We’ve all been given the mandatory uni plagiarism lecture – don’t use ChatGPT or you’ll fail the course. We’ve also all seen the Facebook posts about how this ‘new fangled artificial intelligence is going to enslave us all’, but the truth is AI programs are becoming more and more integrated into our daily lives. With this spread of chat bots, photo generators and Spotify analysts, it might be worth stopping to consider the hidden dangers.
Can programs be sexist?
“AI bias doesn’t come from thin air – it comes from the patterns we perpetuate in our societies”
Sasha Luccioni at the 2023 UN women HeForShe AI summit
With such a gaping gender gap in most STEM fields, it unfortunately seems unsurprising that the same has occurred within the field of AI – not just from the industry’s side, but also the consumer’s. A recent survey by FlexJobs concluded that men were 50% more likely than women to turn to AI based tools, whether in their personal or professional lives – but why? There are several familiar reasons we’ve heard before, similar to why women aren’t encouraged to go into science-related fields. From masculine stereotypes and pay discrepancies, to isolation and a lack of female role-models. If the product is built by men, for men – how can we be surprised when women aren’t using it?
Women are left out at every level of tech production – and it shows. Many programs that are created by male dominated teams or datasets will adopt their gender bias, essentially mirroring its creators. Welcome to 2023 – where even 1s and 0s are sexist. For example, Amazon recently had to retire a recruiting tool after it was proven that the AI preferred male candidates, and many health programs that use machine learning often provide much less accurate diagnoses for women.
We’ve seen time and time again how women have had to work harder to validate their careers, so a fear of AI is all too reasonable. Psychologist Lee Chambers states, “Women are already discredited, and have their ideas taken by men and passed off as their own, so having people knowing that you use an AI might also play into that narrative that you’re not qualified enough. It’s just another thing that’s debasing your skills, your competence, your value.”
Does privacy Even exist anymore?
“We thought we were searching Google, but Google was searching us”
Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard Business School
Women are also likely to be more security conscious, especially considering the internet’s widespread history of targeting women with cyber sexual harassment or bullying. Recently, we’ve seen an increase in ‘deepfake’ images circulating the internet. ‘Deepfakes’ are images, videos or audios in which a person’s face, body or voice is digitally altered using deep learning technologies. The possibilities are pretty endless, you might have seen the @deeptomcriuse account on TikTok, proving that there is no shortage of these videos around – and they are deceptively easy to create.
Beyond the funny dancing videos or fake movie speeches however, is a world of dangerous media. 96% of ‘deepfakes’ were found to be pornographic in a study by Deeptrace – and 99% of those mapped faces from female celebrities onto different bodies. With increasingly advanced technologies, all it takes is a couple of photos of a person, and you could make them say or do anything. Paired with the increasingly global reach of social media, this becomes a terrifying concept. The issue here is not only the staggering lack of consent, but the very real threat of blackmail and abuse. Several women have already been targets of ‘deepfake’ videos that have been spread online – resulting in devastating effects on their careers and personal lives.
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Like the rest of the internet, AI is scary – especially when most of us know so little about it. It seems every other day there’s a new data leak or scandal about a website tracking your every move. It isn’t all bleak though – more and more people are demanding legislation limiting the powers of both AI programs and the companies that create them, pushing for policies that will ensure representation. Since AI doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon, its integration to society should be one both accessible and fair for everyone.