The theme of #iwd2024 is “inspire inclusion.” I was writing something this week about inclusion and asked MS Teams AI to generate some images of “Women in 2024.” I got exactly what I expected – groups of young, attractive women standing really close to each other in some kind of positive spirituality moment. Archetypical stock images. Apparently, women can only be “empowered”.

It bothered me, so I repeated the prompt for “Men in 2024” and got a series of futuristic looking, dynamic images of people in action, moving with purpose, making decisions, often in futurescapes with matrix like graphics. Men are “looking ahead.”

The AI is biased. It is biased because the designers are biased too. Bias is in us all. The first step is to acknowledge it. Then, work hard to challenge your assumptions and seek to overcome it, moment to moment, interaction to interaction. We are best placed to “inspire inclusion” when we work on ourselves to be more inclusive.

Let’s go to work, friends.

<– This much We Know –>