We’re excited to present Emily Springer as a Featured AI Leader.
Let’s get to know how Emily is using AI.
1. How is AI impacting your work?
AI is my work, quite literally! I work as an inclusive, feminist AI consultant to international development organizations looking to incorporate AI into their work practices or programs abroad. I am also an AI literacy trainer for social impact professionals, offering responsible AI bootcamps to individuals and organizations. I work within a larger sector committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the sector is abuzz with "AI for Good." I always say "AI for good must be proven, not assumed." Right now, the positivity, technosolutionism of AI is a force and mentality that I have to actively push against. We've seen time and again the bad press around AI uses increasing social inequalities. And, by default, it will do that. My mission in life is to help ensure that default AI isn't accepted, but inclusive, feminist AI is!
2. How do you use AI in your daily life?
I use AI to speed my up my workflow. This ranges from (1) creating talking point scripts for talks and speeches to condense my notes; (2) building AI images for use in trainings (which means testing image generators for stereotyping, biases, and inequalities); (3) summarizing articles; (4) building out small business marketing leads; (5) getting unstuck while thinking; (6) really wanting to move into cooperative agents but not sure how!
3. What is your favorite AI tool right now?
I hate to say it but it's ChatGPT. I was an early adopter and haven't shifted because of adoption inertia. I've used Bing, Perplexity.ai, etc. for my own work but don't have a reason to shift just yet. Some of my favorite CONCEPTS in AI tools: (1) I'd like to use Latimer.ai (an LLM trained on Black and brown histories but its not open to subscribers just yet). (2) Claude's "constitutional AI" is a fascinating peek into increasing helpfulness of models while retaining and advancing safety protocols. It's based off of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights plus staff contributions plus that of 1000 Americans surveyed.
4. What advice do you have for someone who is just getting started with AI?
Jump in! ESPECIALLY women.
The 4th industrial age means all social interactions and norms are up for debate, up for creation, up for grabs! We need to jump in and grab some of that power that is up for grabs. This is also true for people of color and marginalized communities. We all need to get to the AI table and have the confidence and basic knowledge of AI in order to understand how/where/and why we need to contribute and fight hard for the future we want to see. Women are disappearing in tech, not appearing. We need to change that. The good news is that while there is a lot of talk about AI taking our jobs, AI also creates a lot of jobs.
I would encourage anyone who is just starting in AI to learn the fundamentals, not "tips and tricks" but HOW AI actually works (from a concepts perspective), that way you will have the critical foundation to assess AI uses in your life and society. AI literacy is where to begin, but keep your eyes on the horizon--there are AI governance, AI ethics, and responsible AI jobs there that need non-data scientists! There is space for you, please come and join!
5. Who should we follow in the AI space?
Neema Iyer, Chenai Chair, & Renee Cummings.
6. How can women in AI support each other? We are all minorities in this space, not only from a gender perspective, but from an experiential perspective. We need to take that very very seriously and support one another from the micro (in a meeting: What so and so said is really insightful...) to meso (pushing our companies, clients, networks to constantly read, cite, hire, select to speak women in AI to change representation and the feel of the room, not to mention the content!) to the macro (fight for changes in terms of references, budget lines toward responsible AI, promote your female coworker). We can ask others if they've experimented with AI and show them how to get started. We can have lunches where we test our office AI tools for gender bias and then share the results with our managers and company decision makers. Always, we can do one of the most radical things out there -- two women can support each other in their respective dreams.
Take the time, pull up a chair, and let's change the history about what happened when humans first adopted AI!
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