> Your analysis flat out refuses to acknowledge the inherent value-add that diversity in general brings to the field of AI
Do you have actual quantified evidence that supports this? Also if you are going to cite a study, it should be reproducible.
Do you have actual quantified evidence that supports this? Also if you are going to cite a study, it should be reproducible.
And like the other commenter noted, the Institutes component seems focused on fostering new AI talent all over the country, so ergo a part of that will be making its resources accessible to many different groups of people. A claim that this initiative would be more effective in its stated goals by confining its educational resources to a single population demographic seems like it would also demand research and concrete evidence. Would that even be legal?
"Diverse" is one keyword in a whole paragraph about introducing an NSF funded program to provide educational resources for new workers to skill up on AI. America is a diverse country: Of course a program that serves all of America with that stated goal would create a diverse workforce. I'm a little confused why the top discussion on this thread has seized on that single word with such outrage.
[0]https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-diversity-can-drive-innovation
If you were taught this a decade ago you likely are familiar with the "Striving, Storming, Thriving" study which demonstrates that relation especially well.
I recall a recent hand-wringing study out of Harvard jam-packed with soothing language but showing that as teams diversify their ability to engage in shared risk-taking declines [0]
On the other hand, I still don't share the anguish over the term 'diverse' in this particular OP for the reasons I stated - if this program is designed to foster AI talent all over America, if successful it will by definition foster diverse talent.
Like if the program wasn't designed to help America build a diverse AI workforce, then it would be designed to create a demographically constrained, homogenized workforce. I wouldn't expect us to be happy about that and I wouldn't think of it as a good allocation of federal tax money.
Something not being designed to do X does not mean it is designed to do Y.
The hackles raised here over "diversity" are, as you note, likely related to demographic considerations as opposed to say geographic considerations.
The argument is usually that the goal of government programs should be to accomplish a task as effectively and efficiently as possible. In the case of AI doing so is especially important in an era of rising geopolitical multipolarity. Sacrificing this for the sake of appeasing identity interest groups is short-sighted.
As we briefly explored, arguments that demographic diversity augment this efficacy have yet to meaningfully materialize, while concrete evidence to the contrary has both in the literature and in large-scale behavioral patterns (the neighborhood trust studies come to mind). It's one of, if not THE, most contentious area of sociology and public policy right now because of the obvious implications.
IMO that's why people latch onto it and why it's getting so much attention here. It's a hot button issue of grave importance that hasn't been solved yet and discussions around it are extremely painful and frequently stifled.
In the context of this specific initiative, my view would still be: America is an inherently diverse place, so a program that seeks to develop an AI workforce across America but does not create a diverse one has not achieved “maximum effectiveness” and has not effectively served all of America.
We may be diverse, but that needn't mean every sector of every niche in every industry must be so or that it would be better if it were.
Our position in the world is relative. Our power comes from the relative delta between us and "them", whomever it is we happen to be competing with.
To forget that fundamental relation, even in service to our personal sense of morality, is solipsism.
>if it results in China or India developing more effective models faster and more cheaply
Why should we project that possibility? The most successful research centers for new AI development have been American organizations like OpenAI and Google with clearly stated diversity policies. And of course, this OP is not about private companies, it's about a public resource program. Do you have any evidence that China and India are developing more effective models faster and more cheaply and that it's because of some specific lack of attention paid to ensuring public resources are broadly accessible to all demographics?
>We may be diverse, but that needn't mean every sector of every niche in every industry must be so or that it would be better if it were.
Rather than address this whole point, I'll revisit that we are talking about a federally funded public education program. I do not think a federally funded program to develop a bigger AI workforce in America would be more successful if it did not serve all Americans, and especially not if some of the funding were diverted to gatekeeping its resources to specific demographics.
This is strictly personal opinion, but mine is: America is not China or India and that extends to the values enshrined in our founding documents and constitutional amendments. It is my view one of those values is equal opportunity for all, and it is my view we should not compromise our values for a perceived opportunity to better "compete" on an arbitrarily constrained playing field with other players we feel do not share those values. I think modern history has repeatedly proven that democratic and equitable organizations and countries prevail over those that are not and I don't see where in the lesson plan of America's history we would glean the insight that we should compromise our values now, in this case.
(China recognizes 55 ethnic minorities, and the Han majority itself speaks several mutually unintelligible languages although they kind of just ignore that.)
Harvard’s incoming freshman class is a good example of the utter failure of mandating “reflective diversity” in higher education (or above). In nominal terms, 18% of these freshman are black. They are heavily, heavily incentivized and provided substantial affordances in the admissions process, even when compared to other minority groups. And the result is actually several percentage points ABOVE “reflective diversity”! Success!
Except going by historical trends compiled by “The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education” [1], the overwhelming majority - up to 75%! - of these incoming black freshmen are wealthy scions of the elite from Africa/the Caribbean or legacy admissions.
A top-down policy supposedly designed to promote opportunities for the descendants of slaves, has not only resulted in further disenfranchisement, but has served to coat the entire situation with a pernicious sense of false righteousness that has effectively boxed out the intended beneficiaries from engaging in the public discourse with their concerns. Which, in turn, is causing actual discriminatory beliefs to arise (check out “ADOS” or “FBA” hashtags on Twitter for a taste).
And fwiw, this trend is much broader and taller than just the Ivies. I can’t find the source again at the moment, but in one recent year, an outright majority of all publicized black hires in the C-suite weren’t American born blacks. Outright homogeneity (which doesn’t exist) is hardly less “reflective” of native-born Americans than the current situation.
The saddest aspect to all this is we’d get much more actual “reflective” diversity if we pulled all the distortionary diversity money out of the upper levels of the system and put it into massively improving the communities and EARLY educational outcomes of these underrepresented groups.
Unless you believe in the absolute primacy of genetics, community/home life and early education are the ONLY reliably predictive measures for success (after controlling for wealth). Our attention should be on those things, not on shady initiatives that disincentivize Americans of all stripes for the benefit of millionaire/billionaire global elites who are far more similar to their economic peers than they are to Americans with whom they share a skin color.
[1] https://www.jbhe.com/news_views/52_harvard-blackstudents.htm...
For example, a company that employs you graduates of elite schools might be racially diverse, but if many of the employees graduated from 10 colleges and all live in San Francisco, their world views could be quite similar.
“Diversity” can also be a political signal word. Progressives love diversity for reasons unrelated to management theory.
In fact “diversity” can used to enforce rigid ideological orthodoxies.
I’m sure that’s not what organizational scientists want, but it’s often what results.
And of course, the federal government is not mandating any behavior by private businesses - it is setting the charter for a publicly funded public resource initiative. The federal government often sets in writing directives for its agencies that the average Joe would view as common sense. For example, I think it's common sense that an effectively disseminated public resource initiative to expand America's AI workforce nationwide would result in building a diverse workforce.