Transcript
My name is Aya Jaff, and I'm super excited to be here. Julius just had an amazing talk. I believe he is one of the best keynote speakers I've ever seen on stage. So kudos to you, and thank you so much. Well, I'm here. I have a different role. I'm from the tech sector, but also the finance sector. I was able to dive really, really deep into those two things, and I noticed how Shannon really left out my job title, because I don't have just one, and it's okay to not mention those. But today, I want to make it really tangible, so you understand what I'm doing. So I'm an author, coder, consultant. These are the three main jobs that I have. I've written a book on finance. I've also been the CTO of a stock market simulation game called Tragedy, and I've been consulting a lot of big corporations, big and small, in Silicon Valley, here in Germany, too, in Europe, and we basically talk about a lot of trends. Now, what they want is for me to look into the future. I can't do that, and if you ever hear anybody talking about the future, let me tell you, if they act like they know, look for the nearest exit, because it's not possible. So what we're going to do today is talk about some of the things that I have seen, particularly as a woman in tech. I want to talk about gray areas. I want to talk about questions that are not super... Maybe they're super polarizing to some people, because they don't know. Either they tend to yes or no, but when they do, they are very extreme in their opinions. So let's talk about diversity, but in an intersectional manner. What does that mean? I have an example for you. I noticed a black model. Her name is Shudu, and Shudu is, on Instagram, a pretty big deal. She has a lot of brand deals. She's with Gucci. She's on the Vogue cover. She's doing a lot of things that a pretty normal supermodel would be doing. What I also like about her is that she's talking about things like Black Lives Matter. So she's using her platform to talk about political messages, too. And I love that about her. So I followed her, and I looked at some of the posts, and I realized one hashtag. She's a digital supermodel. Every picture that I was seeing, even with real models that I knew of, they were fabricated. So I did some digging. Shudu is black and female, or identifies as female officially. The person who controls her, though, is white and male. And as we see in the first comment here, there are already people pointing this out. White people just love exploiting black faces and cultures for personal gain, we see. What do you think? Is this morally okay? Can I have a show of hands? Who thinks this is okay? You think it's okay. Who thinks it's not okay? Okay. So the majority thinks it's not okay. Who is not sure? See that's the gray area I'm talking about. And I love talking about those things, because it does show some of the values we have as a society. So what do I look out for when I think about, hmm, is this problematic? Well, I'm worried about profit through exploitation and misrepresentation. Exploiting people is something that we have seen time and time again. One example we have seen is that already white people are playing black people in movies. And not just black-facing. I'm not talking about black-facing in theaters back in the days. I'm talking about real white people that can be altered in those after cuts, whatever, by AI, and have a role where a black person may experience something very traumatic. And that's not okay, because we are diverting a lot of money from those people who could play those roles, authentically maybe even, and rerouting that kind of money. In a society where money really matters, right? If you don't have access to money in this capitalistic society, that's a problem. And also misrepresentation. I worry about, you know, these pictures that we had seen from Shudu, here in particular. We see that she is seen with these metal bands here and there. And those things, they are actually belonging to a very small subgroup in sub-Saharan Africa. So they are not stereotypical for black people to be worn. So this is where this white programmer went wrong. He misrepresented her. And he acted like she is the face of that particular tribe, even though it's very small. So I also ask myself, can anybody do this? Because if yes, then it should be fine that a white man is doing it. I mean, any woman can step up and be like, okay, I'm gonna do my own avatar. But it's not that easy, is it? You need to have access to a lot of high-end computers to be able to simulate that. You need access to knowledge. You need to have time. You need to make sure that you also come up with a business plan. And that also needs a lot of thinking, a lot of people that need to support you along the way. So for me personally, I think it's not morally completely fine, especially because I found out that this white man has specialized in doing diverse faces. He's doing Chinese people, he's doing Spanish people, he's doing Latinx people, and it's just mind-boggling to me that this man was able to garner so much money. Because basically, if you have a black model, you don't need to pay a real black model to be on that cover. And we already see that with campaigns. Just right now, I think a couple days ago, Mango has put out a campaign that was completely done with AI. And it's not that clearly declared on the website. So when you go on there, you will most definitely think this is a normal model. So there is a lot of money to be made. So we