The upsurge in the interest, proliferation, and usage of artificial intelligence (AI) — brought on by the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI last November — has led to intensified questioning over how AI could affect various aspects of society moving forward.

For many people, not least marginalised people themselves, some of the most important questions on AI concern how it could negatively impact marginalised communities if the teams working on AI systems aren’t diverse, and if the AI systems themselves aren’t trained on representative and reliable data.

According to McKinsey’s The State of AI in 2022 study and report from last December, just 27% of people working in teams that are developing AI solutions identify as women, and just 25% identify as racial or ethnic minorities. Further, 29% of people said their organisations have no minority employees working on their AI solutions.

In a bid to support and grow diversity in the field of AI by supporting, championing, and building diverse communities in AI, Diverse AI — which is a volunteer-led, not-for-profit organisation — has been launched in person through events in London and Edinburgh.

The London launch event on 21 June was led by Diverse AI’s founder Toju Duke, who’s a Programme Manager for Responsible AI at Google, while last night’s Scottish launch was led by co-founder Steph Wright, the Head of the Scottish AI Alliance, the organisation working to deliver on Scotland’s AI strategy.

“We believe that AI can truly transform our lives for the better, but this is only achievable if the people that work in and around it are truly diverse,” Wright said. “Truly diverse” encapsulates a wide mixture of people from across different races, genders, sexual orientations, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, religions, and more. “The homogeneity of the field is a widely recognised problem, and it’s a root cause of many of the negative impacts.”

The organisation aims to meet its mission of supporting and growing diversity in AI mainly through community-, collaboration-, and championing-oriented efforts. As Wright said, Diverse AI is “wanting to support the diverse talent that’s already working in AI, making sure they’re staying in AI, and to make sure that diverse voices are represented — and then, also, to try and attract more diverse people into the fields of AI.”

On this front, Wright explained that the focus isn’t solely on supporting technical AI roles. “The focus is always on technical roles or entrepreneurship. But the truth is, those two roles can’t exist without everyone else that enables the sector to thrive; you have your product managers, project managers, business development, marketing, communications, admin — and they all work in AI.”

To help facilitate its aims, the organisation has several key programmes of activity — including aspects such as research and education — led by their respective team leads. Dawn Hunter, who serves as Diverse AI’s Community Empowerment Lead and is also a Project Manager at Scottish AI Alliance, touched on the community empowerment efforts.

“We have a clear objective for community empowerment: it’s about developing and growing an inclusive and supportive community of diverse voices and minds working, researching, developing, implementing, and living with AI,” she said.

Hunter mentioned that the initial community empowerment work focuses on the LGBTQ+ community, and that, as an example of such work, they’re currently engaging with equalities and LGBTQ+ student union representatives at universities across the UK in order to get them engaged in online networking events for LGBTQ+ university students interested in AI.

The LGBTQ+ community is just one community that the organisation aims to support, and Hunter gave a call to action for others to get involved and help champion their own communities: “This can be any marginalised community; you can be part of the neurodiverse community, you can be part of that disabled community, you can be part of the Black and minority ethnic community […] as long as this community is marginalised in the AI space currently and you want to be a champion for it.”

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Near the end of the talk, Wright mentioned how, for those interested in getting involved in the organisation more generally, it’s possible to become a member of Diverse AI for free. By doing so, it’s possible to join a community of diverse people working in AI, thereby being able to share, support, learn, and collaborate in a safe space. Further, members can join Diverse AI events online and in person, as well as have opportunities to lead or volunteer across the aforementioned programmes, among other benefits.

A paid membership is also hoped to be introduced this August, which will offer additional advantages to members, such as being added to the Diverse AI membership directory, which will help showcase and champion the diverse talent already working in AI.

Before the talk introducing Diverse AI came to a close, and before being met with the audience’s round of applause, Wright ended with an open invitation: “I’m inviting you all to come join us on a journey to a diverse AI future.”

For readers wanting to learn more about or get involved with Diverse AI, visit the organisation’s homepage here.