philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Just nine out of 116 AI professionals in films are women, study finds

... “Given that male engineers have repeatedly been shown to engineer products that are most suitable for and adapted to male users, employing more women is essential for addressing the encoding of bias and pejorative stereotypes into AI technologies,” the report’s authors write. ...

Researchers at the University of Cambridge reviewed more than 1,400 films released between 1920 and 2020 and whittled them down to the 142 most influential movies featuring artificial intelligence. Their analysis identified 116 AI professionals. Only nine of these were women, of which five worked for a man or were the child or partner of a more senior male AI engineer. ...

Dr Kanta Dihal, a co-author on the study and a senior research fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, said part of the male bias was an “art-mimicking life” spiral whereby film-makers portray AI professionals as men to reflect the male dominance of the industry. But about one in five AI engineers are women, compared with less than one in 10 of those portrayed in cinema. “They are exacerbating the stereotype they see,” she said. ...

Prof Dame Wendy Hall, a regius professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, said there was an urgent need for a campaign to increase diversity in AI. Hall wrote her first paper on the lack of women in computing in 1987, and said the situation was worse with AI because the potential impact on society was so great.

See the full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/13/just-nine-out-of-116-ai-professionals-in-films-are-women-study-finds