Launched at the World Web Forum 2019 in Zurich, the curriculum-focused partnership aims to advance the digital literacy for women and children in developing countries.

Diversity and AI

There is a crisis of diversity in AI.

Amazon learned this lesson the hard way when it had to scrap its AI recruiting tool because it showed bias against women. As Amazon’s AI researchers discovered, our biases in real life are being reflected in the data that trains our AI.

However, the crisis is not just in the lack of diversity when it comes to data, the fact that most of the AI researchers and developers share a relatively uniform background means that there is a crisis of diversity in the AI talent itself.

When SingularityNET announced its partnership with UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education aimed at preparing school children for the fourth industrial revolution — we took a significant step in ensuring that the AI talent of the future will be as diverse as possible. While discussing the importance of diversity in AI, Dr. Ben Goertzel said:

“One of our key goals is to make A.I. development more of a broad, participatory pursuit, to ensure that A.I. algorithms and services are created and contributed by a very wide variety of people, with different backgrounds and knowledge and interests.”

SingularityNET’s commitment to challenge the biases that are emerging in AI is further reflected in our open discussions on the various ethical issues concerning AI, our efforts to inspire an interest in AI in the youth of Ethiopia, our partnership with the government of Malta to draft a broad and inclusive National AI Strategy, and our overall vision of creating a decentralized network of AI that can break the Big Tech’s hold on AI.

Today, the SingularityNET team is thrilled to announce that we are partnering with Roya Mahboob’s Digital Citizen Fund!

Roya Mahboob, the CEO and President of Digital Citizen Fund, Digital Citizen Brew, and EdyEdy, was named to TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2013 for her work in building internet classrooms in high schools in Afghanistan. She has also won a Civic Innovator Award from the National Democracy Institute and was named as one of the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders 2015.

Through the various companies and nonprofits that she has founded, Roya aims to advance the digital literacy for women and children in developing countries and to bridge the gap between education and job markets for them by offering practical online skills.

Encouraging Digital Literacy

“In most societies, women do not have a level playing field. But technology, and digital literacy specifically, can change that, as it did for me. The Digital Citizen Fund has already given thousands of people access to technology and adding Singularitynet’s AI and blockchain curriculum to our schools, including their beautifully illustrated comics will allow our female students to not only imagine but create and live into a new future.” Roya Mahboob

Digital Literacy, as defined by Cornell University, is the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies and the internet. As the world becomes digitized, the importance and impact of digital literacy will only increase in scope with time. We must ensure that our youth are adequately prepared to interact with technologies that could leapfrog their progress at both a societal and individual level.

Roya Mahboob’s Digital Citizen Fund is a nonprofit organization founded in New York City that helps girls and women in developing countries gain access to technology, improve their digital literacy through the Fund’s IT centers, and obtain the necessary skills to succeed in today’s expanding global market.

Since its formation, the Digital Citizen Fund has enrolled over 12,000 young women in its training centers that offer courses on digital and financial literacy, and classes on coding and social media. It has also helped 100 startups in Kabul and Herat and has recently started its operations in Mexico.

This partnership will enable SingularityNET to contribute curriculum and share our researchers, AI research and content with the Digital Citizen Fund. The curriculum provided by SingularityNET will be based on our previous partnership with UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education and will cover an extensive array of subjects, including robotics, natural language AI, machine learning to analyze data, blockchain experiments, 3D printing, wearables, smartphone-based bioimaging, and more.

The SingularityNET team believes that creating a decentralized AI ecosystem will require the democratization of AI knowledge and innovative go-to-market approaches to educate and inspire the future generation. Most importantly, we believe that encouraging digital literacy in developing countries is the crucial first step in ensuring that the AI talent of the future is as diverse as possible and that our most important invention is not contaminated by our biases.

Join Us

We hope you will join us in our mission to democratize AI and to use its transformative powers to enact real, positive and lasting change. The best way forward is to come together and work practically towards creating a better future. SingularityNET plans to reinforce and expand its collaborations to shape the coming AI Singularity into a positive one for all. To read more about our other partners, click here.

SingularityNET has a passionate and talented community which you can connect with by visiting our Community Forum. Feel free to say hello and to introduce yourself here. We are proud of our developers and researchers that are actively publishing their research for the benefit of the community; you can read the research here.

For any additional information, please refer to our roadmaps and subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed about all of our developments. You can connect with our passionate and talented community by visiting our Community Forum.