The Potential and the Dangers of AI for Leaders with Tracey Spicer
In the latest episode of the We Are Human Leaders podcast, we explore the dangers and the potential for good in Artificial Intelligence at work with award-winning journalist and speaker, Tracey Spicer AM.
Tracey shares numerous insights and examples from latest best-selling book, Man-Made: How the bias of the past is being built into the future, unpacking the dangers of AI and machine learning. As well as their potential for positively impact our work lives and our leadership.
Unconscious bias is embedded into AI
As she notes, “AI programmers put their own unconscious biases into AI. And when you've got a homogenized group creating the algorithms, the unconscious biases are pretty much the same. The devices work for them and nobody else.“
She offers the powerful example of a Nigerian tech worker tried to use an automated soap dispenser in a Marriott hotel in 2016. “It didn't work for his hands, but it worked for the hands of his white colleague, and it worked for a white piece of paper. Now, why did that happen? It's AI light sensor technology that bounces off the skin to operate the soap dispenser.”
Tracey shares the process behind this outcome. “The people who created it didn't use inclusive design. They didn't test it on a lot of people. They tested it on themselves, a small group of young white men who all looked the same. And then they sent it out to Marriott hotels without doing any more testing. Now that's annoying when it's a soap dispenser, but think about this. That same light sensor technology is used in self-driving cars, which in testing, were coming up to pedestrian crossings and simply not stopping for people of color. So this is a real life and death implication of the bias.
Sometimes, however, the bias is not unconscious. Tracey shares powerful examples which many of us will have all encountered: “They deliberately make home chatbots female-voiced and business and finance chatbots male-voiced because as a society we have always viewed the male voice as being more credible and having more gravitas. [In my research for the book,] what shocked me most is that a lot of this [bias], particularly the gendered stereotyping, is 100% deliberate.”
Leaning into the positive potential of AI for Leaders
As Tracey explains, we need to consciously focus much more on inclusion and diversity in AI programming and design. She notes, “According to people who've researched this deeply, we will lose 82 million jobs globally from AI. And while 95 million will be created, because of the archetype of the ‘IT guy’, there's still not enough focus on getting diversity and inclusion into computing.”
She advises leaders not to shy away from learning about AI: “Have leaders who understand the technology. Don't just outsource everything to a third party. Leaders of the future are going to need to understand how this works.”
At its essence, AI impacts us all, every day, at work and far beyond. As Tracey expresses it, “AI is a workplace health and safety issue. It's also a broader societal safety issue – and we all deserve to be safe.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Tracey Spicer is a multiple award winning author, journalist and broadcaster. For her 30 years of media and charity work, Tracey has been awarded the Order of Australia. Her latest book, Man-Made: How the bias of the past is being built into the future, won the Social Responsibility category in the Australian Business Book Awards.
