In our Sunday newsletter, we, as editors, look back on the past seven days. We do this on the initiative of our cartoonist Albert Jan Rasker. He picks a subject, makes a drawing, and we take it from there.
It’s plain and simple: when an organization is diverse, the chances of success in the long term are higher. And still, only 10 percent of all founders in the Dutch start-up ecosystem are women. And women entrepreneurs still raise much less money than their male counterparts. This, of course, has lots of reasons, but it needs to change.
The recently launched Dutch program Momentum, therefore, focuses on supporting female founders. “If we do nothing, the system changes too slowly,” says Mercedes de Miranda, Program Director of Momentum at Startupbootcamp. “And systemic changes are often incredibly slow.”
The initiative is much needed. Read the whole story here.
But there’s more to be done. As we all know, AI systems can be very biased. When programmed by a man, they tend to favor male-related results. When AI tools are asked to suggest a hundred occupations or characters, less than twenty percent of the tools show images of a woman. Awareness of this bias led to the creation of Missjourney – the name of which was clearly inspired by Midjourney.
Read more about Missjourney here. From CEOs to leaders, superheroes to doctors and engineers, our minds are pushed toward male pictures. MissJourney actively counters these biased gender stereotypes; the initiators hope it will inspire AI developers to create smart, unbiased solutions. We agree (and so does Albert Jan) and can only hope the male part of society doesn’t see this ambition as a lady’s task.
There’s more…
In addition to this – as always – we had our sights sharp on all those people and organizations busy tackling the enormous challenges of our time. Here is this week’s “sneak preview of the future“:
Hable One keyboard enables blind people to use smartphones again
Dangerous places can now be inspected with drones made by Flyability
In the future, houses will roll off an assembly line
A new optical tool helps to detect how bacteria communicate
Battery invention from Delft lab can extend the battery service life
And finally, here’s what our AI-powered editor was all about this week: follow Laio.
Have a great, innovative week!
Related Posts
