Many people perceive it as a problem that there are far more men than women in IT. Whether that is because of personal preference, discrimination, lifestyle choices, social gender construct reinforcement or any other factor makes long and interesting debate, but whatever conclusions are reached, we can only start from the reality of where we are. Even if activists were to be totally successful in eliminating all social and genetic gender conditioning, it would only work fully for babies born tomorrow and entering IT in 20 years time. Additionally, unless activists also plan to lobotomize everyone who doesn’t submit to their demands, some 20-somethings who have just started work may still be working in 50 years so whatever their origin, natural, social or some mix or other, some existing gender-related attitudes, prejudices and preferences might persist in the workplace that long, however much effort is made to remove them.
Nevertheless, the outlook for women in IT is very good, because IT is changing anyway, largely thanks to AI, so the nature of IT work will change and the impact of any associated gender preferences and prejudices will change with it. This will happen regardless of any involvement by Google or government but since some of the front line AI development is at Google, it’s ironic that they don’t seem to have noticed this effect themselves. If they had, their response to the recent fiasco might have highlighted how their AI R&D will help reduce the gender imbalance rather than causing the uproar they did by treating it as just a personnel issue. One conclusion must be that Google needs better futurists and their PR people need better understanding of what is going on in their own company and its obvious consequences.
As I’ve been lecturing for decades, AI up-skills people by giving them fast and intuitive access to high quality data and analysis tools. It will change all knowledge-based jobs in coming years, and will make some jobs redundant while creating others. If someone has excellent skills or enthusiasm in one area, AI can help cover over any deficiencies in the rest of their toolkit. Someone with poor emotional interaction skills can use AI emotion recognition assistance tools. Someone with poor drawing or visualization skills can make good use of natural language interaction to control computer-based drawing or visualization skills. Someone who has never written a single computer program can explain what they want to do to a smart computer and it will produce its own code, interacting with the user to eliminate any ambiguities. So whatever skills someone starts with, AI can help up-skill them in that area, while also helping to cover over any deficiencies they have, whether gender related or not.
In the longer term, IT and hence AI will connect directly to our brains, and much of our minds and memories will exist in the cloud, though it will probably not feel any different from when it was entirely inside your head. If everyone is substantially upskilled in IQ, senses and emotions, then any IQ or EQ advantages will evaporate as the premium on physical strength did when the steam engine was invented. Any pre-existing statistical gender differences in ability distribution among various skills would presumably go the same way, at least as far as any financial value is concerned.
The IT industry won’t vanish, but will gradually be ‘staffed’ more by AI and robots, with a few humans remaining for whatever few tasks linger on that are still better done by humans. My guess is that emotional skills will take a little longer to automate effectively than intellectual skills, and I still believe that women are generally better than men in emotional, human interaction skills, while it is not a myth that many men in IT score highly on the autistic spectrum. However, these skills will eventually fall within the AI skill-set too and will be optional add-ons to anyone deficient in them, so that small advantage for women will also only be temporary.
So, there may be a gender imbalance in the IT industry. I believe it is mostly due to personal career and lifestyle choices rather than discrimination but whatever its actual causes, the problem will go away soon anyway as the industry develops. Any innate psychological or neurological gender advantages that do exist will simply vanish into noise as cheap access to AI enhancement massively exceeds their impacts.
Timeguide - The future before it comes over the horizon 