The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras’ Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (RBCDSAI), SuperBloom Studios and the IIT-M Alumni Association (IITMAA) have together launched an initiative to reduce the gap in gender data in digital sources.
The initiative ‘Hidden Voices’ has set a goal of auto-generating biographies of notable women by International Women’s Day on March 8, 2023. Their aim is make a positive impact on gender representation among digital sources. SuperBloom Studios is a business consultancy firm co-founded by three alumni of the Institute. Volunteers may register through http://hiddenvoices.xyz/
Balaraman Ravindran, head of the RBCDSAI, said the project would be an instance of a human-allied AI execution. The project was trying to address the errors that AIs could make while processing documents about under-represented populations. “We will take advantage of AI solutions where possible and judiciously use human oversight and verification to produce high quality outputs,” he said.
Raji Baskaran, founding partner of SuperBloom Studios, said the lack of information created unintended biases, and it was prominent in the digital world.
According to Krishnan Narayanan, president of the IITMAA, the project was under its Mission Million Smiles and Women-in-STEM programmes. The younger, digitally proficient alumni were willing to volunteer, he added.
The initiative would start with biographies of women in STEM fields and tech-adjacent business domains from North America and India and later expand to expertise areas, geography and other less represented communities.
