Posted on 12/16/2018 12:54:47 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom
The challenges of making tech more welcoming for women are numerous, especially in the field of artificial intelligence.
To get a sense of just how monumental a task the tech community faces, look no further than the marquee gathering for AI’s top scientists. Preparations for this year’s event drew controversy not only because there weren’t enough female speakers or study authors. The biggest debate was over the conference’s name. The annual Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems, formerly known as NIPS, had become a punchline symbol about just how bad the gender imbalance is for artificial intelligence. Thousands of AI researchers convened in Montreal last week under a slightly tweaked banner — NeurIPS — but with many of the same problems still under the surface.
AI’s challenge reflects a broader lack of diversity in the tech industry. At major tech companies, women account for 20 percent or fewer of the engineering and computing roles. By some accounts, AI’s gender imbalance is even worse: One estimate by startup incubator Element AI shows women making up just 13 percent of the AI workforce in the U.S.
AI and machine learning can mimic the biases of their human creators as they make their way into consumer products and everyday life.
“The more diversity we have in machine learning, the better job we will do in creating products that don’t discriminate,” said Hanna Wallach, a Microsoft researcher who is a senior program chairwoman of the conference and co-founder of an associated event for women in machine learning.
Critics said [the name] added to a hostile environment that for some women...“This name change has opened up so many of the issues that women and minorities face in tech,” said Animashree Anandkumar, who directs machine-learning research at chipmaker Nvidia.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Maybe that is serious stuff, but the article goes off in the weeds about the acronym of the "Neural Information Processing Systems" annual conference - "NIPS." It's been used for decades, but in 2018, it suddenly offends enough of the perpetually-offended that it had to be changed (one would that Japanese conference-attendees would be more put-off by the conference name than women).
Everybody has way too much to worry about these days. Just do your damn jobs.
gotta be a better way to say that
I thought liberals abolished biological gender? Silly me.
They can’t have it both ways.
The title suggest satire.
But the compost is serious — about something.
This is insane.
They start with an obviously false assumption, that men and women have equal abilities and interests in all things.
That is insanity.
Which of the 52 genders are they talking about? (snark)
Thinking machines to favor slim waists and bigger boobs.
Why is “uterus” a masculine noun?
Easy fix. Change the name. I suggest, Brain Oriented Operational Boundary Systems.
Every field discriminates against women...until they dumb-down the standards. Then they don’t discriminate anymore...
The next big issue will be that computers have only zero and one.
....seems reasonable to me...
What do you call a Base 57 system?
I like Total Integrated Technology System.
Why don’t they just convince half of the tech guys to become women?
Exactly. Get half the men to say they are women and problem solved. I mean they are already winning women’s sporting events that way, why stop at ai.
52 was several years back. It’s 100+ now.
They just need to build logic systems that
go completely haywire every 28 days then return
to normal with no memory of being insane...
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