🌻Women in AI: Breaking Barriers and Shaping the Future
Harpreet Dulai Aisha Ekundayo, PhD and Simina Camin from EPAM Systems
Here’s me using Claude and Otter to transcribe and summarise our eye opening discussion to share.
🔑 Key Takeaways:
– women use AI 25% less than men, potentially putting them at a professional disadvantage .
– Many women experience imposter syndrome when adopting AI tools, questioning if they’re “cheating” or if they need to fully understand the technology before using it.
– AI adoption hesitancy stems from legitimate concerns about privacy, data security, and uncertainty about which tools to use.
– AI has accelerated career advancement for panelists, creating opportunities for networking, public speaking, and leadership.
– Prompt engineering is becoming a critical skill—one panelist noted it could be “half the job done” for many roles.
🚩 Concerning Realities:
– The panel opened with a stark demonstration of AI bias: when Harpreet Dulai with Punjabi heritage input her profile, the AI offered either “a runner in a bra or a man in a turban”—revealing troubling stereotypes.
– Only 22% of people working in AI globally are women, which directly contributes to algorithmic bias in the tools being developed.
– Data architecture itself is inherently biased—for example, Wikipedia categorizes “famous scientists” (predominantly male) separately from “famous women scientists,” and this pattern affects how AI learns.
– Corporate reluctance to use AI tools on client projects due to data privacy concerns creates a gap between those allowed to leverage AI and those who cannot.
💡 Solutions Discussed:
– Personal upskilling through resources like Coursera, Google, IBM, and Snowflake’s “AI for Dummies” guide
– The importance of RAG architecture (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) with guardrails to limit bias
– EU AI Act as a positive step toward more ethical AI governance
– Women speaking up about their experiences and increasing representation in the field
The panel left me with Steve Jobs’ powerful reminder: “Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity, not a threat.”
Today’s episode was brought to you by the letter O as in OMG IS THIS META OR WHAT 😅
Thank you Louise Lockie for creating this magical space
#LonSFWiT as usual! 😍
Loving this crowd ❤️
