THE FUTURE IS HERE

Why Diversity Matters for the Future of Artificial Intelligence | Eva Prakash | TEDxMeritAcademy

The world is in a period of revolutionary digital transformation that is driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning. But as AI’s uses become more widespread, an important question arises: who will be building these technologies? Currently, there is a diversity crisis in engineering – women and people of color make up only a small percentage of computer scientists, and their numbers appear to be even lower in the AI field. What are the implications if this massively important technology is fundamentally biased? And what can we do to bridge the gap? Eva Prakash is a rising senior and an advocate of diversity in artificial intelligence. She is the founder and CEO of Girl 2.0, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in California that is dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology by providing free computer science education to girls and other underrepresented minorities in STEM. The organization is focused on debunking the myth that coding is only for “white guys in hoodies” by rebranding what it means to be a computer scientist. Currently, Eva is a student researcher in computational biology at Stanford University, where she works on the interpretability of machine learning models for genomics. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx