Jai Clarke-Binns on unlocking success in the AI and DEI landscape, cultivating curiosity to stay ahead and embracing critical theory.
Jai Clarke-Binns (He/They) is a highly skilled DE&I professional who is dedicated to creating a more equitable future for organizations and society as a whole. With a background in HR and a passion for design-thinking, they are able to approach problems from a unique perspective and find innovative solutions. Their experience includes consulting and founding a community-led initiative called People of Creativity, and they are now a valued member of the DE&I team at Google DeepMind. And in their spare time, they have founded the newsletter A Load of Orgness 🫠.
Dinal: As a DEI practitioner, what are your thoughts on the current state of affairs in the field?
Jai: If I am being honest, we are still not where we need to be, nor where I feel many of us desire to be. Here are two key areas I consider when reflecting on what a desirable and holistic state of affairs looks like. First, there is the practitioner side regarding the competencies we develop and build over time and second, we have where DE&I should be regarding moving the needle forward.
Reflecting on our competencies today, many practitioners are incredibly empathetic and understand the challenges different underrepresented communities face in organisations.
The disconnect I observe, is a flattening of our work to simply listing all groups, making sure they are included and where they see a gap, attempting to plug it without taking a structural approach.
There is a need for more critical theory and a structural approach. For me, a structural approach requires identifying the systems and powers that result in exclusion and cycles of privileges. The work is harder to address and requires a holistic approach that involves governance and rethinking underlying processes. The opportunity space at this level is vast as it can open up equity across multiple groups rather than selecting one group to focus on. In this way you can also focus on the system of inequity that impacts various marginalised identities.
“Terms like ableism and racism can feel loaded and evoke shame and guilt, leading us to avoid conversations or initiatives that move these issues forward.”
Are we moving the needle forward? Yes and no. Significant DE&I progress in the workplace has been made; however, it is still uneven across and within different groups. An example is a lack of intersectionality in gender diversity.
In my opinion, this is because within society, some inequities we find are more frequently spoken about, such as sexism; however, we struggle to speak about ableism or even racism. Both terms can feel loaded and evoke shame and guilt, leading us to avoid conversations or initiatives that move these issues forward.
So, in a nutshell, progress has been made; however, there are still critical areas to address. That being said, I am hopeful for the future of DE&I to shape a better workplace and society.
Dinal: What steps can DEI practitioners take to build on their competencies and knowledge?
Jai: A cornerstone of any social justice related work is the need to build resilience—the one thing we can not deny is that we will make mistakes. We can not be paralysed by fear as an excuse for inaction or avoiding specific topics. Our job is to role-model behaviours we wish to propagate across the organisations we work in, continually highlighting behaviours that display a growth mindset. This goes back to my previous point about being uncomfortable; we can only get comfortable if we work through our discomfort and educate ourselves about other communities.
“Our job as DEI practitioners is to role-model behaviours we wish to propagate across the organisations we work in, continually highlighting behaviours that display a growth mindset.”
The other area I am deeply passionate about is, as my favourite social commentary blogger Kimberly N. Foster says, are you doing the reading? The field is so large it can be hard to know where to start. I say to start where you are interested, and you will rapidly see all marginalised issues are connected through powerlines.
Also, consider the power of academics; they produce powerful insights across various identity and organisational topics. Additionally, I must shout out the behavioural scientists because change can be daunting without their nudges (one for the geeks). Ultimately, we do not and should not be reinventing the wheel. We should synergise and safely experiment with evidence-based approaches to achieve equity.
Dinal: Given you're in the AI space, what would be one piece of advice you might give to fellow DEI practitioners seeking to understand AI better?
Jai: This is a tough one; before sharing my advice, I would like to share sources that you can use to grow your knowledge
All of these sources provide great ongoing information about technology and AI. I also encourage DE&I folks to try out the range of AI tools such as Bard, Chat GPT, Midjourney, DALL-E, etc. By interacting with these tools, we can build curiosity while reflecting on how they might reproduce instances of bias. Oh doh, I want to share one more source related to Bias in AI, the great work of Joy Buolamwini, Gender Shades, a critical evaluation of the bias in facial recognition data sets. I could go on but stay curious, do the reading and verify your sources.