"For only four hours of simulated data from the telescope, my code could run for five days before outputting the results," Atemkeng says. "I became passionate about the amount of data the SKA would produce in the future – a data stream likely to be in the order of PB/s. At this data scale, even using the most powerful supercomputers, the computation will always remain a major challenge. So I became interested in developing tools for big data, which can be implemented with AI and machine learning algorithms." For Atemkeng, most of Africa's problems – from poverty to food access for its rapidly growing population, education and healthcare access in rural areas – could be solved using machine learning and big data analytics.

Orange said that it has become the first company to be awarded the GEEIS-AI certification (Gender Equality European & International Standard for AI), which was created on the initiative of gender equality NGO Arborus. The telecom group backed the initiative in April and signed up to a charter aimed at supporting non-discriminatory artificial intelligence within companies, in applications such as human resource management processes. It then passed an audit carried out by Bureau Veritas assessing compliance with the GEEIS-AI requirements. The certification is one of the GEEIS labels created by the Arborus Endowment Fund, which was set up in 2010 to raise awareness and promote gender equality under the patronage of the European Economic and Social Council.

At a time when artificial intelligence algorithms are increasingly prevalent in our everyday lives (recruitment, customer relations, recommending content, banking and insurance, etc.), it is vital for Orange to ensure that the entire data value chain is managed responsibly and that potential discriminatory biases are identified and eliminated. The audit, carried out by Bureau Veritas, assessed Orange for its actions aimed at designing, developing and using inclusive artificial intelligence to promote diversity and avoid risks of discrimination before awarding the certification. The GEEIS-AI repository offers a way to raise awareness among the entire AI production chain, from design to operating the end product. In this way, a wide range of job lines and skills are at the service of the entire Orange ecosystem. This applies, in particular, to human resource management processes to guarantee they are not biased while encouraging diversity in AI job lines.

"When you train algorithms on limited data, what you get is holes in the results." We are at the start of an epoch that will change everything, Stephanie Dinkins says about AI. But does the robots that we create represent everyone? In order to avoid problematic machine bias, she asks us developers to bring different people to the table. Developers shouldn't be afraid to rock the boat and encourage a little discomfort in the workplace.

On March 7th, the Center for Responsible Business and the Human Rights Center, in collaboration with Microsoft, hosted the third annual conference on Business, Technology, and Human Rights. The event gathered technologists and practitioners across industry, nonprofit, and academia, as well as students around the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Social Impact. As student advisory board members at the Center for Responsible Business, we want to be part of the movement to move business to the forefront of social and environmental impact. Attending this conference and meeting some of the leading practitioners in the field of AI gave us the chance to understand how we can ensure this burgeoning technology can help achieve that goal. AI can serve humanity and promote positive social, environmental, and economic outcomes through a focus on human-centered, inclusive AI design. This means adopting a more conscientious design of AI algorithms and tools that puts the full diversity of human needs and consequences at the center.