EDITORIAL
As the Women's Forum opens in Paris on Wednesday, to strengthen the position of women in society, new technologies seem to be resisting! For our columnist, Jean-Pierre Montanay, the high concentration of men in the fields of computer science explains the sexism that even the algorithms can demonstrate.
"The figures breathe testosterone: only one computer scientist out of three is a woman.In the field of artificial intelligence, they are almost invisible: more than two thirds of researchers are male, and if we look at start-ups ups that invent the future, here too it is an insult to parity: less than one in ten has for boss ... a boss .. Finally, a comforting figure: 50% of the graduates of science in France are young women. ..
And yet, these well-made heads are not found in the computer industry. They make up only 15% of computer science students. However, we must remember that in the 1950s and 1960s, women represent nearly 40% of the workforce in the computer but everything will switch in the 1980s. The PC arrives at home at the same time as video games, the computer and the joystick are the new totems of the dominant male, he then appears in the unflattering features of the geek. But yesterday's geek took the bandwagon of programming to take over the new technologies.
The sexism of artificial intelligence
As a result, the algorithms seem to have incorporated all the stereotypes of society. A woman in a white coat identified by artificial intelligence gives a nurse and a man in a white coat ... a doctor! When Apple developed its Health application, no one asked the question of whether a woman's rules could influence her state of form. Because yes, the programmer was a man.
Promoting the rules of coding at an early age among girls is encouraging signal to turn the tide: the coding institutes are feminized thanks to young startups anxious to have the hand on the algorithms. Imagine an artificial intelligence devoid of any feminine vision, one would not escape the #balancetonrobot! "