It’s one of the most dynamic sectors in modern business, but technology suffers from sector-specific skills gaps — artificial intelligence being one — that continue to impact negatively on innovation and growth. These skills gaps present an opportunity for women to create an amazing career — as well as build inclusivity into the tech of tomorrow.
What is AI?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn’t just one thing; rather it is an umbrella term for a dynamic ecosystem of different technologies working together to enable machines to think and reason — acting and learning with intellectual processes characteristic of humans. These technologies include machine learning, natural language processing, big data and data science, text, speech and visual recognition, deep learning and expert systems.
AI is now already present in our everyday lives – from Siri voice recognition to autopiloting airplanes and the gathering and sorting of big data in business. Most AI that exists today is defined as Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) or Narrow AI, which focuses primarily on a single task. However, future potential vision for this technology ranges from Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) able to think on the same level as a human mind to Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) which would be able to carry out tasks but also one day have emotions and relationships too.
Where is the gap?
According to the European Commission, 90% of jobs today require digital skills, but women still only make up only 17.5% of the tech workforce worldwide, and hold just 5% of leadership positions. These gender inequalities are most pronounced in disruptive tech skills in emerging sectors like AI and cloud computing. World Economic Forum research shows women make up only 26% of AI jobs globally1 yet, a 2020 LinkedIn report2 found that Artificial Intelligence Specialist is the top emerging job in the United States, with hiring growth increasing by 74 percent annually since 2016. According to a survey by the European Commission3 access to the right skillsets is currently seen by businesses as the biggest block to advancing the use and innovation of AI4 — and the combination of such a fast-growing jobs market and the gender gap means there is a unique window of opportunity for women looking to enter tech or change career pathways to take advantage of this.
The impact of diversity on AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming embedded in everyday life, affecting how we work, purchase, connect and communicate. As a technology, it has the potential to make life easier, business more effective and to provide solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems. But this potential can only be realised if AI represents society in all its diversity – and we currently sit at a crucial point, where what is being encoded into systems now will have a powerful impact on future social equality.
Bias in AI is the biggest concern — introduced into systems through the way that data is obtained, algorithms are designed, and AI outputs are interpreted. If AI is built by a narrow set of people with a narrow set of perspectives, then the implications for what ‘reality’ becomes and who this technology best serves as it becomes ubiquitous are immense. Gartner predicts that in 2022, 85% of AI projects will deliver erroneous outcomes5 due to bias in data or algorithms thanks to the lack of diversity in the teams creating them. In a Deloitte survey of men and women working in AI6 71% said that adding more women to teams will improve AI functionality and design and bring unique perspectives sorely needed to high tech, while 66% said that AI and machine learning solutions would benefit from having more diverse employees in designer and developer positions.
For the national institute for data science and artificial intelligence at the Turning Institute7 the case for greater diversity is clear: ‘Growing women’s participation and tackling structural discrimination is essential to ensuring their perspectives and priorities will inform the insights that data scientists will generate, the AI systems that they will build, as well as the research agendas that they will define. It is crucial that we get ahead of this now, before flawed technologies become irreversibly integrated into the fabric of society’.
The skills needed
The breadth of AI means that the skills needed for its creation, development and deployment as a technology are myriad, and as such there are many pathways into a career. Women with a strong mathematical and statistical background will have a role to play in data science and engineering. However, AI also means being able to understand and predict human behaviour, which means creativity, analytical and critical thinking, and soft skills are also an essential for engineers in this field along with technical ability.
Being an engineer or having a degree in data science is not a prerequisite for a successful career in AI. Alongside the skills needed for technical roles, there are a wide range of competencies that will be essential to exploit and guide the potential of AI in a way that is effective, productive and equitable for society. As machine learning takes over repetitive work, such as data collection and collation, much of the value of business professionals will be in understanding and interpreting that data to further business or client aims and objectives. And as developing effective AI requires an in-depth understanding of the problem it’s trying to solve, individuals who have expertise within an industry or business area can be crucial players in strategising and implementing AI systems across businesses — with or without a computer sciences degree.
The opportunity
The potential of AI is huge — globally it is estimated to reach 1.5-3 trillion dollars in the next 10 years, something that the pandemic has helped to accelerate in physical terms, but which has also exacerbated the gender jobs divide.8 With such an opportunity on offer though, and demanding ‘all hands on deck’, women have a chance to flourish in the digital age of AI.
Based on job-posting data for 2022 so far, data scientists, computer scientists and data architects show the strongest demand for AI-related requests from employers. But in today’s world, there are numerous opportunities beyond just engineering and technical science role, as AI increasingly becomes understood as an extension of human capabilities, not a digital replacement. As such, communications skills, critical thinking, creativity and teamwork will be increasingly important and according to Korn Ferry research9, women score higher than men on nearly all emotional intelligence competencies. Baking this into AI systems will be crucial to ensuring that AI serves a diverse society and doesn’t embed already existing structural inequalities further.
Moving laterally in tech is already an established career path for many women, and this can be further leveraged in terms of AI — research by WISE10 found that women are more likely to have retrained for a tech role than men. Finally, with AI still in its infancy, relatively few people have leading expertise, creating a unique opportunity to establish an even playing field in terms of AI development. Many organisations are just beginning their AI journeys and Deloitte’s report found that despite the reported dearth of data and AI positions held by women, the positive theme that surfaced across its interviews was that men are not ‘ahead’ of women in AI. As one Deloitte interviewee noted, ‘We are all learning in this space. Everyone is at ground zero with AI.’
