There are few things that I find more elusive than walking through a museum. Being inside the frame is an incredible opportunity for you change perspective and try to find reality through the eyes of the past. Sometimes the immersion disappears when you enter the museum; Moreover, the ideas that provoke us are dampened by the alternation of days.
The story I passed ended with a relic of 1877 in the Manchester Art Gallery, painted by Saunders and Sargent. Oil, realistic style, photo cases, is titled Interior of Manchester Royal Exchange and essentially represents analog version of the most expensive LinkedIn of the time.
At the time, this elegant hall was considered the largest business hall in the world. Quiz so that the 231 riders who appeared in line paid their bill to be part of it. An opportunity to be immortalized like this the industrial elite of the time who wanted to escape. At the end of the 19th century there were no sites on the internet where this appeared, but the ways to hang on and figure it out were invented long before social red.
The one who just had were the women in the room. Here, as I observe today at many events and boards, women have been invited not to participate in the day. Or no quisieron salir. Or he just doesn’t know anything.
Today we will use this image from 1877 as we data file In order to train a talent selection algorithm, the result would be predictable enough: the model would conclude that the only valid candidates for business management, reverse equity, or economic decision making are men with a serious look and a sombrero with a cup.
It would not be a fault of the algorithm, but a lesson learned from the past. Something similar happened in 2015, when Amazon discovered that its artificial intelligence system for evaluating resumes penalized women because it learned about the previous decade’s male-dominated negotiation history.
Algorithms do not exist in historical contexts, they learn from patrons. And if past data reflects a clear reality, the result is obvious. Without aural diversity in the data, AI doesn’t correct history, it automates.
At the beginning of the 20th century, art broke away from burgundy realism and embraced the vanguard, obsessed with movement, color and the disruption of forms. This is the case of Delaunay, who in his painting Drama Politique featured the moment when Henriette Caillaux, the wife of the French finance minister, fatally shot the editor of the periodical Le Figaroafter accusing your husband of corruption.
Surprisingly, Señora Caillaux was juzgada and absuelta. The argument was as revealing as it was disturbing: A woman cannot be accused of a premeditated crime because her emotional nature did not allow her to plan something so complex. The year was 1914, and while the first suffragists were complaining about political rights in the streets, a justice followed that saw them as irrationally claiming to be responsible for their own actions.
More than a century ago, social and above all artistic changes are evident. Hey women employ more than 34% of the population on boards of directors of large European companies and in Spain, 38% is lost in listed companies, trying to reach the umbral 40% that the European regulation intends to consolidate. Progress unthinkable in the eraManchester Royal Exchange. And without the embargo, there would still be something to do.
If Saunders and Sargent want to paint a picture to represent start-up sponsors today, it may not be as stark as it was in 1877. As of 2023, female-only startups in Europe will account for a modest 1.8% of capital. In the United States, only 2%.
The most frustrating thing about these numbers is that they don’t relate to yield. Another ClosingGap, female-led startups generate 10% revenue growth and have a 27% lower tax rate than those funded by men.
In a world where technology is advancing exponentially and artificial intelligence is busy shaping our present and our future, diversity is not just an issue of fairness, it is an issue of data quality. Since algorithms are trained in the past, the solution is clear: automate the things we still haven’t fixed. No, if it’s just about fighting ethical injustice, if it’s about avoiding systemic risk.
The difference with seniors Manchester Royal Exchange, Today’s women don’t want to pay to be photographed. Let’s ensure opportunities reflect the talent that exists, not the inertia of the past. As capital and data continue to look to the past, the future will be nothing more than a digital version of that 1877 image: elegant, precise, and deeply misunderstood.
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