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Patricia Gestoso

A laptopogram based on a neutral background and populated by scattered squared portraits, all monochromatic, grouped according to similarity. The groupings vary in size, ranging from single faces to overlapping collections of up to twelve. The facial expr
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[New Post] Speculative fiction: The Life of Data Podcast

Philipp Schmitt & AT&T Laboratories Cambridge / Better Images of AI / Data flock (faces) / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0 Speculative fiction: The Life of Data Podcast Have you ever thought what happens to your photos circulating on social media? I have and that's the topic of in my second short story in English in which I used speculative fiction to question the interplay between humans and technology, specifically AI. In a nutshell, I imagined what the data from the digital portrait of a Black...

Image by Alexa from Pixabay. The Three Hidden Forces That Sabotage Your Ambitions and How to Overcome Them Throughout my life, I’ve devoted a lot of energy to “solve” for what I call “point blockers” — one-off events that come up as disruptive, beyond my control, or that I’ve given somehow a quality of being life-changing Somebody's death A certification A promotion Which is great for short-term survival — all my brain is focused on solving the problem at hand. What’s not so good is that — as...

Image by Alan Warburton / © BBC / Better Images of AI / Virtual Human / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0. Techno-Patriarchy: How AI is Misogyny's New Clothes In the discussions around gender bias in artificial intelligence (AI), intentionality is left out of the conversation. We talk about discriminatory datasets and algorithms but avoid mentioning that humans — software developers — select those databases or code the algorithms. Any attempts to demand accountability are crushed under exculpating...

Anton Grabolle / Better Images of AI / Human-AI collaboration / CC-BY 4.0 I cannot believe that's already 22nd of April. It's been a hectic month in a good way. For example, In my role as UK partnership lead for European Women on Boards, I've been preparing two virtual events to discuss how women can get on commercial boards as well as how to transition from board member to chairperson. This Thursday, I'll deliver the talk "Beyond the Offer Letter: Dispelling 7 Myths About the Gender Pay Gap"...

Clarote & AI4Media / Better Images of AI / Power/Profit / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0. Inside the Digital Underbelly: The Lucrative Ecosystem of Deepfake Porn Two weeks ago, deepfake pornographic images of Taylor Swift spread like fire through X. It took the platform 19 hours to suspend the account that posted the content after they amassed over 27 million views and more than 260,000 likes. That gave me pause. 260,000 people watched the content, knew it was fake, and felt no shame in sharing their...

“Fixing” Women: The Profitable Tricks of the Beauty Industrial Complex Last week, an article caught my attention. The title referred to the weird ways in which women have tried to lose weight. The subtitle pointed out that the culprit was our quest for beauty. That stopped me in my tracks. A flood of memories of nonstop dieting and judgment — from myself and others — came back. I repeated to myself, “Our quest for beauty”. This time, my brain consciously rebelled. I was not buying that...

How to be a Better Coach? 7 Best Practices to Deliver Inclusive Coaching Experiences Since 2015, I’ve spearheaded several initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion in tech products and the workplace that were recognized with the UK 2020 Women in Tech Changemakers award. An inflection point in that trajectory was when, in June 2018, I launched my website focused on diversity and inclusion to broaden my audience as a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) advocate, a role I’d been actively...

Dyslexia's Prison Paradox: A Closer Look at the Numbers Sometimes we come across a piece of information that fundamentally changes our understanding of a problem, adding a dimension that we’ve missed completely. Recently, I read the article Incarcerating Illiteracy — The Prison Pipeline of Dyslexia that made exactly that. More precisely, the sentence “In America, an estimated 50% of the prison population is dyslexic. […] A population of which 80% is functionally illiterate.” The author...

Breaking Free: Dispelling 6 Myths About the Gender Pay Gap I’ve been pondering what I’d like my last post of the year to be about. Below are some ideas that crossed my mind Something that’ll prompt reflection about 2023 or action for 2024? A personal anecdote? A client aha moment? An uplifting story? A cautionary tale? I was definitively not thinking of discussing women and money. The reason? I’ve talked about women and money extensively since I started blogging. For example, I’ve discussed...

Upwards & Onwards: The career breakthrough gift you deserve in 2024 One of the things I’m proudest of this year is the launch of my “coachering” — coaching & mentoring — program “Upwards & Onwards”. Through this program, women and people from underrepresented groups have got An internal promotion. A job in another organisation more aligned with their career goals. A more senior job in another organisation. Applied for internal promotion and received detailed feedback on the skills and...