This is a special occasion of Vietnamese Women’s Day. In the latest post, we have introduced 5 technologies that make women’s lives better. Today, we want to shine a spotlight on an urgent issue: the harmful impact of tech on women. Let’s take lessons from the 3 worst cases ever in this post.

Amazon AI Hiring Tool “Hates” Women

The Amazon team built computer programs in 2014 to review job applicants’ CVs to mechanize the talent search. However, their system taught itself that male candidates were preferable since the models were trained by observing patterns in CVs submitted over a decade that predominantly came from men.

As a result, it penalized resumes that included the word “women’s and downgraded students from two all-women’s colleges. Fortunately, Amazon has realized this bias and tried to fix it.

Apple “Sexist” Credit Card

This scandal broke out when a couple compared their Apple Card spending limits. Despite a better credit score, the wife’s credit line was 20 times lower than her husband’s. Their tweets caught the attention of thousands of people in similar situations.

The fact that even employees from Apple seemed unable to describe how the algorithm worked makes the investigation far more challenging.

China’s Deceptive Face-Scanning 

In 2019, China’s Alipay added beauty filters to its face-scan payments system in order to adapt to its users’ demands. 60% of them thought they looked uglier on these cameras. It was thought to be a brilliant initiative, but it wasn’t. 

Their beauty filters can make people look thinner, fairer-skinned, and more symmetrical than they are in real life, putting pressure on women to conform to unrealistic beauty standards.