to women and people of colour.
“The intention of AI is to augment – not replace,” said Julie Choi, vice president and general manager of AI Marketing at Intel. “In any industry, the intent should be to help us, to kind of automate the mundane, because we do have so much data. In the space of diversity and inclusion and HR, we can implement this technology into the talent ecosystem to ensure we have more diversity in our talent pool.”
However, Choi was quick to highlight the dual nature of AI solutions. “AI can either go one of two ways,” she observed. “It can make the world better and more inclusive, or it can go the opposite direction.”
Choi said that, as she came to understand more about machine learning, it has became apparent that the key ingredient in ensuring AI is used for good is to keep a human touch involved in the process. “It just became so apparent that humans have to be in the loop – we have to be guiding the AI,” she added.
Learning innovation and behavioural science expert at IBM, Phaedra Boinodiris agreed and reiterated that, when it comes to AI, there’s a good, a bad and an ugly side. The latter, Boinodiris added, stems from the tendency of others to accept AI’s validity at face value.
“The problem is that people think, for whatever reason, if a decision comes from an AI, that it’s morally or ethically squeaky clean,” she noted. “They don’t think about: Who picked the data? Where did this data come from?”
