This morning, our partners at Meta hosted a fantastic roundtable with their Chief Diversity Officer, Maxine Williams and Head of Connection Planning, Zehra Chatoo. It was all about the impact of AI on diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) as well as the broader DE&I agenda.
There were a few key takeaways:
- Data clearly shows cognitively diverse teams = better business outcomes.
- Meta’s AI team have a near impossible task to build a solution that facilitates the conversations one individual might want to have whilst being conscious that the AI’s response might offend others. Can this ever be solved?
- The tech coming out of Meta in the coming years is impressive. From Ray-Ban glasses with integrated AI, to other wearables helping empower the lives of the physically disabled. It’s clear Meta sees itself as more than a social platform in its mission to bring the world closer together.
- Diverse teams working on complex problems enable the “edge cases to be pursued whilst the centre appears”, benefiting more people.
- The catch 22 is not lost on Meta that AI is an energy intensive technology: it’s levelling access to education globally whilst likely to be disproportionately negatively impacting those in already challenging environments geographically. The script is unwritten so far on the cost-benefit.
- Hiring diversity for the sake of hitting a diversity quota is not how Meta hire. It’s about getting diverse representation in the running for roles, then merit wins.
An all-round important conversation and a great event with our partners.
On the last bullet point, we are hiring at BARK. Whilst all hiring will also always remain merit based, we’d love more people living and working in diverse communities to apply. If you’re an exceptional performance marketer or creative from any walk of life, please view our open roles and get in touch.
