Even with progress, it’s still challenging to ensure everyone, regardless of gender, has equal opportunities in the startup world.
“While evening out the playing field via representation numbers is a helpful indicator of progress, this isn’t the all-encompassing practice to promote gender equality. The core of closing the gender gap stems from fostering the right support system and environment to retain and nurture bright talent. At the same time, our leadership models the values we expect from each of our employees,” says Veronika Folkova, Senior Director, People Business Partners for Global Legal Organisation and APAC, Confluent.
Can you share with us how gender bias can show up in AI? What potential/existing harms can it cause?
Gender bias in AI is a complicated issue. AI learns by taking in vast amounts of data, looking for patterns, and then using those patterns to make predictions. However, the data it learns from can reflect real-world biases. That means AI decisions can affect people from different backgrounds, jobs, and income levels in unfair ways.
In many countries, women have less access to education and training, especially in research and development. This can lead to unintentional biases. Also, most AI content and research are often written in a way that assumes the reader is a man, which can leave others out.
These biases often get built into the words and data used to train AI systems. As a result, the algorithms can become biased, too, leading to unfair treatment and the exclusion of qualified people—especially women.
A real-life example is the AI art tool Midjourney. When asked to create images of people in specific jobs, it showed both young and older adults—but the older people were always men. This repeated an old stereotype that working women don’t stay in their jobs as they age.
What are your proposed solutions?
Honestly, there’s no quick fix for gender bias in AI. As the Senior Director of People Business Partners for the Global Legal Organization and APAC, AI is starting to play a significant role in finding job candidates and managing hiring processes.
As such, it goes back to laying the groundwork to provide equal opportunities to the right people, doing our thorough research to uplift the right talent, and improving the training and development of our own people to identify the limitations of AI and better use its strengths.
How can the government take a proactive role in this?
In the recent 2024 Budget, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong shared that Singapore will spend S$1 billion over the next five years to grow its AI capabilities, support talent, and help the AI industry grow.
This supports Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0, which started in December last year. These investments are a step in the right direction, especially as more people become aware of AI’s problems—like biased data and “hallucinations,” where the AI learns the wrong patterns and gives incorrect answers.
To help solve these problems, I’m glad the Singapore government has created a Generative AI framework. It takes a careful and balanced approach to handle concerns about AI while still supporting new ideas and progress. We all need to keep working together, sharing knowledge, and combining our efforts to stay updated with new technology and make sure it benefits everyone.
What role can tech startups play in ensuring responsible use of AI?
Even though startups are small, they can significantly impact and help drive change in their field.
Startups should focus on building diverse and inclusive teams with people from different backgrounds and skills. This helps ensure AI systems are designed to meet the needs of everyone and helps spot and reduce biases in the results.
Startups can make AI systems more transparent by clearly explaining how their algorithms work, including where the data comes from, how the system is trained, and how decisions are made.
Startups can help use AI responsibly by working with others in the industry and sharing what they learn as they try new methods.
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