I’ve not used this argument with those are preaching artificial intelligence (AI) is evil. I truly am trying to avoid conflict. I don’t do it well, but this made me think.

Before I share my thoughts, I’ll say I’m not a geek, I’m a very keen trainee geek. I agree to cookies. I forget passwords. I learnt how to two finger type when keyboards came in to replace tick boxes and carbon paper.

I’m what some call a woman of a certain age, which is limiting in itself, but hey I’ll go with it. I’m mostly a keen and enthusiastic learner of all things and am passionate about books, writing and lifelong learning.

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Yesterday a huge footie (it’s football not soccer so there!) game played out on a world stage.

The entire world cup has shifted the view of the women’s game across the globe. About time, but I’ll move on…

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An article in the press mentions that the big river has admitted they had to quickly ‘fix’ Alexa as when asked for the result / scores, it said there wasn’t a match.

Oops!

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Anyway – it got me thinking.

We know, or should, that sexism and diversity has always been a concern raised about artificial intelligence. It should come as no surprise in an area, technology, that had and still has a gender gap.

Strictly speaking, I mean Large Language Models (LLMs) AI is a much larger umbrella that has been around for years. It is the accessibility of LLMs that seems to have caused the sudden onslaught of negativity and misinformation.

Even mention of the topic has led people to bully others into submission, to troll them online and condemn their work. Bullying is never OK. It is especially damaging when it’s infighting between creatives. I read daily about writers who use AI to help them manage their challenges such as dyslexia, sight issues, imposter syndrome, and many more.

Some people think it’s okay to push their opinions on others. As a result, individuals are being removed, or removing themselves from social media and networking groups.

Ironically, those who are doing the bullying are telling us they are fighting for humanity against the machine. Then trying to beat the humanity and personal opinions from those who disagree.

Personal opinion and interaction is precisely what divides us from the machines.

It’s understandable why AI models are biased in one gender direction, the male one. Historically, there were a huge number of male writers. Women forced to work behind those male pen names. The world of literature and scripts that have fed the models have come from a society that was and, some argue, still is a patriarchy.

It’s not AI or LLMs that have this issue, it affects most if not all areas of technology. Gaming has long had a problem with sexism, and that still drags on.*

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So to my point… I ask you this.

To redress the balance, do we, as a diverse community or writers, actually have a responsibility to redress the balance for future generations?

Should we ensure our work is accessible to all LLMs for advanced learning?

Do we need to flood world with diverse fiction to support or force the LLM’s to re-educate themselves?

Are those authors refusing to engage actually ensuring the AI stays stuck in the dark ages and failing to address the gap in its learning?

I have no answers.

Maybe by asking the questions, it will make writers think about what their legacy will be.

If all of this sounds too futuristic or beyond you, it’s not.

Read about it, educate yourself. 

AI is already writing for you to read. You may not know it because despite the rumours, it is not all rubbish or stolen verbatim quotes.

AI helps writers with accessibility issues or challenges put metaphorical pens to paper and get their words out in the world. How amazing is that!

Please, all I ask is that you discuss with your peers how can we help to ensure diversity in all things is in our future and that of our offspring.

It’s not going away, but we can help it be more relevant, reflective of our world and at least ensure it gets the footie results right.

I wrote on a similar topic in 2021 – here’s my earlier post…

Why Our Diverse Voices Are More Important Now Than Ever Before

Large Language Model (LLM) – a “transformer” architecture that processes and generates human-like language. It is a machine learning algorithm that uses massive amounts of text data to learn how to understand and generate language.

[https://www.v7labs.com/blog/large-language-models-llms]

Artificial intelligence leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind

[https://www.ibm.com/topics/artificial-intelligence]

Further Reading / Useful Info:

https://diversity.ai/

https://www.raconteur.net/responsible-business/ais-threat-to-diversity-equity-inclusivity

https://blog.frontiersin.org/2023/06/08/diversity-inclusion-forefront-future-ai/

https://www.lebbos.org/llm-reading-list

* Sexism in gaming:

https://www.thegamer.com/women-in-games-gaming-industry-sexism-abuse-drink-spiking-gdc/