Joanna Bryson joins UNESCO’s Women4Ethical AI expert platform

Joanna Bryson, Professor of Ethics and Technology at the Hertie School’s Centre for Digital Governance, is now a member of UNESCO’s expert platform Women4Ethical AI. The group unites 17 leading female experts from academia, civil society, the private sector and regulatory bodies to support governments and companies’ efforts to ensure that women are represented equally in both the design and the deployment of artificial intelligence. 

“UNESCO’s Women4Ethical AI platform is an important step to ensuring that girls and women aren’t left behind as AI develops,” says Bryson. “I’m proud to be able to contribute to the platform’s work.” 

The Women4Ethical AI platform’s mission is to drive progress on non-discriminatory algorithms and data sources. It will also incentivise girls and women to participate in AI by investing in targeted programmes to increase girls’ and women’s participation in ICT (information and communications technology), as well as in science, engineering and mathematics. The platform’s work will help advance the ethical provisions in UNESCO’s “Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence”, the organisation’s roadmap for states in establishing their AI policies.

AI and gender inequality

According to UNESCO, while digital technologies are reshaping everyday life, women’s needs and experiences tend to be overlooked by designers, who in most cases are men. “Only 20% of employees in technical roles in machine learning companies, 12% of artificial intelligence researchers globally and 6% of professional software developers are women,” writes the organisation. This has led to a bias in AI products, research and software, and must change so that everyone understands and benefits from technological progress.

Bryson joined the Hertie School in 2020. Her work focusses on the impact of technology on human cooperation. She also researches the governance of AI and information and communication technology. Before joining the Hertie School, she was on the Computer Science faculty at the University of Bath. She has also been affiliated with the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oxford and the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy. In addition to being a member of the Women4Ethical AI expert platform, Bryson is also one of nine experts nominated by Germany to the Global Partnership for Artificial Intelligence, a multi-stakeholder initiative which aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice on AI. She actively comments on developments in AI governance and ethics in the media.
 

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