The proportion of women in technical occupations is low. Since the making Artificial Intelligence is no exception. But the industry wants to change that – and get a prejudice out of their heads.
Berlin (dpa) – In order to inspire more women for Artificial Intelligence , the industry believes that an image change is necessary. So far, only a few women would apply for jobs, said the head of the visual search engine Nyris, Anna Lukasson-Herzig , the German Press Agency .
“They do not combine a nice working atmosphere with these jobs.” Many women have prejudices: “A lot of funny men sitting in front of many monitors, in the basement, have headphones on, no one speaks to each other, no one laughs,” said Lukas-Herzig . “There’s no girl on it, we have to get out and then they want to join in.”
In addition, many women just did not dare to apply for jobs around Artificial Intelligence . The reason for this is often already in kindergarten time. Necessary was a common social effort, demanded Lukasson-Herzig . “We all have to keep working to keep girls from being nonsense.”
The proportion of women in the industry located in Germany, according to the World Economic Forum ( WEF ) at 16 percent. The WEF had recently cited the large gap between men and women in the AI as a reason that gender justice in this country is not progressing.
“It must be the task of all social groups to reduce this deficit, which starts at school and goes through the universities to the companies,” said the head of the Federal Association of Artificial Intelligence , Jörg Bienert. The association demands that computer science should be introduced as a compulsory subject at school from the third grade onwards, since the interest in technology can already be aroused in early childhood.
Quota regulation is not an issue for the industry. “I generally feel limited that quotas or forced external measures are appropriate,” said the head of the Berlin data analysis start-up Anacode, Janna Lipenkova. “On the contrary, especially in education, it is important to give women the full horizons of opportunity, and to give them the necessary self-confidence to fully realize their potential.”