We, Women Reclaiming AI (womenreclaimingai.com) invite you to take a step into the future and take part in a hyper-local nanosecond protest on the representation of women in gendered technology. Together we will discuss, design and demonstrate demands to ensure this future becomes more representative and desirable.
Women are underrepresented in computing and robotics. However, when it comes to making humanoid chatbots or robots, women appear regularly - but not as makers. As speech recognition, chatbot technology and robotics are improving at pace, the sci-fi fantasy and commercial benefit of creating technology gendered as women are driving new artistic, cultural, and industrial endeavours. Men are responsible for re-coding women's identity within technology, amplifying the issues of the past, without consultation or inclusion of women's voices. This has to change!
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We're hoping that many efforts and discussions will continue after Mozfest. Share any ideas you already have for how to continue the work from your session. –Our mission:
To address the issues arising when men/male teams use womens’ bodies, voices, personalities etc for commercial, social or sexual gain.
To activate women to assert their own needs, wants, desires, with technological development
To use creative technology as a design activist method for creating opportunities for upskilling, discussion and advocacy for women in technology - particularly smart and AI drive technologies.
To reclaim female representation from under-representative teams in technology
To stop the perpetuation of myths and subservient sexual archetypes that are being reinforced through the male drive of technology
To consider intersectionality at all levels of our action
To create a response and manifesto listing our demands from technology industries that use female bodies for profit.
How will you deal with varying numbers of participants in your session? –We are used to running workshops which are participatory and scalable. We will use breakout rooms, Miro and digital collaborative tools. Our team is made up of three experienced facilitators, used to running workshops online. Our forth member will be live-illustrating the workshops creating visual materials for participants. If the group is small (less than 10) we can work in one room, if the group is larger we will use breakout rooms to give people greater time for discussion.
We create collaborative workshops, events and installations aimed at (re)claiming conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems as a medium for protest.