Dr. Poornima Luthra (She/ Her)’s Post

Is digital innovation non-diverse - and is it important? This was the theme of today’s panel session at Danske Bank’s event Sustain Tomorrow. Some of the topics we looked at included: - Status of D&I in Nordic tech - Is it a problem if tech is non-diverse in recruitment? - If diversity is good for business, what do we need to do? - Quotas in tech: yay or nay? - Nordic values in tech In preparing for the session, here are a few of the key points that I wanted to emphasize: 🎯 We need to move the discussion from equality to equity. In societies where equality is a core societal value, it can seem strange to need to embrace equity but equality can only hold if we assume that everyone experiences all situations in the same and just way. But we don’t. So equity must be put on the table to level to playing field. 🎯 Who is behind tech? According to UNESCO, only 6% of professional software developers and 12% of AI researchers are women. Only 1.5% of venture capital in Denmark is invested in female founder led startups, even though these startups yield 25% higher ROI than businesses led by all male founders. 🎯 Why is hiring more diversely important? To answer this, we need to look at the evidence of what happens when we don’t…and we have plenty of evidence there. From facial recognition software that misidentifies darker skinned faces to be primates, to hiring algorithms that favour male candidates against women and non-European names, to a recent study at Oxford University in which only 22 of over 350 images generated by an AI image generator fulfilled the task to create images of Black doctors treating White kids. The rest were of White doctors treating Black kids. New technology like AI brings many opportunities for sure. However, there needs to be some checks and balances to block bias. What can be done? 👉🏽 We need to have more representative training data with humans-in-the-loop to catch bias. 👉🏽 We need to recruit programmers across multiple intersectional identities. 👉🏽 We need to decolonize technology and that includes paying more equitably when hiring content moderators in the global south and addressing the many pressing issues of child labour in cobolt mining. I was encouraged to see a robust discussion. Thanks for inviting me Jens Ravn. #SustainTomorrow