need to talk about this. We need to talk about who has access to tech, who can actually drive the conversation. Because right now, the rooms pretty much look like this. In other words, when companies talk about diversity, I notice that they talk about diversity only in those lower ranks, I would say. You might think, okay, there's a woman there, maybe in the third or maybe even second stage, right underneath the CEO. But it's very often a white woman. So we clearly have a hierarchy in the diversity section. We have a hierarchy, and it's white women, probably Latinx men, people that maybe look like me, POCs that could be read as more white than black people, or people of color. So it was never just about gender. Let's not just talk about gender when we talk about diversity in the tech industry. Let's talk about other things, age, sexuality, background, culture, ethnicity, abilities. I have a couple of examples why this is really important. You want to have my earring? Sure. Thank you so much. No problem. Okay. This is better for you. Yes. Nice. We have had examples of cameras not being able to capture black people, for example. We see here they are less recognizable than their white counterparts. And I love that Google's Super Bowl ad showed this yearbook photo as an example of that. And they also said, it's Black History Month, and we want to give back, and Google promotes real-tone feature to make it better, so they are better recognized. Or we have this computer. Have you ever helped out your grandma or grandpa with any tech problem? I mean, sometimes they get to menus I have never seen in my life, and I'm like, where did you click? Well, with this computer, this is a one-button computer, and it's not touch, and I love that. Because you know how the skin of old people sometimes, they tend to be drier than most, and they tend to turn a little bit leathery, and it doesn't really work that great on many surfaces. So this is one button, and it's just for communication. You can call them any time, your beloved ones, you can check Netflix, whatever. So I believe that nowadays, if tech excludes people from these demographics, that's ignorance in action. Because we can do better, and we have seen better examples. So while I do believe it's about all of these things, I also want to say that one specific thing I don't agree with, and I'm not just talking about the campaign Julius very beautifully described as Kamala versus Donald Trump. I mean it as it's not always better to have a woman or a Latinx woman in that case at the top. Because let's be real, if a man starts a war, it's bad. If an educated Latin woman, girl boss a little too hard and starts a war, it is still bad. So let's talk about that. I think that's a sentiment that doesn't get enough recognition, because on LinkedIn at the moment, I see a lot of discussions where people are discussing, okay, we only have two women as CEOs, and we need more women. While I agree, of course, it would be more diverse, I do think it's failing the discussion here. It's failing. What are we actually looking for? We are looking for a woman that is thinking in a different way, in a different manner than their male counterparts. Because if they choose to do the same things and to take the same route as the man before, well then we are still stuck in the same system we had. So for me, intersectional means that we add this little word, too. It's always in the context of social inequality. That is what we care about. When we say we want diversity, it's not so we can just make more money or make better products. It's really not about that. It's about making the world a more just place, so everybody has a say in it. Some might even say colonialism has not disappeared, it has taken a new form. Because we see exactly those things, exploitation, misrepresentation, and a lot of things that are problematic in the tech sector. And this is not what I'm saying, this is what Timnit Gibra is saying. She's an activist who once worked for a big tech company, Google, and got fired because she voiced her opinion on their AI practices. She says big tech companies are grabbing our natural resources, our data, to control our views, track our movements, and discriminate against us. So we are entering, or we are in full bloom in this new time. But we can resist colonialism, because we have these tools that make it more transparent where we are, where we stand, and we have more people talking about this. So we have to be really clear about what is really going on. So I was asked to talk about digital mastery, too. For me, that's leadership in both the tech sector, so somebody that knows the tools, but also is able to lead in a really big and grand way. And I have these four steps that I believe describe my story, too. First, I learned how to code. I was 16. I learned the ropes, you know? I learned how to set up GitHub, play with Java, play with Ruby, and all these programming languages, set up my own program, have my own website. This was all fun and games. I went on and studied computer science, so I understood the now, I understood the trends, I understood where we stand, where we need to go, who we need to work with to make more money, who I need to consult with, what kind of job titles would make sense on LinkedIn, what would get likes, you know? And that's something a 21-year-old would be very much concerned with, getting ahead in their career. And then I hit a point, and that was a very crucial point for me. Nine months ago, I