In a recent Forbes article titled “A Call For A Systemic Dismantling: These Women Refuse To Be Hidden Figures In The Development Of AI,” Professor Kelly Lyons and eight other influential women weighed in on representation within the tech and AI community. The author, Hessie Jones, was prompted by recent events to examine the ongoing struggle for recognition and respect for women’s contributions and voices in AI.
Professor Kelly Lyons was appointed Interim Director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society last year and previously held the position of Associate Director. In the article, she highlighted the Institute’s 2022-2023 Women in AI series, a six-part speaker series in collaboration with Deloitte which drew over 1,000 global participants and covered a range of AI topics, from healthcare innovations to AI governance. According to Professor Lyons, programs like these are “vital to surfacing important conversations and initiating meaningful connections.”
Professor Lyons was quoted saying, “I have been fortunate to be part of a strong network of very smart, technical women in industry and academia. We may be smaller in proportion within the technical community, but we are large in our voices, our contributions, and our support for one another. The need for initiatives increasing diversity in tech—and especially in the world of artificial intelligence—is vital. We must ensure that the people working on AI systems reflect the concerns, experiences, and identities of the populations affected by these systems. Advocating for women in the AI sector requires a strong, united voice.”
Featured alongside Professor Lyons were Theodora Lau, Founder of Unconventional Ventures; Karen Bennet, VP Engineering xplAInr.AI; Margaret Mitchell, Researcher and Chief Ethics Scientist at HuggingFace; Volha Litvinets, Senior Risk Consultant at Ernst & Young; Mia Dand, Founder at Women in AI Ethics, Stephanie Lipp, Founder, MyCoFutures; Staci LaToison, Founder, Dream Big Ventures; and Victoria Hailey, CMC of The Victoria Hailey Group Corporation.
Featured News
Jazz Journeys with Alan Stanbridge
For the vast majority of working jazz musicians, the metaphor of the journey has profoundly real implications. It is perhaps unsurprising then, writes Professor Alan Stanbridge in Jazzforschung/Jazz Research, that the theme of travelling has featured extensively in the history and discourses of jazz, in ways that often blur or conflate the real, the fictional and the metaphorical. These […]
Alum Albert Tai’s entrepreneurial journey
Alumnus Albert Tai’s Hypercare startup was featured in the Globe and Mail this week as one of four U of T startups that are solving global challenges with innovative solutions. Tai, who graduated from the Faculty of Information in 2017, launched Hypercare that same year, together with Dr. Joseph Choi, an emergency physician and assistant […]
MMST students, alumna contribute to Governor General’s Award-winning exhibit
Students from the Museum Studies capstone course (2022/23) played a key role in creating an exhibit that has just been named winner of the Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Community Programming. Grace Kovacs, Hanjia Li, Abera Rajendran and Marie Song helped put together “Standing in the Doorway: Lived Histories and Experiences of the Chinese Community”. The exhibit drew on new oral histories, loaned […]
Faculty of Information at ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
Faculty of Information professors and students will have a strong presence at the 27th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW) taking place in San José, Costa Rica next week (November 9-13). CSCW is the premier venue for research in the design and use of technologies that affect groups, organizations, communities, and […]