The following policy brief, developed by participants in the Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Program “Digital Constitutionalism and the UN Global Digital Compact,” is the product of the Digital Constitutionalism Network’s successful Teaching Partnership that spans across several universities and enables students to engage both digitally and in person with pressing rights issues in the digital context. This brief is the third of a six-part series of policy briefs from the program held at the University of Bremen in the spring of 2024.

Developed by Larissa Reichel, Poojika Amarakoon, Peppi Bruns, Denise Brancaccio, Giovanni Capone, and Pauline Prochnow, the policy brief “An Intersectionality Approach to Gender and Artificial Intelligence” addresses the issue of bias and discrimination in decision-making by artificial intelligence, using the lens of intersectionality to gender to promote intersectional equality. Recognizing the interconnectedness of social categories and the overlapping and compounding levels of discrimination that individuals’ various social identities encounter, the authors provide evidential research demonstrating the inequality that can be seen from an intersectional perspective. The application of AI to a range of areas, including medicine, employment applications, and facial-recognition systems, reveals intersectional inequality in the current uses of AI. The brief examines key sections of the Global Digital Compact and makes normative recommendations to the United Nations with regard to the issue of bias and discrimination in AI. Technical recommendations are also offered to developers of AI systems with the aim of fostering an AI industry that proactively incorporates measures to minimize the effects of intersectionality in AI systems.

You can find the six policy briefs here: https://www.globaldigitalcompact.org/outcomes.html 

Photos: Matej Meza/Universität Bremen