Seminar “Artificial Intelligence, Public Policies, and Gender Biases”

On November 27th, CEI International Affairs, in collaboration with the Obra Social Fundación “la Caixa”, organized a space for reflection on the construction of public policies with a gender perspective in the era of artificial intelligence at the Palau Macaya in Barcelona. 

The event “Artificial Intelligence, Public Policies, and Gender Biases” featured three specialists from different disciplinary areas: 

Aina Gallego, senior associate researcher at IBEI and associate professor at the University of Barcelona, opened the conference by clearly contextualizing the advantages and challenges of the rise of AI in decision-making and public policies. Specifically, Gallego focused on the new scenarios and risks posed by generative AI, particularly regarding the ownership of AI systems and privacy management. 

Thais Ruiz de Alda used the example of metadata in the music industry, using the Music Gender Metadata project. Metadata reflects information related to identifying musical works, such as titles, creator names, dates, etc. Currently, the inclusion of personal attributes such as gender is not mandatory in the architecture of these metadata and is therefore not adopted in the industry. For this reason, De Alda is working on a technical development that includes a gender metadata framework. 

Finally, Lidia Arroyo Prieto, professor in the Department of Social Psychology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and researcher in the Gender and ICT group at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the UOC, concluded this first part of the debate by once again warning about the implications of artificial intelligence from a feminist perspective in public policies. In fact, a key point shared by the speakers was emphasized: any result produced by generative AI should require human review and supervision. 

The event concluded with a Q&A session between the attendees, which reiterated the need to define ethical principles and publicly regulate the fundamental mechanisms of generative AI for the proper use of this technology.