started to really dive deep into the startup scene for myself. I had an AI startup idea, and I was working on this for six months. We had a pretty good algorithm, which I designed, and I really loved it, because the product was something that I was really passionate about. It was in the media sector, and we were able to have tools that helped journalists do a better job. And I was sitting there with the investors, and I was like, well, I need just four more months to train this AI, really, particularly in these areas, because we're helping journalists, and journalists will use this to have more say in certain topics and write articles and do deep dives. So it's important we get this right. And then they said, well, you need to be doing this in two months, and you need to work with Amazon, and you need to train your data with a lot of people that are not getting paid enough. Well, that's not what they said, but you have to train it with people in the global south. And that's what's happening a lot of times. So we have a lot of AI startups that train their data in the cheapest way possible, because the alternative would be that you go out and look for people maybe in Europe that could train this that would take more time and take more money. And I was at this very, very difficult stage in my life where I really had to look deeply into the mirror and be like, can I go through with this? This was a gray area. My co-founder was of the opinion that, sure, it's fine, because once we have this idea, dude, we're going to be super rich. And then we can give back in a great manner, right? We can have a lot of, I don't know, we can go to different galas and pay a lot of money and have a great conscience afterwards. I was like, is that the way I want to go? For him, this gray area was, yes, this is OK. He was also, I have to say, not very critical at all. This was a step that came natural to him. He didn't question what the investors were wanting. But I urge you all to be a little bit more critical. It's difficult, and it takes a personal sacrifice. For me personally, it was a pretty huge sacrifice, because I said, I can't do it. I don't want to do it. I presented the alternative. And the investors, of course, were like, no, we will not be going forward with that. So my co-founder went on and did that. That's something that you need to be willing to take. It will be uncomfortable. But I do believe it's worth it. Because right now, I'm having so many more discussions that are worth having with philosophers, with coders that are of the same opinion. I was able to set up, in that timing after that, a big conference on tech and AI and ethics. And it was one of the biggest ones in Germany. And we talked about that exactly, with people that didn't just accept that this is OK, and this is the status quo, and we should just get along with it. We are thinking about new ways of doing things. So the next step, I have to say, I'm in the middle of that seven. And I don't know where that path is going to lead me, is to change. So when you're confronted, just like I was, with a decision that isn't as clear as you want it to be, you need to really consult with people who love you, who know you and your values. It is about those conversations. It's not about just looking deeply inside of yourself. It's about looking further than that. And I want you to change the world according to your values. Because it is you. You have those tools. You have the skills. And you do have the privileges. That's why I'm so thankful to be here. I have this one question that really helped me also get further along in my career. And this was something that a former boss of mine asked me. He said, at some point, of course, do you... You can insert any minority group or person into this. Do you want to have this job, he asked. And at first glance, I looked at, you know, everything that was playing an influence in my life. I was like, okay, well, I need to pick up my dog. My parents need a bit of supervision here and there on the weekends. I need to help them set that up. I need to also work the second job that I have. And I tended to say, no, I'm sorry. I cannot step up. I cannot do this job right now. Can you do it? Can you find somebody else? He didn't back out. He asked me another question, which I want you to ask every other one. Is what needs to change for you to say yes? He did not give up. And I loved that. That question really showed me. He's someone I can trust. He's someone that's going to look for more ways to solve this problem. He's really interested in me making it to that stage, to that job, to that, you know, to that power position, essentially. So I thought about it more, and we figured out a way to have two people work on one position. And we see this time and time again now in the business world, too. We have a lot of hand employees doing a great job of combining sometimes two women to have one leadership position. And these are the things that we need to talk about. These new ways of managing power positions with responsibility. So don't turn bitter, please. A lot of people in the diversity sector, they're starting to become really cynical about it. And we're like, oh, it will never change. But actually, it is already changing. We have seen a surge of more women in the tech sector. We have had great discussions. And I do believe that it is you. You are the key. Thank you so much. If you want to follow me along for more gray area questions, you can do that on LinkedIn.
