Kriti Sharma: rendre l’intelligence artificielle plus éthique - Business au Feminin

Vice-présidente Bots et intelligence artificielle chez Sage, Kriti Sharma est une pionnière dans le développement de machines intelligentes capables de fonctionner et de réagir comme des êtres humains pour simplifier les tâches administratives des entreprises. Elle est aussi la créatrice de Pegg, le premier chatbot de comptabilité au monde qui sera sera commercialisé en 2018 en France et désormais adopté dans 135 pays.

L’intelligence artificielle est une des plus grandes révolutions de notre temps pouvant mettre en danger le pouvoir de l’être humain et son travail. Quel est votre point de vue ?

Kriti Sharma: L’intelligence artificielle est comme n’importe quelle autre révolution technologique majeure, elle aura des implications positives comme négatives. Maintenant, il faut être sûr qu’elles sont utilisées à de bonnes fins. Par exemple pour les petites entreprises qui n’ont pas beaucoup d’équipes technologiques, l’intelligence artificielle peut les aider à automatiser un certain nombre de process.

Par ailleurs, la technologie attire une main d’œuvre de plus en plus diversifiée, ce qui n’existait pas auparavant. L’intelligence artificielle peut également s’automatiser elle-même. Avant, créer un software prenait du temps, maintenant, l’IA commence à écrire ses propres codes. Elle peut, dans une certaine mesure, automatiser le travail de l’ingénieur software. Donc nous avons maintenant un besoin de gens aux compétences créatives, plus seulement des ingénieurs mais une combinaison de profils Art et Science. Autrement dit, vous n’avez pas besoin d’être un ingénieur ou un Data scientifique avec un master pour travailler dans l’intelligence artificielle.

Dans « the end of the professions » David Susskind évoque des professions comme les avocats, qui vont être impactées par l’automatisation et l’intelligence artificielle. Ne pensez-vous pas que cela va accroitre les inégalités à l’échelle mondiale ?

Bias, Biased decisions, AI, Bots, ETHICS, Women in TechBrigitte BellanJanuary 31, 2018Kriti Sharma, Sage, Business au Feminin, Bots, BIAS, ethics

How Robots Could Make the Gender Pay Gap Even Worse - Fortune

A new report published Thursday suggests that robots could make the gender pay gap even worse, stoking existing fears and uncertainty around the concept of automation.

In a paper titled “Managing automation Employment, inequality and ethics in the digital age,” the Institute for Public Policy Research argued that a greater share of jobs that women hold—46.8% versus 40.9% for men—have the technical potential to be automated since female workers are more likely to hold low-skill “automatable” occupations. Paired with women’s underrepresentation in high-skill occupations that may be complemented by technology, that means that automation could exacerbate gender inequality.

“Automation,” IPPR says, “is more likely to accelerate inequalities of wealth and income than create a future of mass joblessness.”

Initially, IPPR says, automation could narrow the gender pay gap since it would displace women from jobs that tend to earn below-average pay. (According to the latest OECD data, the gender wage gap in the U.K. is 17.1%; in the U.S., it’s 18.9%.) But that progress would remain only if displaced women re-entered the labor market at around the new average salary for their gender. That’s unlikely, IPPR says. Some industries dominated by women (such as retail or child and elderly care) are seeing less investment in productivity-raising technology, perhaps because the current human labor is so cheap.

Bots, Gender Gap, Gender Pay Data, Women in EconomyBrigitte BellanJanuary 15, 2018Claire Zillman, Fortune, Automation, Gender Gap

Alexa, Siri, Cortana: Our virtual assistants say a lot about sexism -Science Friction

OK, Google. We need to talk.

For that matter — Alexa, Siri, Cortana — we should too.

The tech world's growing legion of virtual assistants added another to its ranks last month, with the launch of Google Home in Australia.

And like its predecessors, the device speaks in dulcet tones and with a woman's voice. She sits on your kitchen table — discreet, rotund and white — at your beck and call and ready to respond to your questions.

But what's with all the obsequious, subservient small talk? And why do nearly all digital assistants and chatbots default to being female?

A handmaid's tale

Feminist researcher and digital media scholar Miriam Sweeney, from the University of Alabama, believes the fact that virtual agents are overwhelmingly represented as women is not accidental.

"It definitely corresponds to the kinds of tasks they carry out," she says.

Bots, Bias, Gender Bias, AI, Sexism, StereotypesBrigitte BellanAugust 13, 2017Natasha Mitchell, Alexa, Cortana, Siri, Google, Sexual harassment, sexism

How Silicon Valley's sexism affects your life - Washington Post

It was a rough week at Google. On Aug. 4, a 10-page memo titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" started circulating among employees. It argued that the disparities between men and women in tech and leadership roles were rooted in biology, not bias. On Monday, James Damore, the software engineer who wrote it, was fired; he then filed a labor complaint to contest his dismissal.

We've heard lots about Silicon Valley's toxic culture this summer - venture capitalists who proposition female start-up founders, man-child CEOs like Uber's Travis Kalanick, abusive nondisparagement agreements that prevent harassment victims from describing their experiences. Damore's memo added fuel to the fire, arguing that women are more neurotic and less stress-tolerant than men, less likely to pursue status, and less interested in the "systemizing" work of programming. "We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism," he concludes.

Like the stories that came before it, coverage of this memo has focused on how a sexist tech culture harms people in the industry - the women and people of color who've been patronized, passed over, and pushed out. But what happens in Silicon Valley doesn't stay in Silicon Valley. It comes into our homes and onto our screens, affecting all of us who use technology, not just those who make it.

Bias, Bots, Gender Bias, AIBrigitte BellanAugust 13, 2017Bias, gebder, Washington Post, Sara Wachter-Boettcher

We tested bots like Siri and Alexa to see who would stand up to sexual harassment -Quartz

Women have been made into servants once again. Except this time, they’re digital.

Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google’s Google Home peddle stereotypes of female subservience—which puts their “progressive” parent companies in a moral predicament.

People often comment on the sexism inherent in these subservient bots’ female voices, but few have considered the real-life implications of the devices’ lackluster responses to sexual harassment. By letting users verbally abuse these assistants without ramifications, their parent companies are allowing certain behavioral stereotypes to be perpetuated. Everyone has an ethical imperative to help prevent abuse, but companies producing digital female servants warrant extra scrutiny, especially if they can unintentionally reinforce their abusers’ actions as normal or acceptable.