Never before has more power to determine the future of everyone on the planet been so concentrated in the hands of an unelected few.
There are five “demi-gods” of AI, as The Economist described them this week, who have unprecedented power over global markets, the global labour force, and global safety.
These five are all male, and they all have their own interests, shareholders, agendas and egos. They include xAI CEO Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and the lesser-known CEO of Google DeepMind, Sir Demis Hassabis.
Expand the list to the next ten, twenty or fifty most powerful people controlling the most consequential technology of our time, and you’ll find they are almost all men.
This concentration of power in the hands of a self-interested few is something I want to highlight today to mark International Girls in ICT Day.
First and foremost, to highlight the incredible imbalance of power that women and girls in these fields confront, with a tiny group of men ultimately defining the problems AI solves, who’ll benefit first, the extent to which their tech will disrupt global order and the safety constraints they’re willing to apply. The demi-god-like status these men have achieved also brings up far more terrifying, existential risks — but for now, let’s consider some of the immediate challenges this concentrated power poses to women and girls generally, and then some of the key challenges affecting women and girls’ participation in tech, especially in AI.
The first challenge is economic chaos, as I’ve written about previously. The great AI jobs displacement is already here, and women are most at risk. Countless reports highlight how women are over-represented in roles most exposed to generative AI disruption, yet are underrepresented among the key AI researchers building these tools. Women are also up against an AI adoption gap, with recent LeanIn research finding men are 23 per cent more likely than women to be encouraged by their managers to use AI.
The second challenge is agency, and how few women are represented at the tables of influence, making decisions affecting all of us. Trump’s recently created Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology provides an excellent example. It excludes AI safety researchers, ethicists, and related academic and civil society voices – areas of AI where women are actually far better represented. Most of the demi-gods of AI got themselves a seat.
The third challenge is, of course, the issue of the all-out war on women and girls occurring as we speak by way of online abuse and deepfakes that overwhelmingly target more women than men, and how the online abuse of women in power has a detrimental effect not only on the women targeted but also on any woman or girl who seeks to emulate what they’ve achieved.
A final biggie is the impact of AI — including the concentration of power in the hands of men like those above — on our democratic institutions. Increasingly autocratic governments like to take on basic rights of women and girls, including healthcare, while unemployment and economic turmoil have a history of pushing voters to turn to extremes. Meanwhile, the ease of creating deepfakes and other AI-generated content to spread lies during election campaigns is also contributing.
Now, back to the issue of women and girls in ICT.
For years now, we’ve been encouraging women and girls into tech-related roles through programs that get girls coding and excited about the industry’s potential.
And yet what happens when they get there? Research shows they come up against sexism and discrimination. Attrition is a serious challenge, with the Tech Council of Australia warning of a “leaky pipeline” of women leaving the tech sector.
Once upon a time, large tech companies cared about this issue, or at least pretended to care. But many have quickly abandoned such concerns after being granted permission to do so in Trump’s second presidency.
Indeed, at the most critical point in tech history, large tech companies, including Meta, Google, and Microsoft, have stopped publishing diversity, equity, and inclusion data. They’re removing mentions of “diversity” and winding back programs designed to support women and girls. Some companies are holding the line, including Salesforce and Apple.
In recent months, major tech companies in Australia and abroad have announced extensive layoffs, with AI-related efficiency gains cited as a major reason for the moves. WiseTech and Atlassian are two of the bigger tech companies announcing thousands of layoffs. While we’re yet to see a gender-based breakdown on who goes, what happened in 2022 during a previous round of mass layoffs provides a hint: 45 per cent of those who lost jobs across 23 different rounds of layoffs were women, despite women making up between 26 and 28 per cent of the workforce.
So, where do we go from here?
Despite the challenges, we must continue to encourage and support women and girls in tech careers. We must spotlight the pioneers and the trailblazers. We must keep demanding that employers do better on addressing structural issues affecting women’s progression. We must support and open channels for whistleblowers in tech, a field where women have been overrepresented again but have achieved monumental results against serious power.
We should also take heart in the pushbacks against the concentrated power of AI tech bros. It’s happening in a number of landmark judgments regarding the effects of tech products on young people. It’s happening now across parts of the US, as citizens turn to things like local planning laws to push back against data centres.
As for the demi-gods of AI? More regulation of their businesses would be a start, but a move that will be challenging, given the current state of the United States, where the work primarily occurs. But it’s something we must continually advocate for, including in Australia, and in pushing for courageous leaders and policymakers to stand up.
And we should use the AI, selecting those we feel most comfortable with and moving on from those that demonstrate questionable behaviour. We still have the power, at least for now, to determine where our attention goes and the platforms we’ll spend our money on.