About

Gender Equality is the 5th United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). As with other SDGs, Artificial Intelligence can play a role in promoting good practices, or to the contrary, can enhance the existing biases and prejudices. A recent workshop at IJCAI, in Macao, made the case for a number of projects relating SDGs and Artificial Intelligence.

The Knowledge 4 All Foundation, the Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaire de Paris and the UNESCO Chair on OER at Université de Nantes jointly organize this workshop. The workshop will be organized around talks, but interaction will be promoted through active debates around the different questions relevant to the workshop, of which:

Bias issues: typically, AI will reproduce the bias in the data. If the data contains a prejudice, the decision making based on AI can reproduce (and sometimes enhance) that prejudice.
Gender issues in AI projects: Is it a good idea to add a "gender officer" to an AI project? Someone who can look out so that prejudice doesn't creep in?
AI for Education: how educating women can make special sense? What do we need to look out for?

Programme

09:30-10:00	Coffee on arrival
10:00-10:10	Welcome and setting the stage Colin de la Higuera, Université de Nantes, UNESCO Chair in teacher training technologies with OER
10:10‑11:00	Keynote talk Bhavani Rao, UNESCO Chair in Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality (slides)
11:00‑12:30	Session 1: Does AI introduce new risks and opportunities for gender equality? Moderator: Florence Sedes John Shawe-Taylor, UNESCO Chair in Artificial Intelligence (slides) Wendy MacKay, INRIA National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation, Situ Ex Prateek Sibal, ICT in Education Knowledge Societies Division Communication and Information Sector UNESCO (slides)
12:30‑14:00	Lunch break
10:30‑12:00	Session 2: The issue of bias-which are the main reasons for bias and can AI do something about it? Michèle Sebag, CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique (slides) Frédérique Krupa, Human Machine Design Lab, University Nantes Bhavani Rao, UNESCO Chair in Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality
14:00-15:30	Session 3: AI and education: where women empowerment questions can be looked into Sophie Touzé, VetAgro Sup-Université de Lyon Mitja Jermol, UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for OER and Open Learning (slides) Florence Sedes, Université de Toulouse and Société Informatique de France
16:00	Wrap-up and final words