Jensine Larsen: Promise and Peril of AI for Women and Girls
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Show Notes:
Co-founder of Unfurl Futures and founder of the global network World Pulse, Jensine Larsen, and Dr. Nancy discuss the purpose of Larsen’s leadership in connecting the untapped human potential of women and girls to create a more powerful force. She describes how privileged she feels to have worked with so many grassroots women leaders from every country in the world, digitally and in person, and learned how the power of online worlds can create an impact offline. She has taken the valuable lessons of World Pulse and started a new project called Connected Power, ultimately to harness AI for the benefit of women and girls.
Larsen describes this moment as a narrow window of opportunity, which she is using to explore the innovations being built to shape the technology of AI, not just to create profit, but to benefit communities and transform lives. Collaborating with peers, journalists, researchers, and digital entrepreneurs, she is taking a year to explore what good work is being done for women and girls. She and her team have connected with 300 digital movement builders, people who were part of the #MeToo movement, Ni Una Menos in South America, the End Femicide movement in Kenya, and other grassroots movements, asking them if they had a magic wand to boost their movements, what would they need.
Her experience of building World Pulse taught her the struggle involved in trying to connect with others while building her own platform. Through Connected Power, she hopes to reach across that barrier with deep strategic collaboration, the outcome of which will be a blueprint for the builders, the funders, and the researchers to understand what is needed to coordinate their movements.
She points out these are very resource-scarce regions operating on tiny budgets, less than $25,000 in some cases, and under duress, like Sudan, where they’re trying to get stories out in the middle of genocide, where their physical location puts them at risk. Yet they are building alliances and getting stories out.
Larsen calls the term artificial intelligence (AI) a myth since less than half of one percent of recorded history is devoted to women’s stories. She points out that current AI models aggregate what’s been written, so we’re only getting a thin slice of human intelligence. Besides that, some countries are lying about the status of women and girls, like in Afghanistan, where women still can’t go anywhere without a male escort, yet publicity says the opposite: that women are getting an education again.
The challenge during today’s backlash against women’s rights is to create a new paradigm. Larsen says the global hearts and minds have not been resonating with the negative messaging, and it’s time to tell new stories that benefit everyone in a positive digital world.
There are many ways to get involved. Connected Power is building co-architects, co-funders, and co-activators. Larsen says if anyone exists in this space and wants to be part of building the blueprint, reach out. There’s a methodology and process for different roles. Read more about current needs and activities at https://www.connectedpower-blueprint.net .
About:
Jensine Larsen founded of World Pulse two decades ago to create a safe place for women to tell their stories and amplify their collective voice around the world. World Pulse is powered by more than 80,000 women across 200 countries, who are speaking for themselves and collectively improving the lives of nearly 25 million people. Larsen is a leader in digital communication, women’s leadership, online communities, reciprocal philanthropy, and strategic partnerships. And in 2018, she received the United Nations Media Social Impact Award. Currently, she’s building Connected Power, a new project that explores how women and girls are using technology to tell their stories, build movements, protect their communities, and pursue justice, uniting them for greater impact.