Diversity – in all its forms
Watch as David presented “The danger of believing AI in an intercultural and diverse world” for Diversity and Innovation Conference, Poland 31 May 2025 here
AI and INTERCULTURALITY April 2025
A lot has been written about the downsides and upsides of Artificial Intelligence and how it affects Interculturality and Diversity. This paper doesn’t deal with the benefits and perils of Artificial Intelligence in general but only insofar as it affects Diversity and Interculturality.
Al is everywhere Al is not neutral What do we do?
Summary
There are a lot of benefits from AI and for the world of Diversity and Interculturality there are significant downsides. Significant advantages include increased efficiency and the possibility therefore of extending services, such as medical ones, at much cheaper prices and therefore for more people and more minorities.
Much of AI is market driven, it is highly competitive, fast paced, and very flexible with many organisations going for the Minimal Viable Product approach using agile development. The desire to be first to market causes the products not to be ready or tested properly As a consequence many of these products barely work and are not thought out properly. There are products such as HeyGen which allow you to automatically make videos from text with an avatar looking a lot like you which can remove the stereotyping. Duo-Lingo claims to have AI’d everything and getting lots of negative response from customers.
There is a tendency to ‘AI’ existing processes, which is a wasted opportunity, and, as with most IT development , the developers tend not to understand the fundamentals behind the processes as they are not expert at doing the job just at automating it. (Nothing new here) . It is also quite likely that those actually doing the work don’t understand it either. There can be considerable opportunities for innovation by doing processes a different way as afforded by AI. There is a fear of being innovative as the downsides are often not obvious – shifting the bottlenecks from one place to another rather than eliminating .
There is scant regard for ‘Ethical AI’ except for including in marketing material. There isn’t the time to do it . Ethical AI , of which there are many versions depending in which country you are in, is barely enforced or enforceable as legislation is not able to keep up with the changes.
You cannot rely on the contents of AI because of Hallucinations (it makes the best guess) and frequently you cannot challenge the results as you do not know how the results were derived. Potentially lethal in Healthcare where doctors cannot understand how the conclusions are made. This results in loss of trust between the organisations providing the services and their clients
While there is considerable bias in everyday life – The tendency to go for ‘people like us’ is made much worse with AI as the training data used for most Large Language Models is fundamentally biased. This is because of the sources tend to be based on western and Global North ideologies and young white male philosophies. Therefore they reinforce discrimination becoming much unreliable and biased for those who are non-white non-male , non-straight and living in Global South. This is also true of the developers.
In conclusion AI can offer many breakthroughs as it can much more at considerably less cost. However bias and misinformation results in lost trust. And eventually there is regulatory backlash. The fundamental issues of bias in data, developers means ultimately that all the minorities will become more persecuted and disadvantaged as, while these issues are well known, there is no benefit to the developers in fixing them
Ask for the details
Diversity – what’s in it for me ?
- Diverse and properly inclusive teams make a lot more money and are more successful than those who are not
DIEB: Diversity, Equity Inclusion, Belonging
We deeply value David Rigby ‘s contribution to the AI Symposium. As a dedicated participant, David engaged actively for nearly 15 hours, offering insightful perspectives that significantly advanced the conversation on AI and intercultural competence. His commitment and depth of knowledge were truly remarkable and appreciated by the entire SIETAR Global community.
are many variants over whether to use the Acronym DEIB. This is because it is a broad topic and in different scenarios and countries it has developed in different ways. We use the definition adopted by SIETAR Europe of which we are members
We offer
- a team of associates in four continents speaking 12 languages (see People)
- four day training course on Diversity already delivered in several countries (see Train )
- talks on Diversity delivered in several countries (see Speak)
- Diversity workshops tailored for specific countries to deal with others (see Train)
- Cognitive Diversity – how to build a properly diverse team using Profiling (see Profile
- Coaching on Interculturality and on how to become Diverse (see Coach)
- Call us on +447788425688 for more details or send us an enquiry
Our building blocks
Diversity Equity/Equality Inclusion Belonging
Diversity
Great strides have been made in some countries to ensure women are included in diversity. In fewer countries strides have been made to ensure that those with fluid gender and those with different sexuality are included. Race or nationality can operate in different ways. In the Middle East there are the locals (the indigenous) and the expats. For the expats your race/nationality determines your salary.
Equity/Equality
The law in the UK states that everyone be treated equally. That those born to privilege are treated in Law. the same way as those not.
In the USA Equity is the key where allowance is made about your background and circumstance to enable you to work on a level playing field.
Inclusion and Belonging.
watch this video from DuPont watch here How many things can you find wrong with it?
Diversity is being asked to the dance, Inclusion is being asked to dance. Belonging refers to an individual’s sense of acceptance. Belonging is usually the result of the level of inclusion an individual feels in their environment, where they can be themselves and be part of the team.
For example; If you have a woman on an all-male board and all they are asked to deal with is ‘women’s issues’ or maybe ‘soft skills’ such as HR then that is not inclusion. Same applies to LGBT community. It’s about being included and belong to every day decisions. The same can apply to many other diversity categories such as age, education, culture. Having to code-switch to be included may be necessary – as speaking the same language can help
Issues can occur in an international organisation where the culture of the Organisation is at odds with the culture of the country.
A diverse workforce is more engaged, creative and, ultimately, drives better business results when operating in a truly inclusive environment. However diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives faced criticism and pushback because they are implemented according to the law and not to deliver the benefits.
