Tech Tank: Creating Queer Inclusive Research and Experiences in AI

Celebrated every June, Pride Month honors the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan, New York—a pivotal event in the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States. Nearly 55 years since Stonewall, the LGBTQIA+ community has made remarkable strides toward equality and liberation, celebrated during National Pride Month.

However, despite decades of progress, the LGBTQIA+ community still faces significant biases, particularly in the realm of artificial intelligence. AI systems often misclassify LGBTQIA+ content as inappropriate or harmful, hindering the community’s ability to communicate and share their experiences. Furthermore, facial recognition technology and generative AI images frequently misidentify LGBTQIA+ individuals. Privacy and safety issues also persist in AI-generated environments, where the representation of LGBTQIA+ communities remains incomplete.

This week on the TechTank Podcast, co-host Nicol Turner Lee is joined by Arjun Subramonian, a computer science PhD candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Raj Korpan, an assistant professor of computer science at Hunter College in the city of New York. Subramonian and Korpan are co-authors of the paper “Queer In AI: A Case Study in Community-Led Participatory AI,” which outlines the harm AI poses to queer communities and offers solutions through community organization. Together, they discuss the issues emerging technologies pose to the LGBTQIA+ community and how the community is navigating them in these unprecedented times.

Listen to the episode and subscribe to the TechTank Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Acast.