UNESCO supports Women in AI

Numbers tell the truth – there is a big gender divide in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. According to recent researches of the World Economic Forum and WIRED, only 22% of AI professionals and 12% of researchers in the machine learning and AI field globally are women.

Today, AI and other emerging technologies are transforming the world that we live in. From personalized news feed, automated customer services to instant machine translation, AI affects our daily lives. If the women participation in the development and deployment of AI remains unchanged, evidence suggests that by 2022, 85% of AI projects will not be able to deliver accurate and correct outcomes due to existing gender bias and stereotypes in AI algorithms that reproduce the patterns of human behaviors over the years.

This year, UNESCO will join ITU, UNESCAP, and other agencies to organize the Girls in ICT Day Thailand again to provide trainings for girls and women in secondary schools on STEMS. UNESCO will lead a training track on AI for girls, which are planned to be on Thursdays, 29 April, 5 and 13 May, 2021.

In addition, to address the gender divide in the AI field and empower women computer scientists, UNESCO supports the Women in AI Program organized by iTrainAsia and sponsored by Microsoft. The program will provide training on fundamental knowledge of AI (Introduction, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Natural   Language Processing, and Conversational AI), as well as learning to use Microsoft Azure services to support them. The trainings aim to cover 500 women computer scientists from 8 different Asian countries and equip them with enough information and knowledge to take the AI-900 exam for certification.

In Thailand, three sessions will take place on 21 April, 15 May and 5 June 2021. Registration is open at http://bit.ly/azurethai.

For the prerequisites of candidates and other details about the training program, please visit https://www.itrainasia.com/microsoft-women-in-ai/.

For more information about the Girls in ICT Day Thailand 2021, please check https://www.girlsinict-asiapacific.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/GirlsinictasiapacificTH.