The speakers will discuss how AI can perpetuate, amplify and even create new bias that affect women, and in particular women of color, in recruiting processes and in the workplace. We will also present Biasly AI as an example of how AI can be used as a tool for inclusivity. Biasly was created by Mila and can be used in the hiring process.
Professor Rangita de Silva de Alwis, a globally recognized international women's rights expert, a United Nations advisor, a fellow of the HKS Women and Public Policy Programme and founder of the AI and Bias Policy Lab at Penn Law, will discuss AI intersectional gender bias, especially as it relates to recruiting.
Allison Cohen, from Mila, will present Biasly, a natural language processing tool that identifies conscious and subconscious bias and debiases problematic sentences for its users.
The conversation will be moderated by Edynne Grand-pierre, Law student at the University of Ottawa.
This event is organized by the U Ottawa research chair Accountable AI in a Global Context and the Harvard Kenne dy School Women's Network.
Our speakers
Rangita de Silva de Alwis is a globally recognized international women's rights expert. She serves as the Associate Dean of International Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania Law School where she teaches International Women's Rights and the Policy Lab, directs the Global Institute for Human Rights, has been appointed Leader-in-Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School's Women and Public Policy Program for 2019-2021 academic years and was named the Hillary Rodham Clinton Fellow on Gender Equity, Georgetown (2020-2021). In 2017, she started the Global Women's Leadership Project and Women, Law & Leadership Lab under the auspices of UN Women's Executive Director, Under Secretary-General Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka to map the laws that regulate the status of women in the f amily. Rangita serves as Special Advisor to the President of Wellesley College and as Distinguished Adviser to the Executive Director of UN Women on global women's rights and women's leadership. Rangita is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of Harvard Law School's Center on the Legal Profession where she is co-authoring a Study with Under Secretary General Mlambo- Ngcuka on the transformative impact of business leadership, innovation and inclusion on accelerating the SDGs. She also serves on the UN Women High Level Working Group on Women's Access to Justice and as Advisor to Gender Equality at UNESCO. Rangita has also founded the AI and Bias Policy Lab at Penn Law, which has produced insightful research on AI bias, including the Elephant in AI report.
Allison Cohen is the Applied AI Projects Lead at Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute. In this role, Allison works closely with AI researchers, collaborators and funding partners to professionalize socially beneficial AI projects and deploy them at scale. Currently, her portfolio of projects includes a de-biasing application and a tool to support police in their human trafficking investigations.
Edynne Grand-pierre is a third-year student in the joint Civil Law degree and Bachelor of Social Science program specializing in International Development and Globalization at the University of Ottawa. She is interested in artificial intelligence and technology, and has been serving as a member of the racial profiling committee of the Saint-Michel law clinic. Edynne is also involved in her community to promote access to justice. She is currently the National Francophone Representative of the Black Law Students' Association of Canada.