Are we moving from a MACHO-biased to a MACHINE-biased world?

From the top, clockwise: board members Laetitia Moncarz, Emie Genty, Jenyfer Jerbi (and baby Emma!), Avital Eusgeld, Salam Beasan, and Anne Baer; co-founder Jenyfer Jerbi and participant; Anne Baer on stage; networking session; panelists on stage; Sam Cohen on stage

On July 3rd, 2023, Women in Tech®Israel hosted its first event of the summer at Herzog's offices in Tel Aviv, and the topic was all about collective and #artificialintelligence.

Anne Baer, iKare Innovation's CEO and co-founder of Women in Tech's Israeli chapter was the keynote speaker and shared some insights:

- Israel leads the world with the share of high tech in the workforce - one out of ten employees working in multinationals and startups! Despite a positive trend, women still represent only one third of this cohort, usually at non tech positions.

- When it comes to C-level, it goes down to 16%, mostly VP HR or marcom.

- Roles mostly held by women will be the first to be either erased or transformed by the AI wave: secretaries, accounting clerks, translators, telemarketers...

- Only 4% of Chinese language AI articles have a female co-author. It's almost like saying that we are totally missing out in a country aiming to lead world AI race.

- As women predominantly favor jobs with a social impact, why not consider the huge disruption AI is about to have on our societies? Slightly optimistic note: according to a recent LinkedIn census, women are already twice as numerous in AI positions than in Engineering (26% vs 15%).

With AI on the rise, and machine getting more and more autonomy, it seems legitimate to wonder if human fed machines, will perpetuate current human biases. Some solutions exists. One such model was presented by Samuel Cohen, expert in generative modeling, CEO of Fairgen.

We are happy to see men such as Sam Cohen or Beny Rubinstein, M.B.A., Ph.D. candidate, one of our panelists, being part of the solution.

Avital Eusgeld also discussed how AI can help achieve more diversity and inclusion in the high tech environnement with the participation amongst others of Anna Pelkin from TikTok; Merav Ash (Hason) from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Hodaya Binyamini, from Accenture Israel.

The evening closed with a great networking session, where participants engaged with one another at length!

Be sure to follow Women in Tech Israel on LinkedIn to keep up-to-date with future events!