AI is the future — how do we make sure it’s inclusive?

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Artificial intelligence is quickly advancing its way into our daily lives, with more than a billion people touching it in some way each year. Global leaders are now working together to ensure the technology is built without bias. Why? They can't do it alone.

The goal of building inclusive AI is a challenging one, in part because the talent working on the tech is fairly homogeneous. Only 22% of AI professionals across the globe are female, compared to 78% who are male, according to LinkedIn data. The number of workers with AI skills grew 190% globally between 2015 and 2017 and 6 of the 15 fastest-growing jobs of the past year call for these skills and AI specialists are becoming some of the highest paid — and most educated — experts across tech.

If the skills gap in AI persists, it’s challenging to imagine a future where the technology is built to support underrepresented groups.

“The biggest risk of the digital economy is that it is not inclusive,” IBM CEO Ginny Rometty said in an interview with Fortune this Monday. “If you feel like you don’t have the skills to participate in this world and work with this, that is a very divisive thing.”

While the tech community is known for “moving fast and breaking things,” that dogma simply won’t work for creating systems that support AI. That’s why large tech companies like IBM are hiring ethicists to constantly consider the implications of the tech and training workers without college degrees in AI skills. They’re also partnering with each other to learn best practices. The Partnership on AI, for example, features leaders from Facebook, Google, IBM and more to “bring together diverse, global voices to realize the promise of artificial intelligence.”

We Tackled It Live: I sat down with Francesca Rossi, IBM's AI Ethics Global Leader at 12pm ET to discuss this and more. You can catch the conversation and ask Rossi questions directly right here.

What’s Working

New Rules. On Thursday, I’ll be covering The New York Times New Rules Summit in Brooklyn. I’ll have updates throughout the day from sessions on the gender pay gap, representation of women in the media and more. I’ll also be sitting down live with Ellevest founder Sallie Krawcheck, Uber’s head of legal Tony West and Stubhub President Sukhinder Cassidy.

• Have questions for any of my upcoming guests? Let me know in the comments below using #NYTNewRules and watch select panels here.

#OutOnLinkedIn. On the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the LinkedIn editorial team is exploring the modern workplace that LGBTQ+ Americans face each day in a four-part video series. The laws supporting LGBTQ+ Americans in the workplace still leave room for discrimination. Seventeen states currently lack any workplace protection laws for the community while the other 33 offer varying protections depending on a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or employer. We have more below, and encourage you to tell your story on Linkedin using #OutOnLinkedIn.

Coming back from stay at home. Most companies still aren’t great at bringing back talent that took time off from their career to have children. In a tight labor market, hiring managers are thinking more about the transition by creating things like “returnships” and other benefits to help welcome parents back to work. [HBR]

Tight labor market = more perks. In the fight to recruit more workers, Target extended its paid parental leave and is offering employees access to 20 days of subsidized care for children. [Bloomberg]

What Needs Work

Foreign interest in U.S. tech wanes. As U.S. immigration becomes more challenging, high-skilled workers abroad are less interested in coming here for work. Where are they going instead? Canada. [Vox]

Automation will impact everyone. Up to 1 in 4 women currently working today will be impacted by automation and artificial intelligence over the next ten years and the stat is basically the same for men. Women in clerical roles like secretaries, schedulers and bookkeepers are predicted to be impacted while the majority of male worker displacement will happening in manufacturing. [LinkedIn]

So close...but. In an interview announcing efforts to promote women in the newsroom. Editor-In-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg said, “It’s really, really hard to write a 10,000-word cover story. There are not a lot of journalists in America who can do it. The journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males.” The implication of his statement -- that women aren't up for the job -- caused many women in the media to question his ability to fix the problem. [Nieman Labs]

Who’s Pushing Us Forward

Be what you see. Ali Stroker became the first wheelchair user to win a Tony. “This award is for every kid who is watching tonight who has a disability, who has a limitation or a challenge,” she said on stage. [NYTimes]

What do you want to see in next week’s edition? Let me know in the comments below or message me here. #WorkingTogether