One of the great joys of my work is being able to join discussions with colleagues around the world, listen, learn and contribute where I can.
Last week, the Kuala Lumpur International PR Conference (KLIP 8) was held in Malaysia and, as always, there was an innovation added to the event in the form of a special session, AI SHE LEADS forum for women in AI and PR. I wasn't able to attend in person but was able to contribute the presentation you can watch below.
The short session covered several trains of thought - threads of consideration tied together to bond us to the role of women when it comes to leading away from harm.
AI is not simply shiny tools, productivity tricks or an inevitable future to which everyone must quietly adapt - it is a set of systems already shaping judgement, access, visibility and trust and doing so using data soaked in old inequalities.
Last week, the Kuala Lumpur International PR Conference (KLIP 8) was held in Malaysia and, as always, there was an innovation added to the event in the form of a special session, AI SHE LEADS forum for women in AI and PR. I wasn't able to attend in person but was able to contribute the presentation you can watch below.
The short session covered several trains of thought - threads of consideration tied together to bond us to the role of women when it comes to leading away from harm.
AI is not simply shiny tools, productivity tricks or an inevitable future to which everyone must quietly adapt - it is a set of systems already shaping judgement, access, visibility and trust and doing so using data soaked in old inequalities.
Women are underrepresented in the all the rooms where AI is designed, funded, governed and sold, yet overrepresented among those harmed when systems reproduce bias or enable abuse and imbalance. Imbalance manifested in facial recognition failures, recruitment bias, gendered stereotypes in generative AI and the industrialisation of synthetic sexualised imagery.
A second thread is the danger of treating AI as neutral infrastructure. When AI decides who gets a service, who is believed, who is flagged, who is ignored or who is deemed a risk, it changes the relationship between organisations and the people they serve. That matters deeply for public relations and communication because our work is relationship work, sense-making and stewardship of trust.
The third thread is responsibility before deployment. We must look beyond automation and question who is affected, who benefits, who carries the risk, what data is missing, who can appeal and who is accountable when systems fail.
The final thread is women’s leadership. Not as a tidy diversity add-on but as a necessary challenge to the new fast-forming societal norms as directed by AI and those currently directing the technology and its development. Women in public relations and communication must party to the decisions as they are made, not called in afterwards to explain or mitigate the damage done.