In this clip I talk about a AI/ML conference where there were only women (and non-binary) speakers allowed.

If the roles were reversed, it would be so obviously discriminatory!

Why can't we accept that men and women are different, and male brain apparently seems to be (on average) more suitable for the kind of analytic thinking that lends itself to AI innovation? So what? Women are (statistically) more capable at other things. And I'm only talking statistical averages here. There are exceptional women in the AI field, and exceptional men in women-dominated fields.

Let's celebrate our individual strengths, rather than desperately trying to pretend that there are no gender differences, and that everything needs to be 50-50 male/female (or now: 46-46-4-3-2-... whatever) to reflect the gender distribution in the general population.

Why forcefully try to enact some sort of artificial diversity by creating separate playing fields where men are not allowed to have a voice on stage? (They did generously allow men to sign up as audience members.)

As a woman, this bothers me, as I suddenly find myself part of sort of a "protected minority group" in tech - instead of being part of the whole and competing based on my individual skills and knowledge.

If the conference were mostly about cultural/society issues, I could see the point, but it seems to have been conceived as a tech conference... purposely leaving out the vast majority of techies that drive AI tech forward. (Most advanced github projects around AI are created by men.)

But why are there so much fewer women in tech?

Why not consciously try to "even out" the statistical gender differences?

I'll talk about all this in this video. Just my personal opinion, but yeah as a woman I'm a bit bummed about this DEI stuff. Not just because it's creating a big backlash (I recorded this before the 2024 U.S. election...). It actually makes it harder for people who defy gender norms to fit in and not being seen as a member of their gender grou