This week our Chief Digital Officer Elaine Safier joined more than 100 brilliant women in tech at the Women of Silicon Roundabout event in London. Alongside stories of significant industry innovation, top of the agenda for many speakers was the role of tech in driving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) ambitions.
Elaine’s session explored both the dangers of ‘big tech’ in relation to reinforcing bias and – on the flipside – proposed the idea that persuasive technology and AI has the potential to actually improve equality and ensure diversity.
In the run up to the event, Elaine worked closely with leading experts, Nathalie Nahai, Perry Timms, Tom Chatfield and Dr. Neema Pahsa to look at the challenges the tech industry is facing. The group agreed that many of the problems are down to misalignment - where the tech vendors’ values and goals are simply not aligned with the user’s values and goals. When misalignment happens, and when companies don’t infuse the tech and AI with inclusive values, it isn’t surprising that they start reinforcing bias, perpetuating echo chambers, and often bringing out peoples’ worst instincts.
But there’s good news to be had too, and Elaine painted a picture of a better future, where tech developers start by thinking about what the user wants or needs to grow and thrive – and base their products and tools on that. She urged companies to begin measuring success by experiences and outcomes - and focus on long term behaviour change rather than short term activity levels.
If we did all this, said Elaine, and work to separate to the product and from the very start, then we move towards data and AI that uses positive persuasion, in ways that enable conscious control and choice.
If you attended the Silicon Roundabout event, we’d love to hear your thoughts. And there’s plenty more to come from MindGym over the coming weeks and months on the subject of ‘tech for good’ too. We’re preparing to reveal updates to our existing digital products and launch innovative new digital services – all designed to help our customers harness the power of technology to achieve lasting behavioural change.
And we’re prepared to lead by example - our talented team of designers, developers and tech experts is focused on making technology which delivers measurable impact: changing how people think, feel and behave at work. And at the heart of this is a commitment to embedding ethical design principles in everything we do.
