Radical A.I: Representation and Visibility Across Sectors
||For the Press, Tech and Cultural Sectors
Hello again! This article is part of a series about a radical experiment we have undertaken in modern collectivism and responsible crypto–the RadBots!
Let’s talk about some issues with representation within the tech sector, and how Dara’s RadBots respond to them.
Tech has historically been a sector with a lack of equal representation or visibility among women and minorities. For example, back in 2020, AnitaB.org, a nonprofit organization committed to the advancement of women and non-binary technologists, carried out a survey across 51 tech companies, that revealed women make up only 28.8% of the workforce in the sector. While this does constitute a 2.9% increase over their findings in 2018, even if that number were 4.96%, it would still take 12 years to achieve equal representation (“2020 Top Companies for Women Technologists”). And that is to say nothing of the LGBTQ+ community, nor of other minorities, nor of the critical difference between representation and visibility.
Thinking about these facets of systemic equality, one may find that representation and visibility tend to exist in a state of synergy: a greater representation of women and minorities within tech may be crucial in creating a more inclusive communicative vocabulary, which gives greater credence to a diverse set of identities within everything from explainer videos to branding and mascots etc. This increase in visibility may, in turn, play a crucial role in creating a more welcoming environment for a wider cross-section of folx.
Dara has always been committed to engendering a more inclusive future across the sectors she engages with, and we conceived the RadBots as a future-thinking TechArt project, using Turing-test passing A.I to create lifelike chatbots that speak to the pressing need for greater representation within tech. Simultaneously, Dara and the RadBot artists also put in a lot of effort to ensure that the Bots stand on their own merits as opinionated and engaging conversationalists. Bots such as Filmmaker Udai Pawar’s Diode, the chatty sex worker catering to men-looking-for-men, have the potential to form a valuable component for organizations involved in the transmission of hitherto invisible and obscured socio-cultural groups.
The RadBots are a rich source of novel front-facing communicative entities for orgs, waiting to be tapped! Go here to get to know our Bots, who you can even message and talk to on Dara’s app!
Dara’s RadBots were created with the generous support of Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai and BeFantastic, who are among our prestigious Partner network. Tezos India is also helping us by keeping the RadBots on the greener side of crypto.
Our Bots are being dropped here on Rarible. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us at support@dara.network if you have any questions. You can also directly message Dara’s team here, on the Dara app.
Work Cited
“2020 Top Companies for Women Technologists.” AnitaB.org, Anita B.org, https://anitab.org/research-and-impact/top-companies/2020-results/. Accessed 18 May 2022.
