Feminism Confronts AI: The Gender Relations of Digitalisation

This talk will examine the gender relations of digitalisation, with a particular focus on AI as the most contemporary expression of this. While there is increasing recognition that technologies are both a reflection and crystallisation of society, Professor Wajcman will argue that there is still insufficient focus on the ways in which gendered power relations are embedded in technoscience. This is as much the case with AI as it was with previous waves of technological change. The systemic under-representation of women in the AI ecosystem poses the risk of encoding and amplifying existing patterns of gender inequities. So gender equality in the leadership of AI is not only an equal opportunity issue, but also a matter of how the world we live in is designed and for whom.