University of São Paulo: USP launches program that encourages diversity among future professionals in the field of Artificial Intelligence
THEDiversity and inclusion are present and necessary guidelines in our lives. In the midst of a world that is advancing at a fast pace, the occupation of important spaces by minorities and less privileged people has become increasingly fundamental. According to a survey carried out in 2021 by Pulses, in partnership with Nohs Somos, minorities do not reach 10% of the workforce in companies. In the artificial intelligence landscape, the situation is similar. Black people, LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities (PCDs) and women remain the exception in this environment. As a way of encouraging a change in this situation, USP’s Center for Artificial Intelligence (C4AI), through its Inclusion and Diversity Committee (CID), will officially launch on October 19 an initiative that offers scientific initiation grants to underrepresented groups.
Named the Inclusion and Diversity Program (PID), the project – which is currently undergoing a pilot phase – seeks to reduce, in practice, inequality among future professionals in the field of Artificial Intelligence in Brazil. The idea is to encourage the training of people belonging to underrepresented groups by offering specific opportunities for this audience. “Our proposal is to have more women, more black people, people from the LGBTQIA+ group and even older people joining the scientific universe. In addition, all the people who were selected had a low family income”, explains Valdinei Freire, professor at USP’s School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH), one of the founders of the PID and a member of C4AI.
The PID, which already offers scholarships for undergraduate students to work on the different campuses of the University, is not only focused on students in the area of Computing. Of the 12 vacancies offered so far, students from Letters, Social Sciences, History, Law, Speech-Language Pathology, Veterinary Medicine, Astronomy, Physics and Statistics were selected. multidisciplinary area that manages to encompass different aspects, as explained by Renata Wassermann, professor at the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME) at USP, one of the creators of the initiative: “Within our Center, we have groups working with applications in medicine, agriculture, in law and the impact of artificial intelligence at work. Multidisciplinary is already present in the Center as a whole. AI is our common thread with the other areas of knowledge”, he reiterates.
The perspective is that, over time, the promotion of training of minorities within the area of AI will be even greater, as there are still few underrepresented groups within the computing universe. For this reason, the PID, which was created about a year ago and in that period had the participation of two undergraduate students, a doctoral student and nine professors from USP, seeks to launch programs that foster representation, the power of inclusion and the feeling of belonging for everyone.
The PID is now entering a professionalization stage and, in order to expand opportunities for more students, mainly from areas not yet covered, it is open to establishing partnerships with companies interested in investing in inclusion through the granting of scholarships and other contributions within their different segments, valuing the generation of knowledge and the training of professionals from different social groups.
“Companies look for diversity. It is in the interest of institutions that their team be diverse, with people from the most varied groups. However, even though they have this desire, there is a lack of people in the area, as many have been excluded from these training opportunities. Therefore, by entering into a partnership with PID, companies can expect that within a year or two, when they enter the job market very well qualified in the field of Artificial Intelligence, students can be hired by the companies”, says Renata.
diversity early
Initiating actions to promote diversity through scientific initiation grants was a choice designed to promote, even at graduation, opportunities for underrepresented groups to have access to the AI universe in their first stage of academic life. If the PID had its starting point with doctoral students, for example, the margin of inclusion would be much smaller, as it would reach an audience that has already been excluded in the past.
For the C4AI scholarship holder and student of the Astronomy course at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences (IAG) at USP, Washington Lopes, the initiative is fundamental to enable minorities to enter the field of AI, in addition to contributing to the permanence of from the scholarships offered: “Establishing public notices that focus on attracting underrepresented groups is important and necessary, as we can only change reality and remove the conscious or unconscious biases that exclude this public with actions focused on their inclusion”, he says. the student.
Upon being selected, Washington had access to introductory classes and content on AI and participated in a project together with other PID fellows in the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP). The objective of this work was to verify the feasibility of training a neural network to perform the translation of texts that are within the standard norm for texts in neutral language. In a second stage, the student started to do research in his area of training, more specifically on the Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN, Active Galactic Nucleus). The focus of his work is to analyze interferometric images using an algorithm called Cross-Entropy, in order to identify and characterize AGN components. “Scientific initiation has been very important for me to understand the first steps of how research is done and what it is like to be a researcher. It is the opportunity we have to experience, during graduation, the various possibilities of lines of research that may be of interest to us and, with that, choose in a more assertive way in which area we will follow during graduate studies”, he emphasizes.
Mariluce is studying Electrical Engineering at Poli – Photo: Janiffer Santos
Mariluce Pereira de Jesus was also selected to receive a scientific initiation grant from C4AI. She says that her entry into the show was the kick she needed to enter the world of AI, something that has always been her goal. According to the young woman, the initiative allowed the democratization of spaces, something that impacts her as an individual, but also brings benefits to the entire population.
“Until then, I didn’t know how to take the first step in the area. We are often within USP, particularly within the engineering area, and at the same time that spaces like this are so close, they are also far away. C4AI’s initiative to offer scholarships to underrepresented groups was a big deal. It allowed me to enter the area and fulfill my dream of developing a project within the area of artificial intelligence, which is something I want to work on in the future. This democratization of access made the C4AI space more inclusive and gave minorities access to it. This impacts in two ways, because it is good for our group and also for society”, celebrates the student,
According to Mariluce, it is from initiatives such as the C4AI that new visions can be addressed so that more real-world problems are solved: “When we enter this world, we bring our vision, our problems, we are in the place of speech to bring representation and seek solutions to the problems of our groups. Expanding our influence in society is fundamental. Mainly for the engineer, a profession that I believe needs to play a human role. There is no progress without the evolution of science, and having access to this world is something that makes all the difference to me”, he concludes.
Want to collaborate with the PID? Contact those responsible for the initiative by accessing the website of the Inclusion and Diversity Committee at: https://c4ai.inova.usp.br/cid/#contact-2 . Open to the public, the program’s official launch event will be held on October 19, at 4 pm, along with the celebration of the two-year anniversary of C4AI, which is funded by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Fapesp ) and IBM.
The festivity, which will be broadcast live on C4AI’s YouTube channel, will take place at the center’s headquarters, located in the Inova USP building, in São Paulo.